While “Z” might be Russia’s symbol of its invasion, a triangle represents Ukraine’s most audacious attempt to repel it.

They are taped or painted on the sides of every supply truck, tank, or personnel carrier that heads towards the Russian border in the Sumy region.

It’s an offensive that has seized hundreds of square kilometres of Russian territory and palpably restored momentum and morale to Ukraine’s war effort.

The Russian official in charge of the border region of Kursk has spoken of 28 settlements under Ukrainian control and almost 200,000 Russians have fled their homes.

Tomash has just returned from Ukraine’s cross-border mission along with his comrade “Accord”, who nonchalantly says it was “cool”.

Their drone unit had spent two days paving the way for the cross border incursion.

“We had orders to come here, but we didn’t know what that meant,” Tomash admits as he pauses for a coffee at a petrol station.

“We suppressed the enemy’s means of communication and surveillance in advance to clear the way.”

Exactly how much Russian territory has been seized is uncertain, although there is scepticism over Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi’s claim that 1,000 sq km is under Ukrainian control.

Russia’s defence ministry insisted on Tuesday that Ukrainian attempts to push deeper had been thwarted but they have been proved wrong before.

Whatever the reality, it appears Kyiv is committed to this military gamble.

The level of activity in the neighbouring Sumy region is something I haven’t seen since the liberations of 2022, when there was a feeling of wind in Ukrainian sails.

It’s undoubtedly a welcome departure from the grinding war of attrition of the last 18 months, but to label it a success or failure would be premature.

The goal of this offensive is unclear, although President Volodymyr Zelensky has spoken of targeting sites from which Russia can launch attacks on Ukraine and bringing “a just peace” closer.

But it is evident Kyiv is deploying some of its best troops.

Fit-looking soldiers gather around vehicles that match their muscularity. Most politely decline to talk. Some look exhausted.

Over the Telegram messaging app, a soldier still in Russia tells us months of planning went into forcing Moscow to move troops from other parts of the front line in Ukraine.

“The element of surprise worked,” he says. “We entered easily with little resistance. On 6 August, the first groups crossed at night in several directions.”

“Almost immediately they reached the western outskirts of the city of Sudzha,” he adds.

With operations like this, secrecy suits the soldiers carrying them out. The same cannot be said for civilians.

On both sides of the border, tens of thousands are being evacuated after an increase in air strikes and fighting.

“The Russian civilians we encounter don’t resist,” explains the soldier. “We don’t touch them, but they either treat us sharply, negatively, or not at all.”

“They also deceive us about the positions of Russian troops,” he adds.

The soldiers we speak to confirm that Russian forces have indeed been redeployed from the eastern front line, including the Kharkiv, Pokrovsk and Toretsk directions.

But none of them are reporting a slowing of Russian advances, yet.

Vladimir Putin has promised a “worthy response” to the first capture of Russian territory since World War Two.

But any fear he intended to spread has not reached the dusty border settlements habitually bombed by his forces.

Misha and his friend Valera pass us in their orange Lada in the village of Stetskivka.

“I want them to take it [Kursk region] and do this!” says Misha, making a twisting gesture with his hands.

“They should take everything, even Moscow!”

It’s an anger anchored in being on the receiving end of Russia’s relentless full-scale invasion which began in February 2022.

“Russia attacked first, not us,” chimes in Valera with his window down. “Now our guys have responded and shown what we’re capable of. We’d have captured it earlier if we’d had permission.”

Ukraine, it seems, finally has the Western green light it had been yearning for to strike across the border.

The stakes are still dauntingly high, as illustrated by new defences being built on the outskirts of Sumy city.

Until last week, the area had been fearing a Russian offensive in Ukraine’s north. If Ukraine’s incursion fails, those worries could be realised quickly.

Ukrainian forces were, and still are, outnumbered by the Russian aggressors.

“For us to keep hold of this Russian territory we need two things,” writes our Ukrainian soldier on enemy soil.

“More towns like Sudzha under our control, and reserves,” he says.

“Our front line is already bursting at the seams, and it’s not clear where we will get them.”

For Kyiv, the logic or hope is that Russia is forced to switch focus from fighting on Ukrainian soil to its own.

Some in Ukraine believe this counter-offensive could even boost its position in any future peace negotiations.

It could equally push talks even further away.

Early on Friday morning, a 31-year-old female trainee doctor retired to sleep in a seminar hall after a gruelling day at one of India’s oldest hospitals.

It was the last time she was seen alive.

The next morning, her colleagues discovered her half-naked body on the podium, bearing extensive injuries. Police later arrested a hospital volunteer worker in connection with what they say is a case of rape and murder at Kolkata’s 138-year-old RG Kar Medical College.

Enraged doctors went on strike both in the city and across India, demanding a strict federal law to protect healthcare workers. The tragic incident has again cast a spotlight on the violence against healthcare workers in the country.

Women make up nearly 30% of India’s doctors and 80% of the nursing staff. They are also more vulnerable than their male colleagues. Official data reveals a troubling 4% increase in crimes against women in 2022, with over 20% of these incidents involving rape and assault.

The crime in the Kolkata hospital last week exposed the alarming security risks faced by them in many of India’s state-run health facilities.

At RG Kar Hospital, which sees over 3,500 patients daily, the overworked trainee doctors – some working up to 36 hours straight – had no designated rest rooms, forcing them to seek rest in a third-floor seminar room.

Reports indicate that the arrested suspect, a patient volunteer with a troubled past, had unrestricted access to the ward and was captured on CCTV. Police allege that no background checks were conducted on the volunteer.

“The hospital has always been our first home; we only go home to rest. We never imagined it could be this unsafe. Now, after this incident, we’re terrified,” says Madhuparna Nandi, a junior doctor at Kolkata’s 76-year-old National Medical College.

Dr Nandi’s own journey highlights how female doctors in India’s government hospitals have become resigned to working in conditions that compromise their security.

At her hospital, where she is a resident in gynaecology and obstetrics, there are no designated rest rooms and separate toilets for female doctors.

“I use the patients’ or the nurses’ toilets if they allow me. When I work late, I sometimes sleep in an empty patient bed in the ward or in a cramped waiting room with a bed and basin,” Dr Nandi told me.

She says she feels insecure even in the room where she rests after 24-hour shifts that start with outpatient duty and continue through ward rounds and maternity rooms.

One night in 2021, during the peak of the Covid pandemic, some men barged into her room and woke her by touching her, demanding, “Get up, get up. See our patient.”

“I was completely shaken by the incident. But we never imagined it would come to a point where a doctor could be raped and murdered in the hospital,” Dr Nandi says.

What happened on Friday was not an isolated incident. The most shocking case remains that of Aruna Shanbaug, a nurse at a prominent Mumbai hospital, who was left in a persistent vegetative state after being raped and strangled by a ward attendant in 1973. She died in 2015, after 42 years of severe brain damage and paralysis. More recently, in Kerala, Vandana Das, a 23-year-old medical intern, was fatally stabbed with surgical scissors by a drunken patient last year.

In overcrowded government hospitals with unrestricted access, doctors often face mob fury from patients’ relatives after a death or over demands for immediate treatment. Kamna Kakkar, an anaesthetist, remembers a harrowing incident during a night shift in an intensive care unit (ICU) during the pandemic in 2021 at her hospital in Haryana in northern India.

“I was the lone doctor in the ICU when three men, flaunting a politician’s name, forced their way in, demanding a much in-demand controlled drug. I gave in to protect myself, knowing the safety of my patients was at stake,” Dr Kakkar told me.

Namrata Mitra, a Kolkata-based pathologist who studied at the RG Kar Medical College, says her doctor father would often accompany her to work because she felt unsafe.

“During my on-call duty, I took my father with me. Everyone laughed, but I had to sleep in a room tucked away in a long, dark corridor with a locked iron gate that only the nurse could open if a patient arrived,” Dr Mitra wrote in a Facebook post over the weekend.

“I’m not ashamed to admit I was scared. What if someone from the ward – an attendant, or even a patient – tried something? I took advantage of the fact that my father was a doctor, but not everyone has that privilege.”

When she was working in a public health centre in a district in West Bengal, Dr Mitra spent nights in a dilapidated one-storey building that served as the doctor’s hostel.

“From dusk, a group of boys would gather around the house, making lewd comments as we went in and out for emergencies. They would ask us to check their blood pressure as an excuse to touch us and they would peek through the broken bathroom windows,” she wrote.

Years later, during an emergency shift at a government hospital, “a group of drunk men passed by me, creating a ruckus, and one of them even groped me”, Dr Mitra said. “When I tried to complain, I found the police officers dozing off with their guns in hand.”

Things have worsened over the years, says Saraswati Datta Bodhak, a pharmacologist at a government hospital in West Bengal’s Bankura district. “Both my daughters are young doctors and they tell me that hospital campuses are overrun by anti-social elements, drunks and touts,” she says. Dr Bodhak recalls seeing a man with a gun roaming around a top government hospital in Kolkata during a visit.

India lacks a stringent federal law to protect healthcare workers. Although 25 states have some laws to prevent violence against them, convictions are “almost non-existent”, RV Asokan, president of the Indian Medical Association (IMA), an organisation of doctors, told me. “Security in hospitals is almost absent,” he says. “One reason is that nobody thinks of hospitals as conflict zones.”

Some states like Haryana have deployed private bouncers to strengthen security at government hospitals. In 2022, the federal government asked the states to deploy trained security forces for sensitive hospitals, install CCTV cameras, set up quick reaction teams, restrict entry to “undesirable individuals” and file complaints against offenders. Nothing much has happened, clearly.

Even the protesting doctors don’t seem to be very hopeful. “Nothing will change… The expectation will be that doctors should work round the clock and endure abuse as a norm,” says Dr Mitra. It is a disheartening thought.

A murder investigation has been opened into Bangladesh’s former prime minister Sheikh Hasina over the police killing of a man during civil unrest.

Six other top figures in the previous government are also being investigated following weeks of deadly unrest in the capital Dhaka.

Ms Hasina resigned earlier this month, fleeing to neighbouring India, as calls grew for her to stand down.

Just hours after the case was filed against her, she called for an investigation into the protests that led to her resignation.

In her first public statement since she left the country, she asked for those involved to “be identified and punished accordingly”.

More than 400 people were killed in weeks of student demonstrations culminating in the demands against Ms Hasina. Many of them were shot by the police, on her orders.

Mamun Mia, a lawyer who brought the case against the former prime minister on behalf of a private citizen, said the court in Dhaka had ordered police to accept “the murder case against the accused persons”.

This is the first step in a criminal investigation under Bangladeshi law.

Businessman Amir Hamza applied to bring the murder case in July, after a local grocer Abu Saeed was shot in the head while crossing the road.

He told a court that on 19 July, students were holding a peaceful protest, alleging police had fired indiscriminately on the crowd, according to BBC Bangla.

Mr Hamza said he was not related to Mr Saeed but approached the court because the grocer’s family did not have the finances to file the case.

“I am the first ordinary citizen who showed the courage to take this legal step against Sheikh Hasina for her crimes. I will see the case to an end,” he told Reuters news agency.

Magistrate Rajesh Chowdhury ordered the police to investigate the case, the first to be brought against Ms Hasina since the protests started.

The former Transport and Bridges Minister Obaidul Quader is among those being investigated.

Ms Hasina’s government, which was in power for 15 years, was accused of widespread human rights violations and dogged by allegations of rampant corruption.

The student protests began in early July, starting out as peaceful demands to scrap quotas in civil service jobs, before transforming into a wider movement which toppled the government.

Ms Hasina urged police to clamp down hard on the protestors, referring to them as “not students but terrorists who are out to destabilise the nation”.

The recently formed new government contains many of the protestors, and is helmed by Nobel Peace laureate Muhammad Yunus.

Ms Hasina will return to the country when elections are declared, her son Sajeeb Wazed Joy has said.

The Australian city of Melbourne has banned rental electronic scooters with officials saying they posed unacceptable safety risks.

The U-turn by the city’s council comes after it first welcomed the scooters in February 2022, saying they would operate a two-year trial.

However, hundreds of accidents since then have sparked complaints and outrage from the public.

Melbourne’s mayor said he was “fed up” with the bad behaviour of some scooter users.

“Too many people [are] riding on footpaths. People don’t park them properly. They’re tipped, they’re scattered around the city like confetti, like rubbish, creating tripping hazards,” Nicholas Reece told local radio station 3AW.

Melbourne is just the latest city in the world to remove hire scooters – which can go at up to 26km/h (16mph) – after a brief period of operation. The French capital Paris outlawed them last September – Mr Reece said he wanted to copy “the Paris option”.

City councillors voted 6-4 on Tuesday evening local time to ban the scooters almost immediately.

