Three of the men accused of plotting the 11 September, 2001 terrorist attacks have entered into a pre-trial agreement, the US Department of Defence says.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, Walid Muhammad Salih Mubarak Bin Attash, and Mustafa Ahmed Adam al-Hawsawi have been held at the US Navy base Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, for years without going to trial.

According to US news outlets, the men will plead guilty in exchange for the prosecution agreeing not to seek the death penalty.

The terms of the plea deal have not yet been released.

Nearly 3,000 people in New York, Virginia and Pennsylvania were killed in the al-Qaeda attacks, which sparked the “War on Terror” and the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.

They were the deadliest assault on US soil since the 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour, Hawaii, where 2,400 people were killed.

The deal was first announced in a letter sent by prosecutors to the family of victims, according to The New York Times.

“In exchange for the removal of the death penalty as a possible punishment, these three accused have agreed to plead guilty to all of the charged offenses, including the murder of the 2,976 people listed in the charge sheet,” said the letter from chief prosecutor Rear Admiral Aaron Rugh.

The men have been accused of a litany of charges, including attacking civilians, murder in violation of the laws of war, hijacking and terrorism.

They are expected to formally submit their pleas in court as early as next week, the Times reported.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammad is widely considered the architect of the attack, in which hijackers seized passenger planes and crashed them into the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon outside of Washington.

A fourth plane crashed into a field in Pennsylvania after passengers fought back.

Mohammad, a US-educated engineer, was captured along with Hawsawi in Pakistan in March 2003.

Prosecutors argued that he brought his idea of hijacking and flying planes into US buildings to al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, and later helped recruit and train some of the hijackers.

He was subjected to a number of “enhanced interrogation techniques”, including “waterboarding” – simulated drowning – at least 183 times before the practice was banned by the US government.

In his letter, Admiral Rugh wrote that the decision to accept the deal was “not reached lightly” and was in the “best path… to justice”.

In September, the Biden administration reportedly rejected the terms of a plea deal with five men held at the US Navy base in Cuba, including Mohammad.

The men had reportedly sought a guarantee from the president that they would not be kept in solitary confinement and would have access to trauma treatment.

The White House National Security Council said that the president’s office was told on Wednesday of the new deal and had played no role in negotiations.

Jim Smith, whose wife died in the attacks, told the New York Post that families of victims had “waited 23 years to have our day in court to put on the record what these animals did to our loved ones”.

“They took that opportunity away from us,” he said, adding they should receive the “highest penalty” for their roles.

Republicans too were quick to attack the Biden administration for striking a deal with the accused.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell condemned the move as “a revolting abdication of the government’s responsibility to defend America and provide justice”.

“The only thing worse than negotiating with terrorists is negotiating with them after they are in custody,” he said.

Iran has threatened “harsh punishment” for Israel, which it says was responsible for assassinating Hamas’s leader on Wednesday.

Israel has not commented directly on the strike which killed Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran early on Wednesday.

However, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said his country had delivered “crushing blows” to its enemies in recent days, including the killing of a senior Hezbollah commander in Lebanon hours before the Tehran strike.

He warned Israelis that “challenging days lie ahead”, as fears of a wider conflict in the Middle East grow.

“Since the strike in Beirut there are threats surrounding from all directions,” he told a televised address.

“We are prepared for any scenario and we will stand united and determined against any threat.”

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned against a “dangerous escalation” of hostilities in the region. The UN Security Council was due to meet on Wednesday evening to discuss the situation.

Hamas’s armed wing said the death of Haniyeh, who was widely viewed as the group’s overall leader, would “take the battle to new dimensions” and have major repercussions.

The group attacked Israel on 7 October, killing around 1,200 people. Since the attack, Israel has vowed to destroy Hamas.

Haniyeh, who played an important role in negotiations over a ceasefire in Gaza, was killed hours after attending the inauguration of Iran’s new president, Masoud Pezeshkian, in Tehran.

A senior Hamas official told the BBC the killing took place in the same building where Haniyeh had stayed during previous visits to Iran.

Three Hamas leaders and a number of guards were with him in the same building, they said.

Khalil Al-Hayya, a senior Hamas official, told a news conference that a missile hit Haniyeh “directly”, citing witnesses who were with him.

The group’s leadership has been left in “a state of shock”, top Hamas officials have told the BBC.

Hours before Haniyeh was targeted, Israel said it had killed senior Hezbollah Fuad Shukr in Beirut.

Israel believes he was responsible for a rocket attack that killed 12 people in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights on Saturday. Hezbollah has denied any involvement.

The Iran-backed group confirmed Shukr’s body was found among the rubble of the residential building which was struck. Four other people, including two children, were killed.

A response from Hezbollah is almost certain. In the past, the heavily-armed, Iranian-supported group has responded to the killings of senior members by firing barrages of rockets into Israel.

The US has updated its travel guidance for citizens, advising them not to travel to Lebanon due to “rising tensions”, and the UK foreign secretary has urged nationals to leave the country.

Several airlines have cancelled flights to Beirut, while United, Delta and British Airways are expected to announce they are suspending flights to Tel Aviv.

CrowdStrike is being sued by shareholders after a faulty update by the cybersecurity firm crashed more than eight millions computers and caused chaos around the world.

The lawsuit accuses the company of making “false and misleading” statements about its software testing.

It also says the company’s share price dropped 32% in the 12 days after the incident, causing a loss in market value of $25bn (£14.5bn).

CrowdStrike denies the allegations and said it will defend itself against the proposed class action lawsuit.

The suit filed in the Austin, Texas federal court, alleges that CrowdStrike executives defrauded investors by making them believe the company’s software updates were adequately tested.

The lawsuit is seeking an unspecified amount of compensation for investors who owned CrowdStrike shares between 29 November and 29 July.

It cites chief executive George Kurtz, who said in a conference call on 5 March that the firm’s software was “validated, tested and certified.”

CrowdStrike told BBC News that its disputes the claims.

“We believe this case lacks merit and we will vigorously defend the company,” a spokesperson said.

Meanwhile, the chief executive of Delta Air Lines, Ed Bastian, has said in an interview with business news channel CNBC that the disruption caused by the outage cost the airline $500m, including lost revenue and compensation to passengers.

Delta has reportedly hired a prominent lawyer and is preparing to seek compensation from CrowdStrike.

The faulty update on 19 July crashed 8.5 million Microsoft Windows computers around the world. The outage disrupted businesses and services, including airlines, banks and hospitals.

In a detailed review of the incident, CrowdStrike said there was a “bug” in a system designed to ensure software updates worked properly.

CrowdStrike said the glitch meant “problematic content data” in a file went undetected.

The company said it could prevent a repeat of the incident with better software testing and checks, including more scrutiny from developers.

Fresh violence has broken out in Bangladesh between police and student protesters demanding justice for victims of recent unrest.

An official in the north-eastern city of Sylhet said demonstrators had attacked police, forcing them to resort to tear gas on Wednesday. Clashes were also reported in the capital Dhaka and other cities.

More than 200 people have been killed in this month’s violence, mostly as a result of police opening fire. Nearly 10,000 people have reportedly been detained.

Photos sent from the southern city of Barisal to BBC Bangla show police in riot gear and wielding batons, barricading demonstrations and taking away protesters, many of whom are women.

Wednesday’s “March for Justice” was called by the Students Against Discrimination movement.

They said they were demonstrating against “mass killings, arrests, attacks, and disappearances of students and people”.

Students have been protesting against attempts to reinstate quotas in civil service jobs for relatives of veterans from the country’s war for independence from Pakistan in 1971 for more than three weeks.

A third of public sector jobs had been set aside for them, but on 21 July the Supreme Court court ruled just 5% of the roles could be reserved.

The student movement believes the system is discriminatory and has demanded recruitment based on merit.

Organisers have demanded an apology from Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and for six ministers to resign over deadly clashes at the resulting protests.

The government blames the main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party and the Jamaat-e-Islami party for the unrest.

The European Union has postponed talks with Bangladesh on a new co-operation agreement after criticism of the government’s crackdown.

On Tuesday, the bloc’s foreign policy chief Josep Borrell condemned what he called the use of excessive force against protesters and asked for those responsible to be brought to justice.

The now postponed co-operation deal had been intended to boost economic links between Bangladesh and the EU, the country’s main trading partner.

The World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada) says it is “unfairly caught” in a row between the US and China, with their geopolitical tensions spilling onto the Olympic stage.

China’s top swimmers have been in the spotlight after a slew of doping allegations, followed by contentious US claims that Wada was covering it up.

Chinese swimmers headed to Paris were drug-tested twice as much as some other nations, which, in turn, has fuelled accusations of a conspiracy to disrupt their performance.

Wada said in its statement on Tuesday that it had been caught in “the middle of geopolitical tensions between superpowers but has no mandate to participate in that”.

“Certain individuals [in the US] are attempting to score political points purely on the basis that the athletes in question are Chinese,” Wada head of media relations James Fitzgerald told the BBC. “The result is that it has created distrust and division within the anti-doping system.”

A trade war, geopolitical rivalries and Beijing’s friendship with Russia have soured relations between the world’s two largest economies.

It’s little surprise that some of those tensions play out in competitive sports but now they appear to be driving a harder – and harsher – wedge.

Last week, Wada had said it was considering legal action against its US counterpart, Usada, over “defamatory” accusations.

The latter had accused Wada and China’s anti-doping agency, Chinada, of being among the “dirty hands in burying positive tests and suppressing the voices of courageous whistleblowers”.

US lawmakers, too, have accused Wada of failing to investigate doping allegations against Chinese swimmers properly. And on Tuesday they introduced a bill that would give the White House power to cut funding to the agency.

“When members of congress and senators are inserting themselves into the largely technical world of anti-doping, it ceases to be about scientific and legal analysis, and it drifts into the political realm,” said Mr Fitzgerald.

Wada’s statement on Tuesday followed reports in the New York Times about a previously undisclosed case involving two Chinese swimmers – including one on this year’s Olympic team – who were investigated for doping.

They had tested positive for a banned steroid in 2022, but they were cleared to compete. China’s anti-doping agency concluded that the athletes had most likely consumed the steroid unknowingly while eating contaminated burgers.

Usada accused Wada of letting China “compete under a different set of rules, tilting the field in their favour”.

But Wada defended the decision. It said the athletes’ nutritional supplements and hair tests had returned negative results, and that both swimmers also provided control samples that were negative in the days before and after the one test that was positive.

It added that the two swimmers were suspended for more than a year and then their cases were closed.

Their cases are part of a “wider series of cases involving [Chinese] athletes from different sports”, the agency said, adding that, “based on the number of cases, clearly there is an issue of contamination in several countries around the world”.

In a statement in June, Wada noted that athletes who eat meat sometimes test positive for drugs if they have ingested clenbuterol, a banned substance which is used as a growth promoter for farm animals.

That statement, in response to questions from the New York Times, said the agency was investigating instances of contamination in China as well as Mexico, Guatemala and other countries.

The agency’s boss Olivier Niggli pointed out at the time that US media had “only asked questions about China when meat contamination is an issue in many countries”, and referred to “attempts to politicise anti-doping”.

All of this follows a bigger controversy in April, when the New York Times reported that 23 Chinese swimmers had tested positive for a performance-enhancing drug months before the 2021 Tokyo Olympics.

But they were cleared to compete after Chinese officials found the results were caused by contamination. The 30-member team went on to win six medals, inlcuding three golds in Tokyo. Eleven of those who tested positive were also picked to be part of the Chinese swimming team for the Paris Olympics.

US swimmer and 11-time Olympic medalist Katie Ledecky had said her confidence in anti-doping regulators was at an “all-time low” after the news about the 23 Chinese swimmers.

Wada’s investigation, however, found that it was “not in a position to disprove the possibility that contamination” was the source of the drug, heart medication trimetazidine (TMZ).

It said the contamination theory was supported by “the combination of the consistently low concentrations of TMZ as well as no doping pattern” among the tested athletes. That is, their test results over several days were not consistent, veering between negative and positive.

An independent investigation found that Wada did not mishandle the case or show bias towards the Chinese swimmers.

The scandals upped the pressure on anti-doping officals and by the time the Chinese swimming team arrived in Paris, they were being tested far more than is standard.

Since January, each of the team’s 31 members have been tested, on average, 21 times by various anti-doping organisations, according to World Aquatics, which oversees water sports.

In comparison, Australia’s 41 swimmers have been tested an average of four times and the 46 US swimmers, an average of six times.

The flurry of tests has sparked another set of allegations. The state-run Chinese newspaper the Global Times blames Western powers for “abusing doping tests to disrupt [the] Chinese swimming team”.

Speaking to the Global Times, an international politics professor in Shanghai, accused the US of dominating anti-doping rules.

Shen Yi suggested that the “relentless and unethical testing” had disrupted the Chinese team’s training, which she called a “disgrace to the Olympics”.

