Israel says it has killed a top Hezbollah commander after carrying out a strike on a southern suburb of the Lebanese capital Beirut.

At least one person was killed and a number of others wounded in the explosion in Dahiyeh, a stronghold of the Lebanese armed group.

The Israeli military says Fuad Shukr was the target of an “intelligence-based elimination” by fighter jets.

Officials say he was responsible for a rocket attack on the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights on Saturday which killed 12 people, mostly children. Hezbollah has denied any involvement in that attack.

Lebanon’s Prime Minister Najib Mikati condemned “blatant Israeli aggression”.

He described it as a “criminal act” in a “series of aggressive operations killing civilians in clear and explicit violation of international law.”

In a brief post on social media after the attack, Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said: “Hezbollah crossed the red line”.

It is not yet clear if Fuad Shukr was killed in the attack. Security sources in Beirut say the intended target was not in the building. Hezbollah has not yet made a statement.

An Israeli official has confirmed to CBS News, the BBC’s US partner, that Israel gave the US notice of its Beirut strike.

Fuad Shukr is believed to be a senior advisor to Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, the US has previously said.

It has been offering a $5m (3.9m) reward for information about him, alleging he also played a “central role” in the 1983 bombing of a US Marines barracks in Beirut, which killed 241 US military personnel.

Haret Hreik, the area of Dahiyeh hit by the air strike, is densely populated and strongly fortified. Dahiyeh itself is surrounded by Hezbollah checkpoints.

Speaking after the Israeli strike, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters that US President Joe Biden believed a wider war between Israel and Hezbollah could be avoided.

“We do not want to see an escalation, we do not want to see an all-out war,” she said.

Earlier in the day, two unnamed Israeli officials told Reuters news agency that while Israel sought to hurt Hezbollah, it did not want to drag Lebanon into all-out war.

The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) later said there would be no new instructions for Israelis on taking shelter, suggesting they did not anticipate an immediate or significant Hezbollah reaction.

Both sides are aware of the cost of all-out war, which could bring in Iran in support of its Lebanese proxy.

An Israeli reaction had been widely expected after the deadly attack in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights on Saturday, and Israel’s security cabinet had authorised Mr Netanyahu and Mr Gallant to decide how to retaliate.

At least 12 people were killed – mostly children – when a rocket hit a football pitch in Majdal Shams on Saturday.

Israel has blamed Hezbollah, but the group denies any involvement.

It was the deadliest incident near the Israel-Lebanon border since hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah escalated in October.

That escalation came after Hamas’ attack on Israel on 7 October.

Hezbollah – which supports Hamas – opened up a limited second front in Israel’s north, and the two sides have been exchanging fire ever since.

Recent days have seen world leaders urge restraint over fears of an all-out war.

On Tuesday the UK foreign secretary told UK nationals in Lebanon to leave immediately or risk “becoming trapped in a warzone”.

David Lammy has arrived in Qatar along with Defence Secretary John Healey “to “drive forward efforts to bring the conflict in Gaza to an end and to press for de-escalation in the region”, the Foreign Office said.

He said escalation and destabilisation were “in no-one’s interests”, adding: “It is absolutely vital that we engage closely with partners like Qatar, who play a key role in mediating the conflict in Gaza, so that we can bring this devastating war to an end.”

Walk through the streets of Shanghai and its café culture is unmissable. There are some areas where you won’t be able to turn without passing yet another new little café.

China’s financial capital now has so many coffee shops that the government claims it has the most of any city in the world.

The city’s café culture has been developing for years, but the post-Covid opening up has really given it a boost, as locals embrace outdoor living, looking for places to meet their friends and family.

However, with so many new establishments, the competition for customers has become fierce. Most owners we spoke to don’t think all these businesses can survive.

Shanghai officials say there are “more than 8,000 cafes in the city”. And a report by the Shanghai International Coffee Culture Festival, recorded 9,553 coffee shops at the end of 2023.

And it’s not just the number of outlets that sets Shanghai apart.

Where other Chinese cities are still dominated by big coffee chains like Starbucks and its local rival Luckin, Shanghai’s café explosion is largely fuelled by niche, independent outlets, like Hidden Track.

Its owner Dong Xiaoli says she had “no choice” but to dive head first into the industry because she was so passionate about coffee.

But it hasn’t been easy.

Asked what advice she would give someone considering following in her footsteps, she laughs and replies: “I’d say don’t do it.”

“The investment versus return is awful. You need to buy expensive machines and put a lot of money into decorating. You’re earning very small amounts of money compared to other industries.”

To succeed in this very crowded market, having a distinct vibe has become as important as anything else in attracting customers.

Hidden Track has gone for a limited menu and a simple, minimalist vibe which opens onto the street in a welcoming fashion.

Being seen at a café here is considered hip and urbane, and that has helped drive young customers through the doors. Cafes have become a social occasion with many young people to get dressed up and meet for coffee and a chat.

Shanghai’s residents who have long seen themselves as the inheritors of an outward-looking, cosmopolitan attitude which permeated Shanghai in the early decades of the 20th century, are also proud of their café culture.

“Shanghai has long been an international trading city: we started drinking coffee a long time ago. Smaller cities will also gradually get different types of cafes,” says one man sitting at a café.

A woman nearby agrees that the local café culture is now solidly established. Asked how many cups of coffee she drinks a day, she laughs out loud and replies: “As many as I like.”

And as the cafes increase, so does the appetite for experimentation.

The coffee converts of this tea-drinking giant are keen to try new flavours and new brews.

Yuan Jingfeng, who runs the R1070 café, says all his beans come from Japan.

“My costs are very very high. My imported beans include American and Italian styles which are all imported from Japan in their original packaging,” he says.

“Wholesale prices have gone up dramatically over the past few years. The wars in Yemen and Ethiopia have both had an impact. The good beans are getting fewer while the number of coffee drinkers keeps increasing.”

But, so far, he says he has resisted passing on the increased costs to his growing base of coffee drinkers.

AC café is owned by deaf people and employs deaf baristas.

Yang Yanfang – who interprets at AC for those who can’t speak with their hands – says that, after the pandemic, “friends are really keen to meet up for a coffee or a drink and Shanghai has become a city with a really strong coffee culture.”

“I can skip meals, but I can’t skip my coffee,” she adds.

And this is not the only café of its kind.

Another popular café, which is operated by blind staff, serves coffee through a hole in the wall, from someone wearing a monkey suit arm, to customers waiting in the street.

Along one stretch of road, we counted 18 cafes within only a couple of hundred metres. All of them had plenty of customers inside.

Owners are hoping this will not be just a passing fad.

According to some estimates, China’s coffee market was valued at more than 260 billion yuan (US$35bn) last year. It’s been projected that it could increase by another hundred billion (US$13bn).

The country’s branded coffee shop market grew by 58% last year, according to the World Coffee Portal.

With overheads so high in Shanghai, many coffee shops can’t afford to have their space under-utilised at night. So, when the sun goes down, they are turning their cafes into bars, sometimes with live music.

The owner of the Flower Café and Bar, Wang Xi, has a prime spot with a clear view of the city. His margins are very tight but, at the moment, his venture is surviving.

“I’m a quite optimistic,” he says. “I hope the Chinese economy will quickly return to pre-pandemic levels. If the economy flows again, everyone will make a profit.”

China’s economy may be facing some significant hurdles but, as Wang Xi speaks, he looks out across the customers sitting at little tables and chairs staring down Suzhou Creek towards a gleaming Shanghai skyline and – on this night – it’s hard not to share his optimism.

Thirty-nine police officers have been injured after unrest broke out in Southport hours after a vigil took place to remember the victims of a knife attack in which three children were killed, the North West Ambulance Service said.

Earlier, Merseyside Police said eight officers sustained serious injuries including fractures, lacerations, a suspected broken nose and concussion.

Other injuries included one officer being knocked unconscious, as well as some suffering head and serious facial injuries. Three police dogs were also hurt, with two having bricks thrown at them.

The disorder, which police said was believed to involve English Defence League supporters, began only a few streets away from Wednesday’s vigil location, near to a mosque on St Luke’s Road in Southport.

Those involved threw bricks at the mosque, set fire to cars and wheelie bins and caused damage to a local convenience store, police said.

In total, 27 officers were taken to hospital, and 12 were treated and discharged at the scene, the ambulance service said.

As a result of the disorder, a 24-hour section 60 Order has been introduced in the area, giving officers enhanced stop and search powers to stop individuals, police said, adding that it will be in place until 19:54 BST on Wednesday.

A section 34 Order has also been introduced, allowing police to direct people who are engaging in antisocial behaviour or are “likely to become involved in such behaviour”.

Merseyside Police said extra officers will remain in the area “to provide a visible presence and reassure communities.

In addition, a small number ambulance resources will remain at the scene on St Luke’s Road and will continue to support the police.

Assistant Chief Constable Alex Goss said it was “sickening” that this was happening within a “devastated” community.

He said the force has faced “serious violence” in the Merseyside town, and he was “so proud to have witnessed off-duty officers parade back on duty to support their colleagues who had displayed such courage whilst under constant and sustained attack.”

ACC Goss also thanked officers from Greater Manchester Police, Cheshire Police, Lancashire Police and North Wales Police for providing mutual aid and support.

He added the disorder involved many people “who do not live in the Merseyside area or care about the people of Merseyside”.

“Sadly, offenders have destroyed garden walls so they could use the bricks to attack our officers and have set cars belonging to the public on fire, and damaged cars parked in the Mosque car park,” he said.

“This is no way to treat a community, least of all a community that is still reeling from the events of Monday.”

A 17-year-old boy has been arrested on suspicion of murder and attempted murder after Monday’s attack on a children’s dance club in Hart Street.

ACC Goss said: “There has been much speculation and hypothesis around the status of a 17-year-old male who is currently in police custody, and some individuals are using this to bring violence and disorder to our streets.

“We have already said that the person arrested was born in the UK, and speculation helps nobody at this time.”

PM Sir Keir Starmer said on X that the people of Southport were “reeling” after the “horror inflicted on them yesterday”.

He said that those who had “hijacked the vigil for the victims with violence and thuggery” had insulted the community and would “feel the full force of the law”.

Families living nearby told the BBC they feared for their safety as stones flew past and police officers rushed to put on riot gear and pick up shields.

“I can’t believe this is happening in Southport,” one young woman shouted from the front of her car as she tried to drive her young daughter away.

The disorder began after hundreds of people gathered near a local mosque attacking the front of it, throwing bricks, bottles, fireworks and rocks, many with hoods up and scarves hiding their faces.

Merseyside Police said those behind the violence had been fired up by social media posts which incorrectly suggested an Islamist link to Monday’s stabbings.

The Home Secretary Yvette Cooper had earlier warned about disinformation linked to the attack.

The suspect has no known links to Islam.

Ms Cooper later said it was “appalling” that police officers in Southport were facing attacks from “thugs on the streets who have no respect for a grieving community”.

“I think everyone should be showing some respect for the community that is grieving and also for the police who are pursuing an urgent criminal investigation now, and who showed such heroism and bravery yesterday in the face of these horrific attacks,” she said.

In a statement on X, Merseyside Police and Crime Commissioner Emily Spurrell also said she was “absolutely appalled by the disgraceful scenes of violence”.

“This is a community which has faced unimaginable tragedy, and it is grieving.

“Such behaviour is abhorrent and only causes further harm and suffering,” she added.

Merseyside Police Chief Constable Serena Kennedy posted on X that more than 1,000 residents from Southport had come together at the vigil to remember the little girls who had died, those who were still critical in hospital and all those who witnessed and were traumatised by the events from yesterday.

“This is where all of our focus should be,” she said.

The Liverpool Region Mosque Network said the violent scenes were “causing further fear and anxiety within our communities”.

It added: “We must all unite and stand together against all forms of hate, violence and division.”

Southport MP Patrick Hurley said he was “deeply concerned about reports of violent protests tonight”.

He said they involved “people from outside our Southport community attacking our police and local people”.

Dozens of staff at the Singapore office of TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, have been hospitalised in an apparent food poisoning outbreak.

Health and food safety officials in the city state are investigating the incident, which left 60 people with symptoms of gastroenteritis on Tuesday. Fifty seven of them were treated in hospital.

ByteDance has also said it is looking into what caused its employees to fall ill.

The BBC understands that no food is prepared or cooked at the ByteDance offices and that it uses third party caterers to supply food.

Seventeen ambulances were sent to the building in Singapore’s business district to treat those who had fallen ill, according to local media reports.

“We take the health and safety of our employees very seriously and have taken immediate steps to support all affected employees, including working with emergency services to provide care,” a ByteDance spokesperson told the BBC.

“We are investigating the matter and are working with the relevant authorities on this.”

“Food operators must play their part by adhering to good food safety practices” said the Singapore Food Agency (SFA) in a joint statement with the city-state’s Ministry of Health.

“SFA will not hesitate to take enforcement action against errant food operators,” the statement added.

Founded in 2012 by Chinese entrepreneurs, ByteDance had its first major success with short video app Douyin in China. A year later, it launched TikTok, an international version of Douyin.

TikTok, which is not available in China, has more than a billion active users around the world.

It is now run by a limited liability company based in Singapore and Los Angeles but is essentially owned by ByteDance.

Fresh protests have broken out in the Venezuelan capital Caracas after the disputed result of the country’s presidential election.

Thousands gathered in the city centre to show their opposition to President Nicolas Maduro’s claim of victory.

Many said they would not stop until there was a new government, and some said this would only be achieved if the security forces joined opposition protesters.

However the military and police have so far remained loyal to Mr Maduro and have fired tear gas and rubber bullets at some protesters.

Local officials say around 750 people have been arrested. Two leading NGOs in the country say several people have died and dozens have been injured.

On Tuesday Venezuela’s defence minister described the protests as “a coup”.

Surrounded by armed troops, Gen Vladimir Padrino read out a statement saying that President Nicolás Maduro had the “absolute loyalty and unconditional support” of the military.

Venezuela’s attorney general, who is a close ally of Mr Maduro, said a soldier had been killed in the anti-government protests.

Opposition leader Maria Corina Machado called for protests to be peaceful.

“We must proceed in a peaceful manner. We should not fall into the provocations the government has set us. They want to make Venezuelans face off against each other,” she said.

“Our candidate won 70% of the votes. We united a country, Venezuelans who once believed in Maduro are with us today.”

One anti-government protester who did not want to be named because he feared repercussions from the security forces, told the BBC they had seen evidence of electoral fraud.

“We are absolutely sure the election was stolen. I worked in an electoral booth. The government is not recognising it, they stopped all the tallies of the vote halfway through the night. They don’t want the world to know that they lost,” they said.