Operators Lime and Neuron have been ordered to remove the scooters within 30 days.

The companies still had six months left on their contracts to operate the vehicles and had been campaigning heavily in recent weeks, urging users to petition the council.

Both companies said they had invested significantly in recent months to improve safety and regulations around the use of scooters – with Neuron saying it was planning on installing AI cameras on scooters to prevent misuse.

A spokesman for the company decried the city council’s blanket ban on Tuesday, saying they had been in discussions with city officials to introduce measures like restricting the scooter use to less congested parts of the city, or setting up riding zones.

“This goes over and above the reforms announced by the state government,” Jayden Bryant from Neuron had earlier told Australian media.

“It is very odd that [a different] tabled proposal for the introduction of new e-scooter technology can change to become a proposal for a ban.”

About 1,500 Lime and Neuron scooters had been distributed across the city since the trial’s inception in February 2022.

Melbourne city council had previously reported that scooters had cut the city’s carbon emissions by more than 400 tonnes and encouraged greater take-up of public transport.

But there has also been growing evidence of the scheme’s flaws. One of the city’s main hospitals, the Royal Melbourne hospital, published a report in December 2023 which found close to 250 scooter-riders presented at its emergency department with injuries in 2022. A majority of these involved factors such as intoxication, speeding and not wearing a helmet.

A hospital spokesman said e-scooter accidents had even caused deaths and brain damage, with injuries mainly among younger patients.

Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida will not seek re-election as leader of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), which he says needs a “new start”.

The 67-year-old LDP veteran is expected to step down as PM after the party elects a new leader in September.

Support for Mr Kishida, who has been PM since 2021, has fallen in the wake of a corruption scandal involving his party, rising living costs and a slumping yen.

His approval ratings had plummeted to 15.5% last month – the lowest for a PM in more than a decade.

“In the upcoming presidential election, it’s necessary to show the people that the Liberal Democratic Party will change,” Mr Kishida said at a press conference on Wednesday announcing his decision.

“A transparent and open election, and free and open debate are important. The first easy-to-understand step that indicates that the LDP will change is for me to step back,” he said.

Within the party, some have doubted whether Mr Kishida can lead the LDP to a win in the next general election due in 2025. The party has been in power almost continuously since 1955.

Analysts have told the BBC that Japan is going through a “once-in-a-generation” political crisis as the ruling party fights to clean up its image.

Last December, four LDP cabinet ministers resigned within a fortnight over a fundraising scandal involving the ruling party’s most powerful faction.

Five senior vice-ministers and a parliamentary vice-minister from the same faction, formerly led by the late PM Shinzo Abe, also quit.

Japan’s prosecutors launched a criminal investigation into whether dozens of LDP lawmakers received proceeds from fundraising events that saw millions of dollars kept off official party records.

But Mr Kishida’s handling of the fundraising scandal drew public criticism, which made him more unpopular.

The controversy also unfolded as Japanese households struggled with food prices soaring at the fastest rate in almost half a century.

The combination of economic woes and political scandal fuelled mistrust in the ruling party, despite a weak and divided opposition.

A far-right Israeli minister has led hundreds of Jewish Israelis into Jerusalem’s most contested holy site, with many defying the Israeli government’s long-standing ban on Jewish prayer there.

The visit by National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir to the al-Aqsa Mosque compound, known to Jews as Temple Mount, has been condemned as provocative by Palestinian leaders, as well as the US, France, the UN and several Arab states.

Mr Ben-Gvir said in a video that “our policy is to enable Jewish prayer”.

But the Israeli prime minister’s office insisted there had been no change to the status quo agreement that allows only Muslim worship there.

The site is the holiest place for Jews because it was the site of two Biblical temples. It is the third holiest place for Muslims, who believe it was where the Prophet Muhammad ascended to heaven.

Situated in occupied East Jerusalem, it was captured by Israel from Jordan in the 1967 Middle East war. Under the status quo, Jordan was allowed to continue its historical role as custodian of the site, while Israel assumed control of security and access.

Palestinians accuse Israel of taking steps to undermine the arrangements and complain that in recent years Jewish visitors have often been seen praying without being stopped by Israeli police.

Videos shared on social media on Tuesday showed groups of Jewish Israelis singing the Israeli national anthem, some carrying the Israeli flag while others prostrate themselves in prayer at the edge of the holy site.

Visiting the compound escorted by Israeli police, Itamar Ben Gvir, said “great progress” had been made in Israel’s “governance and sovereignty” there. “Our policy is to enable Jewish prayer,” he went on.

He also declared that Israel “must win the war” in the Gaza Strip, and should not get involved in the talks on a ceasefire and hostage release deal in order to “bring Hamas to its knees”.

Later, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said the incident had “deviated from the status quo.”

“Israel’s policy on the Temple Mount has not changed; this is how it has been and this is how it will be,” it stressed.

In response to the statement, Mr Ben-Gvir said that it was his own policy to “enable freedom of worship for Jews in all places”.

“There is no law that permits engaging in racist discrimination against Jews at the Temple Mount or anywhere else in Israel,” he added.

However, the Palestinian foreign ministry expressed great concern about what it called “the dangerous escalation resulting from the raids by extremist settlers on the blessed al-Aqsa Mosque”.

“The ministry will continue its political efforts to address these provocations at various levels, warning of their serious consequences on the conflict arena and the region as a whole,” a statement said.

The Jordanian Islamic endowment which administers the site, the Waqf, said more than 2,000 Israelis had entered the compound and appealed to Muslims across the world to help it maintain the status quo.

Jordan’s foreign ministry said the incident reflected “the insistence of the Israeli government and its extremist members to flout international laws and Israel’s obligations as the occupying power”.

Egypt and Saudi Arabia also said the incident violated international law, with the former adding that Mr Ben-Gvir was seeking to scupper attempts to broker a Gaza ceasefire deal.

In a statement, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Mr Ben-Gvir’s visit “demonstrated blatant disregard for the historic status quo with respect to the holy sites in Jerusalem.

“These provocative actions only exacerbate tensions at a pivotal moment when all focus should be on the ongoing diplomatic efforts to achieve a ceasefire agreement and secure the release of all hostages and create the conditions for broader regional stability,” the US’s top diplomat added.

The French foreign ministry condemned Mr Ben-Gvir’s visit, saying: “This new provocation is unacceptable”.

UN spokesperson Farhan Haq called the incident “unhelpful and unduly provocative”, adding: “We are against any efforts to change the status quo within the holy sites.”

The Melbourne Symphony Orchestra (MSO) has cancelled an acclaimed pianist’s upcoming recital after comments he made on the Israel-Gaza war.

Jayson Gillham premiered Witness at a show at the MSO on Sunday. The piece was penned by another composer as a tribute to the Palestinian press.

The British-Australian was scheduled to perform again on Thursday, but the MSO has said it is reworking the programme after Gillham introduced the piece by saying Israel had killed more than 100 journalists.

A spokesperson for Gillham told the ABC he won’t comment on the decision to drop him “out of respect to the MSO and his ongoing relationship with them”.

Gillham – who is billed on the MSO website as “as one of the finest pianists of his generation” – was born in Australia but lives in the UK.

At the concert at the Iwaki Auditorium on Sunday, he performed a range of works, from Beethoven to Chopin. He also played Witness, written by Australian composer Connor D’Netto, which the MSO says was a last-minute addition.

“Over the last 10 months, Israel has killed more than 100 Palestinian journalists,” Mr Gillham said before starting the piece.

A number were “targeted assassinations of prominent journalists” who were travelling in marked press vehicles or wearing press jackets, he claimed.

“The killing of journalists is a war crime in international law, and it is done in an effort to prevent the documentation and broadcasting of war crimes to the world,” he added.

In an email to patrons, the MSO said they were blindsided by Mr Gillham’s comments and he had put them in a “difficult situation”.

“The MSO does not condone the use of our stage as a platform for expressing personal views”, it added.

Hamas-led gunmen killed about 1,200 people in an attack on Israel on 7 October, taking 251 others back to Gaza as hostages.

That attack triggered a massive Israeli military offensive on Gaza and the current war.

More than 39,790 Palestinians have been killed in the Israeli campaign, according to Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry.

The Committee to Protect Journalists, an independent organisation that promotes press freedom, reports that 113 of those were journalists.

Apologising for the “offence and distress” caused, the MSO said it had removed Gillham from the program and would update customers soon.

In a statement given to local media, a spokesperson for the MSO said: “Mr Gillham’s remarks went beyond the remit of his contract.”

The decision has caused a backlash on social media. High profile barrister Greg Barns said the cancellation was “truly appalling” while arts critics and former Sydney Symphony Orchestra chairman Leo Schofield said “MSO management should hang its collective head in shame”.

The Israel-Gaza war has become a volatile political issue in Australia that all sides have sought to carefully manage.

As has been the case in countless other countries, there have been protests from both Jewish and Muslim communities, as well as a sharp uptick in Islamophobia and antisemitism.

Newborn twins were killed in an Israeli airstrike in Gaza while their father was at a local government office to register their birth.

Asser, a boy, and Ayssel, a girl, were just four days old when their father Mohammed Abu al-Qumsan went to collect their birth certificates.

While he was away, his neighbours called to say their home in Deir al Balah had been bombed.

The strike also killed his wife and the twins’ grandmother.

“I don’t know what happened,” he said. “I am told it was a shell that hit the house.”

“I didn’t even have the time to celebrate them,” he added.

Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry says 115 infants have been born and then killed during the war.

According to AP news agency, the family had followed an order to evacuate Gaza City in the opening weeks of the Israel-Gaza war, seeking shelter in a central part of the strip, as the Israeli army instructed.

The BBC has asked the Israeli army for comment on the strike, and is waiting for a response.

Israel says it tries to avoid harming civilians and blames their deaths on Hamas operating in dense residential areas, including using civilian buildings as shelter.

But officials rarely comment on individual strikes.

Several such shelters in Gaza have been attacked in the past few weeks.

On Saturday, an Israeli air strike on a school building sheltering displaced Palestinians in Gaza City killed more than 70 people, the director of a hospital told the BBC.

An Israeli military spokesman said the school “served as an active Hamas and Islamic Jihad military facility”, which Hamas denied.

Israel disputed the number of dead, but the BBC could not independently verify figures from either side.

Hamas-led gunmen killed about 1,200 people in an attack on Israel on 7 October, taking 251 others back to Gaza as hostages.

That attack triggered a massive Israeli military offensive on Gaza and the current war.

More than 39,790 Palestinians have been killed in the Israeli campaign, according to Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry.

Pakistan’s former spymaster – who was once tipped for the army’s top job – has been taken into military custody.

Lt Gen Faiz Hameed has been accused of abusing his power and raiding a private property development business during his time as head of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency.

It is incredibly rare for someone of Gen Hameed’s rank to be arrested in Pakistan, and has sparked widespread speculation, with many linking the move to his close ties with former prime minister Imran Khan.

He led the ISI during Mr Khan’s administration, from 2019 to 2021, before taking early retirement in December 2022.

The two were understood to be very close during that period.

The army’s official statement said the arrest of Gen Hameed was ordered by the Supreme Court, and that the military had now started “the process of Field General Court Martial”.

A court martial is a legal military hearing.

It also noted there had also been “multiple instances of violation” of the Pakistan Army Act since his retirement.

In an interview with the BBC, retired officer Lt Gen Talat Hussain described the move as “unusual” and predicted that many more arrests could follow.

According to some analysts, the arrest could be seen as part of the military’s drive to hold people accountable within the institution.

The arrest of such a high-ranking officer signals that no one is beyond scrutiny, according to Senator Irfan Siddiqi, a close ally of former prime minister Nawaz Sharif.

However, others suggest that this may be more about settling old scores, with indications that the current army leadership and General Hameed did not see eye to eye.

There is also speculation that the arrest reflects a willingness to take action against those who were seen as backing Imran Khan, even if they were outside the political arena.

Mr Khan, who has been imprisoned for more than a year and is facing numerous charges, was once closely aligned with Pakistan’s military leadership.

Opposition figures have previously accused Gen Hameed of being responsible for “selecting” Mr Khan for office, and was apparently so confident he was going to be named army chief he boasted of it, according to the BBC’s former Pakistan correspondent.

Mr Khan’s PTI party has appeared to shrug off speculation the arrest could be linked to them, with chairman Barrister Gohar Ali Khan describing the military’s actions as an internal matter.

The government has welcomed the arrest.

Gen Hameed could not be reached for comment.

Democratic congresswoman and member of the “Squad”, Ilhan Omar, has fended off a primary election challenge in Minnesota, according to US media projections.

Ms Omar faced three challengers in the primary contest to determine the party’s nominee and will now continue on to the November election in the state’s solidly Democratic-leaning 5th District.

