Richard Gere and his wife Alejandra Silva announced Sunday they were expecting their first child together, but that they kept the news secret before first telling the Dalai Lama, who gave the unborn child a blessing.

The Hollywood actor famous for his starring roles in Pretty Woman, An Officer and a Gentleman and Chicago, will become a father for the second time next year just a few months before he turns 70.

The couple released a photo yesterday of themselves in Rotterdam with the spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism.

Gere has his arms around his wife’s waist as the Dalai Lama holds Miss Silva’s hand and places his other hand on her stomach.

"Just a few moments ago… Getting blessings for our precious to come.." the 35-year-old wrote in an Instagram post.

"We couldn’t announce it before telling HH Dalai Lama."

Gere, 69, married Miss Silva, his third wife, in April in Madrid following a four year relationship.

He was previously married to models Carey Lowell and Cindy Crawford.

The Spanish publicist already has a five year-old son from a previous marriage.

In an interview with Hola, the Spanish magazine, two years ago, she said: "Richard has been my hero in real life.

"I was a little lost, without light, and meeting him gave sense to my life. I felt like someone was stretching out his hand and showing me the true path."

The Golden Globe winner has often spoken about his Buddhist faith which he became interested in his early twenties.

He gave his 18-year-old son Homer, the middle name Jigme, a traditional Buddhist name.

Last year,  he told The Hollywood Reporter that  the reason he is rarely cast in mainstream films now is due to his outspoken stance on Tibet as China becomes a growing influence in the film industry.

"There are definitely movies that I can’t be in because the Chinese will say, ‘Not with him,’" he claimed.

"I recently had an episode where someone said they could not finance a film with me because it would upset the Chinese." 

Members of a Saudi team sent to Turkey to help investigate the murder of Jamal Khashoggi instead worked to cover up evidence of the Washington Post columnist’s death, Turkish officials said Monday.

The officials alleged that senior Saudi leaders sent a chemist and a toxicologist to Istanbul with the task of cleaning the scene of the Saudi Arabian consulate before Turkish detectives could investigate. 

"We believe that the two individuals came to Turkey for the sole purpose of covering up evidence of Jamal Khashoggi’s murder before the Turkish police were allowed to search the premises," a senior Turkish official said.

If the Turkish allegations is confirmed, it raises questions over whether the Saudi leadership was secretly authorising a cover up at a time when it was still publicly insisting that Mr Khashoggi had walked out of the consulate alive. 

Saudi Arabia did not immediately respond to the latest allegation.

Meanwhile, Mr Khashoggi’s two adult sons spoke publicly for the first time since their father’s death and appealed for his body to be found so that it could be buried in the family plot in Medina, the second holiest city in the Islamic faith. 

"All what we want right now is to bury him in Al-Baqi [cemetery] in Medina with the rest of his family," Salah Khashoggi told CNN. "I talked about that with the Saudi authorities and I just hope that it happens soon.”

Mr Khashoggi’s body has still not been found, and Turkish officials have expressed disbelief at Saudi claims that they do not know where it is. 

Salah Khashoggi was summoned to the royal palace in Saudi Arabia where he met with King Salman and Mohammed bin Salman, the crown prince who is alleged to have ordered his father’s death. 

The younger Mr Khashoggi said he had faith in the king’s promise to find everyone responsible for killing his father.

"The king has stressed that everybody involved will be brought to justice. And I have faith in that. This will happen. Otherwise Saudi wouldn’t have started an internal investigation," he said.

Saudi Arabia claims that Mr Khashoggi’s death was a “rogue” operation and was not authorised by Crown Prince Mohammed or other senior Saudi figures. 

A Saudi delegate told a meeting of the UN Human Rights Council on Monday that the kingdom was committed to “reaching all facts and bringing all the perpetrators to justice”. 

News of the alleged Saudi cover up effort was first reported in the Daily Sabah, a pro-government Turkish newspaper to which Turkish officials have often leaked details of their investigation.  

Turkish officials later confirmed the report to Western media. They identified the two men as  Ahmed Abdulaziz Al-Janobi, a chemist, and Khaled Yahya al-Zahrani, a toxicology expert. 

The two men were part of a Saudi team which arrived in Istanbul on October 11, nine days after Mr Khashoggi was murdered on October 2. 

The team was officially sent to Istanbul as part of a joint investigation but Turkish officials claimed that at least two members of the team were secretly working to sabotage the search for the truth. 

The two men allegedly visited the consulate every day from October 11 until October 17 to destroy evidence. Turkish police were only allowed inside the consulate on October 15. 