They said that Venezuelans who had been supporters of previous leader Hugo Chavez, known as Chavistas, were now withdrawing their support from Mr Maduro.

“This is a very peaceful protest. This is an upper class part of Caracas. What we saw yesterday was quite violent. I believe the people who used to be Chavistas are no longer Chavistas,” they said.

“I think people are hoping for a change. Most likely it will be violent.”

Protest erupted after the head of the National Electoral Council (CNE) – who is a member of Mr Maduro’s party and used to work as his legal adviser – declared the president re-elected for a third consecutive term.

The CNE had earlier announced that Mr Maduro had won with 51% of the votes, ahead of Edmundo González with 44%.

However, the electoral authority has so far failed to publish detailed voting tallies, which the opposition says show that the result the CNE announced was fraudulent.

The regional body for the Americas, the Organization of American States (OAS), has accused Venezuela’s government of completely distorting the results.

The opposition coalition backing Mr González said they had been able to review 73.2% of the voting tallies and maintained that they confirmed that Mr González was the winner by a wide margin.

“We have the records showing our categorical and mathematically irreversible victory,” Mr González said.

• Key moments which led to Venezuela protests

However on Monday the CNE doubled down, announcing that all votes hsad been counted and Mr Maduro was the winner.

Meanwhile Attorney General Tarek Saab, a longtime ally of Mr Maduro, warned that those arrested would be charged with “resisting authority and, in the most serious cases, terrorism”.

The opposition Voluntad Popular (Popular Will) party said among those who have been detained was their national political co-ordinator, Freddy Superlano.

The party warned that the government was stepping up its repression of activists who have been demanding the publication of results from polling stations.

Julio Derbis from Petare, one of the slums on the outskirts of the city, said: “We are going to fight, we hope with the pressure from the streets, we will overturn what the president is pretending, which is him sticking to power.

“The police are our neighbours, we live side by side, and they need to understand that they need to unite in the fight for all of our common good.”

Another protester, Karina Pinto, said these protests felt different to previous rounds of anti-government demonstrations.

“We have to get on the streets, it is the only way. We don’t support violence, but they are violent. We have to respond,” she said.

“The security forces need to get on our side, they are Venezuelans too. They can’t be against us, we are the people.”

In another section of the city, groups of President Maduro’s also gathered to show their support for him.

Nancy Ramones, one supporter of the president, said: “I’m not protesting anything, I’m supporting my government, the one who won. Nicolas Maduro. And I’m supporting him because he is the man that represents peace.”

“What the opposition say, they have not proved. If they say there is fraud, they have to prove it. And fraud hasn’t happened. They always have a hidden agenda.

“This is a coup that we are not going to allow, we are patriots. We are Venezuelans, we love peace.”

Milagros Arocha said: “Here the one who really won was Nicolas Maduro, here are the people, representing Nicolas Maduro. We want peace.”

Opposition parties had united behind Mr González in an attempt to unseat President Maduro after 11 years in power, amid widespread discontent.

Almost 7.8m people have fled the economic and political crisis which has rocked the country under the Maduro Administration.

The United Nations’ human rights chief has said he is deeply concerned about the increasing tension and violence in Venezuela. Volker Turk called on the authorities to respect the rights of all Venezuelans to assemble and protest peacefully.

Babies with peanut allergies in Australia will be offered treatment to build immunity to the potentially life-threatening condition, under a world-first program.

Supervised by select paediatric hospitals, eligible babies will be given gradually increasing doses of peanut powder each day for at least two years, to reduce sensitivity.

Clinical trials of oral immunotherapy have shown promise, but this is the first time it has been adopted as national model of care for peanut allergies.

Australia is often dubbed the “allergy capital of the world”, with one in 10 infants diagnosed with food sensitivities.

Researchers are hopeful that this style of treatment could transform care options.

“[This] might be the game changer we have all wanted to stop this terrible allergy in its tracks,” Assistant Minister for Health Ged Kearney said.

Peanut allergy affects about 3% of Australians at 12 months old and – unlike other food allergies – few children outgrow it, making it the most common food allergy among school-aged children.

The free program is only available to children under 12 months who have already been diagnosed with a peanut allergy, and are receiving care at one of ten participating hospitals across the country.

“One of the biggest concerns for families living with peanut allergy is the fear of accidental exposure,” said Westmead Children’s Hospital allergist Dr Lara Ford.

“This program has the potential to remove that burden.”

The dosing schedule will be carefully calculated for each child, until they reach a “maintenance dose” which they will remain on for two years, program lead Tim Brettig told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

Some children may experience side effects including an allergic reaction, but for most children in this age group they are mild and do not require treatment, he said.

A food allergy test at the end of the treatment will help determine if remission was achieved.

The National Allergy Centre of Excellence will evaluate the program for both effectiveness and safety with the hope of extending it to more public and private hospitals.

But doctors have stressed that families should not try oral immunotherapy at home unsupervised.

This isn’t the retirement that Mary had dreamed of.

The former midwife spent years living on a cattle station with her husband on the north-western edge of Australia – outside her window, the vast and ruggedly beautiful Kimberley region.

Now, though, the frail 71-year-old spends most of her days and nights in her battered car. Her current view is the public toilet block of a Perth shopping centre.

Mary is not her real name. She does not want people she knows to find out she is living like this.

She is one of the roughly 122,000 people who are homeless in Australia on any given night, according to data from the country’s bureau of statistics.

A recent government report says that 40% of renters on low income are now at risk of joining that cohort.

That’s what happened to Mary. Pushed out of her flat last year when her landlord opted to lease it for short-term stays, she couldn’t find anywhere affordable on her state pension.

Her husband can’t help – he’s in a care home with Alzheimer’s disease.

“He’d be horrified [if he knew], absolutely mortified,” she says.

So now Mary’s 4×4 is full to the brim with her belongings. A walking frame lies in the back, along with piles of clothes. On the passenger seat sits a tin of rice pudding.

“That’s my evening meal, every night without fail,” she says, picking it up, her hands shaking.

She sometimes gets a bed in a shelter, but most nights, Mary settles down in a part of the city where more police are around. She explains she has been assaulted four times and does not want to take any risks.

Every so often, Mary coughs – the after-effects of a recent bout of pneumonia she suffered after getting caught in a rainstorm. The car battery died when the windows were down, and she had no money to fix it.

“It seems that the moment people know you’re homeless… you become what I call a non-person,” she says. “You no longer have any value in people’s lives.”

Homelessness services around Australia have reported a jump in demand amid a national housing crisis – with women and children the clear majority of those needing help. Indigenous Australians are over-represented too.

In recent years, record house prices, underinvestment in social housing, a general shortage of homes and drastically climbing rents, have left much of the nation’s growing population struggling to find a place to live.

Rents have risen the fastest in Perth – up an average of 20% this past year alone. In the few days we were in the city, everyone had a story to share.

Hailey Hawkins tells me she and her daughter Tacisha have been couch-surfing and living in tents for nearly four years, most of Tacisha’s life. They are eligible for social housing – but waiting lists are years-long.

“One week, I’ll have enough money to have decent enough accommodation plus be able to feed both myself and my daughter,” she says, struggling to hold back tears.

“Otherwise, it’s asking money to friends, family or pretty much anyone really that is willing to help.”

Michael Piu, head of St Patrick’s Community Support Centre, says they’re seeing people from all walks of life – young and old, working families and individuals alike – come through the doors.

“A single trigger can push people into homelessness, and there really are very few options for them,” he says.

“They don’t know where to start.”

The housing crisis remains a national talking point, and it is no different inside the country’s parliaments.

Wilson Tucker, a member of the Western Australia state parliament, recently made headlines for being a “homeless” politician – although he prefers the word nomadic. He was evicted and, despite a salary almost twice the national average, could not find anywhere else to live.

But what Mr Tucker didn’t initially mention was that he is also a landlord. He says he bought the home with tenants already living there, and didn’t want to turf them out in what he calls a “red hot” property market.

So now, when parliament sits, Mr Tucker stays in hotels. The rest of the time he is on the road in his 4×4 and roof tent.

“But there’s a lot of people out there that don’t have that privilege, and they’re resigned to fight over this handful of properties,” he tells the BBC.

Housing has also been on the agenda in the federal parliament, where MPs have been considering making it a legally protected human right.

Two independent parliamentarians introduced a bill on the issue off the back of advocacy by the Australian Human Rights Commission, but without government support it is unlikely to pass.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announced in this year’s budget A$6.2bn ($4.1bn; £3.3bn) to speed up the construction of new houses, provide rent subsidies, and increase the pool of social and affordable housing.

States and territories also have a slew of initiatives they hope will ease the strain.

But homelessness charities are crying out for extra support to keep up with the growing demand, and advocates say more urgent reform – like scrapping lucrative tax concessions for investors or increasing protections for renters – is needed.

There has been criticism heaped on landlords too for hiking rents at a time when people are squeezed – and discussions about limiting increases and narrowing the reasons for which a landlord can evict a tenant.

But the property industry says landlords are hurting too.

In May 2022, interest rates began rising faster than at any time in Australia’s history – with 13 increases over 18 months.

“Most people only own one investment property and they’ve had their mortgage repayments [on those properties] go up by 50% as well,” says Cath Hart, chief executive of the Real Estate Institute of Western Australia.

She says the conditions are tough enough already, and the pandemic showed that measures like rent increase caps and eviction moratoriums only push landlords out of the long-term rental market.

“What we saw during Covid… was that 20,000 fewer properties were available to rent as investors just went ‘You know what? It’s too hard.’”

In the meantime, every night different charities take turns offering help to those who want it.

As evening falls and commuters exit their shiny office buildings in the centre of Perth, crowds of people with nowhere to go gather in a square by the railway tracks.

With the Australian winter now kicking in, it is the clothes donations that are causing the biggest flurry. Supermarkets donate food, there is a laundry service, a mobile doctor surgery and a hairdresser.

Also out are street chaplains, providing meals.

Michelle Rumbold has joined them to help. Until a few months ago, she was the one receiving the handouts. A registered nurse, she was left with nothing after she got evicted and crashed her car.

“I ended up losing my job purely because I didn’t have accommodation and I didn’t have a car,” Michelle says.

“I think it took a while for people to actually realise I was homeless, because I didn’t look homeless. Gradually, over time, you become so used to the street that you lose yourself.”

Michelle managed to get transitional housing and she’s now back on her feet, working in a GP’s surgery. But she still likes to come back here and help.

“It’s hard to leave this place once you’ve been here,” she says. “It’s a really odd thing to say but people become your family here.”

But for every Michelle, there are plenty more like Mary, still struggling.

For Mary, it’s the loneliness that hits her the most.

“You’ve got no TV, no neighbours to say hi to,” she says.

“People often just give you the side eye and think ‘Oh God, not another one’ and walk away.”

A former US officer who was the only person to be convicted in connection with the My Lai massacre during the Vietnam War has died, according to reports.

William Calley died on 28 April at the age of 80, the Washington Post and New York Times reported, citing official death records.

Calley led the US Army platoon that carried out the mass murder of hundreds of civilians, including women and children, in the Vietnamese village of Son My in 1968.

He was sentenced to life in prison in 1971 for killing 22 civilians, but only served three days behind bars after then-President Richard Nixon ordered his release under house arrest.

The My Lai massacre is known as one of the worst war crimes in American military history. The killings shocked the US public at the time and galvanised the anti-Vietnam war movement.

According to the Vietnamese government, 504 people were killed in the massacre.

Calley, a junior college dropout from South Florida, enlisted in the army in 1964.

He was quickly promoted to junior officer and then second lieutenant, at a time when the US army was desperate for soldiers.

On the morning of 16 March 1968, Calley’s unit was airlifted to a hamlet in Son My – known to US soldiers at the time as My Lai 4 – on a mission to search and kill Viet Cong members and sympathisers.

When they arrived, the officers were met with no resistance from the residents of the village, who were found cooking breakfast over outdoor fires, according to a 1972 report by journalist Seymour Hersh in the New Yorker.

Mr Hersh reported that Calley and his unit proceeded to kill the civilians in the following hours. Many were rounded up in small groups and shot, he said. Others were pushed into a drainage ditch and shot, or were killed in or near their homes.

Women and girls were raped by American officers and then murdered, Mr Hersh reported.

The massacre was initially covered up but became public a year and a half later, thanks in large part to Mr Hersh’s reporting, which earned him a Pulitzer Prize.

Calley was one of 26 soldiers who were charged with criminal offences and the only one convicted.

His conviction polarised Americans. Some deemed him a war criminal while others felt the junior officer was used as a scapegoat to shift blame for a massacre that was ultimately the responsibility of his superiors.

While he was given a life sentence, Calley only served three-and-a-half years under house arrest after President Nixon commuted his sentence.

Calley married Penny Vick, the daughter of a jewelry store owner in Columbus, Georgia, in 1976. The couple had one son, William Laws Calley III, and divorced in the mid-2000s.

He rarely spoke about his role in the My Lai massacre and had refused to sit down with historians and reporters.

In 2009, he apologised while speaking to the Kiwanis Club of Greater Columbus.

“There is not a day that goes by that I do not feel remorse for what happened that day in My Lai,” he said. “I feel remorse for the Vietnamese who were killed, for their families, for the American soldiers involved and their families.”

The Washington Post first reported Calley’s death on Monday, after receiving a tip from a Harvard Law School graduate who uncovered it in public records.

No cause of death has been cited.

After months of negotiation, Taiwan and China have “reached an agreement” on how to respond to the deaths of two Chinese fishermen following a sea chase by Taiwan’s coastguard, Taipei said.

The settlement involves compensation to the victims’ families and the repatriation of their bodies to China, according to reports. Taiwan’s coastguard declined to share details.

The deal may reduce tensions in the sensitive Taiwan Strait, which Beijing claims as its own.

China had condemned the incident in February as “malicious” and started regular patrols around Taiwan’s Kinmen archipelago following it.

The regular patrols aimed to “maintain operational order in sea areas and safeguard fishermen’s lives and property”, Beijing’s coastguard said in February.

The two men who died were among four people on board a fishing boat which trespassed into Taiwanese waters off Kinmen on 14 February and resisted inspection.

The boat capsized when Taiwanese authorities gave chase and the two fishermen drowned while trying to flee.

Beijing and Taipei used to be more flexible about each other’s fishing fleets, especially around Taiwan’s off-shore islands, which lie extremely close to the Chinese coast. Kinmen – Taiwan’s northernmost archipelago – lies just 3km (1.9 mi) from China.

But in recent years Taiwan has been enforcing its own waters more strictly – a response to what it says is a massive increase in poaching by fishermen from China’s coastal Fujian province.