Chinese swimmer Qin Haiyang, who holds the world record for the 200m men’s breastroke, said this testing “proves that European and American teams feel threatened by the performances of the Chinese team in recent years”.

“Some tricks aim to disrupt our preparation rhythm and destroy our psychological defence. But we are not afraid,” he said on Chinese social media platform Weibo.

Qin, who won golds in the 50m, 100m and 200m breaststroke at the world championships last year, finished in seventh place in the men’s 100m breaststroke final on Sunday.

This criticism was echoed by former Chinese diving champion Gao Min who said the rigorous testing had “disrupted our Chinese swimming team” and called Qin’s performance “the worst in any competition over the past two years”.

China’s current medal tally stands at one gold, two silver and two bronze.

China’s “butterfly queen”, Zhang Yufei, who won a silver in the 100m event in Tokyo, was in tears over her bronze finish on Monday but said the doping tests did not have a big impact on her.

While they were a “bit annoying”, she said it was the pressure that was “far greater” than she had imagined.

Israel has inflicted two devastating blows on its enemies.

It has not confirmed that it killed the Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran, but it is hard to see who else would have wanted him dead more than the Israelis. As for the Hezbollah commander Fuad Shukr, Israel says he was killed in Beirut in an “intelligence-based elimination”.

For Israel, everyone senior in Hamas is a legitimate target after the attacks of 7 October 2023, which inflicted the worst single day of bloodshed on Israel since independence in 1948.

Fuad Shukr, Israel says, was killed because as a veteran Hezbollah commander he was responsible for the rocket attack that killed 12 children and young people in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.

Hezbollah has confirmed he was killed in the raid on Beirut. It denies carrying out the attack in the Golan.

Once again, the Middle East is full of speculation that the all-out war feared since 7 October is imminent. The deadly irony is no side wants that war, but increasingly they are prepared to risk it.

The Israelis have been under pressure from their American allies to calibrate their response to Hezbollah, inflicting a blow that will hurt the group without provoking a devastating retaliation and igniting a wider and deeper war.

But two assassinations amount to a major gamble.

Israel, under pressure from its allies in Washington, wanted to inflict a blow on Hezbollah that would not extract a devastating retaliation. The leader of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, might still decide that an attack on their stronghold in southern Beirut warrants a matching attack on Tel Aviv.

Israel might also have calculated that Iran would not go to war over an assassinated Palestinian leader, even though his death in their capital, under their protection, is a humiliation.

Killing Haniyeh, just after he had met the new Iranian president, is a dramatic display of Israel’s reach.

The Islamic Republic thought it re-established deterrence when it fired hundreds of missiles and drones at Israel in April – that claim has now been exposed as hollow. April’s barrage was also retaliation, for the Israeli air strike that killed two Iranian generals in Iran’s embassy in Damascus.

More retaliation looks certain from Iran, its ally Hezbollah or one of its proxies. Pro-Iranian militias in Iraq have made it clear that they blame the US equally for what has happened. In the Red Sea, the Houthis might redouble their attacks out of Yemen.

There are limits to what Hamas can do, after months of the Israeli onslaught in Gaza. But the Israelis are on high alert for attacks in the occupied West Bank or inside Israel itself.

It is important to realise that the Middle East is already in a regional war, but also to recognise that it could get much worse.

Even so, this round of killing and retaliation might not be the spark that ignites all-out war, though it is easy to construct scenarios based on the clear and dangerous risks and realities in the world’s most turbulent region.

Pulling back from the brink, repeatedly, is not making war any less likely. It makes it harder to construct a diplomatic pathway away from the looming threat of all-out conflict.

The only credible first step for lowering the deadly temperature in the Middle East is a ceasefire in Gaza.

In recent weeks the Americans have said that it was getting closer. That was always hard to imagine while the two sides’ definitions of an acceptable ceasefire were so far apart. For Hamas, a ceasefire meant an Israeli withdrawal and the end of hostilities. For Israel, it meant a pause that allowed for the release of some or all of the surviving hostages, and the right to resume the war afterwards.

Now a ceasefire in Gaza looks as far away as ever, although the US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has said again that it remains America’s diplomatic priority.

Ismail Haniyeh was a leading figure on the Hamas side in the ceasefire talks. With his colleagues, he communicated with the US and Israel via the head of the Egyptian secret service and the prime minister of Qatar, Sheikh Mohamed bin Jassim al Thani.

The prime minister posted his response to the assassination of Haniyeh on X, writing: “Political assassinations and continued targeting of civilians in Gaza while talks continue leads us to ask how mediation can succeed when one party assassinates the negotiator on the other side.”

The assassination fits more closely into Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s conception of “total victory” over Hamas than into the American idea that a ceasefire is vital to avoid an even deeper regional catastrophe.

It will also strengthen the belief held by Mr Netanyahu’s critics inside and outside Israel that he wants to prolong the war, to avoid the moment when he faces a reckoning of the mistakes he made that allowed Hamas the space to attack with such devastating consequences on 7 October.

The Americans and French have also worked hard to find a diplomatic way to stop the border war between Israel and Hezbollah. But the vital first step would be a ceasefire in Gaza, and the prospect one was close has taken another hammer blow.

A 17-year-old has been charged with the murder of three girls at a dance class in Southport.

Bebe King, six, Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven, and nine-year-old Alice Dasilva Aguiar died after a knife attack at a Taylor Swift-themed event in the Merseyside town on Monday.

The teenager, who is due to appear at Liverpool City Magistrates’ Court later on Thursday, has also been charged with 10 counts of attempted murder.

Eight other children and two adults who were at the event in the Hart Space centre were injured, with some still believed to be in a critical condition.

The defendant, who cannot be named because of his age, has also been charged with the possession of a bladed article.

Merseyside Police announced the charges during a press conference just after midnight.

Ursula Doyle, deputy chief crown prosecutor for the Crown Prosecution Service Mersey-Cheshire, said: “We remind all concerned that criminal proceedings against the defendant are active and that he has the right to a fair trial.

“It is extremely important that there should be no reporting, commentary, or sharing of information online which could in any way prejudice these proceedings.

“Our thoughts remain with the families of all of those affected by these harrowing events.”

Chief Constable of Merseyside Police Serena Kennedy said: “Whilst these charges are a significant milestone within this investigation, this remains very much a live investigation and we continue to work with our partners from Lancashire Police and counter-terrorism police in the North West.”

The summer holiday dance class on Hart Street in Southport was being held for primary school children aged six to 10.

Police were called to reports of a stabbing there just before 11:50 BST on Monday.

When officers arrived, they found that multiple people, many of whom were children, had been subjected to a “ferocious attack” and had suffered serious injuries, Ms Kennedy said.

Police believe a person armed with a knife walked into the building and attacked those inside.

Two adults were critically injured “bravely” trying to protect the children from the attack, police said.

In a tribute issued through police, Bebe’s family said: “No words can describe the devastation that has hit our family as we try to deal with the loss of our little girl Bebe.”

Meanwhile, the family of Alice said: “Keep smiling and dancing like you love to do our Princess, like we said before to you, you’re always our princess and no one would change that. Love from Your Hero Daddy and Mummy.”

Separately, more than 100 people were arrested in a protest in central London on Wednesday night following the deaths in Southport, the Metropolitan Police said.

The Met said it made arrests for a range of offences including violent disorder, assault on an emergency worker, and breach of protest conditions on Wednesday evening.

It followed separate unrest in Southport on Tuesday, which came hours after a peaceful vigil was attended by thousands to remember the girls who died.

A large group of protesters attacked the front of a mosque, throwing bricks, bottles, fireworks and rocks, while police officers used riot shields to defend themselves as wheelie bins were hurled towards them.

A police vehicle was also set on fire.

Merseyside Police said more than 50 police officers were hurt in a “sustained and vicious attack”. The force said the violence was believed to have involved English Defence League supporters.

It added that those behind the violence had been fired up by social media posts which incorrectly suggested an Islamist link to Monday’s stabbing.

In a message widely shared on social media, Elsie’s mother Jenni Stancombe condemned the violence.

“This is the only thing that I will write, but please stop the violence in Southport tonight,” she wrote.

“The police have been nothing but heroic these last 24 hours and we don’t need this.”

Several officers were also injured in separate disorder in Hartlepool on Wednesday, Cleveland Police said, after violence broke out in the town.

Syeda X, a poor migrant woman living in shanty towns that skirt India’s capital Delhi, struggled through more than 50 jobs in 30 years.

She trimmed jeans threads, cooked savouries, shelled almonds and made tea strainers, door knobs, photo frames and toy guns. She also stitched school bags and did bead and jewellery work. Despite her hard work, she earned meagre wages, like 25 rupees (30 cents; 23 pence) for assembling 1,000 toy guns.

The protagonist of a new book, The Many Lives of Syeda X, by journalist Neha Dixit, Syeda relocated to Delhi with her family in the mid-1990s after religious riots in the neighbouring state of Uttar Pradesh. Reported over 10 years with more than 900 interviews, the book highlights, in part, the precarious life of an Indian home-based female worker.

Ms Dixit’s book shines a spotlight on the invisible lives of India’s neglected female home-based workers. After being recognised officially as a distinct category of workers only in 2007, India defined a home-based worker as someone who produces goods or services for an employer from their own home or chosen premises, regardless of whether the employer provides equipment or materials.

Over 80% of working women in India are employed in the informal economy, with home-based work being the largest sector after agriculture. Yet, no legislation or policy supports these women.

Wiego, an organisation that supports women in informal employment, estimated that by 2017-18, women comprised about 17 million of the 41 million home-based workers in India. These women represented approximately 9% of total employment. Their numbers in the city have grown faster than in India’s countryside. “The centre of gravity in home-based workers appears to be shifting to urban areas,” says Indrani Mazumdar, a historian who has worked extensively on the subject.

Bereft of social security or any protection, these women are in a constant battle with poverty, precariousness and wayward spouses. Often their family’s main breadwinners, they strive to earn enough to educate their children out of poverty. These women also face the brunt of climate change, losing livelihoods and running losses: monsoon waterlogging in their homes leads to wastage of their supplied material.

In India, around 75% of female workers in manufacturing work are home-based, says economist Sona Mitra. “These women are recorded as self-employed and they are largely invisible,” she adds.

Ms Dixit’s harrowing narrative portrays Syeda X and other home-based working women as archetypes of helplessness and exploitation. No-one knows who sets the abysmal rates for their work. No-one provides instructions, training, or tools. These women rely solely on each other to learn how to get the job done.

Finding work is also often about following the news cycle, Ms Dixit writes.

When Kalpana Chawla became the first Indian-origin woman in space in 1997, women dressed plastic dolls in hand-stitched white spacesuits. During the 1999 cricket World Cup, they stitched hundreds of cheap footballs. A viral 2001 rumour about a “monkey man” attacking people in Delhi spurred a demand for masks resembling the creature to be sold at traffic crossings. During elections, they made flags, key rings and caps for political parties. When schools resumed, they packed crayons and school bags and bound books.

Many women also find it difficult to get home-based work for more than 20 days a month. Ms Dixit writes that only those who don’t negotiate rates or ask too many questions, buy their own tools, deliver on time, never ask for advances or help during crises and tolerate delayed payments are able to find work easily.

The precarity of female home workers has increased due to changes in the nature of the work, according to Ms Mazumdar. Up until the 1990s, the readymade garment industry outsourced many tasks to home workers. This shifted in the 1990s as factories began bringing tasks in-house and machines replaced human labour, particularly for embroidery. “Home-based work became very volatile,” she says.

In 2019, the International Labour Organisation, drawing on household surveys in 118 countries, estimated there were around 260 million home-based workers worldwide, representing 7.9% of the global employment.

Research from Brazil and South Africa shows that monitoring work conditions and protecting workers’ rights in subcontracted or home-based work is possible when local governments and trade unions collaborate effectively.

Such examples in India are few and far between. There’s the 52-year-old Self Employed Women’s Association (Sewa), a membership-based organisation that unites poor, self-employed women in the informal economy. There are self-help groups of home-based workers and micro-finance to support them. “But these schemes have really not helped them when it comes to employment,” says Ms Mazumdar.

In 2009, women in Delhi who shelled and cleaned almonds from homes stopped working, demanding better pay and overtime, among other things. (They were paid 50 rupees for cleaning a 23kg bag for 12-16 hours.) The strike paralysed the almond processing industry at its peak season.

A study in Tamil Nadu state by social scientist K Kalpana illustrated how home and neighbourhood-based female workers subcontracted to make (papadumin Chennai successfully defended their rights, despite government agencies ignoring claims of trade unions.

Syeda X and her friends had no such luck. “If she ever took time off to nurse an illness or to attend to her children, her job would be lost to another faceless migrant, fighting to take her place,” writes Ms Dixit. Displacement and hardship were the only constants in her life, shifting from job to job and home to home.

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A loud noise shook Ajay Ghosh awake at his home in the southern Indian state of Kerala in the early hours of Tuesday.