Saudi Arabia did not admit that Mr Khashoggi had been killed until October 20. Prior to that the kingdom maintained that he had safely left the consulate. 

If the Turkish allegations are true, it would appear that Saudi officials were secretly covering up evidence of a murder while publicly insisting that Mr Khashoggi had not been harmed inside the consulate. 

As primary school students returned from their autumn break on Monday, some in a town east of Paris were wearing the same polo shirts and sky-blue sweaters – the first uniforms ever seen in a French public school.

The highly symbolic move by officials in Provins comes as France wrestles with how to close a growing achievement gap between children from poor and wealthy families.

Many countries around the world require school uniforms, with advocates saying they bolster respect between students and teachers while reinforcing a communal sense of belonging.

But they are relatively uncommon across much of Europe, with the notable exception of Britain.

Last June, 62 per cent of parents in Provins voted in favour of a uniform emblazoned with a crest of the medieval city’s famed Cesar Tower and the French motto of "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity".

Yet just a few children were wearing the new outfits Monday morning – officials didn’t go so far as to make them mandatory.

"I was a little worried," said eight-year-old Noe at his school’s entrance.

"But I like it, because we’re dressed like in ‘Harry Potter’," he said.

At 137 euros (£120), the kit also includes matching trousers and an aviator-style jacket, though subsidies are available for families who can’t afford it.

"About half the students will wear it," said Mayor Olivier Lavenka of the rightwing Republicans party, who pushed for the vote as a way of easing social discrimination.

"It’s an experiment, and in a few years we’ll see how it has worked out."

Traditionally uniforms have been the preserve of private schools, often Catholic institutions in the nicer parts of French towns.

But recently more parents have been calling for uniforms as a way to promote social cohesion, in particular in deprived neighbourhoods, and ease the resentments that can emerge over how different kids are dressed.

French children in deprived areas are four times more likely to end up struggling than students in higher income areas, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has found.

On this measurement, France was the worst performing of 36 major economies measured by the respected Paris-based research institute, far behind Britain or the United States but also Brazil and Mexico.

Two candidates in last year’s presidential campaign, rightwinger Francois Fillon and far-right leader Marine Le Pen, called for a "return to uniforms".

Historians note there has never been such a policy in French public schools.

Students did have to wear aprons or smocks until the late 1960s, but only to avoid stains from using fountain pens and ink wells.

"Lots of people have this memory of uniformed smocks, but it’s a reconstructed memory – you only have to look at class photos from that era," education historian Claude Lelievre said.

Since 2013, three proposals have been lodged in parliament urging uniforms in public schools, but have gone nowhere.

Education Minister Jean-Michel Blanquer has indicated he’s in favour of the measure for schools which want it, but has not called for nationwide implementation.

Lavenka, the Provins mayor, noted that school uniforms are common in the French overseas territories of Martinique and Guadeloupe.

Like other advocates, Lavenka says they will help induce "an improved education climate" by reinforcing a sense of belonging to the same school body – while also making it easier for getting kids dressed in the morning.

His move echoes the growing demand for publicly funded charter schools in the US, which often tout their use of uniforms as a core part of their high-achieving strategies.

Yet critics say there is little solid research to back up such claims, not least because uniforms are often part of a broader push to improve academic performance.

"There has never been a serious empirical study showing there is more social equality between students or respect for authority because of uniforms," said Francoise Lantheaume, an education professor at the University of Lyon-2.

Some parents also remained sceptical.

"They are going to be faced with social differences their entire lives," said Stephanie Meiria, whose daughter attends one of the town’s six public schools.

"And my daughter loves picking out her own clothes, I don’t want to take that away from her."

In most countries, a 79 percent leap in share prices over just 11 days would normally suggest a surfeit of investor confidence.

In Zimbabwe, home last month to the world’s best performing stock market, it has been a sign of panic and inflation, just another terrifying financial statistic in a country that has been a world-beater at producing them.

Nine years after inflation hit 89.7 sextillion percent and the central bank authorised a 100-trillion Zimbabwean dollar banknote — still too little to pay for a local bus fare — the country is again mired in financial woe.

In recent weeks, Zimbabweans have experienced a wretchedly familiar reprise of aspects from that grim period, experiencing anew soaring prices, petrol queues, bare supermarket shelves and pharmacies running short of life-saving medicines.

It should not have been this way. A year ago this month, the coup was launched that finally ousted Robert Mugabe, the nonagenarian autocrat blamed for turning one of Africa’s most promising economies into a dysfunctional supplicant.

Zimbabweans celebrated on the streets, dancing euphorically with the soldiers they hailed as liberators. Many felt their country would be unleashed both from tyranny and immiseration.