Kinmen residents have reported seeing an increased presence of Chinese dredging vessels in its vicinity.

China’s Taiwan Affairs Office had for months urged Taiwanese authorities to investigate the incident and offer assistance to the victims’ families. It also accused the self-ruled Taiwan – which Beijing sees as a breakaway province which will eventually be part of China – of “using various excuses to forcefully seize Chinese fishing vessels”.

Taiwan has defended its coastguard’s actions and called on Beijing to “restrain similar behaviours” on its waters.

On Tuesday, Taiwan’s coast guard director Chang Chung-lung apologised to the victims’ families “for the suffering [they have] endured” and also “for not recording evidence in this case”.

Both sides “will actively implement the agreed consensus as quickly as possible” said Hsieh Chin-chin, deputy director-general of the coastguard administration.

“We respect the families and the content of the consensus, so we are unable to provide further details,” Mr Hsieh added.

A spokesman for Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council revealed the compensation will be paid by private donors, while stressing it does not have any impact on the outcome of the investigation into what happened, and who was responsible.

Beijing said it hopes Taiwan will “actively implement the terms of the agreement to provide peace of mind to the victims and offer an explanation to their families”.

The threat from international and domestic terror presents a “breadth of challenge greater than it has ever been”, according to senior US and UK police officers who oversaw the successful prosecution of Anjem Choudary.

The Islamist preacher from east London is starting a life sentence for directing a group banned under UK terror law, and encouraging support for it online.

The officers say his case highlights the continuing danger posed by radicalisers – and the violent groups they support.

But they also say counter-terrorism forces are now battling a wide diversity of threats – including from a worrying number of people who don’t support an underlying ideology, but are simply drawn to violence.

Young people being attracted to online extremism through conspiracy theories, the actions of “hostile states” such as Russia, and the “toxicity of our political environment” are also concerning, they warn.

Following Choudary’s trial, the BBC spoke exclusively to Matt Jukes, the UK’s head of counter-terrorism policing, and Rebecca Weiner, Deputy Commissioner of Intelligence and Counterterrorism at the New York Police Department.

They told us that alongside extremist groups energised by events in the Middle East, the new security threats were sparking multiple investigations.

It is a “palpably different picture than it was,” says Assistant Commissioner Jukes.

Deputy Commissioner Weiner singles out online extremism as probably the most important aspect of what she terms an “everything, everywhere, all-at-once threat environment”.

With two wars – Israel-Gaza and Ukraine – being fought in what Ms Weiner calls “a tsunami of disinformation”, she says it is hard for people to understand what is true and what is not – “and that is playing out in the realm of violence”.

People are being “overwhelmed with false narratives” and fed conspiracy theories, she says.

A disturbing aspect of this, says Mr Jukes, is the increasing number of those turning to terrorism because of a fascination for violence, rather than ideological fanaticism.

He says in 20% of cases his officers now handle, terror suspects have no settled view of the world: “We are seeing people literally flip from searching for neo-Nazi material online to searching for Islamist material.”

This is a real shift, he says, with people having previously gone from a single ideology, to extremism, and on to violence.

Young people are viewing “dehumanising content”, including extreme pornography – says Mr Jukes – and being asked in online groups “to prove themselves by producing more and more extreme content”.

This includes terrorist material created using artificial intelligence, he says, with gaming being one of the “gateways” into extremism online.

The age profile of those drawn into this extreme environment is coming down – and he worries about “very young people who only need to take up a knife or use a vehicle as a weapon to carry out a deadly attack”.

Nearly one in five of those arrested as terror suspects in the UK in the past year were under 18.

Counter-terror police on both sides of the Atlantic have also been kept busy since last October’s attack by Hamas on Israel, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 taken hostage. More than 39,000 Palestinians have been killed, according to Gaza’s health ministry.

Fifty police investigations have been launched in the UK into support or encouragement of terrorism. There has also been a big increase in antisemitic and Islamophobic hate crime.

Government statistics for the year ending in March 2024 show terror-related arrests in the UK were up by 23% on the previous year (although they were lower than the period between 2013 to 2020).

Five years ago, says Mr Jukes, he would have been kept awake primarily by fears of an IS attack in the UK, but now he says one of his main concerns would be the growing threat from “determined and shameless” state actors.

For many years, he says “hostile actions of states” formed only a very small part of police and MI5 investigations. But this has grown more than fourfold since the 2018 Salisbury poisonings, says Mr Jukes, when a nerve agent was used to try to assassinate a former Russian spy and his daughter.

The spy, who had defected to the West, and his daughter were badly injured – but a British woman died after coming into contact with Novichok. Russia has always denied involvement.

There has also been an increased threat from parts of the Chinese state, he adds, and at least 15 foiled plots by Iran in the past two years to either kidnap or kill those in the UK it considers enemies of the regime.

“If these authoritarian organs of the state feel like the UK or the US is fair [game] for them to pursue their adversities, then everything we stand for in terms of being a safe, liberal democracy is challenged,” says Mr Jukes.

The two police chiefs also point to “toxicity” in the political environment, which has led to politicians becoming targets of violence – including two British MPs murdered in terror attacks, and the failed assassination of Donald Trump at a campaign rally on 13 July.

I ask if there is any reassuring news amid this scary picture of dispersed danger.

People can “take a degree of comfort”, says Mr Jukes, that since the attacks in London and Manchester in 2017, “that terrible year”, police have disrupted nearly 40 “terrorist plots”.

“And we are doing that month-in, month-out, with real efficiency and effectiveness.”

The authoritarian leader of Belarus has pardoned a German citizen who had been sentenced to death.

Rico Kroeger was arrested in October and had been accused of acting as a mercenary and of planting explosives. But news of his death sentence only became widely known last week.

Today’s intervention by Alexander Lukashenko means his death sentence is officially commuted to a life sentence and he will not be executed.

The unusual nature of the case, the sudden focus – and the equally sudden pardon – have all prompted speculation Belarus might be looking to release Mr Krieger in a high-profile swap involving prisoners in both Germany and Russia, a close ally of Belarus.

It comes days after Mr Krieger was shown in a film on Belarusian state television in tears and begging for help.

The 16-minute film released on Friday included re-enactments involving guards in balaclavas and truncheons and looked like a crude attempt to pressure the German authorities into action.

Foreign Ministries in Berlin and Minsk confirmed they were in talks. A spokesman in Belarus said various “proposals” had been made.

Mr Krieger is the first Westerner ever sentenced to death in Belarus.

In his televised confession, clearly made under duress, Mr Krieger admitted to planting explosives beside a train line, supposedly on the orders of Ukrainian intelligence, the SBU.

He said he had wanted to fight in Ukraine with an international legion but was instructed to carry out a mission in Belarus, first.

But the film produced no direct evidence of that and there were multiple oddities and inconsistencies in the account.

It ended with Mr Krieger making a sobbing plea for help from the German government.

Now he’s been pardoned, state media are full of praise for Mr Lukashenko’s “merciful” nature and damning the Germans, claiming they abandoned their own.

One notorious reporter was filmed giving the official line: the crime was very serious and unjustifiable, but Mr Lukashenko was wise and fair – and would make “the right call”.

It is possible this presidential pardon is the latest in a series of tentative gestures by Mr Lukashenko towards the West.

Widely condemned and sanctioned after his security forces brutally suppressed mass opposition protests in 2020, he was isolated still further when he allowed Russia to use Belarusian territory for its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Lukashenko owed Vladimir Putin for coming to his support during the street protests.

Now some see hints he is trying to build bridges again with Europe: he released a handful of political prisoners earlier this month.

Reports of a recent meeting with Vladimir Putin in Russia suggest it was unusually tense.

But there are other theories, including speculation Mr Krieger could be a key part in a complex, multi-country prisoner exchange.

That might also involve Vadim Krasikov a Russian FSB assassin in prison in Germany who the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, wants back.

Mr Krasikov’s fate has previously been linked to that of the American reporter Evan Gershkovich, who was arrested in Russia and recently convicted of espionage.

His employer, the Wall Street Journal, friends and families all insist that is absurd and he is a political hostage.

The only sure fact for now is Mr Krieger – who had been facing death by firing squad – has been spared.

What Mr Lukashenko wants in return for that is not clear.

An Indian teenager is now among a handful of people in the world to survive a rare brain-eating amoeba, partly due to his father coming across a public awareness campaign on social media.

Afnan Jasim, 14, is thought to have become infected in June after he went for a swim in a local pond in the southern state of Kerala.

His doctor said that the amoeba – called Naegleria fowleri – likely entered his body from the water that had been contaminated by it.

Primary Amoebic Meningoencephalitis (PAM), the disease caused by the amoeba, has a mortality rate of 97%.

According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, between 1971 and 2023, just eight other people have survived the disease across four countries – Australia, US, Mexico and Pakistan.

In all the cases, the infection was diagnosed between nine hours and five days after the symptoms appeared – which played a crucial role in their recovery.

Medical experts say that timely treatment is key to curing the disease. Symptoms of PAM include headache, fever, nausea, vomiting, disorientation, a stiff neck, a loss of balance, seizures and/or hallucinations.

Afnan began experiencing the symptoms five days after he had gone for a swim in a local pond in Kozhikode district. He developed seizures and began complaining of severe headaches.

His parents took him to the doctor, but Afnan did not improve.

Luckily, his father MK Siddiqui, 46, had the presence of mind to connect his son’s symptoms with something he had read on social media.

Mr Siddiqui, who is a dairy farmer, said he was reading about the effects of the Nipah virus – a boy recently died of it in Kerala – on social media when he chanced upon information about the deadly brain-eating amoeba.

“I read something about seizures being caused by an infection. As soon as Afnan developed seizures, I rushed him to the local hospital,” Mr Siddiqui said.

When the seizures didn’t stop, he took his son to another hospital, but this one didn’t have a neurologist.

Finally, they went to the Baby Memorial Hospital in Kozhikode, where the boy was treated by Dr Abdul Rauf, a consultant intensive care paediatrician.

“The disease was diagnosed within 24 hours of the onset of symptoms,” Dr Rauf told the BBC.

Dr Rauf credits Mr Siddiqui with informing doctors about Afnan’s swim in the local pond and his subsequent symptoms, which helped them diagnose the disease in time.

The amoeba is known to enter the human body through nasal passages and it travels through the cribriform plate – which is located at the base of the skull and transmits olfactory nerves to enable the sense of smell – to reach the brain.

“The parasite then releases different chemicals and destroys the brain,” says Dr Rauf.

Most patients die because of intracranial pressure [exercised by fluids inside the skull and on the brain tissue].

He added that the amoeba was found in freshwater lakes, particularly in water that was warm.

“People should not jump or dive into water. That is a sure way for the amoeba to enter the body. If the water is contaminated, the amoeba enters through your nose,” he says.

The best thing to do, he says, is to avoid contaminated water bodies. Even in swimming pools, people are advised to keep their mouths above the water level.

“Chlorination of water resources is very important,” Dr Rauf adds.

A research paper published in Karnataka state has also reported cases of infants locally and in places like Nigeria contracting the infection from bathwater.

Since 1965, some 400 cases of PAM have been reported around the world, while India has had fewer than 30 cases so far.

“Kerala reported a PAM case in 2018 and 2020,” the doctor said.

Just this year, six cases have been recorded in Kerala. Of these, three have died and one is in a critical condition. While Afnan has been discharged, the sixth person has also responded to treatment and is recovering.

“After two deaths at our hospital, we informed the government as it was a public health issue and an awareness campaign was launched,” Dr Rauf said. It was this awareness campaign that Mr Siddiqui had come across on social media.

Doctors conducted tests on Afnan which helped detect the presence of the amoeba in the boy’s cerebrospinal fluid – which is found in the brain and spinal cord – and then administered a combination of antimicrobial drugs by injecting them into his spine.

The treatment also included administering miltefosine – a drug that the state government imported from Germany.

“This drug is used for rare diseases in India but it is not very costly,” Dr Rauf said.

“On the first day, the patient was not very conscious due to the seizures. But within three days, Afnan’s condition started improving,” he added.

A week later, doctors repeated the tests and found the amoeba was no longer present in his body. But he will continue taking medicines for a month, after which he plans to resume his studies.

The experience has left a profound impact on Afnan, who says he now wants to do a degree in nursing.

“He told the doctor that nurses work so hard for the patients,” Mr Siddiqui says.

Increasing numbers of bereaved parents in Israel are asking for sperm from the bodies of their sons – many of them soldiers – to be extracted and frozen. Some rules on the procedure have been relaxed in the wake of the 7 October Hamas attacks, but families are angry and frustrated about the lengthy legal processes they face.

Avi Harush’s voice trembles as he recalls the moment he learned his 20-year-old son, Reef, had been killed in combat on 6 April 2024 in the Gaza Strip.

The military officers who came to his door also presented him with a decision. There was still time to retrieve Reef’s sperm – was the family interested?

Avi’s answer was immediate. Reef “lived life to its fullest”, he says. “Despite the horrible loss, we choose to live.”

“Reef loved children and wanted kids of his own – there’s no question about it,” he adds.

Reef had no wife or girlfriend. But as Avi began to share his son’s story, several women got in touch, offering to bear Reef’s child.

He says the idea is now his “life’s mission”.

The family is among a growing number who have frozen sperm since the 7 October Hamas attacks on Israel, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 others were taken back to Gaza as hostages.

Israel launched a major military operation in Gaza in response, in which more than 39,000 Palestinians have been killed, according to the Hamas-run health ministry. About 400 Israelis have also been killed in the war.

Since 7 October, sperm has been retrieved from nearly 170 young men – both civilians and soldiers – according to the Israeli health ministry. It is roughly 15 times the figure for the same period in previous years.

The process involves making an incision in the testicle and removing a small piece of tissue, from which live sperm cells can then be isolated in a lab and frozen.

Success rates for retrieving the cells are highest if it is done within 24 hours of death, though they can live for up to 72 hours.

In October, the Israeli health ministry waived a requirement for parents to obtain a court order to request the procedure. The IDF says it has become more proactive in offering it to bereaved parents in recent years.

But while it has become easier to have sperm frozen, widows or parents who want to use it in the conception of a child have to demonstrate in court that the dead man wanted to have children. The process can take years, particularly for bereaved parents.

The first parents in Israel to preserve and use their dead son’s sperm were Rachel and Yaakov Cohen, whose son Keivan was shot dead by a Palestinian sniper, according to the IDF, in 2002 in the Gaza Strip.

Their granddaughter, Osher – born from his sperm – is now 10 years old.

