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The judges asked the government to refrain from registering any new cases which invoke sedition until it finishes hearing petitions challenging it.

The court also asked the authorities to pause all existing sedition trials.

The government has been accused of using the law against critics, such as politicians, journalists and activists.

On Tuesday, the government said that they would review the law after earlier defending it.

While pausing the court hearing on Wednesday, the judges said that those already charged under the law, and in jail, could seek bail from trial courts.

Kapil Sibal, senior leader of India’s opposition Congress party and lawyer for the petitioners, told the Supreme Court that there were over 800 cases of sedition pending across India and as many as 13,000 people were in jail.

A majority of sedition cases filed against 405 Indians for criticising politicians and governments over the last decade were registered after 2014 when Prime Minister Narendra Modi took power, according to data compiled by the website Article14.

Too early to celebrate?

Soutik Biswas, BBC News, Delhi

The Supreme Court’s decision to pause the sedition law is a significant development.

For decades, successive governments have used the colonial-era law – the dreaded section 124a of the antiquated Indian Penal Code – against students, journalists, intellectuals, social activists, and those critical of the government to essentially suppress dissent and free speech.

A law which was mainly used against Indian political leaders seeking independence from British rule in the 19th and early 20th centuries has now been weaponised as a tool of suppression by successive democratically elected governments. That is, many say, is India’s shame.

But it would be too early to celebrate.

It remains to be seen how Narendra Modi’s government “re-examines and reconsiders” the draconian law. Will it be defanged and modified? Or will it be scrapped?

Most Indians will be happy to see the law, which they say has no place in a modern democracy, to be given a quick burial.

The law made headlines last year when it was invoked against a student who shared a document intended to help farmers protesting against agricultural reforms.

It was also used in the case of a school play involving nine to 12-year-olds, for liking a Facebook post, and not standing up in a cinema when the national anthem was being played.

The offence is punishable by a monetary fine or a maximum sentence of life in prison, or both.

In 1962, the top court had imposed limits on the use of the law, but critics say authorities in India continue to flout these restrictions with impunity.

They say the law is mostly used to intimidate people who protest against authority. Given India’s slow moving judicial system, these cases get stuck for years.

Meanwhile, people charged under the sedition law have to surrender their passports, are not eligible for government jobs and must produce themselves in court whenever required.

Still reliant on coal for most of its electricity, it is one of the dirtiest countries per capita – making up just over 1% of global emissions, but only 0.3% of the world’s population.

It’s a massive global supplier of fossil fuels, and once that is factored in, it accounts for 3.6% of the world’s emissions.

But it’s also one of the nations most at risk from climate change.

In recent years, Australia has suffered severe drought, historic bushfires, successive years of record-breaking floods, and six mass bleaching events on the Great Barrier Reef.

And it’s racing towards a future full of similar disasters, the latest UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report warns.

The current government has angered allies with its short-term emissions reductions target – which is half what the IPCC says is needed if the world has any chance of limiting warming to 1.5C.

But Australia is still wedded to fossil fuels and climate policy has famously played a role in toppling three prime ministers in a decade.

Though most voters want tougher climate action, some coal towns lie in swing constituencies that are key to winning elections.

After years of warring within the Liberal-National coalition, Scott Morrison’s government committed to a 2050 net zero emissions target at the last gasp before last year’s Glasgow COP26 summit.

Deputy PM and National Party leader Barnaby Joyce remains personally opposed to the policy, claiming people in regional areas would have to “grab a rifle [and] go out and start shooting [their] cattle” to meet the goals.

Australia’s 2030 emissions reduction target of 26% on 2005 levels – half the US and UK benchmarks – has been called “a great disappointment”.

Mr Morrison has boasted the country is on track to achieve 35%. Yet that’s unlikely, vice chair of the IPCC and Australian National University Professor Mark Howden says, unless the government – which has been in power since 2013 – overhauls its “technology over taxes” approach.

Once emissions saved by a drastic reduction in land clearing are excluded, Australia’s carbon footprint has actually increased “significantly” since 2005, he notes.

And Mr Morrison’s plan to bring it down has been criticised for hanging on technologies that do not exist yet.

“That’s what we call a moral hazard – we make the assumption that the solution will pop up so we don’t take action now,” Prof Howden told the BBC.

Critically, coal mines and power stations are safe on Mr Morrison’s watch.

The opposition Labor party’s 2030 emissions reduction target of 43% is “far more ambitious”, Prof Howden says.

“If you’re looking at the difference between those goals, it’s like taking every car off the road.”