At first, the salesman, who lives in Wayanad district’s Mundakkai village, did not quite understand what caused the sound.

But when he looked out and saw an enormous amount of mud flowing down from a hill above, he knew what was coming.

At least 166 people have been killed and 192 people are still missing in the massive landslides that hit Mundakkai and the neighbouring Chooralmala area that night.

The disaster, which is the worst the state has seen since floods in 2018, has left behind a trail of destruction in its wake.

• India landslides kill 120 and trap dozens

Pictures show uprooted trees, flattened houses and broken bridges submerged in muddied waters.

“My family survived but 40 people died near my house, not even a mile away,” Mr Ghosh said.

The intensity of the landslide was so high that it split the Iruvanipuzha river, which flows through the area, into two.

On Tuesday, authorities launched a massive rescue operation in the area to look for possible survivors. But their efforts have been complicated by heavy rains.

A hilly region known for its rugged terrain and stunning vistas, Wayanad is a popular tourist destination which attracts more than 100,000 visitors every year. The district is mainly inhabited by indigenous tribes and is dotted with picturesque tea and cardamom estates.

A part of the ecologically sensitive Western Ghats – a mountain range that runs along the western coast of India – the district is not new to landslides.

• Scores still missing as India landslides kill 158

In fact, a 2011 report submitted by a panel of experts, led by ecologist Madhav Gadgil, had classified the entire Wayanad region as “fragile, medium fragile and less fragile area”.

The report also recommended a ban on all ” environmentally-hazardous” human activities along the Western Ghats, including in Wayanad.

The recommendations have since been continuously opposed by all political parties and governments of Kerala, who maintain that it would stall development in the area.

It was also opposed by the neighbouring state of Karnataka, which argued that it would impact livelihoods of local people.

The indecision on the issue has meant that environmentally-hazardous activities like deforestation, mining and building construction have continued in the region.

Experts say excessive rainfall in Wayanad this season – about 60-70% higher than usual – has added to the scale of the disaster.

“This time, the accumulated heavy rainfall of the last two weeks was followed with this extreme category rainfall of Tuesday, causing massive flooding,” said Abhilash S, director of the department of atmospheric sciences in Cochin University of Science and Technology.

“That was the primary triggering factor,” he added.

Others point out that rapid urbanisation and increasing mining activities in surrounding areas have made the region even more fragile.

In 2019, 17 people died in a landslide that struck Puthumala, 10km (six miles) away from Tuesday’s disaster. A report by the Kerala Forest Research Institute (KFRI) had then pointed out that the landslide was caused by rock mining and quarrying in the region.

“This entire area has very steep slopes. The only thing that holds it together is vegetation,” said TV Sajeev, the chief scientist of KFRI.

But in recent years, the Kerala government has allowed certain non-plantation activities in this region. “As a result, plantation owners have shifted to tourism and built mega structures for which the ground had to be levelled, making it even more fragile,” Mr Sajeev added.

The scientist says the government should go back to the Gadgil report that said fragile land must be managed in a different way.

“The way out is to make sure that our ecological systems are really healthy. If they are healthy, they can handle any kind of climate change,” he said.

A witness to the Titan submersible disaster has told BBC News about the fear and false hope felt by those on its support ship.

Rory Golden was on the Oceangate expedition when contact with the sub and its five passengers was lost on a dive to the Titanic in June 2023.

“We had this image in our heads of them being down there, running out of oxygen in the freezing cold, getting terribly frightened and scared,” he said.

But after learning the sub had imploded just hours into the dive, he said it was a comfort to know those onboard hadn’t suffered.

Mr Golden was on the Polar Prince support ship to give presentations about the Titanic when the submersible went missing.

“When the sub was overdue we weren’t unduly concerned because communications break down a lot in the ocean,” he explained.

“But when the alarm was finally raised, that’s when we realised that there were some serious issues.”

A major search and rescue operation was launched by the US Coast Guard.

A few days in, sounds of banging were detected underwater raising hope that these were coming from the missing sub.

But it’s now known that those onboard most likely died instantly after Titan suffered a catastrophic failure as it neared the Titanic at the bottom of the Atlantic.

“We lived in false hope for four days,” Mr Golden said. “There’s still a lot of questions to be answered.”

Those who perished were British explorer Hamish Harding, the British-Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman, Stockton Rush, the CEO of Oceangate, and French diver Paul Henri – or PH – Nargeolet.

Rory Golden was a close friend of PH – a veteran deep sea explorer. He is now on the first expedition to the Titanic since the tragedy – an expedition that PH Nargeolet was supposed to be leading.

A plaque is being laid in his honour at the wreck site and a memorial service for all those who died on the sub has been held at sea.

Mr Golden told the BBC he was one of the last people to see PH alive.

“He left the ship in great spirits, in great form and he was happy. He was going somewhere that he wanted to be.”

Rory Golden had also visited the Titanic on the Oceangate sub.

”PH and I had discussed the submersible in the past and I had actually made a dive in it myself the year before,” he said.

“And I’m here – as are many others. The Titan sub had made 15 dives to the Titanic up to that point, so it had worked.

“I was comfortable, I spent 12 hours at the Titanic and it was a whole different experience being in a submersible that I could actually move around quite well in.”

He told the BBC that he didn’t regret his dive at all.

“It wasn’t my time,” he said. “You never know when your time is going to come. And that certainly brought that home to all of us.”

The discovery of the wreckage of Titan four days after it went missing confirmed the fate of those onboard.

“We all cried when the remains were found of the sub,” he said.

“A special bond has been formed between all of us who were there on the ship that week. And that’s a bond that will always be there.”

Industry experts had raised many serious questions about the safety of the Titan submersible prior to the dive.

Investigations by the US Coast Guard and Canadian Coast Guard are still ongoing.

They are likely to call for changes to ensure such a tragedy doesn’t happen again.

Donald Trump has questioned Kamala Harris’ racial identity during a heated exchange at a convention for black journalists.

Trump falsely claimed the vice-president and presumptive Democratic nominee had only emphasised her Asian-American heritage until recently when, he claimed, “she became a black person”.

“I didn’t know she was black until a number of years ago when she happened to turn black and now she wants to be known as black,” he said at the National Association of Black Journalists convention in Chicago on Wednesday.

“So I don’t know – Is she Indian? Or is she black?”

Ms Harris said Trump’s remarks were “the same old show” of “divisiveness… and disrespect”.

“The American people deserve better,” she told a meeting of the historically black sorority Sigma Gamma Rho in Houston. “We deserve a leader who understands that our differences do not divide us – they are an essential source of our strength.”

Ms Harris is the first black and Asian-American vice-president, with Indian and Jamaican-born parents. She attended Howard University, a historically black university, and joined the predominantly black Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority.

She became a member of Congressional Black Caucus after entering the Senate in 2017.

Trump’s claims prompted a heated exchange with ABC News’ correspondent Rachel Scott, one of the moderators of the Chicago event.

“I respect either one,” the Republican said in reference to Harris’ racial identity. “But she obviously doesn’t because she was Indian all the way and then all of a sudden she made a turn and she became a black person.”

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said no one “has any right to tell someone who they are, how they identify. That is no one’s right.”

“Who appointed Donald Trump the arbiter of Blackness?” asked Representative Ritchie Torres of New York. He described Trump as a “relic of a racist past”.

The Republican nominee and former president has a history of attacking his opponents on the basis of race.

He falsely accused Barack Obama, the country’s first black president, of not being born in the US.

Trump attacked the former UN ambassador and his Republican primary opponent Nikki Haley by falsely claiming she could not be president because her parents were not US citizens when she was born.

Ms Harris has faced a series of attacks since becoming the presumptive Democratic nominee. Republicans have criticized the decision, saying she was chosen only because of her race.

Tim Burchett, a Republican congressman from Tennessee, called her a “DEI vice-president” – a reference to diversity, equity and inclusion programmes.

On Wednesday, Scott pushed Trump to clarify whether he believed Ms Harris was a “DEI hire”. He replied: “I really don’t know, could be.”

Ms Harris has described growing up engaged with her Indian heritage and often visited the country. Her mother also immersed her two daughters in the black culture of Oakland, California – where she was raised, she said.

Trump also attacked Ms Harris’ credentials during the discussion, saying she had failed her bar exam early in her legal career. His comments were met with murmurs from the crowd.

“I’m just giving you the facts. She didn’t pass her bar exam and she didn’t think she would pass it and she didn’t think she was going to ever pass it and I don’t know what happened. Maybe she passed it,” he said.

Ms Harris graduated from the University of California Hastings College of Law in 1989. The New York Times reported that she failed her first attempt and passed at the second. The state bar of California says less than half of those who sit the test pass on the first attempt.

The Chicago discussion began with a contentious back and forth between Scott and the former president. Trump accused the journalist of giving a “very rude introduction” when she began the conversation asking about his past criticism of black people.

She cited Trump calling black journalists’ questions ”stupid and racist” and that he had ”dinner with a white supremacist at your Mar a Lago resort”.

“I love the black population of this country, I’ve done so much for the black population of this country,” he responded.

The former president criticised the conversation hours later on his social media platform. “The questions were rude and nasty, often in the form of a statement, but we CRUSHED IT!” he said.

Treating failing eyesight and high cholesterol are two new ways to lower the risk of dementia developing, a major report suggests.

Scientists have now identified 14 health issues which, if reduced or eliminated, could theoretically prevent nearly half of dementias in the world.

Middle-aged people and poorer countries have most to gain from targeting these risk factors, says the Lancet Commission’s latest report on the topic.

It predicts that the number of people living with dementia could more than double to 153 million by 2050.

Dementia occurs when a disease, such as Alzheimer’s, damages nerve cells in the brain and leads to confusion and memory loss – but it is not an inevitable part of getting old.

Most of the reason why we get dementia is down to things we cannot control, such as the genes we inherit from our parents and grandparents.

But 45% of our risk can be changed, according to international experts in the field, and can therefore be reduced.

“It’s never too early or too late to take action,” says lead author Prof Gill Livingston, from University College London.

“Governments must reduce risk inequalities by making healthy lifestyles as achievable as possible for everyone.”

The researchers have drawn up a list of recommendations that countries around the world should focus on, including:

• making hearing aids accessible for those with hearing loss
• ensuring good-quality education for all
• supporting people to give up cigarettes
• encouraging exercise and sport
• reducing high blood pressure from the age of 40
• treating high cholesterol from mid-life
• treating obesity as early in life as possible
• reducing problem drinking
• making sure people are not socially isolated or lonely
• screening for eyesight problems and giving glasses to those who need them
• reducing people’s exposure to air pollution

Andy Watts, 58, from Berkshire, saw his father diagnosed with Alzheimer’s at the age of 64. He passed away at the age of 80.

“I watched my father slowly deteriorate over many years. In some ways you lose them before you actually lose them, because their personality gradually fades,” Andy says.

Watching it happen “rips your heart out”, he adds.

His family has a long family history of dementia and high cholesterol, so he gets checked regularly.

Andy said it is “motivating” to know there are things he and his family can do to try to minimise the risk of dementia, like focusing on diet and exercise.

“I want to do everything I can to reduce the risk,” he says.

Some factors are more of a risk than others, the report suggests.

For example, it estimates that hearing loss and high cholesterol are responsible for most cases of preventable dementia (7% each).

In early life it is lack of education that tips the balance while, in later life, social isolation and failing eyesight are a big risk.

Some experts are more cautious about what the evidence shows.

Prof Tara Spires-Jones, director of the Centre for Discovery Brain Sciences at the University of Edinburgh, said this type of research could not conclusively link any of these factors directly to dementia.

However, she said it would contribute to growing evidence that a healthy lifestyle “can boost brain resilience and prevent dementia”.

“We should be careful not to imply that people with dementia could have avoided it if they’d made different lifestyle choices,” said Prof Charles Marshall, from Queen Mary University London. He added that most of an individual’s risk of developing dementia is outside their control.

Samantha Benham-Hermetz, from Alzheimer’s Research UK, described the report’s findings as “groundbreaking”.

“Many people think of dementia as something that happens to people later in life, but dementia is not an inevitable part of ageing.”

So how could vision loss be linked to dementia?

Scientists do not know exactly, but they say that in later life it could be down to the brain shrinking because it no longer needs to process certain aspects of vision.

Vision loss can also “restrict people’s lives, making them go out less, [be] more isolated and have fewer new experiences”, says Prof Livingston.

In many health systems, like the NHS, impaired vision can be treated. However, that is more of a problem in low-income countries which do not have the same resources.

There are reasons to be positive though – despite people living longer, there has been a reduction in dementia in high-income countries, which is thought to be because of lifestyle changes, such as fewer people smoking cigarettes.

However, rising life expectancy is driving up dementia cases in low-income countries.

“Twelve years ago you would have said there’s nothing you can do about dementia – but that’s really not the case,” says Prof Livingston.