Rachel describes a moment after Keivan’s death when she felt his presence: “I went to his closet. I wanted to find his smell. I even smelled his shoes,” she says.

“He spoke to me from his photo. He asked me to make sure he has children.”

Rachel says they “faced so much opposition”, but eventually secured a ground-breaking legal decision, after which she advertised for a potential mother for her son’s child.

Irit – who did not share her surname to protect the family’s privacy – was among dozens of women who responded.

She was single. She says she was assessed by a psychologist and a social worker, and then, with court approval, began fertility treatment.

“Some say we’re playing God. I don’t think that’s the case,” she says.

“There’s a difference between a child who knows their father and one conceived by a sperm bank donation,” she adds.

Osher knows her father was killed in the army. Her room is decorated with dolphins. She says she knows he loved them.

“I know they took his sperm and searched for a perfect mother to bring me to the world,” she adds.

Irit says Osher has grandparents, uncles and cousins from both sides. But she says she is raising Osther “normally” to ensure she “is not raised to be a living monument”.

Preserving sperm has “great meaning” to bereaved families, says Dr Itai Gat, director of the sperm bank at Shamir Medical Center – who himself performs the surgery.

“It’s the last chance to preserve the option of reproduction and fertility in the future,” he says.

He says there’s been a “significant cultural shift” recently towards greater acceptance of the process, but that the current rules have created a conflict in the case of single men.

Dr Gat says, for them, there is often no clear record of consent. This has left families already coping with grief in “a very difficult situation”, where the sperm has been frozen but they can’t use it for fertilisation.

“We’re discussing reproduction, bringing a boy or girl into the world… that we know will be an orphan, without a father,” he says.

In the majority of cases, the deceased would not have known the mother of the child made using his sperm, he adds, and all decisions regarding the child, his education and future would be made by the mother.

He says he was previously opposed to preserving sperm unless there was clear consent from the deceased, but his view has softened since meeting families bereaved in the current war.

“I see how meaningful it is to them, how sometimes it gives them some comfort,” he says.

Rabbi Yuval Sherlo, a prominent liberal rabbi who leads the Tzohar Center for Jewish Ethics in Tel Aviv, also says the consent of the deceased is an important consideration.

And he explains that two important principles in Jewish law are also involved – continuing a man’s lineage and burying the body whole.

Some rabbis say continuing the lineage is so important it merits the damage to the body tissue, he says, while others maintain the procedure should not take place at all.

The current rules on the issue are guidelines published by the Attorney General in 2003, but are not enshrined in law.

Israeli lawmakers have attempted to draft a bill to create clearer, more comprehensive rules, but efforts have stalled.

People close to the process have told the BBC there has been conflict over the level of explicit consent that should be required from the deceased, and whether the child would receive the benefits normally given to the children of soldiers killed in service.

Israeli media have also reported disagreement between widows and bereaved parents over how much control parents should have over their sons’ sperm, especially if the widow does not wish to use it to have a child.

Those who have already frozen their sons’ sperm are worried that if legislation is eventually agreed, it will only address future issues of consent, and not prevent them from facing lengthy court battles.

For Avi, there is determination within his grief.

He looks through a cardboard carton, filled with diaries, albums and mementoes of his son.

He says he won’t rest until he can give Reef a child: “It will happen… and his children will receive this box.”

There have been protests across Venezuela following the announcement on Monday of the disputed result of the presidential election.

The National Electoral Council (CNE) – which is dominated by government allies – declared Nicolás Maduro the winner.

The CNE’s announcement has been widely decried as fraudulent both inside and outside Venezuela with the Carter Center demanding the CNE publish the detailed voting tallies.

The opposition says the tallies it has had access to – which it has made public – show that its candidate, Edmundo González, is the clear winner.

Here we look at some of the key moments which have led to thousands of Venezuelans taking to the streets in protest.

Even before polling stations opened at 06:00 local time on Sunday, long lines formed at many locations with some voters queueing overnight.

There were reports of some voters being blocked from accessing their polling stations, while at others there were long delays.

Some of those keen to cast their ballot joined in a chorus of “We want to vote”.

Many of the 7.8m Venezuelans who have fled their country’s economic and political crisis were not able to cast their votes after they encountered problems adding their names to the electoral register.

The hurdles they faced included strict requirements such as having to provide proof of legal residence in the host country and providing a valid identity card as passports were not accepted as a form of identification.

As identity cards are not issued by Venezuelan consulates abroad, this meant many Venezuelans whose IDs had expired could not vote.

Many also reported being left off the list of voters altogether or appearing on local registers in Venezuela rather than in their current countries of residence.

Others complained of consulates only opening for voter registration for very limited times.

Official figures from the CNE show that fewer than 68,000 people overseas were registered to vote, even though an estimated half of the 7.8m Venezuelans abroad are of voting age.

Venezuela’s National Electoral Council (CNE) has five members who are nominated by the legislative body, the National Assembly.

While it was created as an independent body to organise and oversee elections, it has long been dominated by allies of the governing PSUV party.

Its president, Elvis Amoroso, is a former lawmaker for President Maduro’s socialist PSUV party who went to work as Mr Maduro’s legal adviser.

Before being named head of the CNE, he served as comptroller general. In that post, he barred opposition leader María Corina Machado from running for office for 15 years.

As head of the CNE, he revoked the invitation which had been issued to the European Union to send independent electoral observers to monitor the presidential election.

In the early hours on Monday, Mr Amoroso announced that with 80% of the votes counted, President Maduro had an “unassailable lead” with 51% of the vote.

He said that the opposition candidate, Edmundo González, had 44% of the vote.

However, the CNE did not provide a detailed breakdown of the results from individual polling stations.

The incumbent celebrated the announcement outside the Miraflores presidential palace.

“I am Nicolás Maduro Moros, the re-elected president of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela and I will defend our democracy, our laws and our people,” he shouted.

Before a crowd of loyal supporters, he mocked and mimicked former opposition and current opposition leaders , whom he accused of “crying fraud” every time they lost an election.

He praised the electoral system and urged “respect” for “Venezuela’s sovereignty”.

Mr Maduro also alleged that the CNE had been the target of a “massive hacking attack” on election night because “the demons didn’t want the total tally to be announced”. “We already he know who it was,” he said.

“We are setting an example for the world,” he told his cheering supporters.

Shortly after the CNE had declared Mr Maduro’s victory, opposition leader María Corina Machado denounced the result as fraudulent.

She said that the opposition had had access to 40% of the voting tallies and they suggested that opposition candidate Edmundo González had won with 70% of the votes.

In a news conference some hours later on Monday, Ms Machado said the opposition had been able to review 73.2% of the voting tallies and they confirmed that Mr González was the winner of the election.

She said that those voting tallies showed that Nicolás Maduro had 2.75m votes compared to Mr González’s 6.27m votes.

She added that even if all the votes in the remaining 26.8% of tallies the opposition had not had access to yet were for Mr Maduro, it would not be enough to beat Mr González.

“We have the records showing our categorical and mathematically irreversible victory,” Mr González said.

Ms Machado also announced that the opposition had uploaded the voting tallies to a website so that the Venezuelan people and independent observer could scrutinise them.

Despite international and national scepticism and criticism expressed about the result released by the CNE, the electoral authority doubled down on Monday.

It announced that all of the votes had been counted and declared Mr Maduro re-elected to a third consecutive term.

Elvis Amoroso, who has been a close ally of Mr Maduro for years, handed him the credentials for the presidential term from 2025-2031.

Even though it pressed ahead with the formalities, the CNE still failed to provide access to all of the voting tallies, despite pressure by the Carter Center, one of the few international organisations allowed as observers, to do so.

The already tense atmosphere was further inflamed by pro-government groups, the so-called colectivos and by clashes between protesters and the security forces.

In one incident, members of a colectivo attacked people who were waiting to enter a polling station to witness the vote count.

A non-governmental group said on Tuesday that three people had died and dozens were injured in the protests which have erupted across Venezuela.

Also on Tuesday, Venezuela’s attorney-general said 749 had been arrested during anti-government protests.

A Venezuelan opposition party – Voluntad Popular – said its national coordinator, Freddy Superlano, was among those detained.

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has promised that Hezbollah will pay “a heavy price” for an attack that killed 12 children at a football pitch in Majdal Shams on the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights on Saturday.

The costs that Mr Netanyahu, his Defence Minister Yoav Gallant and Israel’s military chiefs decide to inflict on Hezbollah will determine whether the war either side of the Israel-Lebanon border stays limited and relatively controlled or explodes into something much worse.

The border war started the day after Hamas attacked Israel on 7 October last year, when Hezbollah fired rockets into Israel to support the Palestinians.

Since then, it has been fought within a grisly set of unspoken understandings. Israel and Hezbollah have mostly aimed at military targets, though both have also killed civilians.

As a result, the war, though highly dangerous, has stayed limited. Even so, tens of thousands of people on both sides of the border have left their homes. Busy communities have become ghost towns.

The fear from the outset has been that a big attack on either side’s civilians would cause uncontrolled escalation and in turn, cause a much worse war, as both Israel and Hezbollah bring their full force to bear.

Action against Hezbollah in the largely depopulated areas of south Lebanon might avoid escalation. Killing Lebanese civilians in Beirut or destroying infrastructure like bridges or power stations would not.

Hezbollah claims, unconvincingly, that it did not carry out the attack in Majdal Shams. Even so, it is hard to see why it would target Druze children at a football match.

Hezbollah has mostly stuck to the tacit rules of the conflict, trying to kill soldiers, not civilians since it started the border war on 8 October.

It might have been aiming for the extensive Israeli early warning stations on military positions on Mount Hermon.

Hezbollah is a much more formidable enemy of Israel than Hamas. It is more powerful than the fragile Lebanese state and operates without consulting it.

Hezbollah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah is close to the Supreme Leader of Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Hezbollah fighters are disciplined and well trained, and Iran has supplied them with a formidable arsenal of missiles that can hit Israel’s cities.

Hezbollah fought Israel to a standstill in their last big war in 2006. Its men have extensive combat experience after fighting for years in Syria in support of the regime of President Bashar al-Assad.

Israel’s leadership know all that. They also know that despite their vast firepower they have not yet subdued Hamas in Gaza, and the reservists their army relies on are feeling considerable strain.

Israel is also under heavy pressure from its allies, including the US – without which it cannot sustain its war effort – not to take action that would escalate the war into an all-out fight.

The Americans and the French have tried to negotiate a way of de-escalating the Israel-Hezbollah border war. The absence of a ceasefire in Gaza blights their chances of success.

The border between Israel and Lebanon remains the mostly likely place for the wider Middle East war to intensify.

Even if the crisis caused by the killing of young football players and spectators in Majdal Shams passes without a much worse conflagration, the “rules” of the border war are tattered, imperfect, unstable and continue to carry the risk that a single bloody incident will touch off another catastrophic war.

Across the summer in the UK there’s a music festival pretty much every week somewhere in the country.

Highlights include the summer kick off with Radio 1’s Big Weekend in May, Glastonbury’s dominance in June, Latitude in July and a Reading and Leeds Bank Holiday bonanza in August.

Some could argue British music lovers are spoilt for choice.

In some parts of the world there’s no option to dance with your mates in a field while holding a lukewarm beer, getting to grips with dry shampoo, shoddy phone signal and chants of ‘Oggy, oggy, oggy, oi, oi, oi’.

That’s where Dua Lipa and her dad Dukagjin wanted to change things by launching Sunny Hill festival in the family’s home city of Pristina, Kosovo – a part of the world few international artists toured.

“I want to change the rhetoric of what people think about Kosovo and it being war-torn,” Dua explained earlier this year.

“When I was living in Kosovo, none of the artists I wanted to see ever came down.”

Dua was born in the UK but moved to Pristina as a child after a war in the late 1990s left more than 10,000 dead, as Kosovo fought for independence from Serbia.

It declared it in 2008, although some countries – including Serbia – refuse to recognise it.

“Reinstating the country took more years than we’d liked,” Dukagjin says.

He says it was “always a dream” to have something like Sunny Hill in Pristina, after working in the live music events industry for years before Dua made it as an international pop star.

In 2018, 10 years after Kosovo declared independence, Sunny Hill launched – headlined by Dua as tens of thousands celebrated one of their own making the big time.

But it was harder then to convince other global artists to play and the following year the New Rules star turned to her friends Miley Cyrus and Calvin Harris to ask them to top the bill, who both performed in the region for the first time.

That changed how the festival was seen by other acts and their management teams.

“We really do punch way above our weight when it comes to the line-up,” Dukagjin tells BBC News.

“When I talk to the artists about coming I say: ‘Look you might not have the tequila you want on your rider, but trust me you’ll have the best sound equipment money can buy’.”

His latest data estimates that about 40% of visitors were from outside Kosovo – noting that will be strongly influenced by the country’s diaspora as those with family connections here bring friends with them.

Some had travelled as far from Chicago in the US to see artists like Bebe Rexha, Burna Boy, Stormzy, and DJ Snake headline the main stage last weekend.

Groove Armada, Black Coffee and Griff were all also on the bill.

Kosovo is thought to have Europe’s youngest population as more than half are estimated to be under the age of 30.

Travel restrictions, until earlier this year, meant local musicians didn’t have the flexibility to play in other parts of the continent.

“It’s not that easy to be a musician,” explains singer La Fazani, who’s played Sunny Hill multiple times.

“The only way you can actually make good income is by playing nightclubs.”

He recently won a big TV show in the country but says without Sunny Hill he wouldn’t get to play live to a crowd of thousands, and hopes the Lipa guest list could improve his career.

“Sunny Hill is one of the greatest generators of a positive image of Kosovo,” he says.

“There’s many international label people here and I hope I might have caught the eye of someone who might like what I do.”

Fresh from seeing his daughter headline one of the biggest festivals in the world, Dukagjin says “Glastonbury is one of a kind” and knows it will be hard for his project Sunny Hill, which took place for the first time on its new permanent site to accommodate the growing audience, to reach a status like that.

Although, he says industry friends like Coachella owner Paul Tollett say the project reminds him of Glastonbury in the 1980s, and there are plans to make it more than a live music festival.

“I love artists who spend a day or two longer in Pristina and have a chance to meet local artists and share ideas.

“And for them to rub shoulders with people in the music industry, and hopefully next year we can create a movement with some workshops,” Dukagjin says.

Listen to Newsbeat live at 12:45 and 17:45 weekdays – or listen back here.

Walk through the streets of Shanghai and its café culture is unmissable. There are some areas where you won’t be able to turn without passing yet another new little café.

China’s financial capital now has so many coffee shops that the government claims it has the most of any city in the world.