The race had been closely watched after successful primary challengers took down two fellow members of the “Squad” – a group of progressive Democrats who have been among the most vocal critics in Congress of Israel’s handling of the war in Gaza.

It was one of several primary races on Tuesday in Connecticut, Wisconsin, Vermont and Minnesota.

With 99% of the votes counted on Tuesday night, the Associated Press reported that Ms Omar won with 67,524 votes, or by just over 56%.

Coming in second was Don Samuels, a former member of the Minneapolis City Council who had also narrowly lost to Ms Omar in 2022.

He received just under 49% of the votes on Tuesday.

Earlier this month Rep Cori Bush of Missouri lost her primary race and in June Jamaal Bowman in New York was also defeated – both after pro-Israel groups poured millions into those races backing other Democrats.

The pair were elected in 2020 amid a year marked by racial justice protests after the killing in Minneapolis of George Floyd, an unarmed Black man.

A Super-Pac operated by the pro-Israel group American Israel Public Affairs Committee appears to have stayed out of Ms Omar’s race.

It had spent millions in races against Mr Bowman and Ms Bush, according to data from Open Secrets, which tracks money in politics.

Super-Pacs are independent “political action committees” that can raise unlimited amounts of money to support an election candidate.

The Intercept reported on Sunday that a last-minute effort by wealthy pro-Israel donors raised six-figure sums to help Mr Samuels.

Opinion polls had suggested Ms Omar would win the challenge.

An internal poll taken last month indicated she was ahead by 30 points, according to media reports.

Ms Omar has gotten help on the campaign trail from progressive Senator Bernie Sanders and Vice-President Kamala Harris, who is running for president.

Ms Omar, who was born in Somalia, is one of the first Muslims to be elected to the US Congress.

She had been an outspoken critic of Israel even before the war in Gaza.

She was removed by the Republican-controlled House from the House Foreign Affairs Committee in February 2023 over a number of comments she’d made about Israel.

Democrats and Ms Omar said at the time it was revenge after two Republicans were ousted from committees in 2020 when Democrats held a House majority.

In 2019, Ms Omar seemed to suggest that Israel demands “allegiance” from American lawmakers and any criticism is viewed as antisemitic, implying money was behind the support for Israel.

Ms Omar apologised for those remarks.

In 2022, when the two last faced off, Ms Omar received 50% of the vote and Mr Samuels received 48%.

Minnesota Democratic Senator Amy Klobuchar, who has served in the upper chamber of the US Congress since 2007, also won her primary challenge on Tuesday.

Two polar bears killed a worker at a remote Arctic radar station in Canada’s northern Nunavut territory, prompting an investigation into the rare fatal attack.

The employee, who has not been named, was working for Nasittuq Corporation – a logistics company which operates radar defence sites on behalf of the Canadian government.

Other workers responded to the scene and killed one of the bears, the company said in a statement.

“We are working closely with local authorities and regulatory agencies to conduct a thorough investigation into the circumstances surrounding this incident,” the company said.

“The safety and well-being of our employees is our highest priority, and we are deeply committed to ensuring a safe working environment.”

The attack took place last week on Brevoort Island, southeast of Baffin Island.

The site is one of dozens of North Warning System outposts in northern Canada, according to CBS News, the BBC’s partner in the US.

The network, which spans 3,100 miles (5,000km), exists to detect aircraft or missiles entering the region.

Polar bear attacks on humans are extremely rare, but this is at least the second recorded fatality from a polar bear attack since 2023.

Last year, a woman and her 1-year-old son were killed by a polar bear in an Alaskan village.

There are about 17,000 polar bears living in the country – making up around two-thirds of the global population of the species, according to the Canadian government.

The species is in decline, and scientists attribute it to the loss of sea ice caused by global warming – leading to shrinking of their hunting and breeding grounds.

Elsewhere, a three-year-old girl in the US state of Montana was dragged out of her tent at a private campground by a black bear on Sunday.

Wildlife officials have set traps, and euthanised one bear believed to have been involved in the attack.

Black bears are much smaller than polar bears but can still be very dangerous to humans.

In 2023, a woman in California was fatally attacked and eaten inside her home, marking the first death by a black bear in the state’s history.

A pilot who died after they crashed a stolen helicopter into a hotel in Australia had attended a party with staff members the night before, their employer has said.

The helicopter belonged to Queensland-based helicopter tour agency Nautilus Aviation who said the employee had been celebrating at a private send-off with colleagues hours before the crash.

Nautilus added that the individual was licensed to fly helicopters in New Zealand but had never flown in Australia.

The pilot was killed in the accident, while two hotel guests were taken to hospital in a stable condition.

In a statement to the BBC, Nautilus said the individual had recently been promoted to a “ground crew position” at another of the company’s bases.

On Sunday night, the pilot joined colleagues at a private send-off, which was also attended by off-duty pilots. Nautilus clarified that this was “not a work event and was coordinated by friends”.

Nautilus added that the individual later gained “unauthorised access to our helicopter hangar”.

The helicopter hit the DoubleTree by Hilton hotel in the northern Queensland city of Cairns at around 01:50 local time on Monday (16:50 BST Sunday), sparking a fire and forcing the evacuation of about 400 guests.

Authorities say the only occupant of the helicopter died at the scene, and two hotel guests – a man in his 80s and a woman in her 70s – were taken to hospital in a stable condition.

Amanda Kay, who was staying in the hotel on the main esplanade in Cairns, described seeing a helicopter flying “extra low”, without lights in rainy weather.

“[It] has turned round and hit the building,” she said, adding that the aircraft “blew up”.

Another bystander said she saw the helicopter fly past the hotel twice in the moments before the collision.

“Boy that was going fast, that helicopter. Unbelievable,” a woman said, in video showing the fiery aftermath of the crash.

“It was just going out of control, that thing was.”

Two of the helicopter’s rotor blades came off on impact, landing on the esplanade and in the hotel pool, according to Queensland Ambulance Service (QAS).

Nautilus Aviation said in its statement that it had completed interviews with the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) and the Queensland Police Service (QPS), and had cooperated with full transparency on its disclosure of the events leading up to and following the incident.

“We offer our heartfelt condolences to the individual’s family and all who have been affected by this tragedy and continue to offer our support to our employees during this very challenging period,” the statement said.

“We will continue to work very closely with QPS and the ATSB as they investigate the circumstances surrounding the incident.”

Located in northern Queensland, the city of Cairns is a popular tourist destination due to its proximity to the Great Barrier Reef.

A police officer accused of shooting a pregnant woman in Ohio has been charged with her murder.

Ta’Kiya Young, 21, was around 25 weeks pregnant at the time of her death last August. Her unborn daughter also died in the police shooting.

On Tuesday, a grand jury in the city of Columbus found sufficient evidence to file charges against Blendon Township police officer Connor Grubb for murder, involuntary manslaughter and assault.

Bodycam video of the fatal encounter released last year showed police attempting to stop Ms Young from driving away so they could question her about alleged shoplifting.

In the video she appeared to drive toward the officer who fired the fatal shot as he commanded her to exit the car.

Ms Young was suspected of shoplifting alcohol from a Kroger grocery store, investigators say.

Lawyers for Mr Grubb say he fired in self-defence.

“When viewed through the eyes of a reasonable police officer, the evidence will show that our client’s actions were justified, when there is video evidence that Officer Grubb was being hit by a moving vehicle,” said his lawyers Mark Collins and Kaitlyn Stephens.

The local chapter of the Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) labour union on Tuesday slammed the indictment as “politically motivated”.

“We stand firm in advocating for an impartial justice system that focuses on truth and facts, not politics,” said chapter president Brian Steel.

“Like all law enforcement officers, Officer Grubb had to make a split-second decision, a reality all too familiar for those who serve to protect our communities,” he also said, adding decisions were often made under “extreme pressure and often in life-threatening situations”.

Blendon Township Police Chief John Belford said in a video statement that it was immediately beginning a disciplinary process where it would review the facts and then decide the best course of action against the officer.

“I want to be very clear: we’re not passing any judgment on whether Officer Grubb acted properly. We haven’t seen the evidence,” Chief Belford said.

A lawyer representing Ms Young’s family, Sean Walton, called the arrest a “solemn victory in the pursuit of justice” and “yet another symbol of the urgent need for reform in police conduct and accountability”.

“The actions that led to the death of Ta’Kiya – the unnecessary aggression, the chilling commands that amounted to ‘comply or die’ – were there for us all to witness in dreadful clarity,” he said.

Ms Young’s grandmother, Nadine Young, told CBS News that the past year had been very difficult for the family, including Ms Young’s two young sons.

“It’s been agony, it’s been like a whirlwind of hurt and pain,” she said.

Video from the 24 August 2023 encounter shows the two officers speaking with Ms Young for about one minute before the shot is fired.

Both officers were in the car park for an unrelated call.

Ms Young was the mother of two boys, aged six and three. She was due to give birth in November.

Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry has announced it has no intention of permanently holding on to the small pocket of Russian territory it has seized over the last week.

But it still faces a stark choice today – whether to keep its forces there to exert maximum pressure on Moscow or to withdraw now.

Battered daily by Russia’s drones, missiles and glide bombs, its exhausted front-line forces falling slowly back in the Donbas, Ukraine was in dire need of some good news this summer.

With this extraordinarily bold and well-executed incursion into Russia’s Kursk oblast, it got it.

“The most striking thing about this incursion,” said a senior British military source who asked not to be named, “is how well the Ukrainians mastered combined arms warfare, deploying everything from air defence to electronic warfare as well as armour and infantry. It’s impressive.”

The Ukrainians also appear to have used some of the modern Western-supplied weaponry – like the German Marder and other armoured vehicles – rather more effectively than they did in last year’s failed summer offensive to push the Russian army out of Ukraine’s south-eastern provinces.

So where does Ukraine’s foray into Russia go from here?

There will be those on the more cautious end of the spectrum who will argue that Ukraine has already made its point, that Putin’s war of choice must now bring some pain to Russians, that despite recent setbacks on the battlefield in the Donbas, Ukraine has shown itself capable of mounting a sophisticated, combined arms assault using all the elements of modern warfare.

In other words, withdraw now with honour, having given the Kremlin a bloody nose, before Russia brings in enough forces to kill or capture the invading Ukrainians.

But withdrawal would negate two of the apparent objectives of Ukraine’s incursion, namely to put enough pressure on Russia that it is forced to divert some of its own troops in the Donbas and secondly to hold enough Russian territory to use as a bargaining chip in any future peace negotiations.

“If Kyiv holds Russian territory,” says Exeter University’s Dr David Blagden, “it can bargain for the return of its own territory from a position of greater strength. Kyiv will have also sought to damage the impression of the all-powerful Putin regime among Russians and to encourage the Kremlin to seek a settlement lest they jeopardise their hold on power.”

One thing is clear. The presence on Russian soil of foreign forces from Ukraine – a country that President Putin does not even think should exist as an independent nation – is intolerable.

He will throw everything he can at this problem while simultaneously keeping up the pressure on Ukraine in the Donbas and punishing its people with yet more drone and missile strikes.

His irritation was plain to see in Russian TV footage of him chairing an emergency meeting in Moscow yesterday.

So has Ukraine’s gamble paid off?

It is still too early to say. If its forces stay in place inside Russia’s borders they can expect to come under an ever-increasing ferocity of attacks as Moscow’s reaction creaks into gear.

Dr Blagden warns that “the personnel, equipment and logistics demands of attempting to sustain the incursion then hold the taken territory will be significant, especially as supply lines lengthen.”

This has undoubtedly been Ukraine’s boldest move this year. It has also been its riskiest.

When Roberto Macri built his luxury hotel in the Kenyan coastal village of Kipini, it was about 100m (330ft) away from the beautiful waters of the Indian Ocean.

For nearly two decades his business thrived as tourists arrived in droves to enjoy the pristine beach and sunny weather.

The Tana Lodge Hotel, which was built on top of sand dunes, offered a spectacular view of the ocean.

But in 2014 people started to notice a change. The sea level had begun to rise and within five years, the hotel’s nine guest cottages had been swallowed by the sea – one after the other.

“The ocean changed steadily and started encroaching the hotel. The last standing cottage was gulped by the sea in 2019, marking the end of my glorious hotel,” Italian businessman Mr Macri told the BBC.

Now other residents of Kipini village, whose houses are located further back from the hotel, are facing the same prospect.

Kipini – built at the mouth of Kenya’s longest waterway, the Tana River, which flows into the Indian Ocean – is among several coastal villages that are slowly disappearing.

“The ocean advances every day and our houses are becoming weaker. We are afraid and distressed but there is nothing much we can do,” Saida Idris, a community leader, told the BBC.