As Democratic presidential hopeful Kamala Harris vets potential running mates, spare a thought for the contenders as they undergo a process that one past participant likens to “a colonoscopy performed with a telescope”.

This is just some of the material in questionnaires fired off during the exhaustive vetting process for previous US vice-presidential nominees.

Potential partners to join Ms Harris on the Democratic ticket for November’s election will have to answer up to 200 questions before they can even begin to be seriously considered.

The vetters – campaign officials and lawyers who volunteer their billable hours for the networking and prestige – often have about a month to dig up every grain of dirt they can find.

The Harris campaign has a matter of days to pick a running mate, with a paperwork deadline looming. The vice-president, who went through the process herself only four years ago, has been assessing around a dozen contenders, with Governor Josh Shapiro and Senator Mark Kelly among those being touted.

Pete Buttigieg, who is also among the rumoured potential picks, was asked this week if the possible running mates are aware they are being vetted. “Yeah, you know,” he said with a smile.

What makes the whole undertaking especially challenging is that, unlike with cabinet picks, the FBI does not perform background checks on vice-presidents.

The vetters will pore over a contender’s tax returns and medical history. They may log on to his or her private social media accounts. They will scour the social media posts of his or her children. The grandchildren’s, too.

The least suggestion of marital infidelity, or any other skeleton in the closet, will be picked apart.

They will check every record of every word the potential candidate has ever uttered or written.

Jim Hamilton, a Democratic lawyer who evaluated potential running mates for John Kerry, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, told the BBC that notes of the process are destroyed afterwards to preserve “a strict, strict veil of confidentiality”.

He oversaw more than 200 lawyers who were tasked with finding Mrs Clinton’s running mate (she picked Virginia Senator Tim Kaine).

“Everybody’s got something in their background they’d just sooner not talk about,” Mr Hamilton said. “But you’d be surprised, once people commit to the process, at how candid they are in their answers.”

Evan Bayh, a finalist to become Barack Obama’s running mate in 2008, remembers the procedure took nearly three months and was “like having a colonoscopy performed with a telescope”.

“There was a whole team assigned to me: an accountant, a lawyer, a physician, you know,” the former Indiana senator and governor told the BBC. “They talked to my wife, they talked to my father.”

Television crews were soon camped outside his house in Washington DC. Mr Bayh recalls his shock one morning as he sat down to breakfast with the television on and heard an MSNBC host remark that the senator’s bowl of yoghurt and granola “sure looks tasty”.

The head of the vetting team phoned one day to ask Mr Bayh about a false internet rumour that he had once received psychiatric treatment.

“And I said, ‘No, it’s not true. But if you guys don’t hurry up and make a decision, it might be true,’” he remembers joking.

A list of 20 names was whittled away. Mr Bayh says it ultimately came down to himself and Joe Biden, then a Delaware senator.

He recalls how he was flown out “very clandestinely” to St Louis, Missouri, in August that year to meet the future president in his hotel room. They spoke for around three hours.

“There was about a three-foot high stack of materials there,” he recalls, “that he [Mr Obama] just gestured to it, and he said, ‘I’ve gone over all the reports on you, and nothing in there bothers me.’

“He said, ‘But if there’s anything that our team didn’t discover, you should tell me now because it will come out.’

“And I said, ‘Well, your people did do a very thorough job. But there were probably two or three things I should mention to you.’ And I did.

“And he looked at me, he said, ‘That’s it?’ And I said, ‘Yeah, that’s it.’ And he said, ‘Well, you haven’t led very much of a life, have you?’”

Mr Bayh did not elaborate to the BBC on his disclosures to Mr Obama in the hotel room, except to say they were family matters.

Mr Biden was ultimately successful. Campaign manager David Plouffe later quoted President Obama as saying it was a “coin toss” between the two.

Sometimes a vetter can pose a question that no-one else thought of, revealing a potential red flag, even if it’s not disqualifying.

Gary Ginsberg, who worked for the Clinton campaign in ’92, told the BBC he remembers Al Gore at a loss for words when asked during the process if he had any friends.

The reserved Tennessee senator bristled. But when pressed, he could name none, beyond his brother-in-law and two congressmen. Mr Gore’s lack of a social circle bothered one top campaign official.

From a long-list of 50, he was nevertheless picked to be running mate. They won. Mr Gore, however, would struggle to overcome low personal likability ratings.

The vetting process used to be largely informal and much less invasive, since it was seen as rude to ask a senator or governor about personal matters.

Two selection disasters changed all that forever.

• 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
• Democratic VP: Five top contenders emerge in Harris VP hunt

In 1972, the Democratic White House nominee George McGovern dumped his running mate after just 18 days. He had picked Missouri Senator Thomas Eagleton based on a two-minute phone conversation and no background check.

It almost immediately emerged in media reports that Mr Eagleton had received electroshock treatment in hospital for clinical depression a decade earlier.

Nixon aides began asking reporters: “How could McGovern be trusted after putting a crazy man on the ticket?”

In that November’s election, the Republican president annihilated his Democratic challenger.

Vetters soon began to cast their nets wider, to look more closely at a potential running mate’s family members, after another embarrassment upended the 1984 White House race.

Democratic nominee Walter Mondale needed a game-changer against Ronald Reagan that year, so he picked Geraldine Ferraro, the first female running mate ever on a major party national ticket.

But the campaign was hamstrung by revelations about her real estate developer husband’s financial dealings.

President Reagan went on to win 49 states in a landslide re-election.

Sometimes a potential running mate dazzles at the audition, but fizzles on the political stage. In 2008, Republican presidential nominee John McCain’s campaign had just 72 hours to vet Sarah Palin.

The then-44-year-old Alaska governor was asked by aides how she would react in a national security crisis where the president had been temporarily incapacitated by surgery.

Under this scenario, the director of national intelligence comes to Acting-President Palin and tells her they have pinpointed Osama Bin Laden.

A plane is overhead ready to kill the al-Qaeda leader.

But there’ll be multiple civilian casualties.

“Do you take the shot?” the vetter asked her.

“Yes,” she said, “I would take the shot because I’m the President of the United States, this is our archenemy who took the lives of 3,000-plus Americans. And then I would get down on my knees and ask for forgiveness for the innocent souls whose lives I would be taking.”

The vetters were highly impressed with this answer.

Yet after she was unveiled as the vice-presidential nominee, Ms Palin proved unable to answer a reporter’s basic question about what newspapers she read. Soon she was seen as gaffe-prone and unready for the political primetime.

Even when the vetting process is conducted with more rigour, the final decision is always up to the nominee.

George HW Bush – one of the 15 US vice-presidents who became president- went with his gut when he picked little-known Indiana Senator Dan Quayle to be his running mate in 1988.

Though they won, Mr Quayle, 41, was widely seen as more of a liability than an asset to the ticket, as recounted in the book First in Line, by Kate Andersen Brower.

The vice-presidential nominee was asked by a reporter aboard the campaign plane in 1988: “What’s the favourite book that you’ve read?”

Mr Quayle turned to his wife, Marilyn.

“What’s the favourite book I’ve read?” he asked her, leaving a nearby political aide aghast.

Actors from the world of gaming went on strike last week, in a row about the use of artificial intelligence (AI) and the threat it poses to their livelihoods. It has reignited the debate about how the entertainment industry is adapting to new technology.

When actor Jennifer Hale talks, you listen. Her delivery is measured and surgically precise, yet her tone has a warmth that most ASMR creators would envy. She could read the phone book and you’d pay attention.

It’s unsurprising, then, that her voice is her livelihood, and that she takes the threat to her industry posed by AI so seriously.

“They see that the work of our souls is nothing more than a commodity to generate profits for them,” she says of several of the major gaming companies. “They don’t see that they’re crushing human beings beneath their feet in blind pursuit of money and profit, it’s disgusting.”

From Commander Shepard in the Mass Effect series to Samus Arran in the Metroid titles, Hale’s list of gaming credits is as long as your arm and her voice is familiar to millions.

Hale is one of the most high-profile voice actors in the world. She’s joined 2,500 members of the US actors union SAG-AFTRA who perform in games, by striking until games divisions of prominent companies like Activision, Warner Brothers, Walt Disney and EA agree to protections around the use of artificial intelligence (AI).

She tells BBC News: “They could, for example, take all my performances in a game, let’s say Mass Effect, feed them into a machine, not too long down the timeline, spit out an entirely new Mass Effect, with a performance that was entirely generated by AI.”

Concerns about AI were one of the key issues in last year’s 118-day actors strike organised by SAG-AFTRA. Terms were eventually agreed with Hollywood studios for film and TV actors.

But the dispute around videogames has rumbled on, finally boiling over into a strike on 25 July. While both sides have agreed on a host of issues, AI protections remains a sticking point.

Hale may be one of the most successful voice actors in the business but in contrast to those who work in front of the camera and despite the games industry generating revenue estimated to be around $189bn (£147bn) in 2024, voice acting in games is considerably less well paid than film and TV work.

“I’m a single working mother who has bills to pay and a life to provide for my kid, as voice actors we don’t get paid star salaries. Under what they’re proposing on the other side of this contract, they would pay me nothing.”

Audrey Cooling, a representative of the 10 game companies negotiating with the union, told BBC News: “Our offer is directly responsive to SAG-AFTRA’s concerns and extends meaningful AI protections that include requiring consent and fair compensation to all performers working under the IMA [Interactive Media Agreement].”

This is an ongoing deal to cover artists working in video games. Hale argues not all games companies are the problem, some businesses can and are making deals which work for all sides.

“Anybody sitting in their basement, anywhere making a game can go to SAG and say, hey, my budget is small, I only have this much money. I really want to work with these good actors. What can I do in SAG will say, absolutely, here you go, how big are you? Great here’s your structure.”

She adds this strike might be a symptom of a growing unease in the wider workplace with AI.

“We actors are the canary in the coal mine. You can see them coming for us, but if they dismiss it, if it gets swept under the rug because we’re just performers, what does that mean?”

On the other side of the Atlantic, John Barclay, assistant general secretary of the UK actor’s union Equity, released a statement of solidarity with its stateside counterparts.

“We stand shoulder to shoulder with SAG-AFTRA as partners in a global fight to secure fair pay and protect our members’ rights, which could not be more urgent as we move forward with artificial intelligence innovation.”

Regulations around strikes are different in the UK, Equity members aren’t striking and neither will UK members of SAG-AFTRA be compelled to.

Actor David Menkin has provided the voice for Luke Skywalker in Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga, as well as voice work in Final Fantasy XVI and Horizon Zero Dawn, amongst a host of other games.

He explains: “Here in the UK, we don’t have a mutually agreed contract between the union Equity and the producers that make these games. So therefore, even if you’re SAG-AFTRA but you were hired on a UK based contract, you can’t stop, you cannot strike, you cannot leave the production, you have to fulfil everything in your contract.”

He tells me he’ s concerned that US companies may try and work around the issue of striking American actors by coming to the UK and hiring British talent to perform in games instead.

“All we can do is make sure that if the work is dumped in the UK, that we are making sure that UK-based actors are fully informed.”

In the US the strike continues and while she waits for both sides to return to the negotiating table, Jennifer Hale hopes long time creative concerns will overcome short-term commercial gain.

“I hope they see that we are all in this together. I don’t understand why they’re willing to kill us all off to increase things a few percentage points, it makes no sense to me.”

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.

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.

For Nashville native Jacki Thrapp flying to Europe this summer to see her idol Taylor Swift perform live was a “no brainer”.

With the cheapest tickets for the remaining US dates of Swift’s continuing Eras Tour now costing $2,500 (£2,000) on the resale market, up from their face value of $49, some American fans realised that it would be cheaper for them to fly across the Atlantic to catch one of the European shows instead.

So back in May, Jacki went to see Swift perform twice in Sweden, with each ticket costing her less than $200.

“Americans are paying so much money, and a lot of Taylor Swift fans are people in their 20s and 30s,” says the 32-year-old. “We’re paying so much money to see her in the US when a lot of us still can’t even afford a house.”

Although Jacki bought two Swedish tickets on the secondary market, the mark-up of the most expensive was only around double its face value. This is said to be because buying resold tickets is not an established thing to do in Sweden, unlike in the US and UK.

In other European countries, such as Germany, tickets cannot be resold at more than 25% of their face value. Meanwhile, some nations go even further. Italy, Portugal and the Republic of Ireland all have laws in place that prevent concert tickets being sold above their original price.

In the UK and the US the price of re-sold tickets can currently be as high as people are willing to pay. In April, 250 musical artists, including Billie Eilish and Cyndi Lauper, signed an open letter that attacked “predatory resellers”, and called the current ticking system “broken”.

The situation may change for the better in the UK in the next few years, as the Labour Party, which forms the new government, said in March that it planned to cap the resale price of tickets.

Yet laws preventing excessive pricing on the secondary market do not stop two key issues – touts getting their hands on excessive amounts of tickets in the first instance, and the risk of people buying counterfeit tickets or being scammed.