The city’s café culture has been developing for years, but the post-Covid opening up has really given it a boost, as locals embrace outdoor living, looking for places to meet their friends and family.

However, with so many new establishments, the competition for customers has become fierce. Most owners we spoke to don’t think all these businesses can survive.

Shanghai officials say there are “more than 8,000 cafes in the city”. And a report by the Shanghai International Coffee Culture Festival, recorded 9,553 coffee shops at the end of 2023.

And it’s not just the number of outlets that sets Shanghai apart.

Where other Chinese cities are still dominated by big coffee chains like Starbucks and its local rival Luckin, Shanghai’s café explosion is largely fuelled by niche, independent outlets, like Hidden Track.

Its owner Dong Xiaoli says she had “no choice” but to dive head first into the industry because she was so passionate about coffee.

But it hasn’t been easy.

Asked what advice she would give someone considering following in her footsteps, she laughs and replies: “I’d say don’t do it.”

“The investment versus return is awful. You need to buy expensive machines and put a lot of money into decorating. You’re earning very small amounts of money compared to other industries.”

To succeed in this very crowded market, having a distinct vibe has become as important as anything else in attracting customers.

Hidden Track has gone for a limited menu and a simple, minimalist vibe which opens onto the street in a welcoming fashion.

Being seen at a café here is considered hip and urbane, and that has helped drive young customers through the doors. Cafes have become a social occasion with many young people to get dressed up and meet for coffee and a chat.

Shanghai’s residents who have long seen themselves as the inheritors of an outward-looking, cosmopolitan attitude which permeated Shanghai in the early decades of the 20th century, are also proud of their café culture.

“Shanghai has long been an international trading city: we started drinking coffee a long time ago. Smaller cities will also gradually get different types of cafes,” says one man sitting at a café.

A woman nearby agrees that the local café culture is now solidly established. Asked how many cups of coffee she drinks a day, she laughs out loud and replies: “As many as I like.”

And as the cafes increase, so does the appetite for experimentation.

The coffee converts of this tea-drinking giant are keen to try new flavours and new brews.

Yuan Jingfeng, who runs the R1070 café, says all his beans come from Japan.

“My costs are very very high. My imported beans include American and Italian styles which are all imported from Japan in their original packaging,” he says.

“Wholesale prices have gone up dramatically over the past few years. The wars in Yemen and Ethiopia have both had an impact. The good beans are getting fewer while the number of coffee drinkers keeps increasing.”

But, so far, he says he has resisted passing on the increased costs to his growing base of coffee drinkers.

AC café is owned by deaf people and employs deaf baristas.

Yang Yanfang – who interprets at AC for those who can’t speak with their hands – says that, after the pandemic, “friends are really keen to meet up for a coffee or a drink and Shanghai has become a city with a really strong coffee culture.”

“I can skip meals, but I can’t skip my coffee,” she adds.

And this is not the only café of its kind.

Another popular café, which is operated by blind staff, serves coffee through a hole in the wall, from someone wearing a monkey suit arm, to customers waiting in the street.

Along one stretch of road, we counted 18 cafes within only a couple of hundred metres. All of them had plenty of customers inside.

Owners are hoping this will not be just a passing fad.

According to some estimates, China’s coffee market was valued at more than 260 billion yuan (US$35bn) last year. It’s been projected that it could increase by another hundred billion (US$13bn).

The country’s branded coffee shop market grew by 58% last year, according to the World Coffee Portal.

With overheads so high in Shanghai, many coffee shops can’t afford to have their space under-utilised at night. So, when the sun goes down, they are turning their cafes into bars, sometimes with live music.

The owner of the Flower Café and Bar, Wang Xi, has a prime spot with a clear view of the city. His margins are very tight but, at the moment, his venture is surviving.

“I’m a quite optimistic,” he says. “I hope the Chinese economy will quickly return to pre-pandemic levels. If the economy flows again, everyone will make a profit.”

China’s economy may be facing some significant hurdles but, as Wang Xi speaks, he looks out across the customers sitting at little tables and chairs staring down Suzhou Creek towards a gleaming Shanghai skyline and – on this night – it’s hard not to share his optimism.

A lavish lobster dinner for King Charles III cost the French president’s office €475,000 (£400,000), according to the country’s audit office.

President Emmanuel Macron pulled out all the stops for the monarch’s visit in September – with guests being treated to blue lobster, crab and an assortment of cheeses.

But in its annual report of the presidential accounts, the Cour des Comptes warned that higher spending on state receptions had contributed to leaving their budget €8.3m in the red.

And it says the Elysée now needs to make “significant efforts… to restore and sustain the financial balance of the financial balance of the presidency”.

• In Pictures: King Charles and Queen Camilla visit France

• What does the King do?

Of the money spent on the dinner, over €165,000 was on catering, with another €40,000 on drinks.

Guests at the star-studded banquet – which included actor Hugh Grant, football manager Arsene Wenger and Rolling Stone Mick Jagger – were treated to a menu of blue lobster and crab followed by Bresse poultry and mushroom gratin.

There was also a course of cheeses – including French Comté and British Stichelton blue.

And for dessert they were served a rose macaroon cookie, composed of rose petal cream, raspberries and lychees.

The extravagant banquet at the Palace of Versailles was part of King Charles’ three-day state visit to France, aimed at reinforcing a key alliance between the two countries.

It had been originally scheduled for March, but was postponed after widespread protests over pension reform hit major cities.

The King’s visit is not the only one cited in the report, with a July 2023 banquet for Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the Louvre – which cost the presidential office €412,000 – also mentioned.

As a result of higher spending, including on these state receptions, expenditure increased by 14% on the previous year, the audit office said.

That compared to only a 6.5% gain in revenue earned by the presidency.

US regulators have ruled that Amazon is responsible for handling recalls of unsafe products sold on its site and must improve its process.

They said Amazon’s alerts were not sufficient to convince its customers to stop using such products and ordered the company to submit a new plan for how it will respond.

The decision by the US Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) came after the agency sued the e-commerce giant in 2021 for distributing more than 400,000 hazardous items, including faulty carbon monoxide detectors.

Amazon said it planned to appeal the finding, while defending its practices.

In the event of a recall, Amazon said it currently removes products from its site and notifies customers.

“We are disappointed by the CPSC’s decision. We plan to appeal the decision and look forward to presenting our case in court,” the company said in a statement.

In this case, Amazon said it had stopped selling the unsafe products identified in the complaint, which included the faulty carbon monoxide detectors, hairdryers without electrocution protection, and children’s pyjamas that did not meet flammability rules.

It said it had notified customers, instructed them to stop using the items and provided refunds.

But the commission said Amazon’s messages failed to include terms like “recall” and supply other information.

Amazon “did not take adequate steps to encourage its customers to return or destroy them, thereby leaving consumers at substantial risk of injury,” it said.

Amazon has long pushed back on claims it was liable for products sold by other businesses on its platform.

In this case, Amazon had disputed its responsibility as a “distributor” under the law, arguing that it was simply acting as an outside logistics provider.

But the commission said Amazon’s role went beyond that of an ordinary shipping company when merchants used its “Fulfilled by Amazon” service, which handles the majority of sales on the platform.

For businesses enrolled in the programme, Amazon controls the return process, communicates with customers, enforces pricing rules and screens items for eligibility, according to the commission’s decision.

In a statement, the commission said its decision was based on the facts of this particular case, while adding: “As with all agency decisions, companies may be interested in considering the applicability of the analysis in the decision to their own products and practices”.

The ruling enters ongoing debate about what responsibility online platforms have for content on their site.

In 2020, a California appeals court found Amazon could be held liable for damages in a case involving a defective laptop battery sold on its site.

A year later, Amazon introduced a new product guarantee, which includes refunds and a process for resolving personal injury disputes.

“We stand behind the safety of every product in our store,” the company said on Tuesday, adding that it had measures in place to prevent unsafe products and monitor listings.

Israeli far-right protesters broke into an army base in a show of support for soldiers accused of severely mistreating a Palestinian prisoner there.

Large crowds gathered outside the Sde Teiman compound after Israeli military police entered it to detain the reservists, who are now subject to an official investigation.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu released a statement strongly condemning the incident and calling for “an immediate calming of passions”.

Protesters also broke into a second military base, where the reservists were taken for questioning, but a police spokeswoman said officers were able to clear it.

Sde Teiman, near Beersheba in southern Israel, has for months been at the centre of reports of serious abuses against Gazan detainees.

According to local media reports, at least nine Israeli soldiers at the base are accused of abusing the Palestinian detainee, a suspected Hamas fighter who was captured in Gaza.

He is said to have been hospitalised after what Israeli media reports describe as serious sexual abuse and injuries to his anus that left him unable to walk.

The Israeli military said its advocate general had ordered an inquiry “following suspected substantial abuse of a detainee”.

The West Bank-based Palestinian Authority’s (PA) Commission of Detainees Affairs called on the international community to urgently intervene by carrying out an UN-mandated investigation.

• Gazans ‘shackled and blindfolded’ at Israel hospital

On Monday dozens of protesters, including far-right MPs from Israel’s governing coalition, burst through the base’s gate as others tried to scale the fence, chanting “we will not abandon our friends, certainly not for terrorists”.

Some soldiers at the base reportedly used pepper spray against the military police personnel who arrived to detain the reservists.

Israeli military Chief of Staff Lt Gen Herzi Halevi said the break-in at Sde Tieman was “extremely serious and against the law”.

“We are in the midst of a war, and actions of this type endanger the security of the state,” he said.

“I strongly condemn the incident, and we are working to restore order at the base.”

Demonstrators also entered the Beit Lid military base in central Israel where the accused reservists were taken for questioning.

Defence Minister, Yoav Gallant, said the investigation into the soldiers’ conduct must be allowed to continue, adding “even in times of anger, the law applies to everyone”.

However some Israeli politicians have condemned the arrest of the reservists. Itamar Ben-Gvir, the far-right national security minister, called their detention “nothing less than shameful”.

Since the 7 October Hamas attack, Israeli authorities have rounded up and held thousands of Palestinians, often without legal representation.

The BBC has previously spoken to medical workers at a field hospital set up in Sde Teiman, who alleged that detainees have been blindfolded, permanently shackled to their beds, and made to wear nappies rather than having access to a toilet.

Last month, Israel’s Haaretz newspaper published allegations made by a doctor at Sde Teiman that leg amputations had been carried out on two prisoners, because of cuffing injuries. The BBC has not independently verified the claims.

Detainees there have told journalists and United Nations officials that they were beaten and attacked. The Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) have denied systematic abuse.

Many Gazans detained by Israel’s army are released without charge after interrogation. Amnesty International this month called on Israel to end the indefinite detention of Gaza Palestinians and what it called “rampant torture” in its prisons.

US model Bella Hadid has spoken out after starring in an Adidas campaign which was criticised for what the brand called “unintentional” connections to the 1972 Munich Olympics.

Hadid, who is half Palestinian, said: “I am shocked, I am upset, and I am disappointed in the lack of sensitivity that went into this campaign.”

The advertising campaign for the retro trainers – the SL72s – referenced the 1972 Munich Olympics, which saw 11 Israeli athletes and a German police officer killed in the attack by a Palestinian group called Black September.

Adidas subsequently apologised and said it would “revise” its campaign, confirming to AFP that Hadid had been removed from it.

Hadid, 27, has been a vocal supporter of Palestinians and earlier this year donated money to support relief efforts for the war in Gaza.

“I would never knowingly engage with any art or work that is linked to a horrific tragedy of any kind,” Hadid said in a statement shared on an Instagram story on Monday evening.

“In advance of the campaign release, I had no knowledge of the historical connection to the atrocious events in 1972.”

She continued: “I am shocked, I am upset, and I am disappointed in the lack of sensitivity that went into this campaign. Had I been made aware, from the bottom of my heart, I would never have participated.

“My team should have known, Adidas should have known and I should have done more research so that I too would have known and understood, and spoken up.”

The campaign released earlier this month saw Hadid holding a floral bouquet for the relaunch of the trainer which originally debuted in 1972, the same year as the Munich Olympics.

Hadid continued: “While everyone’s intentions were to make something positive, and bring people together through art, the collective lack of understanding from all parties undermined the process.

“I do not believe in hate in any form, including antisemitism. That will never waver, and I stand by that statement to the fullest extent.

“Connecting the liberation of the Palestinian people to an attack so tragic, is something that hurts my heart.

“Palestine is not synonymous with terrorism and this campaign unintentionally highlighted an event that does not represent who we are.”

Hadid described herself as a “proud Palestinian woman”.

“I will forever stand by my people of Palestine while continuing to advocate for a world free of antisemitism,” she continued.

“Antisemitism has no place in the liberation of the Palestinian people.

“I will always stand for peace over violence, any day. Hate has no place here, and I will forever advocate for not only my people, but every person worldwide.”

A previous statement from Adidas Originals shared on Instagram said connections to the 1972 attack were “not meant”. The German company apologised “for any upset or distress caused to communities around the world”.

“We made an unintentional mistake,” the statement said, adding that it was “revising the campaign”.

When the ad was launched, it attracted criticism towards Hadid from some quarters, including on social media.

But other users defended the model and called for a boycott of Adidas following the move to pull the campaign.

The conflict in Gaza began when Hamas gunmen launched an unprecedented attack on Israel, killing about 1,200 people and taking 252 back to Gaza as hostages.

Israel responded by launching a military campaign in Gaza with the aims of destroying Hamas and freeing the hostages.

The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said on Monday that more than 39,000 people have been killed in almost 10 months of war between Israel and Palestinian militants.

Singer Taylor Swift has said the knife attack at a dance workshop themed around her music which left three children dead and nine more injured has left her “completely in shock”.

Children and adults were attacked at the event on Hart Street, Southport, on Monday.

Posting on Instagram, the star said she was “at a complete loss” for how to convey her sympathies.

Her fans have raised more than £180,000 for the families of the victims of a knife attack on Merseyside.

Swift, who played in nearby Liverpool as part of her European tour in June, said the “horror” of the attack, which had left three children dead, five critically injured and three more hurt, was “washing over her”.

She said the “loss of life of life and innocence” and the “horrendous trauma inflicted on everyone who was there” had left her at a “complete loss for how to ever convey my sympathies to these families”.

A crowdfunding page called Swifties for Southport has raised more than £181,000 for Alder Hey Children’s Hospital, where many of the injured have been treated.

The Taylor Swift UK & EU Facebook group organisers said the money would go to the hospital’s charity arm.

In a statement, the group said it was working with the hospital to “help raise money for the families affected by the tragedy in Southport”.

It said it was also “raising funeral funds for the two young Swifties who have tragically passed”.