If global leaders set targets similar to the coalition’s, the world would be heading towards “potentially terrifying” warming of more than 3C, he says.

Labor’s target is more consistent with warming of about 1.6C or 1.7C.

While it is still short of the IPCC recommendation, Labor leader Anthony Albanese has defended it as in line with key trading partners like Canada (40-45%), South Korea (40%) and Japan (46%).

Labor has stressed its policy will not leave “emissions intensive” industries – like mining – at a disadvantage to their global competitors.

It has also promised it will support new coal mines if they make commercial sense, and that it will not force coal-fired power stations to shut early.

Instead the party says it will make electric cars cheaper, improve renewable energy storage options, and gradually lower the threshold at which big emitters need to buy carbon offsets.

Like the coalition, Labor is hoping the market will phase out coal without intervention, which Prof Howden says is risky.

“The maths tells us we can’t afford to put in new large fossil fuel infrastructure, and the infrastructure that we have currently we have to take out of the system fairly quickly.”

Australian elections are generally a contest between Labor and the Liberal-National coalition.

The party with the majority of the 151 seats in the lower house of parliament governs, and only twice in the country’s history has no party achieved a majority – in 1940 and 2010.

But voters are increasingly shunning the major parties and in the event of another hung parliament, the government would need support from the crossbench to pass legislation.

A bevy of high-profile candidates – dubbed the “teal independents” – hope that will mean they can negotiate a 2030 target of at least 50% if they are elected and hold the balance of power.

But the future government could also turn to minor party MPs.

The Greens say net zero by 2050 is a death sentence, and the party would push for a 75% cut by 2030, and net zero five years after that.

On the other hand, the far-right One Nation Party proudly calls itself the only party to question climate science and wants the country’s targets scrapped.

Australia’s climate debate has been “toxic”, Prof Howden says, but he’s optimistic it is turning a corner.

“We actually do have the technology and the capability to reduce our emissions much faster than we have done.

“If we get potentially a hung parliament… I think we could actually end up with very significant climate action and people will start to see the benefits of that fairly quickly.”

A mob torched a luxury holiday resort owned by the son of the former Prime Minister, Mahinda Rajapaksa.

On Monday, frustration at the country’s economic crisis spilled over, after government supporters attacked protesters who want President Gotabaya Rajapaksa to quit.

Eight people have since died.

More than 200 are believed to have been injured in the clashes.

Sri Lanka had already seen weeks of protests over its dire financial situation, which has caused the Sri Lankan rupee to plunge, provoking severe food and fuel shortages.

On Monday night, mobs burned more than 50 houses belonging to politicians, reports say, while a controversial museum dedicated to the Rajapaksa family was also razed to the ground in the country’s south.

Shops, businesses and offices will be shut for a third day on Wednesday under a nationwide curfew in place until Thursday morning.

A meeting between Sri Lanka’s political party leaders has been moved online over security concerns.

The streets of Colombo bear the evidence of this week’s rioting – a heavy police presence, overturned and burnt buses.

Security forces have been ordered to shoot law-breakers and looters on sight, and thousands of them have been deployed to patrol the streets.

Nonetheless, protesters continued to gather at Galle Face Green, the main protest site in Colombo, on Tuesday evening. They insist President Rajapaksa has grossly mismanaged the economy and must stand aside.

The president’s older brother, Mahinda, stepped down as prime minister on Monday in a bid to placate demonstrators, but the move failed to bring calm.

President Rajapaska is holding talks with other political parties to form a new interim government. But the main opposition says it will not be part of the interim administration unless the president stands down.

At present, there is no clarity on which political parties will come together to form a government.

The political stalemate comes as Sri Lanka attempts to iron out a bailout package with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) – the $81bn economy is near bankruptcy.

It has suspended its foreign debt payments, largely because of loans from China that paid for massive infrastructure projects.

While the pandemic shrunk Sri Lanka’s earnings and foreign exchange reserves, experts say problems have been exacerbated by populist tax cuts in 2019 and a disastrous ban on chemical fertilisers in 2021 that hit crop productivity.

Protesters gathered in front of Trincomalee Naval Base in the north-east on Tuesday amid unconfirmed reports that Mahinda Rajapaksa had fled there with his family after escaping from his Colombo residence.

There have also been rumours that he and others in the family fled to India, which the Indian High Commission in Sri Lanka has denied.

Anbarasan Ethirajan, BBC News, Colombo

Sri Lankans are still reeling from the violence that has erupted. Many politicians are sheltering in safe houses or avoiding appearing in public.