The latter is said to have affected hundreds of Taylor Swift fans who tried to buy tickets for her concerts in the UK this summer.

Asher Weiss, chief executive of ticketing start-up Tixologi, believes that technology is the solution, particularly AI.

“People [touts] will buy a ticket and list it on multiple marketplaces for secondary sale,” he says. “And then even if it sells on one, they won’t take it down off the other one.

“So multiple people end up with the same ticket, trying to get in,” explains Mr Weiss, whose firm is based in Los Angeles.

To prevent people buying excessive numbers of tickets, he says that Tixologi’s AI “will be able to flag people making multiple purchases from the same IP address as unusual purchasing behaviour”.

“That would prevent those bad actors, and protect the true fans and customers,” adds Mr Weiss.

His firm is also able to ensure that only one copy of a ticket can ever exist. It does this by using blockchain, the technology that underpins cryptocurrencies. This prevents duplication.

Tixologi’s electronic tickets also have a rotating QR code that is said to be extremely difficult to copy, so that fake ones are instantly spotted when scanned. And a venue or artist can select a function called “disable transfers”, which prevents a user from emailing the ticket to someone else. This makes them much harder to re-sell.

UK ticketing company Seat Unique is working with London’s Wembley Stadium to sell hospitality tickets for Taylor Swift’s tour. She returns to the stadium for five shows in August, following three there in June.

“It is probably the most popular event I’ve seen in 15 years,” says Robin Sherry, Seat Unique’s founder and chief executive.

The company specializes in allowing venues and artists to sell their tickets via dynamic pricing. What this means is that the price is allowed to go up, and down, according to demand.

The idea is that the venue and artists sell the tickets directly, and therefore get the additional income if prices rise, instead of that money going to sellers on the secondary market.

To set the dynamic price Seat Unique is now using AI to constantly monitor demand and automatically respond to it.

“It’s ultimately about keeping tickets in the hands of fans not scalpers,” says Mr Sherry, who also works with sports clubs and organisations.

He adds that AI also has the ability to transform the marketing of concerts and other events, with adverts specifically targeted at individuals based on learning what they are interested in.

“I always jokingly say, AI will know what events you want to go to before I do,” he adds, saying that this will be “revolutionary in an industry that has been slow to modernise”.

While AI is starting to change how we are able buy tickets to concerts and other events, it is also beginning to appear on the stage.

In November a new AI-powered hologram of Elvis Presley will be performing live in London.

The creator of the Elvis Evolution production, Andrew McGuiness, says the hologram is so lifelike that it will be “less like Abba Voyage and more like time travel”.

But whether AI will be the answer for fans like Jacki Thrapp remains to be seen. “This was the first time I’ve ever left America to see one of my favourite artists, but there has to be a better way to do this,” she says.

Both Seat Unique and Tixologi hope that better way will be delivered by advances in AI.

Few people know how perilous the migrant journey across Mexico has become in recent months better than a group of women in the eastern state of Veracruz, known as Las Patronas.

For the past 30 years, as policies towards Central American migrants have hardened on both sides of the Rio Grande, they have unfailingly kept up the same humanitarian gesture to the migrants who pass through their village.

Every day, Las Patronas bag up rice, beans, tortillas, bread, tins of tuna and bottles of water.

As the freight train known as , meaning The Beast, approaches, they scramble to the side of the tracks and hold out the food for the migrants travelling on its roofs to grab as they thunder past.

“Gracias! God bless you!” the migrants yell over the deafening noise of the train as it clatters north, a fleeting moment of kindness on what is one of the most dangerous migrant journeys in the world.

Many will struggle to make it much further north.

This year, Mexico has stopped around three times as many migrants who have crossed into its territory from Central America as it did a year ago. While the 280,000 interdictions a month by the Mexican authorities have won approval in Washington, they have made life unbearable for those on the road.

“The dream that many call the American Dream has turned into a nightmare”, reflects Norma Romero, the founder of Las Patronas.

Mexico and the United States are at a pivotal point in their relationship.

Mexico has just chosen its first woman president, Claudia Sheinbaum, who will take office in October. The United States, meanwhile, is heading full steam into its election campaign with possibly its first female president in Kamala Harris, or a second Trump presidency on the horizon.

Neither scenario gives Norma much cause for optimism.

“I never put my faith in politics. Rather, I believe in ordinary people who bring about change and who have different ways of thinking,” she says, as her fellow volunteers chop vegetables to flavour the rice.

Nor does she think having a woman at the helm will make any difference in terms of tackling the widespread abuses of migrants in Mexico.

“Sadly, politics hasn’t improved since, well, as long as I can remember. Really, there’s never been any change that has brought any benefit to migrants.”

I first met Norma a decade ago when, as she showed the BBC, the freight trains were heaving with migrants fleeing violence and hardship in their home countries for the prospect of a better life in the United States.

Successive Mexican governments tended not to stop people heading north if they were simply passing through. In the United States, undocumented immigration was not the polarising electoral topic that it has since become.

Today, that attitude has noticeably changed. Particularly in US border states, it is the leading issue heading into November’s vote.

In June, President Joe Biden issued an executive order which grants US Border Patrol the right to deport people who have crossed into the US illegally without processing their asylum-requests. In the first four weeks of the new policy, there was a 40% reduction in detentions on the US southern border.

Norma says Las Patronas have seen noticeably emptier trains in recent weeks – sometimes without any migrants on them at all. She thinks the migrants are using other routes, by bus or on foot.

But, she says, they remain woefully uninformed about such US policy developments or the extent of the obstacles they face on the road:

“The migrants don’t have the basic knowledge they need about what is involved in travelling through Mexico,” she laments. “We see what’s happening to them and try to think about their wellbeing as human beings.”

Las Patronas also run a shelter where weary migrants can get a hot meal, a bed, bathe, wash their clothes and receive medical attention.

Among those staying for a few days to rest and gather their strength is Guadalupe, a Salvadoran migrant travelling with her 17-year-old daughter Nicole. She says they won’t travel on again, having twice been taken off the freight train by immigration officers.

The experience, she recalls, was brutal.

“They hit a lot of people who were with us and gave others electric shocks with tasers. They almost tasered me too. That was the worst experience we’ve had here in Mexico.”

Given the threat of kidnappings, sexual abuse and extortion by the country’s drug cartels, traversing Mexico is one of the most fraught parts of a journey which, for some, began in the Andes or the Caribbean.

Often though, says Guadalupe, they’re extorted by migration and security officials, the very men and women charged with upholding the law in Mexico.

“Once they take us off the train, many migration officers demand bribes from us. If we have enough money, we can pass. This time, we didn’t, and they sent us back to the border with Guatemala. That was the hardest thing.”

Mexican law enforcement has undoubtedly kept down the numbers of migrants reaching the US’s door.

“There is no crisis in migration at present,” said Mexico’s President, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, recently as he urged the US to bolster development aid to Central America to dissuade people from leaving home in the first place.

Rather than outright deportations – Mexico only sent back around 8,500 people in the first three months of this year – the Mexican authorities have been employing a form of ‘internal removal’ instead. Thousands of detained migrants have been dropped in towns on the border with Guatemala, some 2,000 kilometres from the US border.

The strategy saps the migrants of the funds and energy they need to keep going. Salvadoran migrant, Guadalupe, likens the tactic to a giant game of snakes and ladders:

“It’s very similar. Just like the board game, you have to avoid stepping on the snakes or you’re back to square one. It’s the same here too. If we don’t hide or run faster than the immigration agents, then our journey ends and we’re sent all the way back to the start.”

The BBC repeatedly requested an interview with the Mexican government over undocumented immigration, but no-one was made available.

As another train approaches, Guadalupe helps Norma Romero and the other women to take the food down to the tracks.

No matter who wins in the US, or what their relationship with President-elect Sheinbaum, Norma says Las Patronas won’t turn off their stoves as long as migrants keep coming past.

Listen to ‘Las Patronas’ on The Documentary on the BBC World Service.

Nigara Shaheen’s journey to becoming an Olympic judoka did not begin with judo.

Instead, it began with a 30-minute karate lesson on her family’s balcony in Peshawar, Pakistan.

She was 11 years old and had already been a refugee for most of her young life, having fled her native Afghanistan in 1993 with her parents as an infant, her mother carrying her as they walked two days and nights through the mountains to safety.

She has faced many more obstacles to fight in the sport she loves, in between her first-ever karate lesson and competing in the Paris Olympics as part of the Refugee Olympic Team.

Since 2022, the 31-year-old athlete has been living and training in Toronto.

As a young student in Pakistan, Ms Shaheen faced harassment by older men on her way to the refugee school she attended, and bullying by her peers.

In an essay in the Toronto Life magazine, she recalled: “One day, an older man assaulted me and my sister. He screamed at us and pushed me to the ground. I wanted to punch and beat him, but I didn’t know how.”

Her mother said she needed to learn how to defend herself.

The school she attended didn’t offer martial arts or other after-school activities for students – even if it had, it would often close, sometimes for weeks at a time, she told the BBC in an interview from Paris.

But through her extended family, she heard about an instructor who was coaching karate at a nearby school. He couldn’t train her there, but he could come to her.

Soon after, Ms Shaheen was on the balcony at her aunt’s home, getting coached.

Her mother told her the balcony was all the family had to offer “but you can use it as much as you want”, she recalled.

Not long after, Ms Shaheen was fighting in local karate tournaments. Her coach, noticing her talent and passion, suggested she try competing in judo.

“I asked him ‘what’s judo? And how would I know what to do?’ He told me: ‘Just grab your opponent and throw her, that’s it,’” she said.

Ms Shaheen was able to take down her first opponent in a few seconds. She had a knack for the sport.

While winning felt good, it was the philosophy of judo that got her hooked.

“(My first coach) said you will not learn how to get up unless you fall. As a kid, that really motivated me,” she said.

It also reminded her of watching the WWE with her father, a wrestling fan, as a child.

The sport gave her the confidence to find herself – and joy in her life – despite the hardships she faced as a refugee.

Ms Shaheen’s coaches began to notice her talent. At one point she trained with Pakistan’s national judo team but could not compete alongside them without a Pakistani passport.

In 2014, Ms Shaheen returned to Afghanistan, where she studied political science and public administration at the American University in Kabul.

She also trained with the Afghani national team, were she was welcomed by her male colleagues.

“Inside the gym, we were a family, and they treated me like I was their sister,” she wrote in Toronto Life.

She continued to train and compete, and began to receive a lot of attention as a female athlete in Afghanistan – some of it unwanted.

“I faced immense cyber bullying,” she told the BBC. The harassment later turned physical.

“There were so many times when cars would chase us,” she said. Once, someone threw a soft drink can in her mother’s direction as she was dropping her off at practice.

She left her home country again, in 2018.

“I always say that I became a refugee for a second time,” she said.

She moved to Russia for her master’s studies in international trade and entrepreneurship. But unlike the welcome she received at her gym in Afghanistan, she couldn’t find a training partner in Russia.

She spent the next year training alone – a time she has called “the worst days” of her career.

In 2019, she was approached by an International Judo Federation member, who suggested she try out for the Refugee Olympic Team.

She qualified for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, but a serious shoulder injury knocked her out of the competition.

By then she had finished her studies in Russia and the situation in Afghanistan had deteriorated drastically.

“I was just stuck,” Ms Shaheen said.

She returned to Pakistan where she mostly stayed at home in fear of her safety – she had faced criticism for not wearing a headscarf during the Games – and contemplated her next steps.

That’s when the opportunity to live and train in Canada opened up, with the help of the Olympic Refugee Foundation and United Nations Refugee Agency.

Ms Shaheen was accepted to study in Toronto for a postgraduate degree in international development.

She arrived in September 2022 – a bittersweet moment for the athlete who had already journeyed through three countries in search of stability.

It was in that Canadian city where her judo career was given a new lease on life.

“I was so happy to finally be at a place where I can be myself,” she said. “But it was also hard for me because I had to say goodbye to my parents for the second time.”

In Paris, she is one of the 37 athletes playing for the Refugee Olympic Team – a team Ms Shaheen is grateful to be a part of.

“I feel really proud,” she said ahead of her first competition on Tuesday against Mexico’s Prisca Awiti Alcaraz.

“I’m as much of an Afghan as I am a refugee,” she said. The banner for the refugee team is “a flag that I can relate to”.

While she lost to Ms Alcaraz, Ms Shaheen has said that she is thankful to be able to compete at the highest level.

“Even with every loss, I learn something new.”

She will appear on the mat once again on Saturday, where she will represent the Refugee Olympic Team in the mixed team event – her first time doing so.

“Team events are more exciting since I always look at my teammates and feel like I can’t let them down so I fight for all of them,” she told the International Judo Federation ahead of the competition.

After the games, Ms Shaheen plans to call Canada home – she is now a permanent resident – and she hopes to one day work to assist refugees like herself.