But in the 12 months that have passed, many have reached the gloomy conclusion that getting rid of a dictator is easier than erasing his legacy.

As a result of past mismanagement, profligate government spending and a failure to institute economic reforms by Emmerson Mnangagwa, the new president, Zimbabweans are facing a twin currency and inflation crisis.

Prices have sky-rocketed. Richer Zimbabweans complain that the cost of their weekly shopping skyrocketed by 40 percent, while the poor are suffering even more. 

The collapse of industry in Zimbabwe means that the cost of about 90 percent of of goods, including staples like flour, sugar and cooking oil, have gone up by about 20 percent. Getting enough to eat is again a major challenge for hungry families.

Hyperinflation was finally brought under control in 2009 after the Zimbabwean dollar was finally abolished. 

The economy stabilised after Mr Mugabe was forced to accept a coalition government with opposition control over the finance ministry, and Zimbabweans chose to use the US dollar as their currency. 

Government overspending saw the dollar largely disappear two years ago and the government launched new quasi currencies, such as locally printed cash known as bond notes, and electronic money spent via mobile phones. 

These methods of payment  were at first interchangeable with the US dollar but values deteriorated and plunged in the last few weeks with the rate briefly hitting ten local dollars to US$1.

So prices began rising and panic quickly set in as some, remembering the economic crash a decade earlier, went to spend their money before they feared it would lose all its value.

Crowds formed outside fast-emptying supermarkets, with people desperately trying to stock up on basic grocery items. 

Fast food chains, such as South African-owned franchise Kentucky Fried Chicken, said it had to shut down because it ran out of chicken  and locally produced fast food outlets almost doubled prices. 

Richer Zimbabweans found that often the only way to turn bond notes into dollars was to buy shares in foreign companies listed on the local stock market, explaining why prices have soared.

But nowhere has the situation been as grave or as tragic as in the health sector. 

Inside a hospital in Chitungwiza, a commuter town outside Harare, HIV positive Zimbabweans have been queuing in an increasingly frantic attempt to source anti-retrovirals, the vital medicines that give them a chance of life. Fourteen per cent of Zimbabwe’s sexually active adult population are HIV positive.

Patients used to be given a month’s supply of the medicine at a time, but now, there is only enough to give four days’ worth to each patient, necessitating more frequent trips for those who can ill-afford to make them.

In Bulawayo, many have resorted to social media to get medication.

“Urgently need the following anti-psychotic medications: either Sodium Valproate or Epilim” reads one message on a WhatsApp group used mainly by the old and the poor. 

For Portifa Mwendera, president of the Pharmaceutical Society of Zimbabwe, the crisis has reached nightmare levels. Pharmacies were either selling medication only in US dollars, which most people do not have, or had ratcheted the prices up to unaffordable levels for those who could only pay with bond notes, he said.

Efforts by a cash-strapped government to intervene have inevitably been paltry, with only £2.3m made available for an emergency fund for medicines.

"That will only cover us for about a week,” Mr Mwendera said. “We also owe suppliers about $30m (£23m). It is a crisis.”

Zimbabwe once made three-quarters of its own drugs, but like in so many other sectors, mismanagement ultimately resulted in ruin. State-owned health facilities that were sophisticated at independence in 1980 are now dilapidated or barely functioning, while nearly all medicines are now imported.

Mr Mnangagwa, who has positioned himself as a pragmatic moderniser despite having been a deeply loyal ally of Mr Mugabe, will have to act fast to end the crisis.

Yet his options are limited, and he has been blamed for exacerbating the turmoil by increasing already unsustainable levels of government spending to win votes ahead of last July’s presidential election.

But cutting government expenditure would mean slashing Zimbabwe’s bloated civil service – a deeply unpopular move, sure to alienate many in the already divided Zanu-PF.

Nor can the president approach the World Bank or International Monetary Fund until Zimbabwe pays off more than £1 billion in debt arrears — money it does not have.

US sanctions are likely to remain on hold until Mr Mnangagwa can show democratic discourse.

Suspicions that he is not prepared to do so mounted when soldiers fired at unarmed protesters in the streets and killed six people just two days after the contentious election that confirmed Mr Mnangagwa in the presidency. 

Mr Mnangwagwa had promised that, on his watch, Zimbabwe would enjoy both economic revival and “a flowering of democracy”. As he grapples with the poisoned legacy of the man he ousted and a country again flirting with financial disaster, Zimbabwe’s new president is likely to find it increasingly hard to deliver either.

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Donald Trump has suggested up to 15,000 troops could ultimately be sent to the US-Mexico border to counter approaching caravans of migrants, a major increase on initial deployments. 