She said several people had died and an unknown number were missing after being swept away by the rise in sea levels, coupled with strong winds and heavy tides, especially at night.

The depletion of mangrove forests along the shoreline – the coast’s main line of defence against erosion – is to blame.

Mangrove forests are full of salt-tolerant trees and shrubs that prevent sea water from advancing into farmlands by stabilising soil that otherwise could be washed away.

The cause of their disappearance appears to be a combination of deforestation by locals wanting coveted hard wood – and rising sea water as a result of climate change, which scientists feel is the major factor.

“The shoreline in Kipini is very exposed to the effects of strong winds that strengthen the ocean waves,” George Odera, a scientist with Fauna and Flora, a nature conservancy group, explained.

Kipini, with its welcoming palm trees and smells of spice and barbecuing seafood, evokes what every Kenyan pictures of laid-back coastal life.

But this idyll is under threat as the seawater levels continue to rise.

According to Omar Halki, a local administrator, nearly 10km (6.2 miles) of what used to be dry land have been swallowed by the sea in the last 10 years.

“It’s just a matter of time before the whole region goes under water,” he told the BBC.

Kipini has a population of about 4,000 people and residents told the BBC they could no longer dig or build strong foundations for their homes because of the rising sea levels.

Some in Kipini estimate that more than 1,000 people have relocated to other villages over the last decade.

Most of the wells or boreholes that used to give them fresh water have now turned saline, forcing them to look for alternative sources of drinking water.

The increasing salinity in groundwater has also severely affected farming.

Crabs and prawns, which have also served as a source of livelihood for locals, are now scare as their breeding grounds are within the mangrove swamps.

The rising waters have affected almost all facets of life, including how people are buried.

“Graves are shallow because if we dig the recommended six feet, the dead will be buried in water,” one resident told the BBC.

Kipini is within Tana River county, which is facing multiple climate emergencies – from severe drought and water shortages in some places to flooding in others.

It is the county’s first recorded instance of a village being overtaken by rising sea levels.

But some locals say the geography of the coast has always changed – pointing to how the small fishing community of nearby Ungwana Bay was swept away years ago.

Others say the Tana River could be changing its course.

“Our forefathers showed us where the original waterway used to pass,” resident Rishadi Badi told the BBC, explaining that he was told the river used to pass through Kipini generations ago.

But Mr Odera, who studies the calamity facing Kipini, puts the blame squarely on climate change.

“What is happening in Kipini is not history, it is a recent occurrence and the bitter truth is, it is not getting better,” he said.

Local authorities want to build a sea wall along the 72km (45-mile) coastline to save the village from further intrusion by the ocean.

Although the authorities acknowledge the situation is dire, the wall project is yet to start because of a lack of funds, says Mwanajuma Hiribae, a senior land official in the county.

“The seawater intrusion is a deeper problem affecting about 15 other villages and the county government alone cannot undertake to solve it,” she told the BBC.

Although she said the UN Environment Programme and UN Habitat had expressed support for the wall project.

Similar walls have been built at the historical sites such as Fort Jesus in Mombasa and Vasco Da Gama Pillar in Malindi after the rise in seawater threatened these tourist attractions.

But climate experts say building a wall in Kipini is a “mechanistic solution”, and there needs to be conservation initiatives, like the restoration of mangrove forests.

“The sea is not something that the government will just wake up and stop. We need to help our communities to adapt and become more resilient to these climatic changes,” Mr Odera said.

Locals say that they feel like they are temporary visitors in their own homes, walking to the shore every day to check how far the ocean has moved.

“If no help comes within three years, the entire Kipini region will be swallowed by the ocean,” Mr Halki said.

For Mr Macri, the whole situation has been devastating and he has now moved to the coastal town of Malindi town,170km (100 miles) from Kipini.

“The area was like gold – a calm village with beautiful sand dunes surrounded by coconut trees and historical buildings just next to the beach,” he said.

All that remains of his $460,000 investment is what used to be the manager’s house, standing less than 50m from the sea and awaiting its fate.

Out of the 10 acres (four hectares) on which the hotel stood on, four are fully submerged.

Mr Macri is holding on to his remaining six acres hoping to return and invest again once the ocean has been stopped from encroaching on to land.

His former managing director, Joseph Gachango, is equally bereft.

“It broke my heart to see the hotel that used to attract guests from as far as Italy wiped out with about 50 workers losing their jobs,” he said.

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Business owner Louis Ho remembers how so many of Hong Kong’s taxi drivers refused to take him and his mother – who was a wheelchair user – to hospital for routine check-ups.

“I didn’t even need the driver to carry my mum or the wheelchair. I did everything myself,” says the 64-year-old whose mother passed away in 2018.

He is one of many Hong Kongers who have a story to tell about their city’s infamous cabbies. Ask them what they like least about Hong Kong, and taxi drivers will likely be high on the list.

The most common complaints: drivers are rude, refuse to accept rides and often take longer routes so customers have to pay more.

But now the Hong Kong Taxi Council is on a mission to transform this image. They will despatch “courtesy ambassadors” armed with “best-practice” pamphlets to taxi stands.

Will that really help? That depends on who you ask.

A single campaign cannot school rude or misbehaving drivers overnight – there are about 46,000 cabbies in the city, cautions Ryan Wong, the chairman of the council.

But he is hopeful: “This is not the first time that we have done this, and the feedback from drivers has been positive.”

Hong Kongers are more sceptical. An interview clip of a taxi driver saying that passengers, rather than drivers, are the ones to be educated has gone viral in the city – many point to it as evidence that nothing will change.

Many of them are also still smarting from past experiences.

Amy Ho, in her 30s, said she stopped taking taxis a few years ago after an encounter that she found particularly unpleasant.

“I didn’t realise I had asked for a very short journey. As soon as I reached the destination, I scrambled for cash to pay,” she says.

“It was merely five seconds or so, and the driver said, ‘Can you stop dragging on, auntie? I can’t believe you need a ride for such a short distance and you can’t even afford it!’.”

IT worker Kenny Tong now only take a cab about three times a month, preferring to avoid the ordeal where he can. To hail one, he says, he often has to “bow, wait for the driver to lower the car window” and check if his destination is on the driver’s route for the day.

“Some taxi drivers grumble throughout the journey after I have boarded,” he adds.

He also finds it frustrating when drivers do not use GPS and ask him how to reach the destination – even though they have “multiple phones on the dashboard”.

Most disgruntled passengers do not file complaints because it’s time-consuming. Still, there there were about 11,500 complaints last year – a 11% increase from 2019, according to the Transport Advisory Committee. Only a tiny fraction were prosecuted.

Then there is the problem of dishonest drivers – with tourists especially vulnerable.

In early July, a visitor from the China’s eastern province of Zhejiang took to social media to complain that she was only given HK$44 ($5.6; £4.5) in change after giving a cabbie HK$1,000 for a HK$56 ride. She reported the incident to the police, but couldn’t get her money back because of insufficient evidence.

But poor behaviour is only a symptom of the deeper issues that beset the city’s taxi industry, which is struggling with high costs, increased competition and bureaucracy.

There are about 18,000 taxi licenses in the city, and this number has been largely capped since 1994, apart from 2016 when just 25 licenses were issued. Many holders see the licenses as an investment and rent them to drivers.

Leung Tat Chong – who has worked as a taxi driver for more than two decades – says the rent of the licenses has kept rising and a driver has to pay about HK$500 for a 12-hour daytime shift – which does not include fuel. On a typical day, a driver can make HK$500 to HK$800.

“We can only do more business during rush hours, and sometimes we wait for up to 25 minutes and there is not even one single passenger,” he says. “To make a living, some drivers are not as patient and they have no capacity to improve their services.”

This is not an excuse for poor behaviour, he adds, but the “reality” of the industry.

Taxis also face intense competition from Uber which has been hugely popular since its entry into the Hong Kong market in 2014. The company says half of the city’s 7.5 million population have used it at least once.

The taxi industry has called on the government to crack down on the platform, which remains officially illegal in the city, arguing that it is unfair because Uber drivers are not subjected to the same laws – including needing special licences to run.

In late May, some taxi drivers even launched a vigilante sting operation to expose Uber drivers – but that attracted backlash from the public, many of whom say they prefer the ride hailing app precisely because of the issues they have with cab drivers.

“We underestimated the impact of ride-hailing apps,” says Chau Kwok-keung, the chairman of the Hong Kong Taxi and Public Light Bus Association. “Passengers are willing to pay more for a better riding experience.”

While Mr Chau is against Uber, he concedes that there are fewer conflicts on that platform because drivers can pick the passengers and fares are agreed before the journey. He also admits that the industry has been slow to adapt to online hailing systems and digital payment. Most taxi drivers still only accept cash.

The taxi industry also struggles to attract new blood. The average age of drivers is close to 60. Mr Chau argues that the lack of prospects is an important factor, as taxi fare has only been raised four times in the past decade. In 2023, the average income of an urban taxi driver was about HK$22,000, about 10% higher than the city’s median income. Hong Kong ranks 45th in terms of taxi fare in the world, according to living-cost online database Numbeo. Mr Chau says it’s very low considering Hong Kong is an expensive city.

“Many think that only poor people become cabbies, and it’s the last resort when one meets financial difficulties,” says Mr Leung, who thinks that the government should tighten requirements and provide more training for taxi drivers to improve the profession’s image.

But big changes are afoot for the city’s taxi industry.

A demerit-point system will take effect in September, and misbehaviour could lead to a license suspension after a court conviction.

A taxi fleet system will be introduced and authorities have issued five new licenses. It will allow flexible pricing, but in return, these fleets, which include 3,500 taxis, have to provide online booking, personal rating systems and digital payment.

For now, drivers and passengers say they are waiting to see if these reforms can take hold.

“If we provide good service, the industry will grow and there will be more passengers,” says Mr Leung.

From its opening line, Donald Trump’s first television advertisement blasting rival Kamala Harris took aim at what his campaign believes is her biggest weakness – immigration.

“This is America’s border czar,” a narrator said, over images of the vice-president dancing, “and she’s failed us.”

A series of statistics followed, illustrating what the Trump campaign says took place under Ms Harris, who was given a role in dealing with the border crisis by President Joe Biden soon after his inauguration.

The figures in the video ranged from 10 million illegal border crossings to 250,000 fentanyl-related overdose deaths.

The voice concluded: “Kamala Harris: failed, weak, dangerously liberal.”

The Harris campaign responded that the former president was running on “his trademark lies”.

It comes as little surprise that the Trump campaign took its first big swing at Ms Harris as the “failed border czar”, blaming her for the high numbers of undocumented immigrants at the US southern border.

Americans have consistently said in polls this year that immigration is a top problem facing their country, and it will weigh on many of their minds when they cast ballots for the next US president in November.

Since that first ad, Trump and his running mate JD Vance have repeatedly labelled Ms Harris the “failed border czar”, and tied her to relentless images of people wading across the Rio Grande or squeezing under razor wire into the US.

Her critics say she should have found a way to address the issue over the past four years.

But “border czar” is a contested term. Allies and former officials who worked with the vice-president say she was not given responsibility for policing the border.

“It was never that position,” said Ricardo Zuniga, the former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State of Western Hemisphere Affairs.

“She knew from the beginning, as did the entire US government, that it was about tackling migration at its source.”

In early 2021, President Biden gave Ms Harris the unenviable brief of dealing with the “root causes” of Central American immigration.

At the time, people were fleeing a perfect storm of gang-related violence, economic ruin and environmental disasters in a region called the Northern Triangle – Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador.

Talking to migrants passing through Mexico, it was clear that most came from Honduras where, they said, a brutal “narco-dictatorship” was in power and wages were as low as five dollars a day.

While the ultimate aim of the Harris role was to reduce the numbers of people arriving at the US border, Mr Biden never used the words “border czar” in announcing her appointment.

“She is the most qualified person to lead our efforts with Mexico and the Northern Triangle in stemming the movement of so many folks to our southern border,” Mr Biden said at the time.

Still, many people came to see the assignment as all-encompassing. Several media organisations, including the BBC, described Ms Harris as a “czar” in news reports.

Some commentators in Central America and Mexico questioned her qualifications, given Ms Harris had no prior experience in Latin American affairs.

Czar or otherwise, the job was a daunting, thankless task.

Successfully dealing with decades of underinvestment and the region’s deep-seated economic and political strife would require huge amounts of money, along with goodwill and cross-party cooperation. That’s in woefully short supply in Washington, especially when it comes to immigration.

“The idea that any one US administration is going to alter 500 years of history in Central America in a four-year period is ludicrous,” says Ricardo Zúniga.