They added that every donation would go to the hospital’s charity and would “help make a difference to those impacted in a time of great sadness”.

Cristina Jones, from the group, told BBC Newsbeat that Swift’s statement expressing sympathy was “lovely”.

“It’s very, very heartfelt… and I felt like she took her time to really draft it,” she said.

“I’m really grateful that she said something, because I can tell that she really cares.

“I know that her thoughts are going to be entirely with the families, and I think that’s what we need to be focusing on right now.”

She added that the group was “very, very happy” with how much had been raised and she would be speaking to the hospital about the funds “very, very shortly”.

The attack also left two adults critically injured.

A 17-year-old boy, from Banks in Lancashire, has been arrested on suspicion of murder and attempted murder over the attack.

Police said the motivation for the attack was “unclear” but it was not being treated as terror-related.

Donald Trump on Monday defended his running mate’s claims that “childless cat ladies” had destroyed American values, but also said he believed adults without children were just as good as parents.

JD Vance’s 2021 comment that Vice-President Kamala Harris and other Democrats were “a bunch of childless cat ladies miserable at their own lives” resurfaced after Trump selected the Ohio senator as the Republican vice-presidential candidate.

Trump said on Fox News on Monday that Mr Vance “likes families”, but that he also said he did not place a higher value on parenting.

“You know, you don’t meet the right person, or you don’t meet any person. But you’re just as good, in many cases, a lot better than a person that’s in a family situation,” he said.

Ms Harris, the presumptive Democrat candidate, has two stepchildren with her husband, lawyer Doug Emhoff.

Mr Emhoff’s ex-wife has called such attacks “baseless” and described Harris as a “loving, nurturing, fiercely protective” co-parent.

Trump said Mr Vance was simply trying to show how much he values family life.

“He grew up in a very interesting family situation, and he feels family is good. And I don’t think there’s anything wrong in saying that,” Trump said.

“All he said is he does… like I mean, for him, he likes family.”

Asked by Fox News television host Laura Ingraham on Monday whether he could vouch for Mr Vance as an “excellent pick” for the November election, Trump said: “He’s got has tremendous support, and he really does among a certain group of people – people who like families.”

“That does not mean that people who aren’t members of a big family… he’s not against anything. He loves family, it’s very important to him.”

Trump’s comments came as a 2021 interview of Mr Vance re-emerged, where he said that childless adults were “more sociopathic” than those with children.

“Having kids makes you a better person – I believe this deeply,” he said on The Chris Buskirk Show.

“The fact that so many people – especially in America’s leadership class – just don’t have that in their lives, you know I worry that it makes people more sociopathic and ultimately our whole country a little bit less mentally stable.”

He later added that the “most deranged” and the “most psychotic” Twitter users were “people who don’t have kids”.

A spokesman for Mr Vance said on Tuesday that he was “was talking about politicians on the left who support policies that are explicitly anti-child and anti-family”.

Mr Vance has also defended his original “cat ladies” remark, saying on Friday that it was “obviously… a sarcastic comment”.

“People are focusing so much on the sarcasm and not on the substance of what I actually said,” Mr Vance said on The Megyn Kelly Show.

“The substance of what I said, Megyn – I’m sorry, it’s true,” he added.

Mr Vance, who has three children, said he was not criticising people who do not have children.

“This is about criticising the Democratic Party for becoming anti-family and anti-children,” he told .

“I wish her step-children and Kamala Harris and her whole family the very best. The point is not that she’s lesser. The point is that her party has pursued a set of policies that are profoundly anti-child.”

In the original interview with Tucker Carlson, Mr Vance questioned why some leading politicians did not have children. He named Ms Harris as an example.

“The entire future of the Democrats is controlled by people without children,” he said at the time. “How does it make any sense we’ve turned our country over to people who don’t really have a direct stake in it?”

He said the country was being run “by a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable too”.

Speaking to Fox News, Trump co-campaign chairman Chris LaCivita rejected any suggestion that Trump might regret his choice of running mate.

“JD was the best pick,” Mr LaCivita said. “The president loves him. We love him.”

• SIMPLE GUIDE: Everything you need to know about the vote
• ANALYSIS: Three ways Trump will try to end Harris honeymoon
• SWING STATES: Where the election could be won and lost
• EXPLAINER: RFK Jr and others running for president
• VOTERS: US workers in debt to buy groceries

Australia’s third-largest airline has gone into voluntary administration and cancelled flights on some of its routes.

Rex Airlines specialises in flying to dozens of smaller regional towns and cities across the country – many of which are not serviced by larger rivals Qantas and Virgin Australia.

Trading in Rex shares was halted earlier this week ahead of the announcement that Ernst & Young Australia has been appointed as administrator.

It comes just months after another Australian carrier – Bonza – went out of business in a turbulent domestic market.

Founded in 2002 after the collapse of Ansett, Rex flies in and out of around 56 airports.

It has a fleet of 66 aircraft – mostly 34-seater Saab 340 planes, but also nine Boeing 737-800s.

Since 2020 it has used those larger aircraft to operate between bigger cities such as Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane – routes already lucrative for other carriers.

Those flights have now been cancelled, with its 737-800s grounded.

Passengers who hold bookings will not get refunds, but can change their flight to travel with Virgin Australia free of charge.

Services on regional routes using the smaller planes will continue to operate.

Speaking before the administration was announced, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said that Rex was “important” to regional Australia.

“One thing we need to do is to make sure that we have a viable and ongoing Australian aviation industry,” he told ABC News.

Transport minister Catherine King said the government was prepared to “work with Rex”.

“We want to make sure that they have a future as part of aviation in this country, and we’re very determined to make sure that happens,” she said.

“We obviously don’t want to do that just at any cost. We want to be involved very closely in what that future might look like. I know this is a very uncertain time for staff, a very uncertain time for passengers.”

In a statement earlier on Tuesday, opposition transport spokeswoman Bridget McKenzie said there was not enough competition in the sector, given the dominance of Qantas – which also owns Jetstar – and Virgin Australia.

“Two aviation companies control more than 93% of the domestic space and companies like Rex create more competition which means cheaper airfares across the board,” she said.

Shares in Rex have roughly halved in the past 12 months.

The company also owns a 50% stake in another aviation business used to fly workers in and out of remote worksites such as mines.

Another Australian airline, low-cost carrier Bonza, went into administration earlier this year.

More than 300 Bonza employees were stood down in April, after it entered voluntary administration following the sudden repossession of its fleet of six Boeing 737 Max-8 aircraft.

It later collapsed after no rescue deal could be found.

Top Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh has been killed in Iran, the group has said.

In a statement released on Wednesday, Hamas said Haniyeh was killed in an Israeli raid on his residence in Tehran.

According to the group, Haniyeh died after participating in the inauguration ceremony of the new Iranian president Masoud Pezeshkian who was sworn in on Tuesday.

The Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps said the cause of the “incident” was not immediately clear but was “being investigated”, AFP news agency reported.

• What is Hamas and why is it fighting with Israel in Gaza?

Haniyeh, 62, was a prominent member of the Hamas movement in the late 1980s.

Israel imprisoned Haniyeh for three years in 1989 as it cracked down on the first Palestinian uprising.

He was then exiled in 1992 to a no-man’s-land between Israel and Lebanon, along with a number of Hamas leaders.

Haniyeh was appointed Palestinian prime minister in 2006 by President Mahmoud Abbas after Hamas won the most seats in national elections, but he was dismissed a year later after the group ousted Mr Abbas’ Fatah party from the Gaza Strip in a week of deadly violence.

Haniyeh rejected his sacking as “unconstitutional”, stressing that his government “would not abandon its national responsibilities towards the Palestinian people”, and continued to rule in Gaza.

He was elected head of Hamas’s political bureau in 2017.

In 2018, the US Department of State designated Haniyeh a terrorist. He had lived in Qatar for the past several years.

Israel says it has killed a top Hezbollah commander after carrying out a strike on a southern suburb of the Lebanese capital Beirut.

At least one person was killed and a number of others wounded in the explosion in Dahiyeh, a stronghold of the Lebanese armed group.

The Israeli military says Fuad Shukr was the target of an “intelligence-based elimination” by fighter jets.

Officials say he was responsible for a rocket attack on the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights on Saturday which killed 12 people, mostly children. Hezbollah has denied any involvement in that attack.

Lebanon’s Prime Minister Najib Mikati condemned “blatant Israeli aggression”.

He described it as a “criminal act” in a “series of aggressive operations killing civilians in clear and explicit violation of international law.”

In a brief post on social media after the attack, Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said: “Hezbollah crossed the red line”.

It is not yet clear if Fuad Shukr was killed in the attack. Security sources in Beirut say the intended target was not in the building. Hezbollah has not yet made a statement.

An Israeli official has confirmed to CBS News, the BBC’s US partner, that Israel gave the US notice of its Beirut strike.

Fuad Shukr is believed to be a senior advisor to Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, the US has previously said.

It has been offering a $5m (3.9m) reward for information about him, alleging he also played a “central role” in the 1983 bombing of a US Marines barracks in Beirut, which killed 241 US military personnel.

Haret Hreik, the area of Dahiyeh hit by the air strike, is densely populated and strongly fortified. Dahiyeh itself is surrounded by Hezbollah checkpoints.

Speaking after the Israeli strike, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters that US President Joe Biden believed a wider war between Israel and Hezbollah could be avoided.

“We do not want to see an escalation, we do not want to see an all-out war,” she said.

Earlier in the day, two unnamed Israeli officials told Reuters news agency that while Israel sought to hurt Hezbollah, it did not want to drag Lebanon into all-out war.

The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) later said there would be no new instructions for Israelis on taking shelter, suggesting they did not anticipate an immediate or significant Hezbollah reaction.

Both sides are aware of the cost of all-out war, which could bring in Iran in support of its Lebanese proxy.

An Israeli reaction had been widely expected after the deadly attack in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights on Saturday, and Israel’s security cabinet had authorised Mr Netanyahu and Mr Gallant to decide how to retaliate.

At least 12 people were killed – mostly children – when a rocket hit a football pitch in Majdal Shams on Saturday.

Israel has blamed Hezbollah, but the group denies any involvement.

It was the deadliest incident near the Israel-Lebanon border since hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah escalated in October.

That escalation came after Hamas’ attack on Israel on 7 October.

Hezbollah – which supports Hamas – opened up a limited second front in Israel’s north, and the two sides have been exchanging fire ever since.

Recent days have seen world leaders urge restraint over fears of an all-out war.

On Tuesday the UK foreign secretary told UK nationals in Lebanon to leave immediately or risk “becoming trapped in a warzone”.

David Lammy has arrived in Qatar along with Defence Secretary John Healey “to “drive forward efforts to bring the conflict in Gaza to an end and to press for de-escalation in the region”, the Foreign Office said.

He said escalation and destabilisation were “in no-one’s interests”, adding: “It is absolutely vital that we engage closely with partners like Qatar, who play a key role in mediating the conflict in Gaza, so that we can bring this devastating war to an end.”

Thirty-nine police officers have been injured after unrest broke out in Southport hours after a vigil took place to remember the victims of a knife attack in which three children were killed, the North West Ambulance Service said.

Earlier, Merseyside Police said eight officers sustained serious injuries including fractures, lacerations, a suspected broken nose and concussion.

Other injuries included one officer being knocked unconscious, as well as some suffering head and serious facial injuries. Three police dogs were also hurt, with two having bricks thrown at them.

The disorder, which police said was believed to involve English Defence League supporters, began only a few streets away from Wednesday’s vigil location, near to a mosque on St Luke’s Road in Southport.

Those involved threw bricks at the mosque, set fire to cars and wheelie bins and caused damage to a local convenience store, police said.

In total, 27 officers were taken to hospital, and 12 were treated and discharged at the scene, the ambulance service said.

As a result of the disorder, a 24-hour section 60 Order has been introduced in the area, giving officers enhanced stop and search powers to stop individuals, police said, adding that it will be in place until 19:54 BST on Wednesday.

A section 34 Order has also been introduced, allowing police to direct people who are engaging in antisocial behaviour or are “likely to become involved in such behaviour”.

Merseyside Police said extra officers will remain in the area “to provide a visible presence and reassure communities.

In addition, a small number ambulance resources will remain at the scene on St Luke’s Road and will continue to support the police.

Assistant Chief Constable Alex Goss said it was “sickening” that this was happening within a “devastated” community.

He said the force has faced “serious violence” in the Merseyside town, and he was “so proud to have witnessed off-duty officers parade back on duty to support their colleagues who had displayed such courage whilst under constant and sustained attack.”

ACC Goss also thanked officers from Greater Manchester Police, Cheshire Police, Lancashire Police and North Wales Police for providing mutual aid and support.

He added the disorder involved many people “who do not live in the Merseyside area or care about the people of Merseyside”.

“Sadly, offenders have destroyed garden walls so they could use the bricks to attack our officers and have set cars belonging to the public on fire, and damaged cars parked in the Mosque car park,” he said.

“This is no way to treat a community, least of all a community that is still reeling from the events of Monday.”

A 17-year-old boy has been arrested on suspicion of murder and attempted murder after Monday’s attack on a children’s dance club in Hart Street.

ACC Goss said: “There has been much speculation and hypothesis around the status of a 17-year-old male who is currently in police custody, and some individuals are using this to bring violence and disorder to our streets.

“We have already said that the person arrested was born in the UK, and speculation helps nobody at this time.”

PM Sir Keir Starmer said on X that the people of Southport were “reeling” after the “horror inflicted on them yesterday”.

He said that those who had “hijacked the vigil for the victims with violence and thuggery” had insulted the community and would “feel the full force of the law”.

Families living nearby told the BBC they feared for their safety as stones flew past and police officers rushed to put on riot gear and pick up shields.

“I can’t believe this is happening in Southport,” one young woman shouted from the front of her car as she tried to drive her young daughter away.

The disorder began after hundreds of people gathered near a local mosque attacking the front of it, throwing bricks, bottles, fireworks and rocks, many with hoods up and scarves hiding their faces.

Merseyside Police said those behind the violence had been fired up by social media posts which incorrectly suggested an Islamist link to Monday’s stabbings.

The Home Secretary Yvette Cooper had earlier warned about disinformation linked to the attack.

The suspect has no known links to Islam.

Ms Cooper later said it was “appalling” that police officers in Southport were facing attacks from “thugs on the streets who have no respect for a grieving community”.

“I think everyone should be showing some respect for the community that is grieving and also for the police who are pursuing an urgent criminal investigation now, and who showed such heroism and bravery yesterday in the face of these horrific attacks,” she said.

In a statement on X, Merseyside Police and Crime Commissioner Emily Spurrell also said she was “absolutely appalled by the disgraceful scenes of violence”.