The US president denied he was “fearmongering” over the threat of illegal immigration ahead of the county’s midterm elections next Tuesday, insisting it was an important issue. 

The new figure, floated during a discussion with reporters on the White House lawn, is higher than the 14,000 troops that America has deployed in Afghanistan. 

It is the latest increase, with 800 soldiers initially sent to the border by the Pentagon – a figure that then rose to 5,200 earlier this week. The troops are legally barred from enforcing US immigration law and are instead providing support to border officials. 

"We’ll go up to anywhere between 10 and 15,000 military personnel on top of Border Patrol, Ice [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] and everybody else at the border,” Mr Trump said. 

It remains unclear whether the US president will follow through on the suggestion, given he mentioned it in passing rather than by making any formal announcement. 

The comment is the latest in a series of escalating warnings that Mr Trump has been issuing over migrants approaching the country’s southern border though Central America. 

At first there was just one so-called ‘caravan’ of people seeking to enter the US. Size estimates peaked at around 7,000 people before dropping to around 4,000 people. 

Now more caravans have emerged. A second, which clashed with police whiling crossing Guatemala into Mexico this week, is made up of an estimated 1,000 people. A further two caravans, smaller in size, have also formed. 

Mr Trump has been accused of playing up concerns over immigration to help drive up turnout among his supporters, with the Republican majorities in the Senate and House of Representatives on the line at next week’s elections. 

In recent weeks the US president has called the approaching migrants an “invasion” and a “national emergency”, threatened to close the US-Mexico border and described himself as a “nationalist”. 

On Wednesday he repeated a threat to strip Central American nations of US foreign aid if they fail to help him stop the caravans.  He also suggested there were 25 to 30 million undocumented migrants in America.

That is far higher than other estimates, such as from the Pew Research Center which put the 2016 unauthorised immigrant population at 11.3 million. 

On Wednesday, Mr Trump also doubled down on his proposal to remove a right for the children of illegal migrants born on American soil to get US citizenship, saying it was “very unfair to our citizens”. 

He chastised Paul Ryan, the most senior Republican in the House of Representatives, who suggested Mr Trump could not end birthright citizenship via an executive order, which does not need ratifying by the US Congress. 

“Paul Ryan should be focusing on holding the majority [in the House] rather than giving his opinions on birthright citizenship, something he knows nothing about!” the US president tweeted. 

Hungary’s Central European University, a graduate school founded by US financier George Soros, said it was being forced out of the country by the nationalist government and would switch to enrolling new students in Vienna if it did not get guarantees of academic freedom by Dec. 1.

The US billionaire, who promotes liberal causes through his charities, has been the subject of a campaign by the right-wing government of Prime Minister Viktor Orban. Earlier this year, his charitable Open Society Foundations was forced to leave Hungary.

Thursday’s move by CEU, which was quickly dismissed as a "political ploy" by the government, could deepen a rift between Orban and the European Commission, which has challenged his higher education reforms in the European Court of Justice.

A change last year to national law on education which withdrew the right to operate from foreign-registered universities that did not also offer courses in their home country was widely seen as explicitly targeting CEU.

The CEU offers graduate-level courses taught in English and is frequently ranked as the top university in Hungary. The prospect last year that it might be driven from Hungary drew street protests and international criticism.

The university’s statement on Thursday said the Orban government had kept it in legal limbo for more than a year by failing to reach a formal agreement on its status.

"We cannot operate legally in Hungary as a free, US accredited institution. We are being forced out of a country that has been our home for 26 years," CEU President and Rector Michael Ignatieff told a news conference.

Orban regularly accuses the Hungarian-born Soros of plotting to destroy European civilization by flooding the continent with immigrants. Soros says his support for refugees is one part of a wider humanitarian mission to back open societies around the globe.

The government said Thursday’s announcement by the CEU to relocate operations in Vienna was "a Soros-style political ploy" and it does not concern itself with such matters.

US Ambassador to Budapest David B. Cornstein said in a statement that the CEU remained a priority for the U.S. government and had overwhelming bipartisan support in the United States.

"There is a small window to resolve this, but it needs to happen fast," he said.

The government accuses the CEU of operating without full legal compliance. CEU says it has taken all steps required to comply.

The statement by the university said it would enrol new students in U.S. degrees at its Vienna campus in 2019 if its legal status in Hungary was not resolved by Dec. 1, though it would try to maintain as much research and educational activity in Budapest as possible.

Ignatieff said CEU’s board of trustees set the December deadline to give a chance for Cornstein to make a final effort to work out a compromise.