As the former lead US diplomat on the Northern Triangle, he maintains the Biden administration did make in-roads to Central America’s problems.

He points to Ms Harris’s help raising $5bn (£3.9bn) from the private sector for job creation and entrepreneurship in the region. Several former members of her team recount how she personally called CEOs, persuading them to put in funds.

During her visit to Guatemala and Mexico in June 2021, I saw Ms Harris try to show a kinder face, following four years of Donald Trump’s harsh rhetoric. She said she appreciated that people were fleeing “hunger, hurricanes and pandemic” and went on to set up a Central American corruption task force.

That trip, though, is most remembered for her stark message to all prospective migrants: “Do not come. If you come to our border, you will be turned back.”

Millions ignored her warning. Roughly two years later, in December 2023, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers had 300,000 encounters with undocumented immigrants at the US southern border.

Many who have governed along the border in recent years take a dim view of Kamala Harris and her work in Central America.

“Whatever she was doing diplomatically in other countries, I wouldn’t call it very effective based on what we saw here at the actual border,” says Douglas Nicholls, the Republican Mayor of Yuma, Arizona.

“We had record numbers of people, numbers that far exceeded anything we’d ever seen before, including over three times the population of my city in one year. Those were scary numbers.”

The vice-president is a “legitimate” target on the issue, which he says is not “a made-up excuse to whip up support among the base.”

“It should have been addressed a lot earlier than it was,” says Mayor Nicholls.

Others suggest the funds Ms Harris helped raise had only a small impact on the major incentive driving people north – being paid in US dollars.

Ricardo Barrientos, the director of the Central American Institute of Fiscal Studies, said US private-sector investment paled in comparison to the remittances Central American migrants send home: $37 bn last year alone.

“It’s very small compared to the magnitude of the challenge. Some would say, ‘too little, too late’,” he said.

But Katie Tobin, who worked on immigration at the White House, says Ms Harris’s work has been deliberately “misconstrued and painted in a bad light“.

Ms Harris deserves credit for “a good news story” in Central America, she says. She points to statistics showing a 72% drop in immigration from just Central America between March 2021, when Ms Harris took on the role, and June 2024.

Ultimately, the view of Ms Harris’s record may simply split along party lines.

In recent months, the overall number of undocumented migrants has plummeted.

This is partly due to an executive order issued by President Biden allowing migrants in the US illegally to be deported without processing their asylum requests. There are also more legal pathways into the United States for prospective migrants.

Ms Harris’s defence is primarily to point to Trump’s resistance to getting a bipartisan deal on immigration reform through Congress.

In February, lawmakers reached the deal after intense wrangling, where Democrats ceded much ground to Republican positions. Republican leaders then blocked it at Trump’s behest, reportedly because he did not want to give the Biden administration a win.

“It was Trump himself who, for very openly political reasons, undermined an agreement that would help stabilise the border,” says Mr Zúniga. “So, the Trump campaign is kind of in the way of their own argument on this.”

Mayor Nicholls in Yuma is not moved by that defence, saying: “I think that’s a very short-term memory.”

He recalls contacting the Trump White House at a moment of crisis. He was invited to discuss immigration directly with the president and the Homeland Security secretary in a meeting where he was given more resources.

Three months later, he says “we were out of that crisis”.

“That is effective leadership on the border,” he adds.

Still, Ms Tobin says the Harris campaign should talk about it more.

“When there’s a vacuum and the vice-president doesn’t talk about immigration, it creates an opportunity for Republicans to fill the airwaves with disinformation.”

The Harris campaign responded to Trump’s first advertisement with some of its own.

The first focussed on Trump’s opposition to the immigration deal, and accused him of trying to stop her from fixing the “broken” immigration system.

A more recent one has put the spotlight on her work before the Biden administration, insisting that as California’s attorney general, Ms Harris prosecuted cartels and drug-trafficking gangs – and as president would crack down on fentanyl and human trafficking.

It remains to be seen if this new stance will be enough for her to cast off the “failed border czar” label, given that Republicans will no doubt continue to hammer home that image all the way to election day.

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If you fluff a joke in a TikTok, you’ve always got the option of deleting the video. Not so much live on stage at the world’s biggest performance arts festival.

But for a group of acts who’ve gained a large following on the app, that hasn’t put them off taking their sets offline at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

“All that time posting on TikTok helped me build my confidence,” says Courtney Buchner.

“Having that online platform where I could try things out and feel a little bit safer,” she tells BBC Newsbeat.

TikTok bosses noticed many people like Courtney trying to take their comedy from feeds to theatres this year and the platform has been announced as a sponsor of the festival.

Courtney has had more than a million likes on her TikTok videos, which often include sketches around women’s football.

She didn’t expect to be at this year’s festival but when a slot opened up, she threw herself in.

“Now I’m ready to say to an audience: ‘I’m opening this up to you and to live reactions’.

“Rather than having a reaction in your room, and I don’t get to see it, and you might not like it, and just swipe by,” she says.

Although Courtney says it’s not something she’s personally experienced, she knows there can be some snobbery about performers who’ve cut their teeth online rather than honing their craft in the “real world”.

“There’s that feeling of insecurity that you do have something to prove, that you can move your audience from being online to being fresh and alive in a theatre space,” she says.

“You do hear things about, ‘They’re only getting X, Y and Z because of their following’.

“My answer to that is to get that following took time, patience and talent.”

Chris Hall says his online fans have been surprised by what he’s put on for Fringe so far.

“Some people come and they go, ‘That’s not what we were expecting at all but I really liked it’.

“Hopefully what people like from the [online] content, they see carried through to the stand-up.”

Chris started sharing on TikTok during the coronavirus lockdown and, like Courtney, he says it helped build his confidence, and build a following of almost 600,000.

His videos where he and his sister Elizabeth pretend to be backing singers have earned him thousands of likes and caught the eye of some of the biggest names in the entertainment industry.

“Shania [Twain] was our biggest,” Chris tells Newsbeat.

“That really got the ball – not even the ball rolling. It got the ball catapulted into the stratosphere.”

But he’s left the backing singers skit at home, preferring to offer audiences something different.

“It’s so nice to meet people in real life,” he says, comparing performing on stage to performing online.

“To get that in-person, live feedback.”

Abi Clarke’s journey has been the opposite way round to Chris and Courtney, starting her career in stand-up offline and then moving on to social media.

“I didn’t want to be a social media person,” she says, but adds: “You have to be now.”

Abi now has almost a million followers on TikTok and more than 27 million likes.

Since becoming popular online, she still has to figure out how to translate her online comedy to a real life audience.

“It’s scary. I feel like I’m introducing my school friends to my work friends.

“They’re different forms of performance and they’re different vibes,” she says. “But it’s still me.”

With so many opportunities to go viral, Abi feels using social media to launch a more sustainable live career is a “natural progression” for comedians.

“I think people just want the live genre to be respected and people not to think that they can just come and do a show on the cuff,” she says.

For those thinking of making the leap, she says there are some key differences to overcome when adapting your work.

On social media, “you can be much more niche”, Abi says, and chances are people with similar interests will find you.

But at somewhere like the Fringe, “you don’t know who’s going to come through that door… you have to make sure it’s funny for – hopefully – anyone”.

“You also have to keep their attention for an hour,” she adds, compared to short skits online.

It’s harder “but so much more fun”.

“Social media gets lonely… it can get you down.

“Nothing compares to people laughing live and people being in a room.

“A laugh emoji is never gonna match up to that.”

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

A handbag made from alligator skin and tiny vials of perfume that still release a potent scent are just some of the precious artefacts recovered from the world’s most famous shipwreck – the Titanic.

The exact location of the warehouse where they are stored is a closely guarded secret, because of the value of its contents. All we can say is that it is somewhere in Atlanta, Georgia, in the United States.

Inside, the shelves are packed with thousands of items: from an upturned bathtub and dented porthole, to intricately etched glassware and tiny buttons.

The BBC was given a rare chance to look around the storage facility and discover the stories behind some of these objects.

“It’s a really beautiful, fashionable little bag,” says Tomasina Ray, director of collections for RMS Titanic Inc, the company that has recovered these artefacts. The US firm has the salvage rights to the ship and over the years has retrieved 5,500 items from the wreck site, a selection of which are put on display around the world.

The bag is made from alligator skin, which has survived decades in the depths of the North Atlantic. The delicate items inside have been preserved too, revealing details of the life of its owner – a third-class passenger called Marian Meanwell.

“She was a 63-year-old milliner,” says Tomasina. “And she was travelling to the US to be with her daughter who was recently widowed.”

Among the mementos inside was a faded photograph, thought to be Marian Meanwell’s mother.

There was also paperwork she would need for her new life in America, including a handwritten reference letter from her former landlord in London. It states: “We have always found Miss Meanwell to be a good tenant, prompt with payment.”

Her medical inspection card was inside too, as all third-class passengers needed to prove they weren’t bringing disease into the US. But this water-stained document reveals a tragic twist of fate.

Marian Meanwell was booked on the Majestic – another White Star Line ship. But it didn’t sail, so on the card, Majestic is crossed out and her passage shows that she was transferred to the Titanic and became one of 1,500 people to lose their lives.

“Being able to tell her story and have these objects is really important,” says Tomasina.

“Otherwise she’s just another name on the list.”

Items that belonged to survivors have also been brought back from the deep.

Tomasina opens a plastic container and a sickly-sweet smell fills the air. “It’s very potent,” she admits.

Inside are tiny vials of perfume. They are sealed, but their strong aroma escapes, even after decades on the seafloor.

“There was a perfume salesman on board and he had over 90 of these little perfume vials,” Tomasina explains.

His name was Adolphe Saalfeld and he had been travelling as a second-class passenger.

Saalfeld was one of the 700 people who survived. But with women and children prioritised during the evacuation, some men who made it off the ship were left troubled.

“He had passed by the time we found this,” says Tomasina. “But it’s my understanding that he did live with a bit of guilt – survivor’s guilt.”

Also in the collection is a champagne bottle – complete with champagne inside and a cork in the top.

“A little bit of water probably would have gotten in through the cork as it compressed and equalised the pressure. And then it just sat on the bottom of the ocean,” says Tomasina.

When the Titanic sank in 1912, after striking an iceberg, the ship split apart and its contents spilled out, creating a vast debris field.

“There are a lot of bottles on the ocean floor and a lot of stock pots and kitchen pots too, because Titanic actually broke up around one of the kitchens,” says Tomasina.

There were thousands of bottles of champagne on board. The liner’s owner wanted its first-class passengers to experience the ultimate in opulence, with sumptuous surroundings and the finest food and drink.

“It was like a floating palace and Titanic was supposed to be the most luxurious liner,” says Tomasina.

“So having champagne, having a gym, having all these amenities and these great things for the passengers would have been really important to them.”

The Titanic was on her maiden voyage, travelling from Southampton to the US, when she hit the iceberg.

The ship had advanced safety features for the time and was famously said to be unsinkable.

Tomasina shows us some of the ship’s rivets, chunky metal pins that held its thick steel plates together. There would have been more than three million of them.

“When Titanic sank, there was a theory that they were using substandard materials perhaps, and that’s what caused it to sink faster,” Tomasina explains.

Some of these rivets have been tested to see if they contain any impurities.

“There were high concentrations of slag in these, which is a glass-like material that makes them maybe a little bit more brittle in the cold,” she says.

“If these rivets were brittle, and one of the rivet heads popped off more easily, then it could have allowed the seam to open up where the iceberg hit and made it bigger than it otherwise would have been.”

Tomasina says there is still much to learn about exactly how the ship sank.

“We’re able to help look into the theories, so being able to contribute to the science and that story behind it is something that we’re very happy to do.”

Life on board was different for the social classes – even down to the cups and plates they would drink from and eat off.

A white third-class mug is simple and sturdy, with a bright red White Star logo. A second-class plate has a pretty blue floral decoration and looks a little finer. But a first-class dinner plate is made of more delicate china. It has a gold trim and, under the light, you can catch a glimpse of an intricate garland pattern.

“That pattern would have been coloured but, because it was coloured over the glaze, it was able to wash away,” says Tomasina.

The wealthy first-class passengers were given silver service for their meals – but in third class, it was a different story.

“Third-class passengers would have probably handled the china themselves – it was definitely meant to be much more stable and much more roughly handled than the other china,” explains Tomasina.

RMS Titanic Inc is the only company legally allowed to recover items from the site – it was granted this right by a US court in 1994. But it has to do this under strict conditions – the items must always remain together, so they cannot be sold off separately, and they have to be properly conserved.

Until now, all of the artefacts have been collected from the debris field. But recently the firm has stirred up controversy stating its desire to retrieve an object from the ship itself – the Marconi radio equipment which transmitted the Titanic’s distress calls on the night of the sinking.