“It is not at all safe, particularly for politicians on the government side,” Nalaka Godahewa, until recently media minister, told the BBC. His house was among those torched.

Mahinda Rajapaksa, once celebrated by the majority Sinhalese as a war hero for defeating the Tamil Tiger rebels, has suddenly become a villain. Many blame his supporters for targeting anti-government protesters, which then set off a chain of violent events.

The Rajapaksas have always stood together, but this time their differences are out in the open. The problem appears to have started after Gotabaya asked the family patriarch Mahinda to “take one for the team” and resign.

How the family, who have dominated Sri Lankan politics for years, overcome this crisis is now an open question.

The Qatar-based news channel said Abu Aqleh, 51, was shot “deliberately” and “in cold blood” by Israeli troops. Another reporter was shot and wounded.

The Israeli military denied that its forces targeted journalists.

It was looking into “the possibility” that they “were hit by Palestinian gunmen” during an exchange of fire.

Israel’s Foreign Minister Yair Lapid described Abu Aqleh’s death as “sad” and said it had offered to carry out a joint investigation with the Palestinian Authority.

“Journalists must be protected in conflict zones and we all have a responsibility to get to the truth,” he added.

Qatar’s Assistant Foreign Minister Lolwah al-Khater said Abu Aqleh was shot “in the face” while wearing a press flak jacket and helmet.

The Palestinian health ministry confirmed Abu Aqleh’s death and said she had been rushed to hospital in critical condition after being shot.

Shereen Abu Aqleh was a prominent figure on Al Jazeera’s Arabic news service who had been covering the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for 15 years.

Al Jazeera journalist Nida Ibrahim said she was a “very well respected journalist” and that the news was “a shock to the journalists who have been working with her.”

A wave of attacks by Israeli Arabs and Palestinians in Israel in recent weeks has left 17 Israelis and two Ukrainians dead.

At least 26 Palestinians have been killed – including assailants shot dead while carrying out attacks, or militants and civilians killed during Israeli raids and confrontations in the West Bank.

Israeli operations have centred on the Jenin district, where four of the Palestinians who carried out attacks in Israel came from.

The National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR) predicted the UK will fall into recession this year.

It called on Chancellor Rishi Sunak to do more to stop people sliding into debt and destitution.

The Treasury said it is providing support to households.

In its latest quarterly outlook of the UK economy, NIESR warned that a combination of rising prices and measures announced in the Chancellor’s Spring Statement – such as the decision not to scrap a planned rise in National Insurance tax – are hitting the poorest households hardest.

Inflation – the rate at which prices rise – is at a 30-year high, as the Ukraine war drives up fuel and energy prices.

The Bank of England has warned inflation might reach 10% within months.

The think tank urged the government to raise Universal Credit by £25 per week between May and October, which would cost around £1.35bn, and give £250 each to 11.3 million lower income households.

“Without this targeted support we expect a further increase in extreme poverty,” the think tank said, with about a quarter of a million households sliding into extreme poverty, taking the number to about a million.

About half a million households would “face the choice between eating and heating” without these payments, it said, adding that the chancellor had a reported £20bn of “headroom” for government spending that could be used to cushion the shock to income.

It wasn’t the National Institute for Economic and Social Research but the official independent forecaster, the Office for Budget Responsibility, that first identified £20bn of fiscal “headroom” in the Spring Statement, much of which Rishi Sunak chose not to use.

This refers to the room for manoeuvre the Chancellor has if he wants to meet self-imposed fiscal rules, such as his goal of not borrowing to fund day-to-day spending within three years.

Those rules don’t refer to any objective constraint on government spending – unlike the trouble households get into when they hit the overdraft limit.

The Treasury points out it has already spent billions on support, which is true.

But even within his rules Mr Sunak has billions more to spare.

With the economy forecasted to contract, NIESR is not alone in thinking that further support for households could loosen the grip of a squeeze on living standards that is already feeling painfully tight.

The think tank predicted that inflation would average 7.8% in 2022 and will remain above 3% until 2024 – above the Bank of England’s 2% target.

At the same time, economic growth is set to slow.

While NIESR forecast that UK economic growth in 2022 would increase by 3.5% on average, it predicted a fall in the final two quarters of the year.

This would push the UK into a recession, which is two consecutive quarters of economic decline.

Meanwhile, government policies are set to leave households with even less disposable income, according to NIESR.

It forecasts household income when adjusted for inflation will fall by 2.4% in 2022, along with a small rise in unemployment next year.

Tony Danker, director general of the CBI, which represents big businesses, told the BBC’s Today programme that companies were suffering too.