Her parents are still in Pakistan, where they are cheering her on as she lives out her Olympic dream.

At her lowest points, she said she would lean on her family for support.

“My sister used to tell me, ‘I trust that one day you will achieve something big, and this will be a memory and you will laugh about this.’”

“Now is the time that I laugh about it.”

• What is happening at the Olympics today?
• Is this the photo of the Paris 2024 Olympics?

The organisers of a music festival in Kuala Lumpur are suing British band The 1975 for breach of contract and damages after its singer Matty Healy attacked Malaysia’s anti-LGBT laws, leading to the event being cancelled.

During the band’s headline performance last July, Healy also addressed the audience in a profanity-laden speech and kissed a fellow band member.

The company behind the Good Vibes Festival is seeking £1.9m ($2.4m) in compensation in the UK’s High Court over a violation of performance rules.

Homosexual acts are illegal in Malaysia and punishable by 20 years in prison. The festival does not allow talking about politics and religion, swearing, smoking or drinking alcohol on stage.

The BBC contacted the band who said “they have nothing to add at this time”.

In a court filing, the festival organisers said The 1975 and its management team were aware of its rules for performers.

Future Sound Asia said the band had performed at the same festival in 2016, and were given multiple reminders of the rules ahead of its performance last July.

The lawsuit alleges that the band decided to “act in a way that was intended to breach guidelines”.

It cited Healy’s “provocative speech” and “long pretend passionate embrace” with bassist Ross MacDonald, that it said had “the intention of causing offence and breaching the regulations”.

It added that the band also smuggled a bottle of wine on stage to give Healy “easy access” to it.

Future Sound Asia also cited guidelines by the Malaysia Central Agency for the Application for Foreign Filming and Performance by Foreign Artistes, which ban “kissing, kissing a member of the audience or carrying out such actions among themselves”.

The event in Kuala Lumpur was cancelled the day after the band’s performance. Malaysia’s communications ministry said it took an “unwavering stance against any parties that challenge, ridicule or contravene Malaysian laws”.

Last August the organisers threatened the band with legal action and demanded they acknowledge their liability and compensate the organisers for damages incurred.

Healy’s performance was also criticised by members of the country’s LGBT community who said the act of “performative activism” would make their lives harder.

The 35-year-old singer subsequently defended his actions.

“The 1975 did not waltz [into] Malaysia unannounced, they were invited to headline a festival by a government who had full knowledge of the band with its well-publicised political views and its routine stage show,” he said on stage in Dallas last October.

“Me kissing Ross was not a stunt simply meant to provoke the government,” he continued. “It was an ongoing part of the 1975 stage show, which had been performed many times prior.

“To eliminate any routine part of the show in an effort to appease the Malaysian authorities’ bigoted views of LGBTQ people would be a passive endorsement of those politics.”

The band were sued in a separate class action by several musicians and vendors who said they suffered a loss of earnings as a result of the second and third days of the festival being cancelled.

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

Rico Krieger 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.

The internal anatomy of a prehistoric creature the size of a poppy seed has been revealed in “astonishing detail”.

Researchers used powerful X-rays to scan the 520-million-year-old fossil.

The results, published in the journal Nature, reveal its microscopic blood vessels and nervous system.

It is a peek inside the body of one of the earliest ancestors of modern insects, spiders and crabs.

Lead researcher Dr Martin Smith said this was a dream fossil, in part because it was preserved in its larval, or immature, stage – when its body was still developing.

“Looking at these early stages really is the key to understanding how those adult [body shapes] are formed – not just through evolution but through development.

“But larvae are so tiny and fragile, the chances of finding one fossilised are practically zero – or so I thought.”

Dr Smith’s colleagues found the fossil in a pile of “prehistoric grit” during a study of half-billion-year-old rock deposits in the north of China known to contain microscopic fossils.

“Our collaborators in China have large amounts of this stuff, which they dissolve it in acid and these little bits fall out,” Dr Smith said.

A team of technicians at Yunnan University spent years sifting through the material and picking fossils out of the dust.

After examining this particular specimen under the microscope during a trip to China, Dr Smith said, he had realised it was “something very special” and asked if he could bring it back to the UK to have a closer look.

The team mounted the fossil on the head of a pin in order to scan it with intense X-rays at Oxford’s Diamond Light Source facility. That is where its internal secrets were revealed.

“When I saw the amazing structures preserved under its skin, my jaw just dropped,” Dr Smith said.

Researchers generated three-dimensional images of miniature brain regions, digestive glands, a primitive circulatory system and even traces of the nerves supplying the larva’s simple legs and eyes.

Its brain cavity, which is divided into segments, has revealed the ancestral “nub” of the specialist, segmented heads of modern insects, spiders and crabs that later evolved their various appendages, such as antennae, mouthparts and eyes.

Study co-author, Dr Katherine Dobson, of the University of Strathclyde, said the natural fossilisation had “achieved almost perfect preservation”.

Dr Smith said this might have been caused by high concentrations of phosphorus in the ocean where this larva briefly lived and died.

“It’s washed into the oceans when rocks erode on land,” he said.

“And that phosphorus seems to have flooded the tissues of our fossil,” essentially crystallising its tiny body.

A leopard attacked two men at a South African air force base that borders the world-famous Kruger National Park.

One of the men, a uniformed air force member, was attacked while out for a run. The other, a civilian working at the base, encountered the leopard while on a walk, an air force spokesman said.

The two individuals were admitted to hospital with scratches but no major injuries, Brig Gen Donavan Chetty told the BBC.

One has since been discharged and the other is due to leave on Thursday.

On Wednesday, the leopard was captured and relocated to a sanctuary around 100km (62 miles) from the Hoedspruit air force base, following last week’s attacks.

Gen Chetty said that encounters with leopards are common, but not usually dangerous, for those living and working near the park.

The park, a tourist magnet famed for its rich wildlife, is largely fenced off.

However, Gen Chetty said it was impossible to contain leopards, which are known for their agility, with fences.

“[The leopards] are basically in and amongst the human population,” he said, adding that around 150 of them are known to be living in the area.

Leopards are nocturnal animals that hunt a variety of prey, including wildebeest, antelope and fish, the Kruger National Park website says.

In 2017, three lions were killed after escaping from the park.

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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”.

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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.

Donald Trump has questioned Kamala Harris’ racial identity during a heated exchange at a convention for black journalists.

Trump falsely claimed the vice-president and presumptive Democratic nominee had only emphasised her Asian-American heritage until recently when, he claimed, “she became a black person”.

“I didn’t know she was black until a number of years ago when she happened to turn black and now she wants to be known as black,” he said at the National Association of Black Journalists convention in Chicago on Wednesday.

“So I don’t know – Is she Indian? Or is she black?”

Ms Harris said Trump’s remarks were “the same old show” of “divisiveness… and disrespect”.

“The American people deserve better,” she told a meeting of the historically black sorority Sigma Gamma Rho in Houston. “We deserve a leader who understands that our differences do not divide us – they are an essential source of our strength.”

Ms Harris is the first black and Asian-American vice-president, with Indian and Jamaican-born parents. She attended Howard University, a historically black university, and joined the predominantly black Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority.

She became a member of Congressional Black Caucus after entering the Senate in 2017.

Trump’s claims prompted a heated exchange with ABC News’ correspondent Rachel Scott, one of the moderators of the Chicago event.

“I respect either one,” the Republican said in reference to Harris’ racial identity. “But she obviously doesn’t because she was Indian all the way and then all of a sudden she made a turn and she became a black person.”

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said no one “has any right to tell someone who they are, how they identify. That is no one’s right.”

“Who appointed Donald Trump the arbiter of Blackness?” asked Representative Ritchie Torres of New York. He described Trump as a “relic of a racist past”.

The Republican nominee and former president has a history of attacking his opponents on the basis of race.

He falsely accused Barack Obama, the country’s first black president, of not being born in the US.

Trump attacked the former UN ambassador and his Republican primary opponent Nikki Haley by falsely claiming she could not be president because her parents were not US citizens when she was born.

Ms Harris has faced a series of attacks since becoming the presumptive Democratic nominee. Republicans have criticized the decision, saying she was chosen only because of her race.

Tim Burchett, a Republican congressman from Tennessee, called her a “DEI vice-president” – a reference to diversity, equity and inclusion programmes.

On Wednesday, Scott pushed Trump to clarify whether he believed Ms Harris was a “DEI hire”. He replied: “I really don’t know, could be.”

Ms Harris has described growing up engaged with her Indian heritage and often visited the country. Her mother also immersed her two daughters in the black culture of Oakland, California – where she was raised, she said.

Trump also attacked Ms Harris’ credentials during the discussion, saying she had failed her bar exam early in her legal career. His comments were met with murmurs from the crowd.

“I’m just giving you the facts. She didn’t pass her bar exam and she didn’t think she would pass it and she didn’t think she was going to ever pass it and I don’t know what happened. Maybe she passed it,” he said.

Ms Harris graduated from the University of California Hastings College of Law in 1989. The New York Times reported that she failed her first attempt and passed at the second. The state bar of California says less than half of those who sit the test pass on the first attempt.

The Chicago discussion began with a contentious back and forth between Scott and the former president. Trump accused the journalist of giving a “very rude introduction” when she began the conversation asking about his past criticism of black people.

She cited Trump calling black journalists’ questions ”stupid and racist” and that he had ”dinner with a white supremacist at your Mar a Lago resort”.

“I love the black population of this country, I’ve done so much for the black population of this country,” he responded.

The former president criticised the conversation hours later on his social media platform. “The questions were rude and nasty, often in the form of a statement, but we CRUSHED IT!” he said.

Three of the men accused of plotting the 11 September, 2001 terrorist attacks have entered into a pre-trial agreement, the US Department of Defence says.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, Walid Muhammad Salih Mubarak Bin Attash, and Mustafa Ahmed Adam al-Hawsawi have been held at the US Navy base Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, for years without going to trial.

According to US news outlets, the men will plead guilty in exchange for the prosecution agreeing not to seek the death penalty.

The terms of the plea deal have not yet been released.

Nearly 3,000 people in New York, Virginia and Pennsylvania were killed in the al-Qaeda attacks, which sparked the “War on Terror” and the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.

They were the deadliest assault on US soil since the 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour, Hawaii, where 2,400 people were killed.

The deal was first announced in a letter sent by prosecutors to the family of victims, according to The New York Times.

“In exchange for the removal of the death penalty as a possible punishment, these three accused have agreed to plead guilty to all of the charged offenses, including the murder of the 2,976 people listed in the charge sheet,” said the letter from chief prosecutor Rear Admiral Aaron Rugh.

The men have been accused of a litany of charges, including attacking civilians, murder in violation of the laws of war, hijacking and terrorism.

They are expected to formally submit their pleas in court as early as next week, the Times reported.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammad is widely considered the architect of the attack, in which hijackers seized passenger planes and crashed them into the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon outside of Washington.

A fourth plane crashed into a field in Pennsylvania after passengers fought back.

Mohammad, a US-educated engineer, was captured along with Hawsawi in Pakistan in March 2003.

Prosecutors argued that he brought his idea of hijacking and flying planes into US buildings to al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, and later helped recruit and train some of the hijackers.

He was subjected to a number of “enhanced interrogation techniques”, including “waterboarding” – simulated drowning – at least 183 times before the practice was banned by the US government.

In his letter, Admiral Rugh wrote that the decision to accept the deal was “not reached lightly” and was in the “best path… to justice”.

In September, the Biden administration reportedly rejected the terms of a plea deal with five men held at the US Navy base in Cuba, including Mohammad.

The men had reportedly sought a guarantee from the president that they would not be kept in solitary confinement and would have access to trauma treatment.

The White House National Security Council said that the president’s office was told on Wednesday of the new deal and had played no role in negotiations.

Jim Smith, whose wife died in the attacks, told the New York Post that families of victims had “waited 23 years to have our day in court to put on the record what these animals did to our loved ones”.

“They took that opportunity away from us,” he said, adding they should receive the “highest penalty” for their roles.

Republicans too were quick to attack the Biden administration for striking a deal with the accused.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell condemned the move as “a revolting abdication of the government’s responsibility to defend America and provide justice”.

“The only thing worse than negotiating with terrorists is negotiating with them after they are in custody,” he said.

A 17-year-old has been charged with the murder of three girls at a dance class in Southport.

Bebe King, six, Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven, and nine-year-old Alice Dasilva Aguiar died after a knife attack at a Taylor Swift-themed event in the Merseyside town on Monday.

The teenager, who is due to appear at Liverpool City Magistrates’ Court later on Thursday, has also been charged with 10 counts of attempted murder.

Eight other children and two adults who were at the event in the Hart Space centre were injured, with some still believed to be in a critical condition.

The defendant, who cannot be named because of his age, has also been charged with the possession of a bladed article.

Merseyside Police announced the charges during a press conference just after midnight.