Some believe the wreck is a grave site and should be left alone.

“Titanic is something that we want to respect,” Tomasina says in response.

“We want to make sure that we’re preserving the memory, because not everyone can go down to Titanic, and we want to be able to bring that to the public.”

More room could soon be needed on the shelves of this secret warehouse.

The company’s latest expedition to the site has involved taking millions of images of the wreck to create a detailed 3D scan.

And, as well as surveying the current condition of the Marconi radio room, the team have also been identifying objects in the debris field that they would like to retrieve in future dives.

Who knows what they will find and what untold stories each item may reveal about the ill-fated Titanic and her passengers.

A famous 190-million-year-old rock formation in southern Utah known as the “Double Arch” has collapsed, according to national park officials.

The popular natural phenomenon – which covered Lake Powell in the Glen Canyon National Recreation Area – crumbled last week, according to the National Park Service.

No one was injured when the rock formation fell down at the popular hiking spot.

Park rangers said changing water levels and erosion may have contributed to the collapse.

“[T]his event serves as a reminder of our responsibility and need to protect the mineral resources surrounding Lake Powell,” said Glen Canyon National Recreation Area superintendent Michelle Kerns.

The rocks that formed Double Arch – also known as the “toilet bowl” because of the large hole in the formation – consisted of fine-grained Navajo sandstone from the late Triassic to early Jurassic periods, the National Park Service said.

But over time, the formation had begun to crumble and erode with wind and rain, the agency said.

Ms Kerns said the rock formation may have been influenced or damaged by “manmade interventions”.

Water levels in Lake Powell have fallen steadily since 1999 due to global warming that has made the western US hotter and drier, according to NASA. Water levels rose this year after reaching historic lows in 2023, but have not fully rebounded to 1999, when the lake was near capacity.

The rock formation was a popular hiking destination. In 2023, over 5 million people visited the Glen Canyon National Recreation Area, which spans 1.25 million acres in Utah and Arizona.

Several people took to social media to mourn the loss of the famed arches. One user posted a video of the rock formation hovering above Lake Powell just a day before the collapse. Another said she had a picture of her mother floating below the rock in an inner tube from 1969.

“Sad to see it go,” she posted.

Utah’s parks are home to many arch-like rock formations, including in Arches and Zion National Park.

The Australian city of Melbourne has banned rental electronic scooters with officials saying they posed unacceptable safety risks.

The U-turn by the city’s council comes after it first welcomed the scooters in February 2022, saying they would operate a two-year trial.

However, hundreds of accidents since then have sparked complaints and outrage from the public.

Melbourne’s mayor said he was “fed up” with the bad behaviour of some scooter users.

“Too many people [are] riding on footpaths. People don’t park them properly. They’re tipped, they’re scattered around the city like confetti, like rubbish, creating tripping hazards,” Nicholas Reece told local radio station 3AW.

Melbourne is just the latest city in the world to remove hire scooters – which can go at up to 26km/h (16mph) – after a brief period of operation. The French capital Paris outlawed them last September – Mr Reece said he wanted to copy “the Paris option”.

City councillors voted 6-4 on Tuesday evening local time to ban the scooters almost immediately.

Operators Lime and Neuron have been ordered to remove the scooters within 30 days.

The companies still had six months left on their contracts to operate the vehicles and had been campaigning heavily in recent weeks, urging users to petition the council.

Both companies said they had invested significantly in recent months to improve safety and regulations around the use of scooters – with Neuron saying it was planning on installing AI cameras on scooters to prevent misuse.

A spokesman for the company decried the city council’s blanket ban on Tuesday, saying they had been in discussions with city officials to introduce measures like restricting the scooter use to less congested parts of the city, or setting up riding zones.

“This goes over and above the reforms announced by the state government,” Jayden Bryant from Neuron had earlier told Australian media.

“It is very odd that [a different] tabled proposal for the introduction of new e-scooter technology can change to become a proposal for a ban.”

About 1,500 Lime and Neuron scooters had been distributed across the city since the trial’s inception in February 2022.

Melbourne city council had previously reported that scooters had cut the city’s carbon emissions by more than 400 tonnes and encouraged greater take-up of public transport.

But there has also been growing evidence of the scheme’s flaws. One of the city’s main hospitals, the Royal Melbourne hospital, published a report in December 2023 which found close to 250 scooter-riders presented at its emergency department with injuries in 2022. A majority of these involved factors such as intoxication, speeding and not wearing a helmet.

A hospital spokesman said e-scooter accidents had even caused deaths and brain damage, with injuries mainly among younger patients.

Bangladesh’s new leader is clear: this was not his revolution, and this was not his dream.

But Muhammad Yunus knew the second he took the call from the student on the other end of the phone last week that he would do whatever it took to see it through.

And the students had decided that what they needed was for Prof Yunus – an 84-year-old Nobel laureate – to step into the power vacuum left by the sudden resignation of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and lead the new interim government. He accepted immediately.

“I’m doing this because this is what the youth of the country wanted, and I wanted to help them to do it,” he explains during a private briefing for select journalists at his office in the Jamuna State House.

“It’s not my dream, it’s their dream. So I’m kind of helping them to make it come true.”

Prof Yunus was sworn in on Thursday after months of student-led protests culminated in the fall of the government, and is still trying to gauge the scale of the job in front of him.

Most pressing, he says, is the security situation. In the wake of the violence which left more than 400 dead, the South Asian country’s police had all but disappeared – the country’s police union had announced a strike, and traffic was being guided by the students, while hundreds of police stations had been gutted by fires.

“Law and order is the first one so that people can sit down or get to work,” Prof Yunus says.

Monday saw the first glimmers of progress as officers returned to the streets. It is a first step, but security is far from the only problem.

The government entirely “disappeared” after Sheikh Hasina fled the country, Prof Yunus says.

What was left behind after 15 years of increasingly authoritarian rule is “a mess, complete mess”.

“Even the government, what they did, whatever they did, just simply doesn’t make sense to me… They didn’t have any idea what administration is all about.”

And yet in the face of the chaos is “lots of hope”, Prof Yunus emphasises.

“We are here: a fresh new face for them, for the country… Because finally, this moment, the monster is gone. So this is excitement.”

Reform is key, according to Prof Yunus. It was a simple demand for reform of a quota system which reserved some public sector jobs for the relatives of war heroes, who fought for the country’s independence from Pakistan in 1971, that sparked the protest movement in the first place.

But it was the brutal and deadly crackdown by security services which followed that saw it grow into demands for Sheikh Hasina to stand aside.

Reform is desperately needed, says Prof Yunus, pointing to freedom of speech – heavily restricted under Sheikh Hasina’s government, the prisons filled with people who sought to speak out against her.

He himself alleges he was a victim of the crackdown on freedom of speech. An outspoken critic of Sheikh Hasina’s government, Prof Yunus – lauded for his pioneering use of micro-loans but regarded as a public enemy by the former prime minister – was sentenced to six months in jail in what he has called a politically motivated case.

But there are other, more radical, ideas in the pipeline.

Each ministry will have a student seat in it, an acknowledgement of the role they played in bringing the previous administration to an end.

Already, Nahid Islam and Asif Mahmud, students who led the anti-government protests, sit in his cabinet.

And then there is reform of the judiciary. Already, the students have put pressure on the chief justice to resign.

Prof Yunus argues the judiciary was failing to act independently – instead allegedly taking orders from “some superior authority”.

“In the technical terms, he was the chief justice,” he says. “But actually, he was just a hangman.”

There will, he acknowledges, be decisions made that not everyone agrees with, but he hopes it will be better than what has come before.

“Whatever experience I have in my work… So I’m not saying I can run a government. I’m saying that I have some experience of running some organisations. I’ll bring that as much as I can. There will be people who like it, people who dislike it. But we have to go through with it.”

Matt McBriar, one half of dance music duo Bicep, has announced he is receiving treatment for a “large and pretty rare” brain tumour.

The Belfast-born producer posted about his condition on his Instagram account.

He said a non-cancerous tumour had been found on his pituitary gland in his brain.

He said he had surgery on 9 August, that it had gone well and he was recovering in hospital.

“Towards the end of 2023, I got some intense localised headaches matched with a weird fatigue that felt new,” McBriar said.

“I got several blood tests in spring 2024 which came back indicating that something was wrong, so my GP arranged an MRI followed by a CT scan.”

He said it was at this stage the craniopharyngioma tumour was discovered.

“The good news is firstly, it’s almost certainly not cancerous and secondly, I’ve caught it in the earlier stages of damage,” he added.

“I’d been very lucky to get those initial blood tests followed by an MRI.

“Had it been much longer I might’ve lost some eyesight and a load of other problems due to the size and position of the tumour pressing on my optic nerves.”

He said he had “decided to carry on living life and playing shows as normal and it was personally important to keep my mind busy” during the initial treatment.

He said the post-surgery recovery would take six to eight weeks “and a long road of aftercare but I’m feeling incredibly grateful and lucky”.

Belfast-born/London-based duo Bicep – McBriar and Andy Ferguson – are childhood friends who bonded over a shared love of dance music.

They have been gigging and playing live for more than a decade, and have become one of the biggest names in both underground and mainstream dance music.

McBriar said Ferguson would continue performing upcoming shows as Bicep solo until further notice.

An artwork appearing on the shutters of London Zoo has been confirmed as the latest and final image in Banksy’s surprise animal art trail across the capital.

It shows a gorilla lifting the shutter to release a sea lion and birds, while other animals appear to look on from the inside.

It is the ninth Banksy to appear in as many days in London and follows images that have popped up each morning since 5 August of a goat, elephants, monkeys, a wolf, pelicans, a cat, piranhas and a rhinoceros.

A London Zoo spokesperson said it was “absolutely brilliant” and said the work would be preserved.

Daniel Simmonds, London Zoo’s animal operations manager, said: “Banksy has become part of the London scene and it’s really nice to share his iconic status with, ultimately, one of the most iconic zoos in the entire world.

“We’re quite honoured he’s chosen to use our front shutters this morning to put one of his incredible artworks.

“I think it’s absolutely brilliant,” he told BBC News.

He said staff had no idea Banksy was planning the work at this location.

“That’s part of the amazing enigma of Banksy and that’s why it’s so exciting to come in this morning,” Mr Simmonds added.

Security guards have been brought in to secure a barrier that has been put up around the mural.

Mr Simmonds said the shutter would remain closed today and two others used instead, so that visitors could look at the work.

“It’s really important we share this with everybody.”

He added he was expecting extra people to visit on Tuesday in addition to the thousands who had already booked.

“It’s going to be a busy day.”

Mr Simmons later confirmed that the artwork would be protected.

“We’ll definitely preserve it. We might even look at putting some perspex around it.

“The last thing we want with typical London weather, having just come through one of the worst winters ever, is to see this damaged by the weather.”

He added it was likely to remain in the same location for the immediate future but might then be relocated to elsewhere on the site.

The pledge to protect the latest image follows the removal or partial defacing of several other works in the series.

Banksy’s depiction of a rhinoceros mounting a Nissan Micra with a traffic cone on its bonnet in Charlton was seen being sprayed with a white dollar and “v” sign on Monday, soon after it was unveiled.

Royal Borough of Greenwich said it was “a real shame that a mindless vandal has defaced the mural, which has already drawn visitors and brought so much joy to many.

“The council is now considering what would be reasonably possible for the future of the artwork and will be closely monitoring it.”

A worker has since been seen installing a protective cover over the mural on Westmoor Street.

The car and traffic cone have been removed. However, it is not known why or who was responsible.

Last week, a satellite dish with a picture of a howling wolf on it – the fourth image in the series – was apparently stolen from a garage roof in Peckham.

And a disused billboard in Cricklewood that featured Banksy’s image of a stretching cat – the sixth image of the series – was taken down for safety reasons.

The BBC has been told by Banksy’s team the latest work is the final piece of the series, which has captured the attention of Banksy followers for more than a week.

The artist appears to have installed the works overnight at each occasion.

Crowds have been seen gathering after passers-by have spotted the works each morning, with many posting photos on social media.

Typically, Banksy has confirmed he is behind the creations at 13:00 BST each day, however, he announced the latest work on his Instagram page on Tuesday morning.

While “Z” might be Russia’s symbol of its invasion, a triangle represents Ukraine’s most audacious attempt to repel it.

They are taped or painted on the sides of every supply truck, tank, or personnel carrier that heads towards the Russian border in the Sumy region.

It’s an offensive that has seized hundreds of square kilometres of Russian territory and palpably restored momentum and morale to Ukraine’s war effort.

The Russian official in charge of the border region of Kursk has spoken of 28 settlements under Ukrainian control and almost 200,000 Russians have fled their homes.