“This is a community which has faced unimaginable tragedy, and it is grieving.

“Such behaviour is abhorrent and only causes further harm and suffering,” she added.

Merseyside Police Chief Constable Serena Kennedy posted on X that more than 1,000 residents from Southport had come together at the vigil to remember the little girls who had died, those who were still critical in hospital and all those who witnessed and were traumatised by the events from yesterday.

“This is where all of our focus should be,” she said.

The Liverpool Region Mosque Network said the violent scenes were “causing further fear and anxiety within our communities”.

It added: “We must all unite and stand together against all forms of hate, violence and division.”

Southport MP Patrick Hurley said he was “deeply concerned about reports of violent protests tonight”.

He said they involved “people from outside our Southport community attacking our police and local people”.

Kamala Harris will begin a US tour with her new running mate next week, indicating that she is likely days away from announcing her choice.

The pool of candidates for Democratic vice-president has been narrowed to a group of five, according to CBS, the BBC’s US partner.

• ANALYSIS: Three ways Trump will try to end Harris honeymoon
• The many identities of the first female vice-president

A decision is required before the Democratic National Convention, which starts on 19 August in Chicago, preceding the November presidential election.

Once Ms Harris’s running mate is announced, the two are expected to tour the US, visiting Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Detroit, Michigan; Las Vegas, Nevada; Raleigh, North Carolina; Phoenix, Arizona; Savannah, Georgia; and western Wisconsin.

Here is a look at the five contenders in the final pool, according to CBS.

This charismatic and popular governor could help Ms Harris capture Pennsylvania – a must-win swing state for Democrats.

Mr Shapiro, 51, has seen high approval ratings since he was elected in 2022 and has made inroads for Democrats in a state that went to Trump in the 2016 election.

He captured national headlines after quickly working to rebuild a collapsed bridge on a pivotal Philadelphia highway last year. The speedy repair was hailed by many as the perfect infrastructure talking point for a potential 2028 presidential candidate.

He would be the first Jewish vice-president if chosen by Ms Harris and American voters in November.

Mr Shapiro voiced strong support for Israel in the war in Gaza and his criticism of student protests on school campuses in his state could be divisive in the Democratic Party and the race for office.

The swing-state senator has an impressive resume that could appeal to voters on both sides of the aisle.

The former Navy combat pilot and Nasa astronaut has spent more than 50 days in space on multiple missions.

But Mr Kelly, 60, is newer to serving in Washington. He was sworn into office in December 2020.

His wife is Gabby Giffords, who was shot in the head 2011 in Arizona while serving in the House of Representatives.

Ms Giffords has since become one of the leading voices on gun safety laws, and the couple’s personal story could resonate with voters.

Mr Kelly’s strong border stance and occasional criticisms of the Biden administration could help appeal to independent and conservative voters.

If chosen, the party would need to fill his Senate vacancy in a key state.

The Democratic governor has been close to Ms Harris for a long time.

Mr Beshear, 46, has been able to carve out a successful career as a Democrat in a state that Donald Trump carried by 20 points in the last election. It is an appealing characteristic that could sweeten the Democratic ticket.

He has given a number of viral interviews criticising Donald Trump’s vice-presidential choice, JD Vance, and his opinions on the Appalachia region.

“He ain’t from here,” Mr Beshear has said of the freshman Ohio senator in interviews on CNN and MSNBC. He has called Mr Vance a “phony” and “fake” for his descriptions of the region and its residents in his book, Hillbilly Elegy.

“This is a guy that used to come a couple weeks a summer, at best, to Kentucky and then wrote a book claiming to know us, claiming to understand our culture,” Mr Beshear told the Des Moines Register.

“He called my people lazy, and these are the coal miners that built this country.”

Mr Beshear openly discusses his Christian faith and its impact on his personality and work. Supporting public education and protecting reproductive rights are also key issues for him.

Mr Walz is a battle-tested leader who served 12 years in Congress before becoming governor in 2018.

He has gained national attention for his strategy calling out Donald Trump and JD Vance, simply, as “weird”.

The phrase caught on with a number of Democrats – including Ms Harris. “He’s just a strange, weird dude,” Mr Walz said of Trump during a fundraising event on Monday.

His plainspoken and small-town Midwestern sensibility could appeal to independent and conservative voters.

The 60-year-old led Minnesota through the 2020 protests over George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis.

He used the National Guard to help quell demonstrations that – while mostly peaceful over several days – led to damaged buildings and a police station being set ablaze.

Mr Walz served 20 years in the National Guard, taught high school and also worked as an assistant football coach.

Minnesota is arguably less of a swing state, but would be a valuable asset for Ms Harris.

Campaigning for the White House would not be new for Mr Buttigieg.

As mayor of South Bend, Indiana, he was a surprise favourite of liberal voters in his failed 2020 Democratic primary campaign.

Since then, he has served as federal Transportation Secretary and has become arguably one of the White House’s best communicators.

His skill in interviews and before crowds has been on full display in recent weeks as Ms Harris closes in on a running mate.

On the television show Real Time with Bill Maher, he took multiple shots at Mr Vance. Mr Buttigieg said he “knows” a lot of people like Mr Vance, who “would say whatever they needed to” in order to get ahead.

Mr Buttigieg, 42, pointed out Mr Vance’s history of fiercely criticizing Trump and how he’s now changed his tune to “get power”.

He also managed a number of public crises in his role as secretary, helping to oversee the response to the East Palestine train derailment in Ohio, the Baltimore Bridge collapse and Southwest Airlines’ scheduling crisis in 2022.

This isn’t the retirement that Mary had dreamed of.

The former midwife spent years living on a cattle station with her husband on the north-western edge of Australia – outside her window, the vast and ruggedly beautiful Kimberley region.

Now, though, the frail 71-year-old spends most of her days and nights in her battered car. Her current view is the public toilet block of a Perth shopping centre.

Mary is not her real name. She does not want people she knows to find out she is living like this.

She is one of the roughly 122,000 people who are homeless in Australia on any given night, according to data from the country’s bureau of statistics.

A recent government report says that 40% of renters on low income are now at risk of joining that cohort.

That’s what happened to Mary. Pushed out of her flat last year when her landlord opted to lease it for short-term stays, she couldn’t find anywhere affordable on her state pension.

Her husband can’t help – he’s in a care home with Alzheimer’s disease.

“He’d be horrified [if he knew], absolutely mortified,” she says.

So now Mary’s 4×4 is full to the brim with her belongings. A walking frame lies in the back, along with piles of clothes. On the passenger seat sits a tin of rice pudding.

“That’s my evening meal, every night without fail,” she says, picking it up, her hands shaking.

She sometimes gets a bed in a shelter, but most nights, Mary settles down in a part of the city where more police are around. She explains she has been assaulted four times and does not want to take any risks.

Every so often, Mary coughs – the after-effects of a recent bout of pneumonia she suffered after getting caught in a rainstorm. The car battery died when the windows were down, and she had no money to fix it.

“It seems that the moment people know you’re homeless… you become what I call a non-person,” she says. “You no longer have any value in people’s lives.”

Homelessness services around Australia have reported a jump in demand amid a national housing crisis – with women and children the clear majority of those needing help. Indigenous Australians are over-represented too.

In recent years, record house prices, underinvestment in social housing, a general shortage of homes and drastically climbing rents, have left much of the nation’s growing population struggling to find a place to live.

Rents have risen the fastest in Perth – up an average of 20% this past year alone. In the few days we were in the city, everyone had a story to share.

Hailey Hawkins tells me she and her daughter Tacisha have been couch-surfing and living in tents for nearly four years, most of Tacisha’s life. They are eligible for social housing – but waiting lists are years-long.

“One week, I’ll have enough money to have decent enough accommodation plus be able to feed both myself and my daughter,” she says, struggling to hold back tears.

“Otherwise, it’s asking money to friends, family or pretty much anyone really that is willing to help.”

Michael Piu, head of St Patrick’s Community Support Centre, says they’re seeing people from all walks of life – young and old, working families and individuals alike – come through the doors.

“A single trigger can push people into homelessness, and there really are very few options for them,” he says.

“They don’t know where to start.”

The housing crisis remains a national talking point, and it is no different inside the country’s parliaments.

Wilson Tucker, a member of the Western Australia state parliament, recently made headlines for being a “homeless” politician – although he prefers the word nomadic. He was evicted and, despite a salary almost twice the national average, could not find anywhere else to live.

But what Mr Tucker didn’t initially mention was that he is also a landlord. He says he bought the home with tenants already living there, and didn’t want to turf them out in what he calls a “red hot” property market.

So now, when parliament sits, Mr Tucker stays in hotels. The rest of the time he is on the road in his 4×4 and roof tent.

“But there’s a lot of people out there that don’t have that privilege, and they’re resigned to fight over this handful of properties,” he tells the BBC.

Housing has also been on the agenda in the federal parliament, where MPs have been considering making it a legally protected human right.

Two independent parliamentarians introduced a bill on the issue off the back of advocacy by the Australian Human Rights Commission, but without government support it is unlikely to pass.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announced in this year’s budget A$6.2bn ($4.1bn; £3.3bn) to speed up the construction of new houses, provide rent subsidies, and increase the pool of social and affordable housing.

States and territories also have a slew of initiatives they hope will ease the strain.

But homelessness charities are crying out for extra support to keep up with the growing demand, and advocates say more urgent reform – like scrapping lucrative tax concessions for investors or increasing protections for renters – is needed.

There has been criticism heaped on landlords too for hiking rents at a time when people are squeezed – and discussions about limiting increases and narrowing the reasons for which a landlord can evict a tenant.

But the property industry says landlords are hurting too.

In May 2022, interest rates began rising faster than at any time in Australia’s history – with 13 increases over 18 months.

“Most people only own one investment property and they’ve had their mortgage repayments [on those properties] go up by 50% as well,” says Cath Hart, chief executive of the Real Estate Institute of Western Australia.

She says the conditions are tough enough already, and the pandemic showed that measures like rent increase caps and eviction moratoriums only push landlords out of the long-term rental market.

“What we saw during Covid… was that 20,000 fewer properties were available to rent as investors just went ‘You know what? It’s too hard.’”

In the meantime, every night different charities take turns offering help to those who want it.

As evening falls and commuters exit their shiny office buildings in the centre of Perth, crowds of people with nowhere to go gather in a square by the railway tracks.

With the Australian winter now kicking in, it is the clothes donations that are causing the biggest flurry. Supermarkets donate food, there is a laundry service, a mobile doctor surgery and a hairdresser.

Also out are street chaplains, providing meals.

Michelle Rumbold has joined them to help. Until a few months ago, she was the one receiving the handouts. A registered nurse, she was left with nothing after she got evicted and crashed her car.

“I ended up losing my job purely because I didn’t have accommodation and I didn’t have a car,” Michelle says.

“I think it took a while for people to actually realise I was homeless, because I didn’t look homeless. Gradually, over time, you become so used to the street that you lose yourself.”

Michelle managed to get transitional housing and she’s now back on her feet, working in a GP’s surgery. But she still likes to come back here and help.

“It’s hard to leave this place once you’ve been here,” she says. “It’s a really odd thing to say but people become your family here.”

But for every Michelle, there are plenty more like Mary, still struggling.

For Mary, it’s the loneliness that hits her the most.

“You’ve got no TV, no neighbours to say hi to,” she says.

“People often just give you the side eye and think ‘Oh God, not another one’ and walk away.”

The new acting head of the US Secret Service said he “lost sleep” over security failures that led to the attempted assassination of Donald Trump during a testy congressional hearing on Tuesday.

At an hours-long US Senate hearing, Ronald Rowe and FBI Deputy Director Paul Abbate outlined the ongoing investigation into what led to the shooting, elements of what they had learned about the would-be assassin, and the security failures that allowed the gunman to fire at the former president.

Mr Rowe’s testimony before a joint panel of the Senate Homeland Security and Judiciary committees comes a week after his predecessor, Kim Cheatle, was forced to resign.

Ms Cheatle faced intense criticism for the Secret Service’s handling of the 13 July rally in Butler that left a man dead and Trump and two others injured, and her inability to answer questions before the House Oversight Committee last week was ridiculed by Democrats and Republicans.

The two men’s answers at Tuesday’s hearings were more substantive than what was heard previously, and Mr Rowe attempted to reassure Senators with new plans to address security lapses.

Here are five new things we learned.

During the occasionally tense hearing, Mr Rowe on several occasions made reference to the mental toll that the Butler shooting security failures had taken, on him and his agents.

“My people are hurting right now,” he said. “Emotions are raw.”

One of the failures he outlined was that the Secret Service was unable to deploy a “counter unmanned aerial system” ahead of the rally because of cellular connectivity issues.

Had they done so, they would have likely detected a drone flown by the gunman, Thomas Matthew Crooks, ahead of the rally.

Investigators now believe Crooks conducted “early surveillance” of the site.

“That is something that has cost me a lot of sleep, because of the eventual outcome,” Mr Rowe said.

“I have no explanation…I feel as though we could have found him, could have maybe stopped him on that particular day,” he added. “He could have decided this isn’t the day to do it, because law enforcement just found [him] flying his drone.”

Additionally, Mr Rowe said that agents from the service’s Pittsburgh field office – who were largely responsible for securing the rally site in Butler – had been “wearing this harder than anybody”.

“They feel completely demoralised,” Mr Rowe said. “What I’m trying to do is also let them know that I’m listening. They need to be focused on the mission at hand.”

While he was unable to reveal many details because of the sensitive nature of the Secret Service’s protective work, Mr Rowe said that the agency he now oversees had already been addressing “identified gaps in our security”.

Mr Rowe added that he “will not wait” for various investigations to be finished to ensure “we do not repeat those failures”.

In addition to its plans for drone threats, Mr Rowe outlined intentions to reform how the Secret Service communicates internally and with local police before and during events.

Officials have said that much of the communications chatter at the Butler rally took place via text messages, potentially contributing to confusion over reports of a suspicious person.

Mr Rowe said that suspicions about Crooks were “stuck or siloed” in a communications channel used mostly by state and local officers.

“It was great [that] there was a text chain,” Mr Rowe said. “But that communication needs to go over the net. It needs to go over a radio channel so that everyone has situational awareness of it….I want people using the radio.”

Mr Rowe added that the service would move to ban rangefinders – devices which measure distances between the user and a fixed distance – at future events.

One of the lingering mysteries about the Butler shooting is how Crooks was able to get a rifle onto the rooftop of the now-infamous American Glass Research building in Butler, which is where he had a clear shot of Trump.