Ursula Doyle, deputy chief crown prosecutor for the Crown Prosecution Service Mersey-Cheshire, said: “We remind all concerned that criminal proceedings against the defendant are active and that he has the right to a fair trial.

“It is extremely important that there should be no reporting, commentary, or sharing of information online which could in any way prejudice these proceedings.

“Our thoughts remain with the families of all of those affected by these harrowing events.”

Chief Constable of Merseyside Police Serena Kennedy said: “Whilst these charges are a significant milestone within this investigation, this remains very much a live investigation and we continue to work with our partners from Lancashire Police and counter-terrorism police in the North West.”

The summer holiday dance class on Hart Street in Southport was being held for primary school children aged six to 10.

Police were called to reports of a stabbing there just before 11:50 BST on Monday.

When officers arrived, they found that multiple people, many of whom were children, had been subjected to a “ferocious attack” and had suffered serious injuries, Ms Kennedy said.

Police believe a person armed with a knife walked into the building and attacked those inside.

Two adults were critically injured “bravely” trying to protect the children from the attack, police said.

In a tribute issued through police, Bebe’s family said: “No words can describe the devastation that has hit our family as we try to deal with the loss of our little girl Bebe.”

Meanwhile, the family of Alice said: “Keep smiling and dancing like you love to do our Princess, like we said before to you, you’re always our princess and no one would change that. Love from Your Hero Daddy and Mummy.”

Separately, more than 100 people were arrested in a protest in central London on Wednesday night following the deaths in Southport, the Metropolitan Police said.

The Met said it made arrests for a range of offences including violent disorder, assault on an emergency worker, and breach of protest conditions on Wednesday evening.

It followed separate unrest in Southport on Tuesday, which came hours after a peaceful vigil was attended by thousands to remember the girls who died.

A large group of protesters attacked the front of a mosque, throwing bricks, bottles, fireworks and rocks, while police officers used riot shields to defend themselves as wheelie bins were hurled towards them.

A police vehicle was also set on fire.

Merseyside Police said more than 50 police officers were hurt in a “sustained and vicious attack”. The force said the violence was believed to have involved English Defence League supporters.

It added that those behind the violence had been fired up by social media posts which incorrectly suggested an Islamist link to Monday’s stabbing.

In a message widely shared on social media, Elsie’s mother Jenni Stancombe condemned the violence.

“This is the only thing that I will write, but please stop the violence in Southport tonight,” she wrote.

“The police have been nothing but heroic these last 24 hours and we don’t need this.”

Several officers were also injured in separate disorder in Hartlepool on Wednesday, Cleveland Police said, after violence broke out in the town.

Iran has threatened “harsh punishment” for Israel, which it says was responsible for assassinating Hamas’s leader on Wednesday.

Israel has not commented directly on the strike which killed Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran early on Wednesday.

However, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said his country had delivered “crushing blows” to its enemies in recent days, including the killing of a senior Hezbollah commander in Lebanon hours before the Tehran strike.

He warned Israelis that “challenging days lie ahead”, as fears of a wider conflict in the Middle East grow.

“Since the strike in Beirut there are threats surrounding from all directions,” he told a televised address.

“We are prepared for any scenario and we will stand united and determined against any threat.”

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned against a “dangerous escalation” of hostilities in the region. The UN Security Council was due to meet on Wednesday evening to discuss the situation.

Hamas’s armed wing said the death of Haniyeh, who was widely viewed as the group’s overall leader, would “take the battle to new dimensions” and have major repercussions.

The group attacked Israel on 7 October, killing around 1,200 people. Since the attack, Israel has vowed to destroy Hamas.

Haniyeh, who played an important role in negotiations over a ceasefire in Gaza, was killed hours after attending the inauguration of Iran’s new president, Masoud Pezeshkian, in Tehran.

A senior Hamas official told the BBC the killing took place in the same building where Haniyeh had stayed during previous visits to Iran.

Three Hamas leaders and a number of guards were with him in the same building, they said.

Khalil Al-Hayya, a senior Hamas official, told a news conference that a missile hit Haniyeh “directly”, citing witnesses who were with him.

The group’s leadership has been left in “a state of shock”, top Hamas officials have told the BBC.

Hours before Haniyeh was targeted, Israel said it had killed senior Hezbollah Fuad Shukr in Beirut.

Israel believes he was responsible for a rocket attack that killed 12 people in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights on Saturday. Hezbollah has denied any involvement.

The Iran-backed group confirmed Shukr’s body was found among the rubble of the residential building which was struck. Four other people, including two children, were killed.

A response from Hezbollah is almost certain. In the past, the heavily-armed, Iranian-supported group has responded to the killings of senior members by firing barrages of rockets into Israel.

The US has updated its travel guidance for citizens, advising them not to travel to Lebanon due to “rising tensions”, and the UK foreign secretary has urged nationals to leave the country.

Several airlines have cancelled flights to Beirut, while United, Delta and British Airways are expected to announce they are suspending flights to Tel Aviv.

A witness to the Titan submersible disaster has told BBC News about the fear and false hope felt by those on its support ship.

Rory Golden was on the Oceangate expedition when contact with the sub and its five passengers was lost on a dive to the Titanic in June 2023.

“We had this image in our heads of them being down there, running out of oxygen in the freezing cold, getting terribly frightened and scared,” he said.

But after learning the sub had imploded just hours into the dive, he said it was a comfort to know those onboard hadn’t suffered.

Mr Golden was on the Polar Prince support ship to give presentations about the Titanic when the submersible went missing.

“When the sub was overdue we weren’t unduly concerned because communications break down a lot in the ocean,” he explained.

“But when the alarm was finally raised, that’s when we realised that there were some serious issues.”

A major search and rescue operation was launched by the US Coast Guard.

A few days in, sounds of banging were detected underwater raising hope that these were coming from the missing sub.

But it’s now known that those onboard most likely died instantly after Titan suffered a catastrophic failure as it neared the Titanic at the bottom of the Atlantic.

“We lived in false hope for four days,” Mr Golden said. “There’s still a lot of questions to be answered.”

Those who perished were British explorer Hamish Harding, the British-Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman, Stockton Rush, the CEO of Oceangate, and French diver Paul Henri – or PH – Nargeolet.

Rory Golden was a close friend of PH – a veteran deep sea explorer. He is now on the first expedition to the Titanic since the tragedy – an expedition that PH Nargeolet was supposed to be leading.

A plaque is being laid in his honour at the wreck site and a memorial service for all those who died on the sub has been held at sea.

Mr Golden told the BBC he was one of the last people to see PH alive.

“He left the ship in great spirits, in great form and he was happy. He was going somewhere that he wanted to be.”

Rory Golden had also visited the Titanic on the Oceangate sub.

”PH and I had discussed the submersible in the past and I had actually made a dive in it myself the year before,” he said.

“And I’m here – as are many others. The Titan sub had made 15 dives to the Titanic up to that point, so it had worked.

“I was comfortable, I spent 12 hours at the Titanic and it was a whole different experience being in a submersible that I could actually move around quite well in.”

He told the BBC that he didn’t regret his dive at all.

“It wasn’t my time,” he said. “You never know when your time is going to come. And that certainly brought that home to all of us.”

The discovery of the wreckage of Titan four days after it went missing confirmed the fate of those onboard.

“We all cried when the remains were found of the sub,” he said.

“A special bond has been formed between all of us who were there on the ship that week. And that’s a bond that will always be there.”

Industry experts had raised many serious questions about the safety of the Titan submersible prior to the dive.

Investigations by the US Coast Guard and Canadian Coast Guard are still ongoing.

They are likely to call for changes to ensure such a tragedy doesn’t happen again.

The World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada) says it is “unfairly caught” in a row between the US and China, with their geopolitical tensions spilling onto the Olympic stage.

China’s top swimmers have been in the spotlight after a slew of doping allegations, followed by contentious US claims that Wada was covering it up.

Chinese swimmers headed to Paris were drug-tested twice as much as some other nations, which, in turn, has fuelled accusations of a conspiracy to disrupt their performance.

Wada said in its statement on Tuesday that it had been caught in “the middle of geopolitical tensions between superpowers but has no mandate to participate in that”.

“Certain individuals [in the US] are attempting to score political points purely on the basis that the athletes in question are Chinese,” Wada head of media relations James Fitzgerald told the BBC. “The result is that it has created distrust and division within the anti-doping system.”

A trade war, geopolitical rivalries and Beijing’s friendship with Russia have soured relations between the world’s two largest economies.

It’s little surprise that some of those tensions play out in competitive sports but now they appear to be driving a harder – and harsher – wedge.

Last week, Wada had said it was considering legal action against its US counterpart, Usada, over “defamatory” accusations.

The latter had accused Wada and China’s anti-doping agency, Chinada, of being among the “dirty hands in burying positive tests and suppressing the voices of courageous whistleblowers”.

US lawmakers, too, have accused Wada of failing to investigate doping allegations against Chinese swimmers properly. And on Tuesday they introduced a bill that would give the White House power to cut funding to the agency.

“When members of congress and senators are inserting themselves into the largely technical world of anti-doping, it ceases to be about scientific and legal analysis, and it drifts into the political realm,” said Mr Fitzgerald.

Wada’s statement on Tuesday followed reports in the New York Times about a previously undisclosed case involving two Chinese swimmers – including one on this year’s Olympic team – who were investigated for doping.

They had tested positive for a banned steroid in 2022, but they were cleared to compete. China’s anti-doping agency concluded that the athletes had most likely consumed the steroid unknowingly while eating contaminated burgers.

Usada accused Wada of letting China “compete under a different set of rules, tilting the field in their favour”.

But Wada defended the decision. It said the athletes’ nutritional supplements and hair tests had returned negative results, and that both swimmers also provided control samples that were negative in the days before and after the one test that was positive.

It added that the two swimmers were suspended for more than a year and then their cases were closed.

Their cases are part of a “wider series of cases involving [Chinese] athletes from different sports”, the agency said, adding that, “based on the number of cases, clearly there is an issue of contamination in several countries around the world”.

In a statement in June, Wada noted that athletes who eat meat sometimes test positive for drugs if they have ingested clenbuterol, a banned substance which is used as a growth promoter for farm animals.

That statement, in response to questions from the New York Times, said the agency was investigating instances of contamination in China as well as Mexico, Guatemala and other countries.

The agency’s boss Olivier Niggli pointed out at the time that US media had “only asked questions about China when meat contamination is an issue in many countries”, and referred to “attempts to politicise anti-doping”.

All of this follows a bigger controversy in April, when the New York Times reported that 23 Chinese swimmers had tested positive for a performance-enhancing drug months before the 2021 Tokyo Olympics.

But they were cleared to compete after Chinese officials found the results were caused by contamination. The 30-member team went on to win six medals, inlcuding three golds in Tokyo. Eleven of those who tested positive were also picked to be part of the Chinese swimming team for the Paris Olympics.

US swimmer and 11-time Olympic medalist Katie Ledecky had said her confidence in anti-doping regulators was at an “all-time low” after the news about the 23 Chinese swimmers.

Wada’s investigation, however, found that it was “not in a position to disprove the possibility that contamination” was the source of the drug, heart medication trimetazidine (TMZ).

It said the contamination theory was supported by “the combination of the consistently low concentrations of TMZ as well as no doping pattern” among the tested athletes. That is, their test results over several days were not consistent, veering between negative and positive.

An independent investigation found that Wada did not mishandle the case or show bias towards the Chinese swimmers.

The scandals upped the pressure on anti-doping officals and by the time the Chinese swimming team arrived in Paris, they were being tested far more than is standard.

Since January, each of the team’s 31 members have been tested, on average, 21 times by various anti-doping organisations, according to World Aquatics, which oversees water sports.

In comparison, Australia’s 41 swimmers have been tested an average of four times and the 46 US swimmers, an average of six times.

The flurry of tests has sparked another set of allegations. The state-run Chinese newspaper the Global Times blames Western powers for “abusing doping tests to disrupt [the] Chinese swimming team”.

Speaking to the Global Times, an international politics professor in Shanghai, accused the US of dominating anti-doping rules.

Shen Yi suggested that the “relentless and unethical testing” had disrupted the Chinese team’s training, which she called a “disgrace to the Olympics”.

Chinese swimmer Qin Haiyang, who holds the world record for the 200m men’s breastroke, said this testing “proves that European and American teams feel threatened by the performances of the Chinese team in recent years”.

“Some tricks aim to disrupt our preparation rhythm and destroy our psychological defence. But we are not afraid,” he said on Chinese social media platform Weibo.

Qin, who won golds in the 50m, 100m and 200m breaststroke at the world championships last year, finished in seventh place in the men’s 100m breaststroke final on Sunday.

This criticism was echoed by former Chinese diving champion Gao Min who said the rigorous testing had “disrupted our Chinese swimming team” and called Qin’s performance “the worst in any competition over the past two years”.

China’s current medal tally stands at one gold, two silver and two bronze.