Tomash has just returned from Ukraine’s cross-border mission along with his comrade “Accord”, who nonchalantly says it was “cool”.

Their drone unit had spent two days paving the way for the cross border incursion.

“We had orders to come here, but we didn’t know what that meant,” Tomash admits as he pauses for a coffee at a petrol station.

“We suppressed the enemy’s means of communication and surveillance in advance to clear the way.”

Exactly how much Russian territory has been seized is uncertain, although there is scepticism over Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi’s claim that 1,000 sq km is under Ukrainian control.

Russia’s defence ministry insisted on Tuesday that Ukrainian attempts to push deeper had been thwarted but they have been proved wrong before.

Whatever the reality, it appears Kyiv is committed to this military gamble.

The level of activity in the neighbouring Sumy region is something I haven’t seen since the liberations of 2022, when there was a feeling of wind in Ukrainian sails.

It’s undoubtedly a welcome departure from the grinding war of attrition of the last 18 months, but to label it a success or failure would be premature.

The goal of this offensive is unclear, although President Volodymyr Zelensky has spoken of targeting sites from which Russia can launch attacks on Ukraine and bringing “a just peace” closer.

But it is evident Kyiv is deploying some of its best troops.

Fit-looking soldiers gather around vehicles that match their muscularity. Most politely decline to talk. Some look exhausted.

Over the Telegram messaging app, a soldier still in Russia tells us months of planning went into forcing Moscow to move troops from other parts of the front line in Ukraine.

“The element of surprise worked,” he says. “We entered easily with little resistance. On 6 August, the first groups crossed at night in several directions.”

“Almost immediately they reached the western outskirts of the city of Sudzha,” he adds.

With operations like this, secrecy suits the soldiers carrying them out. The same cannot be said for civilians.

On both sides of the border, tens of thousands are being evacuated after an increase in air strikes and fighting.

“The Russian civilians we encounter don’t resist,” explains the soldier. “We don’t touch them, but they either treat us sharply, negatively, or not at all.”

“They also deceive us about the positions of Russian troops,” he adds.

The soldiers we speak to confirm that Russian forces have indeed been redeployed from the eastern front line, including the Kharkiv, Pokrovsk and Toretsk directions.

But none of them are reporting a slowing of Russian advances, yet.

Vladimir Putin has promised a “worthy response” to the first capture of Russian territory since World War Two.

But any fear he intended to spread has not reached the dusty border settlements habitually bombed by his forces.

Misha and his friend Valera pass us in their orange Lada in the village of Stetskivka.

“I want them to take it [Kursk region] and do this!” says Misha, making a twisting gesture with his hands.

“They should take everything, even Moscow!”

It’s an anger anchored in being on the receiving end of Russia’s relentless full-scale invasion which began in February 2022.

“Russia attacked first, not us,” chimes in Valera with his window down. “Now our guys have responded and shown what we’re capable of. We’d have captured it earlier if we’d had permission.”

Ukraine, it seems, finally has the Western green light it had been yearning for to strike across the border.

The stakes are still dauntingly high, as illustrated by new defences being built on the outskirts of Sumy city.

Until last week, the area had been fearing a Russian offensive in Ukraine’s north. If Ukraine’s incursion fails, those worries could be realised quickly.

Ukrainian forces were, and still are, outnumbered by the Russian aggressors.

“For us to keep hold of this Russian territory we need two things,” writes our Ukrainian soldier on enemy soil.

“More towns like Sudzha under our control, and reserves,” he says.

“Our front line is already bursting at the seams, and it’s not clear where we will get them.”

For Kyiv, the logic or hope is that Russia is forced to switch focus from fighting on Ukrainian soil to its own.

Some in Ukraine believe this counter-offensive could even boost its position in any future peace negotiations.

It could equally push talks even further away.

Early on Friday morning, a 31-year-old female trainee doctor retired to sleep in a seminar hall after a gruelling day at one of India’s oldest hospitals.

It was the last time she was seen alive.

The next morning, her colleagues discovered her half-naked body on the podium, bearing extensive injuries. Police later arrested a hospital volunteer worker in connection with what they say is a case of rape and murder at Kolkata’s 138-year-old RG Kar Medical College.

Enraged doctors went on strike both in the city and across India, demanding a strict federal law to protect healthcare workers. The tragic incident has again cast a spotlight on the violence against healthcare workers in the country.

Women make up nearly 30% of India’s doctors and 80% of the nursing staff. They are also more vulnerable than their male colleagues. Official data reveals a troubling 4% increase in crimes against women in 2022, with over 20% of these incidents involving rape and assault.

The crime in the Kolkata hospital last week exposed the alarming security risks faced by them in many of India’s state-run health facilities.

At RG Kar Hospital, which sees over 3,500 patients daily, the overworked trainee doctors – some working up to 36 hours straight – had no designated rest rooms, forcing them to seek rest in a third-floor seminar room.

Reports indicate that the arrested suspect, a patient volunteer with a troubled past, had unrestricted access to the ward and was captured on CCTV. Police allege that no background checks were conducted on the volunteer.

“The hospital has always been our first home; we only go home to rest. We never imagined it could be this unsafe. Now, after this incident, we’re terrified,” says Madhuparna Nandi, a junior doctor at Kolkata’s 76-year-old National Medical College.

Dr Nandi’s own journey highlights how female doctors in India’s government hospitals have become resigned to working in conditions that compromise their security.

At her hospital, where she is a resident in gynaecology and obstetrics, there are no designated rest rooms and separate toilets for female doctors.

“I use the patients’ or the nurses’ toilets if they allow me. When I work late, I sometimes sleep in an empty patient bed in the ward or in a cramped waiting room with a bed and basin,” Dr Nandi told me.

She says she feels insecure even in the room where she rests after 24-hour shifts that start with outpatient duty and continue through ward rounds and maternity rooms.

One night in 2021, during the peak of the Covid pandemic, some men barged into her room and woke her by touching her, demanding, “Get up, get up. See our patient.”

“I was completely shaken by the incident. But we never imagined it would come to a point where a doctor could be raped and murdered in the hospital,” Dr Nandi says.

What happened on Friday was not an isolated incident. The most shocking case remains that of Aruna Shanbaug, a nurse at a prominent Mumbai hospital, who was left in a persistent vegetative state after being raped and strangled by a ward attendant in 1973. She died in 2015, after 42 years of severe brain damage and paralysis. More recently, in Kerala, Vandana Das, a 23-year-old medical intern, was fatally stabbed with surgical scissors by a drunken patient last year.

In overcrowded government hospitals with unrestricted access, doctors often face mob fury from patients’ relatives after a death or over demands for immediate treatment. Kamna Kakkar, an anaesthetist, remembers a harrowing incident during a night shift in an intensive care unit (ICU) during the pandemic in 2021 at her hospital in Haryana in northern India.

“I was the lone doctor in the ICU when three men, flaunting a politician’s name, forced their way in, demanding a much in-demand controlled drug. I gave in to protect myself, knowing the safety of my patients was at stake,” Dr Kakkar told me.

Namrata Mitra, a Kolkata-based pathologist who studied at the RG Kar Medical College, says her doctor father would often accompany her to work because she felt unsafe.

“During my on-call duty, I took my father with me. Everyone laughed, but I had to sleep in a room tucked away in a long, dark corridor with a locked iron gate that only the nurse could open if a patient arrived,” Dr Mitra wrote in a Facebook post over the weekend.

“I’m not ashamed to admit I was scared. What if someone from the ward – an attendant, or even a patient – tried something? I took advantage of the fact that my father was a doctor, but not everyone has that privilege.”

When she was working in a public health centre in a district in West Bengal, Dr Mitra spent nights in a dilapidated one-storey building that served as the doctor’s hostel.

“From dusk, a group of boys would gather around the house, making lewd comments as we went in and out for emergencies. They would ask us to check their blood pressure as an excuse to touch us and they would peek through the broken bathroom windows,” she wrote.

Years later, during an emergency shift at a government hospital, “a group of drunk men passed by me, creating a ruckus, and one of them even groped me”, Dr Mitra said. “When I tried to complain, I found the police officers dozing off with their guns in hand.”

Things have worsened over the years, says Saraswati Datta Bodhak, a pharmacologist at a government hospital in West Bengal’s Bankura district. “Both my daughters are young doctors and they tell me that hospital campuses are overrun by anti-social elements, drunks and touts,” she says. Dr Bodhak recalls seeing a man with a gun roaming around a top government hospital in Kolkata during a visit.

India lacks a stringent federal law to protect healthcare workers. Although 25 states have some laws to prevent violence against them, convictions are “almost non-existent”, RV Asokan, president of the Indian Medical Association (IMA), an organisation of doctors, told me. “Security in hospitals is almost absent,” he says. “One reason is that nobody thinks of hospitals as conflict zones.”

Some states like Haryana have deployed private bouncers to strengthen security at government hospitals. In 2022, the federal government asked the states to deploy trained security forces for sensitive hospitals, install CCTV cameras, set up quick reaction teams, restrict entry to “undesirable individuals” and file complaints against offenders. Nothing much has happened, clearly.

Even the protesting doctors don’t seem to be very hopeful. “Nothing will change… The expectation will be that doctors should work round the clock and endure abuse as a norm,” says Dr Mitra. It is a disheartening thought.

The Melbourne Symphony Orchestra (MSO) has cancelled an acclaimed pianist’s upcoming recital after comments he made on the Israel-Gaza war.

Jayson Gillham premiered Witness at a show at the MSO on Sunday. The piece was penned by another composer as a tribute to the Palestinian press.

The British-Australian was scheduled to perform again on Thursday, but the MSO has said it is reworking the programme after Gillham introduced the piece by saying Israel had killed more than 100 journalists.

A spokesperson for Gillham told the ABC he won’t comment on the decision to drop him “out of respect to the MSO and his ongoing relationship with them”.

Gillham – who is billed on the MSO website as “as one of the finest pianists of his generation” – was born in Australia but lives in the UK.

At the concert at the Iwaki Auditorium on Sunday, he performed a range of works, from Beethoven to Chopin. He also played Witness, written by Australian composer Connor D’Netto, which the MSO says was a last-minute addition.

“Over the last 10 months, Israel has killed more than 100 Palestinian journalists,” Mr Gillham said before starting the piece.

A number were “targeted assassinations of prominent journalists” who were travelling in marked press vehicles or wearing press jackets, he claimed.

“The killing of journalists is a war crime in international law, and it is done in an effort to prevent the documentation and broadcasting of war crimes to the world,” he added.

In an email to patrons, the MSO said they were blindsided by Mr Gillham’s comments and he had put them in a “difficult situation”.

“The MSO does not condone the use of our stage as a platform for expressing personal views”, it added.

Hamas-led gunmen killed about 1,200 people in an attack on Israel on 7 October, taking 251 others back to Gaza as hostages.

That attack triggered a massive Israeli military offensive on Gaza and the current war.

More than 39,790 Palestinians have been killed in the Israeli campaign, according to Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry.

The Committee to Protect Journalists, an independent organisation that promotes press freedom, reports that 113 of those were journalists.

Apologising for the “offence and distress” caused, the MSO said it had removed Gillham from the program and would update customers soon.

In a statement given to local media, a spokesperson for the MSO said: “Mr Gillham’s remarks went beyond the remit of his contract.”

The decision has caused a backlash on social media. High profile barrister Greg Barns said the cancellation was “truly appalling” while arts critics and former Sydney Symphony Orchestra chairman Leo Schofield said “MSO management should hang its collective head in shame”.

The Israel-Gaza war has become a volatile political issue in Australia that all sides have sought to carefully manage.

As has been the case in countless other countries, there have been protests from both Jewish and Muslim communities, as well as a sharp uptick in Islamophobia and antisemitism.

A far-right Israeli minister has led hundreds of Jewish Israelis into Jerusalem’s most contested holy site, with many defying the Israeli government’s long-standing ban on Jewish prayer there.

The visit by National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir to the al-Aqsa Mosque compound, known to Jews as Temple Mount, has been condemned as provocative by Palestinian leaders, as well as the US, France, the UN and several Arab states.

Mr Ben-Gvir said in a video that “our policy is to enable Jewish prayer”.

But the Israeli prime minister’s office insisted there had been no change to the status quo agreement that allows only Muslim worship there.

The site is the holiest place for Jews because it was the site of two Biblical temples. It is the third holiest place for Muslims, who believe it was where the Prophet Muhammad ascended to heaven.

Situated in occupied East Jerusalem, it was captured by Israel from Jordan in the 1967 Middle East war. Under the status quo, Jordan was allowed to continue its historical role as custodian of the site, while Israel assumed control of security and access.