Neither Mr Rowe or Mr Abbate was able to answer that question.

“We don’t have definitive evidence as to how he got the rifle up there,” Mr Abbate said, although officials believe it was in a backpack he had with him at the rally.

According to Mr Abbate, the rifle “would have been visible” if placed in the bag while assembled.

“We don’t have anyone who observed him with the backpack with a rifle barrel or other parts sticking out,” he said. “The rifle would not have fit fully into this backpack, concealed and whole.”

Newly uncovered video shows Crooks retrieving the bag from his car shortly before climbing up to the roof and firing eight shots at Trump’s podium.

“It’s possible he broke the rifle down and took it out of the bag in those moments before and re-assembled it there,” Mr Abbate said. “That’s one of the theories that we’re looking at.”

Despite conducting hundreds of interviews and poring over mountains of digital evidence, the two law enforcement leaders said that investigators have not yet been able to conclusively provide a motive that can explain why Crooks drove to the rally and opened fire.

Mr Abbate revealed that investigators have unearthed a social media account they believe may be tied to Crooks – a discovery that could potentially provide a glimpse at his worldview.

The account, which includes more than 700 posts, dates back to 2019 and 2020, Mr Abbate said.

Mr Abbate added that the posts, “if ultimately attributable to the shooter, appear to reflect antisemitic and anti-immigration themes, to espouse political violence, and are described as extreme in nature.”

“While the investigative team is still working to verify this account to determine if it did in fact belong to the shooter, we believe it is important to share and note today,” he said. “Our work is very much ongoing and urgent.”

Even as the investigation into what took place continues, some lawmakers at the hearing made it clear that they expected additional disciplinary actions to take place.

South Carolina Republican Lindsey Graham, for example, said that the “best way to make sure it doesn’t have to happen again is to fire people, so that those who come behind them will realise there’s a consequence for not getting it right”.

While Mr Rowe said he would “not rush to judgement”, he did promise that “people will be held accountable”.

“If there were policy violations, those individuals will be held accountable,” he said. “They will be held to our table of penalties, which will include up to termination.”

A global outage affecting Microsoft products including email service Outlook and video game Minecraft has been resolved, the technology giant said in an update.

The firm said preliminary investigations show the outage was caused by a cyber-attack and a failure to properly defend against it.

Earlier, the company issued an apology for the incident, which lasted almost 10 hours and caused thousands of users to report issues with Microsoft services.

It comes less than two weeks after a major global outage left around 8.5 million computers using Microsoft systems inaccessible, impacting healthcare and travel, after a flawed software update by cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike.

“While the initial trigger event was a Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attack… initial investigations suggest that an error in the implementation of our defences amplified the impact of the attack rather than mitigating it,” said an update on the website of the Microsoft Azure cloud computing platform.

DDoS attacks work by flooding a website or online service with internet traffic in an attempt to throw it offline, or otherwise make it inaccessible.

“It seems slightly surreal that we’re experiencing another serious outage of online services from Microsoft,” said computer security expert Professor Alan Woodward.

“You’d expect Microsoft’s network infrastructure to be bomb-proof.”

Earlier, An alert on the technology giant’s service status website said the outage affected Microsoft Azure – the cloud computing platform behind many of its services – and Microsoft 365, which includes systems like Microsoft Office and Outlook.

It also listed its cloud systems Intune and Entra as among those impacted.

Microsoft said it had implemented a fix for the problem which “shows improvement”, and it would monitor the situation “to ensure full recovery”.

“We sincerely apologise for the inconvenience,” it said in a post on X, formerly Twitter.

The outage appears to have impacted other services which rely on Microsoft’s platforms, with Cambridge Water among those affected.

“Due to worldwide issues with Microsoft Azure, a problem with our website is affecting several services including MyAccount and PayNow,” it said in a post on X.

The HM Courts and Tribunals Service – which is responsible for the administration of criminal, civil and family courts and tribunals in England and Wales – said it was aware of issues with “multiple online services”.

Some customers of NatWest also reported issues.

A spokesperson for the bank told the BBC: “We are aware that some customers experienced difficulties accessing our webpages today. This was linked to the issues reported by Microsoft Azure which has affected some Microsoft services globally.

“The issue has now been resolved and our webpages are functioning as normal. We apologise to customers for any inconvenience caused.”

Meanwhile, top flight Dutch football team FC Twente tweeted an update to their fans to say its ticketing website and club app were unavailable to supporters as a result of the outage.

The issues with one of Microsoft’s premier products appeared hours before the tech giant was due to provide its latest financial update.

Microsoft Azure has been a key profit driver for Microsoft in recent years.

But demand has slowed in recent months, rattling investors.

Shares in the firm dropped by 2.7% in after-hours trade on Tuesday after the company reported weaker growth than expected in the April-June period.

Revenue in the “intelligent cloud” unit rose 21% year-on-year in the quarter, Microsoft said.

Overall revenue increased 15% to $64.7bn (£50.4bn), while profit rose 11% to $22bn.

A former US officer who was the only person to be convicted in connection with the My Lai massacre during the Vietnam War has died, according to reports.

William Calley died on 28 April at the age of 80, the Washington Post and New York Times reported, citing official death records.

Calley led the US Army platoon that carried out the mass murder of hundreds of civilians, including women and children, in the Vietnamese village of Son My in 1968.

He was sentenced to life in prison in 1971 for killing 22 civilians, but only served three days behind bars after then-President Richard Nixon ordered his release under house arrest.

The My Lai massacre is known as one of the worst war crimes in American military history. The killings shocked the US public at the time and galvanised the anti-Vietnam war movement.

According to the Vietnamese government, 504 people were killed in the massacre.

Calley, a junior college dropout from South Florida, enlisted in the army in 1964.

He was quickly promoted to junior officer and then second lieutenant, at a time when the US army was desperate for soldiers.

On the morning of 16 March 1968, Calley’s unit was airlifted to a hamlet in Son My – known to US soldiers at the time as My Lai 4 – on a mission to search and kill Viet Cong members and sympathisers.

When they arrived, the officers were met with no resistance from the residents of the village, who were found cooking breakfast over outdoor fires, according to a 1972 report by journalist Seymour Hersh in the New Yorker.

Mr Hersh reported that Calley and his unit proceeded to kill the civilians in the following hours. Many were rounded up in small groups and shot, he said. Others were pushed into a drainage ditch and shot, or were killed in or near their homes.

Women and girls were raped by American officers and then murdered, Mr Hersh reported.

The massacre was initially covered up but became public a year and a half later, thanks in large part to Mr Hersh’s reporting, which earned him a Pulitzer Prize.

Calley was one of 26 soldiers who were charged with criminal offences and the only one convicted.

His conviction polarised Americans. Some deemed him a war criminal while others felt the junior officer was used as a scapegoat to shift blame for a massacre that was ultimately the responsibility of his superiors.

While he was given a life sentence, Calley only served three-and-a-half years under house arrest after President Nixon commuted his sentence.

Calley married Penny Vick, the daughter of a jewelry store owner in Columbus, Georgia, in 1976. The couple had one son, William Laws Calley III, and divorced in the mid-2000s.

He rarely spoke about his role in the My Lai massacre and had refused to sit down with historians and reporters.

In 2009, he apologised while speaking to the Kiwanis Club of Greater Columbus.

“There is not a day that goes by that I do not feel remorse for what happened that day in My Lai,” he said. “I feel remorse for the Vietnamese who were killed, for their families, for the American soldiers involved and their families.”

The Washington Post first reported Calley’s death on Monday, after receiving a tip from a Harvard Law School graduate who uncovered it in public records.

No cause of death has been cited.

The threat from international and domestic terror presents a “breadth of challenge greater than it has ever been”, according to senior US and UK police officers who oversaw the successful prosecution of Anjem Choudary.

The Islamist preacher from east London is starting a life sentence for directing a group banned under UK terror law, and encouraging support for it online.

The officers say his case highlights the continuing danger posed by radicalisers – and the violent groups they support.

But they also say counter-terrorism forces are now battling a wide diversity of threats – including from a worrying number of people who don’t support an underlying ideology, but are simply drawn to violence.

Young people being attracted to online extremism through conspiracy theories, the actions of “hostile states” such as Russia, and the “toxicity of our political environment” are also concerning, they warn.

Following Choudary’s trial, the BBC spoke exclusively to Matt Jukes, the UK’s head of counter-terrorism policing, and Rebecca Weiner, Deputy Commissioner of Intelligence and Counterterrorism at the New York Police Department.

They told us that alongside extremist groups energised by events in the Middle East, the new security threats were sparking multiple investigations.

It is a “palpably different picture than it was,” says Assistant Commissioner Jukes.

Deputy Commissioner Weiner singles out online extremism as probably the most important aspect of what she terms an “everything, everywhere, all-at-once threat environment”.

With two wars – Israel-Gaza and Ukraine – being fought in what Ms Weiner calls “a tsunami of disinformation”, she says it is hard for people to understand what is true and what is not – “and that is playing out in the realm of violence”.

People are being “overwhelmed with false narratives” and fed conspiracy theories, she says.

A disturbing aspect of this, says Mr Jukes, is the increasing number of those turning to terrorism because of a fascination for violence, rather than ideological fanaticism.

He says in 20% of cases his officers now handle, terror suspects have no settled view of the world: “We are seeing people literally flip from searching for neo-Nazi material online to searching for Islamist material.”

This is a real shift, he says, with people having previously gone from a single ideology, to extremism, and on to violence.

Young people are viewing “dehumanising content”, including extreme pornography – says Mr Jukes – and being asked in online groups “to prove themselves by producing more and more extreme content”.

This includes terrorist material created using artificial intelligence, he says, with gaming being one of the “gateways” into extremism online.

The age profile of those drawn into this extreme environment is coming down – and he worries about “very young people who only need to take up a knife or use a vehicle as a weapon to carry out a deadly attack”.

Nearly one in five of those arrested as terror suspects in the UK in the past year were under 18.

Counter-terror police on both sides of the Atlantic have also been kept busy since last October’s attack by Hamas on Israel, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 taken hostage. More than 39,000 Palestinians have been killed, according to Gaza’s health ministry.

Fifty police investigations have been launched in the UK into support or encouragement of terrorism. There has also been a big increase in antisemitic and Islamophobic hate crime.

Government statistics for the year ending in March 2024 show terror-related arrests in the UK were up by 23% on the previous year (although they were lower than the period between 2013 to 2020).

Five years ago, says Mr Jukes, he would have been kept awake primarily by fears of an IS attack in the UK, but now he says one of his main concerns would be the growing threat from “determined and shameless” state actors.

For many years, he says “hostile actions of states” formed only a very small part of police and MI5 investigations. But this has grown more than fourfold since the 2018 Salisbury poisonings, says Mr Jukes, when a nerve agent was used to try to assassinate a former Russian spy and his daughter.

The spy, who had defected to the West, and his daughter were badly injured – but a British woman died after coming into contact with Novichok. Russia has always denied involvement.

There has also been an increased threat from parts of the Chinese state, he adds, and at least 15 foiled plots by Iran in the past two years to either kidnap or kill those in the UK it considers enemies of the regime.

“If these authoritarian organs of the state feel like the UK or the US is fair [game] for them to pursue their adversities, then everything we stand for in terms of being a safe, liberal democracy is challenged,” says Mr Jukes.

The two police chiefs also point to “toxicity” in the political environment, which has led to politicians becoming targets of violence – including two British MPs murdered in terror attacks, and the failed assassination of Donald Trump at a campaign rally on 13 July.

I ask if there is any reassuring news amid this scary picture of dispersed danger.

People can “take a degree of comfort”, says Mr Jukes, that since the attacks in London and Manchester in 2017, “that terrible year”, police have disrupted nearly 40 “terrorist plots”.

“And we are doing that month-in, month-out, with real efficiency and effectiveness.”

At least 123 people have been killed and dozens are still feared trapped after heavy rains triggered massive landslides in the southern Indian state of Kerala.

The landslides struck hilly areas in Wayanad district in the early hours of Tuesday when most residents were asleep.

Rescue operations are under way, but are being hindered by heavy rain and the collapse of a crucial bridge.

Authorities fear the number of casualties will rise further as about 100 people remain trapped in areas the emergency services cannot yet reach.

The landslides are the worst disaster to hit Kerala since 2018, when floods killed more than 400 people.

Officials say more than 200 army personnel have been deployed to assist security forces in search and rescue efforts.

Chief Minister Pinari Vijayan told a press conference that Tuesday’s “landslide has wiped out an entire area”.

Local hospitals are treating at least 123 injured, and more than 3,000 people have been rescued and moved to 45 relief camps, he said.

Apart from 65 confirmed deaths in Wayanad, 16 bodies have been found in the Chaliyar river, which flows into neighbouring Malappuram district. The body parts of a number other people have also been found.

Wayanad, a hilly district which is part of the Western Ghats mountain range, is prone to landslides during the monsoon season.

The landslides have hit several areas in the district, including Mundakkai, Attamala, Chooralmala and Kunhome.

Videos on social media showed muddy water gushing through unpaved streets and forested areas, washing away homes and leaving people and vehicles stranded.

A bridge connecting Chooralmala to Mundakkai and Attamala has collapsed, isolating the two places and making it difficult for rescue personnel to reach trapped families.

Rashid Padikkalparamban, a resident, told Reuters news agency that at least three landslides had hit the area around midnight, washing away the bridge.

State and national disaster relief teams are conducting rescue operations, with the help of local people.

Mr Venu said a small team had managed to cross the river and reach the areas that were cut off. He added that more resources were required, but strong river currents were making it difficult for rescue personnel to cross the river.

Air-relief operations also had to be postponed due to heavy rains, he said.

Raghavan C Arunamala, a local, described horrifying scenes.

“I saw a man trapped in the debris shouting for help. Firefighters and rescue workers have been trying to reach him for the last few hours,” he said.

Local media reports say that people are flocking to hospitals to search for their loved ones.

Nearly 350 families are believed to have lived in the affected regions, where a number of tea and cardamom estates are located.

Most victims are people who worked on the estates and were likely to have been asleep in their makeshift tents when landslides struck.

Wayanad district and neighbouring areas are still on alert due to the forecast of heavy rains.

Schools and colleges were closed in 10 of 14 districts.

In 2019, 17 people had died after a landslide hit Puthumala in Wayanad, around 10km from the areas currently affected.

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, who is a former MP from Wayanad, is set to visit the district on Wednesday.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi posted on X (formerly Twitter) that he had spoken to Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan and assured the federal government’s help in relief efforts.

Mr Modi also announced compensation of 200,000 rupees ($2,388; £1,857) to the victims’ families and 50,000 rupees to the injured.