He said inflation, higher energy prices, labour shortages and the war in Ukraine had made firms “pause before investing”, and that this was stopping them “creating jobs and paying good wages”.

He said the government needed to create “reasons to invest” such as subsidising the shift to clean energy or cutting business rates for shops that have had to put up prices.

“If we wait… the economy will end up in more trouble,” he added. “Get firms investing now because that will stop us facing dire consequences later on.”

Professor Stephen Millard, NIESR’s deputy director for macroeconomics, said: “Although the war in Ukraine is fundamentally a human tragedy, it has resulted in another supply shock for the UK economy: pushing down growth and pushing up on inflation.”

He added: “We need fiscal policy to loosen and monetary policy to tighten if the UK economy is going to sail safely through these treacherous seas.”

A Treasury spokesperson said the country has had a “strong economic recovery” from the pandemic but acknowledged that these are “anxious times”, and said the government is taking action to support households.

“This includes a tax cut of over £330 a year for the typical employee, lowering the Universal Credit taper rate to help people keep more of the money they earn, and providing millions of households with up to £350 each to help with rising energy bills,” the spokesperson said.

“Public debt is at the highest levels since the 1960s and rising inflation is pushing up our debt interest costs, which means we must manage public finances sustainably to avoid saddling future generations with further debt.”

It comes as NIESR separately forecast that global economic growth would be 1% lower, or about $1.5tn, at the end of 2022, due to the Ukraine war.

The prime minister is scheduled to meet leaders of both countries during a 24-hour trip on Wednesday.

Mr Johnson is expected to discuss Europe’s response to the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Mr Johnson’s official spokesman said the visit was also about the “security of Europe more broadly”.

“We understand the positions of Sweden and Finland and that is why the prime minister is going to discuss these broader security issues,” he said.

Asked whether the two countries’ possible membership of the alliance would be discussed, the prime minister’s spokesman said: “We support democratic capabilities to decide on things like Nato membership.”

Mr Johnson will give a news conference in each country, travelling to Sweden first before going on to Finland and then returning to the UK.

Nato – the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation – is a 30-nation defensive alliance founded shortly after the end of World War Two.

It has its headquarters in Brussels, but is dominated by the massive military and nuclear missile power of the US.

Support for joining Nato has increased in both both Sweden and Finland since Russia invaded Ukraine, despite their long history of pursuing policies of military neutrality to avoid conflict with regional powers.

Finland and Sweden are both modern, democratic countries that fulfil the criteria for membership.

Nato’s chief, secretary general Jens Stoltenberg, has said the alliance would welcome them with open arms and there would be minimum delay in processing their membership.

During a visit to Sweden in April, Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin said “everything had changed” when Russia invaded Ukraine and told reporters Finland must to be “prepared for all kinds of actions from Russia”.

Her comments coincided with the publication of a security report that warned membership of Nato could result in “increased tensions on the border between Finland and Russia”.

At the same time, Ms Marin’s Swedish counterpart Magdalena Andersson told reporters that the same “very serious analysis” was taking place as in Finland and she saw no point in delaying it.

Finland for decades, and Sweden for centuries, have chosen to adopt a kind of neutral status rather than enter any military alliance.

But Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has transformed public opinion in both countries. People seem now to want the protection that Nato membership can provide.

But neither country would get the alliance’s security guarantee – that an attack on one member is an attack on all – until their application has been accepted. That could take some months. Until that point, there is a moment of vulnerability.

So what will be interesting is to see what kind of support the UK – and other countries – might be prepared to provide Sweden and Finland in the meantime, during that so-called “grey zone” between both countries’ application and accession to the Western military alliance.

Finnish Foreign Minister Pekka Haavisto subsequently said it would be “useful” for Sweden and Finland to launch joint Nato membership bids, but added no fixed date had been set for any potential application.

However, Russia has warned them not to and threatened “a military technical response” if they do try to join.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov stressed that Moscow would have to “rebalance the situation” with its own measures if any bid went ahead.

In a speech last month, Foreign Secretary Liz Truss said they should be admitted “as soon as possible” if they decided to apply for membership.

Mr Johnson held talks with Ms Andersson and Finnish president Sauli Niinisto in March as part of a meeting of the Joint Expeditionary Force nations, which includes Denmark, Estonia, Iceland, Latvia, Lithuania, the Netherlands and Norway.

After the meeting, No 10 said the leaders had all agreed the invasion of Ukraine had “dramatically changed the landscape of European security”.

Finland shares a land border of 830 miles (1,340km) with Russia and is only about 250 miles from St Petersburg.