China’s “butterfly queen”, Zhang Yufei, who won a silver in the 100m event in Tokyo, was in tears over her bronze finish on Monday but said the doping tests did not have a big impact on her.

While they were a “bit annoying”, she said it was the pressure that was “far greater” than she had imagined.

A French DJ who performed during the Paris Olympics’ opening ceremony has filed a legal complaint after receiving abuse online.

Barbara Butch took part in a drag queen sequence during the event which sparked controversy as viewers interpreted it as a reference to The Last Supper

The ceremony’s artistic director, Thomas Jolly, denied this and some art experts said the scene shared more similarities with a painting of Greek gods.

A lawyer for Barbara Butch said the DJ “has been threatened with death, torture and rape, and has also been the target of numerous antisemitic, homophobic, sexist and grossophobic insults”.

Butch said she had been the target of “cyber-harrassment”, adding that the messages she was receiving were “increasingly extreme”.

French authorities normally examine complaints before deciding whether to launch a formal police investigation.

Jolly has said that he was not inspired by The Last Supper, the famous Leonardo da Vinci painting showing Jesus Christ and his apostles.

Instead, he said the sequence, titled Festivity, was inspired by Greek mythology and intended to be a celebration of diversity, adding his intention was not to “be subversive, nor to mock or to shock”.

Jolly added it was obvious that the tableau was not inspired by The Last Supper given the presence of a figure representing the Greek god Dionysus.

But some viewers who interpreted it as a reference to the painting said they were offended by the similarities.

French Catholic bishops said Christians had been hurt and offended by the show.

Butch wore a silver headdress which looked like a halo during her set, while surrounded by drag artists and dancers.

Organisers of the Paris Olympics have said there was “never an intention to show disrespect to any religious group” and that the intent was to “celebrate community tolerance.”

In a statement, Butch’s lawyer Audrey Msellati said she was filing several complaints.

“Since the opening ceremony of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games artist, DJ, and activist Barbara Butch has been the target of an in an extremely violent campaign of cyber-harassment and defamation,” Msellati said.

“Barbara Butch condemns this vile hatred directed at her, what she represents and what she stands for.”

Msellati continued: “She is today filing several complaints against these acts, whether committed by French nationals, or foreigners, and intends to prosecute anyone who tries to intimidate her in the future.”

Butch also posted a statement of her own in Instagram stories, writing: “Whatever some may say, I exist.

“I’ve never been ashamed of who I am, and I take responsibility for everything – including my artistic choices. All my life, I’ve refused to be a victim: I won’t shut up.”

She said that she “was extremely honoured” to perform in Friday’s ceremony and added: “My heart is still full of joy.”

The scene also featured French drag queen Nicky Doll and former contestants from Drag Race France.

Treating failing eyesight and high cholesterol are two new ways to lower the risk of dementia developing, a major report suggests.

Scientists have now identified 14 health issues which, if reduced or eliminated, could theoretically prevent nearly half of dementias in the world.

Middle-aged people and poorer countries have most to gain from targeting these risk factors, says the Lancet Commission’s latest report on the topic.

It predicts that the number of people living with dementia could more than double to 153 million by 2050.

Dementia occurs when a disease, such as Alzheimer’s, damages nerve cells in the brain and leads to confusion and memory loss – but it is not an inevitable part of getting old.

Most of the reason why we get dementia is down to things we cannot control, such as the genes we inherit from our parents and grandparents.

But 45% of our risk can be changed, according to international experts in the field, and can therefore be reduced.

“It’s never too early or too late to take action,” says lead author Prof Gill Livingston, from University College London.

“Governments must reduce risk inequalities by making healthy lifestyles as achievable as possible for everyone.”

The researchers have drawn up a list of recommendations that countries around the world should focus on, including:

• making hearing aids accessible for those with hearing loss
• ensuring good-quality education for all
• supporting people to give up cigarettes
• encouraging exercise and sport
• reducing high blood pressure from the age of 40
• treating high cholesterol from mid-life
• treating obesity as early in life as possible
• reducing problem drinking
• making sure people are not socially isolated or lonely
• screening for eyesight problems and giving glasses to those who need them
• reducing people’s exposure to air pollution

Andy Watts, 58, from Berkshire, saw his father diagnosed with Alzheimer’s at the age of 64. He passed away at the age of 80.

“I watched my father slowly deteriorate over many years. In some ways you lose them before you actually lose them, because their personality gradually fades,” Andy says.

Watching it happen “rips your heart out”, he adds.

His family has a long family history of dementia and high cholesterol, so he gets checked regularly.

Andy said it is “motivating” to know there are things he and his family can do to try to minimise the risk of dementia, like focusing on diet and exercise.

“I want to do everything I can to reduce the risk,” he says.

Some factors are more of a risk than others, the report suggests.

For example, it estimates that hearing loss and high cholesterol are responsible for most cases of preventable dementia (7% each).

In early life it is lack of education that tips the balance while, in later life, social isolation and failing eyesight are a big risk.

Some experts are more cautious about what the evidence shows.

Prof Tara Spires-Jones, director of the Centre for Discovery Brain Sciences at the University of Edinburgh, said this type of research could not conclusively link any of these factors directly to dementia.

However, she said it would contribute to growing evidence that a healthy lifestyle “can boost brain resilience and prevent dementia”.

“We should be careful not to imply that people with dementia could have avoided it if they’d made different lifestyle choices,” said Prof Charles Marshall, from Queen Mary University London. He added that most of an individual’s risk of developing dementia is outside their control.

Samantha Benham-Hermetz, from Alzheimer’s Research UK, described the report’s findings as “groundbreaking”.

“Many people think of dementia as something that happens to people later in life, but dementia is not an inevitable part of ageing.”

So how could vision loss be linked to dementia?

Scientists do not know exactly, but they say that in later life it could be down to the brain shrinking because it no longer needs to process certain aspects of vision.

Vision loss can also “restrict people’s lives, making them go out less, [be] more isolated and have fewer new experiences”, says Prof Livingston.

In many health systems, like the NHS, impaired vision can be treated. However, that is more of a problem in low-income countries which do not have the same resources.

There are reasons to be positive though – despite people living longer, there has been a reduction in dementia in high-income countries, which is thought to be because of lifestyle changes, such as fewer people smoking cigarettes.

However, rising life expectancy is driving up dementia cases in low-income countries.

“Twelve years ago you would have said there’s nothing you can do about dementia – but that’s really not the case,” says Prof Livingston.

Israel has inflicted two devastating blows on its enemies.

It has not confirmed that it killed the Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran, but it is hard to see who else would have wanted him dead more than the Israelis. As for the Hezbollah commander Fuad Shukr, Israel says he was killed in Beirut in an “intelligence-based elimination”.

For Israel, everyone senior in Hamas is a legitimate target after the attacks of 7 October 2023, which inflicted the worst single day of bloodshed on Israel since independence in 1948.

Fuad Shukr, Israel says, was killed because as a veteran Hezbollah commander he was responsible for the rocket attack that killed 12 children and young people in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.

Hezbollah has confirmed he was killed in the raid on Beirut. It denies carrying out the attack in the Golan.

Once again, the Middle East is full of speculation that the all-out war feared since 7 October is imminent. The deadly irony is no side wants that war, but increasingly they are prepared to risk it.

The Israelis have been under pressure from their American allies to calibrate their response to Hezbollah, inflicting a blow that will hurt the group without provoking a devastating retaliation and igniting a wider and deeper war.

But two assassinations amount to a major gamble.

Israel, under pressure from its allies in Washington, wanted to inflict a blow on Hezbollah that would not extract a devastating retaliation. The leader of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, might still decide that an attack on their stronghold in southern Beirut warrants a matching attack on Tel Aviv.

Israel might also have calculated that Iran would not go to war over an assassinated Palestinian leader, even though his death in their capital, under their protection, is a humiliation.

Killing Haniyeh, just after he had met the new Iranian president, is a dramatic display of Israel’s reach.

The Islamic Republic thought it re-established deterrence when it fired hundreds of missiles and drones at Israel in April – that claim has now been exposed as hollow. April’s barrage was also retaliation, for the Israeli air strike that killed two Iranian generals in Iran’s embassy in Damascus.

More retaliation looks certain from Iran, its ally Hezbollah or one of its proxies. Pro-Iranian militias in Iraq have made it clear that they blame the US equally for what has happened. In the Red Sea, the Houthis might redouble their attacks out of Yemen.

There are limits to what Hamas can do, after months of the Israeli onslaught in Gaza. But the Israelis are on high alert for attacks in the occupied West Bank or inside Israel itself.

It is important to realise that the Middle East is already in a regional war, but also to recognise that it could get much worse.

Even so, this round of killing and retaliation might not be the spark that ignites all-out war, though it is easy to construct scenarios based on the clear and dangerous risks and realities in the world’s most turbulent region.

Pulling back from the brink, repeatedly, is not making war any less likely. It makes it harder to construct a diplomatic pathway away from the looming threat of all-out conflict.

The only credible first step for lowering the deadly temperature in the Middle East is a ceasefire in Gaza.

In recent weeks the Americans have said that it was getting closer. That was always hard to imagine while the two sides’ definitions of an acceptable ceasefire were so far apart. For Hamas, a ceasefire meant an Israeli withdrawal and the end of hostilities. For Israel, it meant a pause that allowed for the release of some or all of the surviving hostages, and the right to resume the war afterwards.

Now a ceasefire in Gaza looks as far away as ever, although the US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has said again that it remains America’s diplomatic priority.

Ismail Haniyeh was a leading figure on the Hamas side in the ceasefire talks. With his colleagues, he communicated with the US and Israel via the head of the Egyptian secret service and the prime minister of Qatar, Sheikh Mohamed bin Jassim al Thani.

The prime minister posted his response to the assassination of Haniyeh on X, writing: “Political assassinations and continued targeting of civilians in Gaza while talks continue leads us to ask how mediation can succeed when one party assassinates the negotiator on the other side.”

The assassination fits more closely into Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s conception of “total victory” over Hamas than into the American idea that a ceasefire is vital to avoid an even deeper regional catastrophe.

It will also strengthen the belief held by Mr Netanyahu’s critics inside and outside Israel that he wants to prolong the war, to avoid the moment when he faces a reckoning of the mistakes he made that allowed Hamas the space to attack with such devastating consequences on 7 October.

The Americans and French have also worked hard to find a diplomatic way to stop the border war between Israel and Hezbollah. But the vital first step would be a ceasefire in Gaza, and the prospect one was close has taken another hammer blow.

A yoga teacher who was stabbed while trying to protect two little girls during the Southport knife attack is a hero, her cousin has told the BBC.

Leanne Lucas, 35, is believed to have been one of the organisers of the Taylor Swift-themed dance class where the attack, which left three children dead, happened.

Chris Rimmer said his cousin, who remains in hospital, is awake and has spoken for the first time.

He said Ms Lucas, who was initially in a critical condition, is now recovering but is “not out of the woods yet”.

Mr Rimmer said Ms Lucas had ushered children into a storage room and “shielded two little girls” from the attacker, which is when she is thought to have been injured.

“She’s just a star. She always gives, and never expects anything from anybody,” he said.

“She’s one of the most outgoing people I’ve ever met in my life. She’s absolutely amazing.”

Mr Rimmer, 41, said the family had been “torn apart” by the incident but that they had gathered at home to comfort each other while her mum, dad and sister stayed by Leanne’s bedside at the hospital.

He also said that, while the family did not want to share too much information regarding her recovery, she was “doing OK” and that the family wanted to keep Leanne and the other victims of the attack at the forefront of people’s minds.

Bebe King, six, Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven, and Alice Dasilva Aguiar, nine, died in the attack, which took place at the Hart Space, a local community hub.

Eight children, Ms Lucas, and one other adult – Jonathan Hayes – were also injured, with several in critical condition.

Speaking to the BBC from his hospital bed, Mr Hayes said he was “saddened” he could not have done more to protect the children from the attack.

Mr Rimmer, a local landscape gardener, said: “So many families have been absolutely destroyed because of what has happened.”

A 17-year-old boy was arrested on Monday on suspicion of murder and attempted murder and remains in custody.

The suspect, who cannot named because of his age, was born in Cardiff and later moved to nearby village Banks, just outside Southport.

The attack is not being treated as terror-related.

A peaceful vigil took place on Tuesday evening in Southport but unrest broke out shortly afterwards, leading to the arrest of four men over the disorder.

Police said 53 officers had been injured and a mosque was damaged.

Merseyside Police said the disturbance was believed to have involved English Defence League supporters.

When asked about his response to this violence, he said: “Southport has just been torn apart, but we can’t think of [that] at the moment.

“Everyone is just concentrating on getting Leanne home so we can see her.”

Since the attack, fans of Taylor Swift have so far raised over £310,000 for the victims and their families.

The group, who are working with Alder Hey Children’s Hospital, had originally aimed to raise £13,000.