Palestinians accuse Israel of taking steps to undermine the arrangements and complain that in recent years Jewish visitors have often been seen praying without being stopped by Israeli police.

Videos shared on social media on Tuesday showed groups of Jewish Israelis singing the Israeli national anthem, some carrying the Israeli flag while others prostrate themselves in prayer at the edge of the holy site.

Visiting the compound escorted by Israeli police, Itamar Ben Gvir, said “great progress” had been made in Israel’s “governance and sovereignty” there. “Our policy is to enable Jewish prayer,” he went on.

He also declared that Israel “must win the war” in the Gaza Strip, and should not get involved in the talks on a ceasefire and hostage release deal in order to “bring Hamas to its knees”.

Later, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said the incident had “deviated from the status quo.”

“Israel’s policy on the Temple Mount has not changed; this is how it has been and this is how it will be,” it stressed.

In response to the statement, Mr Ben-Gvir said that it was his own policy to “enable freedom of worship for Jews in all places”.

“There is no law that permits engaging in racist discrimination against Jews at the Temple Mount or anywhere else in Israel,” he added.

However, the Palestinian foreign ministry expressed great concern about what it called “the dangerous escalation resulting from the raids by extremist settlers on the blessed al-Aqsa Mosque”.

“The ministry will continue its political efforts to address these provocations at various levels, warning of their serious consequences on the conflict arena and the region as a whole,” a statement said.

The Jordanian Islamic endowment which administers the site, the Waqf, said more than 2,000 Israelis had entered the compound and appealed to Muslims across the world to help it maintain the status quo.

Jordan’s foreign ministry said the incident reflected “the insistence of the Israeli government and its extremist members to flout international laws and Israel’s obligations as the occupying power”.

Egypt and Saudi Arabia also said the incident violated international law, with the former adding that Mr Ben-Gvir was seeking to scupper attempts to broker a Gaza ceasefire deal.

In a statement, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Mr Ben-Gvir’s visit “demonstrated blatant disregard for the historic status quo with respect to the holy sites in Jerusalem.

“These provocative actions only exacerbate tensions at a pivotal moment when all focus should be on the ongoing diplomatic efforts to achieve a ceasefire agreement and secure the release of all hostages and create the conditions for broader regional stability,” the US’s top diplomat added.

The French foreign ministry condemned Mr Ben-Gvir’s visit, saying: “This new provocation is unacceptable”.

UN spokesperson Farhan Haq called the incident “unhelpful and unduly provocative”, adding: “We are against any efforts to change the status quo within the holy sites.”

Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida will not seek re-election as leader of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), which he says needs a “new start”.

The 67-year-old LDP veteran is expected to step down as PM after the party elects a new leader in September.

Support for Mr Kishida, who has been PM since 2021, has fallen in the wake of a corruption scandal involving his party, rising living costs and a slumping yen.

His approval ratings had plummeted to 15.5% last month – the lowest for a PM in more than a decade.

“In the upcoming presidential election, it’s necessary to show the people that the Liberal Democratic Party will change,” Mr Kishida said at a press conference on Wednesday announcing his decision.

“A transparent and open election, and free and open debate are important. The first easy-to-understand step that indicates that the LDP will change is for me to step back,” he said.

Within the party, some have doubted whether Mr Kishida can lead the LDP to a win in the next general election due in 2025. The party has been in power almost continuously since 1955.

Analysts have told the BBC that Japan is going through a “once-in-a-generation” political crisis as the ruling party fights to clean up its image.

Last December, four LDP cabinet ministers resigned within a fortnight over a fundraising scandal involving the ruling party’s most powerful faction.

Five senior vice-ministers and a parliamentary vice-minister from the same faction, formerly led by the late PM Shinzo Abe, also quit.

Japan’s prosecutors launched a criminal investigation into whether dozens of LDP lawmakers received proceeds from fundraising events that saw millions of dollars kept off official party records.

But Mr Kishida’s handling of the fundraising scandal drew public criticism, which made him more unpopular.

The controversy also unfolded as Japanese households struggled with food prices soaring at the fastest rate in almost half a century.

The combination of economic woes and political scandal fuelled mistrust in the ruling party, despite a weak and divided opposition.

The Australian city of Melbourne has banned rental electronic scooters with officials saying they posed unacceptable safety risks.

The U-turn by the city’s council comes after it first welcomed the scooters in February 2022, saying they would operate a two-year trial.

However, hundreds of accidents since then have sparked complaints and outrage from the public.

Melbourne’s mayor said he was “fed up” with the bad behaviour of some scooter users.

“Too many people [are] riding on footpaths. People don’t park them properly. They’re tipped, they’re scattered around the city like confetti, like rubbish, creating tripping hazards,” Nicholas Reece told local radio station 3AW.

Melbourne is just the latest city in the world to remove hire scooters – which can go at up to 26km/h (16mph) – after a brief period of operation. The French capital Paris outlawed them last September – Mr Reece said he wanted to copy “the Paris option”.

City councillors voted 6-4 on Tuesday evening local time to ban the scooters almost immediately.

Operators Lime and Neuron have been ordered to remove the scooters within 30 days.

The companies still had six months left on their contracts to operate the vehicles and had been campaigning heavily in recent weeks, urging users to petition the council.

Both companies said they had invested significantly in recent months to improve safety and regulations around the use of scooters – with Neuron saying it was planning on installing AI cameras on scooters to prevent misuse.

A spokesman for the company decried the city council’s blanket ban on Tuesday, saying they had been in discussions with city officials to introduce measures like restricting the scooter use to less congested parts of the city, or setting up riding zones.

“This goes over and above the reforms announced by the state government,” Jayden Bryant from Neuron had earlier told Australian media.

“It is very odd that [a different] tabled proposal for the introduction of new e-scooter technology can change to become a proposal for a ban.”

About 1,500 Lime and Neuron scooters had been distributed across the city since the trial’s inception in February 2022.

Melbourne city council had previously reported that scooters had cut the city’s carbon emissions by more than 400 tonnes and encouraged greater take-up of public transport.

But there has also been growing evidence of the scheme’s flaws. One of the city’s main hospitals, the Royal Melbourne hospital, published a report in December 2023 which found close to 250 scooter-riders presented at its emergency department with injuries in 2022. A majority of these involved factors such as intoxication, speeding and not wearing a helmet.

A hospital spokesman said e-scooter accidents had even caused deaths and brain damage, with injuries mainly among younger patients.

Like his father and grandfather before him, Phool dev Shahni once made a living by diving to the bottom of 8ft-deep (2.4m), muddy ponds.

“I used to dive in 7 to 8ft of water for hours a day – coming to the surface to breathe after 8 to ten minutes,” explains Mr Shahni.

While down in those murky depths he was harvesting the seeds of a type of water lily called euryale ferox.

Known as makhanas, fox nuts or lotus seeds, they are prized for their nutritional value, being high in B vitamins, protein and fibre, with some touting them as a superfood.

Often eaten as a snack, makhanas are also used in various dishes, including the milk pudding kheer, as well as being ground into flour.

In the north-eastern Indian state of Bihar, where Mr Shahni lives, 90% of the world’s makhana is grown.

The leaves of the lily plant are large and circular and sit on the top of the pond. But the seeds form in pods under water and collecting them was an exhausting process.

“While we are at the bottom diving, mud enters our ears, eyes, nose and mouth. Lots of us have skin issues due to this. Also the plant is covered in thorns, which give us cuts all over our body during harvesting of the seeds,” Mr Shahni says.

But in recent years farmers have changed the cultivation process. The plants are now often grown in fields, in much shallower water.

Harvesting seeds in just a foot of water means Mr Shahni can make twice as much money in a day.

“It’s still hard work but I am proud of my tradition. I have three children and I will make sure that one of my sons continues the legacy of working in a fox nut field.”

Dr Manoj Kumar, is one of those behind the change in makhana cultivation.

About ten years ago he realised it would be difficult to expand its cultivation in deep ponds.

Now Senior Scientist at the National Research Centre for Makhana (NRCM), he helped to develop the cultivation of lilies in fields of shallow water.

Over the last four or five years that technique has been taking off.

“With our innovations, growing fox nuts is now as easy as any crop grown on land. The only amount of water needed is a foot. The workers don’t have to work for hours in deep water,” he explains.

And after experiments with different seeds, his centre found a more resilient and productive variety, which he says has tripled the income of farmers.

Dr Kumar says that makhana cultivation has helped some farmers cope with more uncertain weather conditions and floods that have hit Bihar in recent years.

Now NRCM is working on machines that can harvest the seeds.

All that innovation has attracted more and more farmers.

In 2022, the area used for fox nut farming was 35,224 hectares (87,000 acres), an almost threefold increase over 10 years.

Dhirendra Kumar is one farmer who has made a recent switch to makhana cultivation.

Although he grew up on a farm, he didn’t want to follow in his father’s footsteps.

“As farmers we always grew wheat, lentils and mustard but ended up losing a lot of money.

“Most of the time floods destroyed the crops,” he says.

While studying for a PhD, he came into contact with a scientist working on makhana cultivation and decided to experiment with the crop on his family farm.

“The results were amazing. In the first year I made a profit of £340 [US$432],” he says.

Now he grows lilies on 17 acres (6.9 hectares) of land.

“In my wildest dreams I did not think that I would get into growing fox nuts, as it was a labour-intensive job, which was mostly carried out by fishermen.”

The change in crop has also opened up job opportunities for women. Mr Kumar now employs about 200 local women who sow the seeds.

“My aim is to provide jobs to as many farmers as possible so they don’t leave farming because of uncertainty in agriculture,” he says.

It’s not just in the field that innovations have been made.

As well as being one of the leading cultivators of makhana, Madhubani Makhana, processes it for export all over the world.

Traditionally, once the makhanas have been harvested, they are washed, roasted and then hit with a mallet-like tool to make them pop.

“The method is crude, unhygienic and risky. It is laborious, time-consuming and a number of times leads to injuries and burns,” says Shambhu Prasad, the founder and chief executive of Madhubani Makhana.

In partnership with the NRCM, his company has developed a machine which roasts and pops the fox seeds.

“This has helped us increase the quality and the production of fox nuts,” says Mr Prasad.

Three of the machines have been incorporated into his manufacturing plant in Madhubani, in the north of Bihar.

While innovation in the farming and processing of makhana is increasing production, Mr Prasad does not think that will be enough to see prices fall.

“Given the rising global demand for makhana, significant increases in production will be necessary to achieve any substantial reduction in prices,” he says.

Back on his farm, Dhirendra Kumar thinks that makhana cultivation will bring far-reaching change.

“It’s the beginning of innovation in Bihar when it comes to fox nut harvesting. It will change the landscape of the state,” he says.

Newborn twins were killed in an Israeli airstrike in Gaza while their father was at a local government office to register their birth.

Asser, a boy, and Ayssel, a girl, were just four days old when their father Mohammed Abu al-Qumsan went to collect their birth certificates.

While he was away, his neighbours called to say their home in Deir al Balah had been bombed.

The strike also killed his wife and the twins’ grandmother.

“I don’t know what happened,” he said. “I am told it was a shell that hit the house.”

“I didn’t even have the time to celebrate them,” he added.

Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry says 115 infants have been born and then killed during the war.

According to AP news agency, the family had followed an order to evacuate Gaza City in the opening weeks of the Israel-Gaza war, seeking shelter in a central part of the strip, as the Israeli army instructed.

The BBC has asked the Israeli army for comment on the strike, and is waiting for a response.

Israel says it tries to avoid harming civilians and blames their deaths on Hamas operating in dense residential areas, including using civilian buildings as shelter.

But officials rarely comment on individual strikes.

Several such shelters in Gaza have been attacked in the past few weeks.

On Saturday, an Israeli air strike on a school building sheltering displaced Palestinians in Gaza City killed more than 70 people, the director of a hospital told the BBC.

An Israeli military spokesman said the school “served as an active Hamas and Islamic Jihad military facility”, which Hamas denied.

Israel disputed the number of dead, but the BBC could not independently verify figures from either side.

Hamas-led gunmen killed about 1,200 people in an attack on Israel on 7 October, taking 251 others back to Gaza as hostages.

That attack triggered a massive Israeli military offensive on Gaza and the current war.

More than 39,790 Palestinians have been killed in the Israeli campaign, according to Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry.

Two polar bears killed a worker at a remote Arctic radar station in Canada’s northern Nunavut territory, prompting an investigation into the rare fatal attack.

The employee, who has not been named, was working for Nasittuq Corporation – a logistics company which operates radar defence sites on behalf of the Canadian government.

Other workers responded to the scene and killed one of the bears, the company said in a statement.

“We are working closely with local authorities and regulatory agencies to conduct a thorough investigation into the circumstances surrounding this incident,” the company said.

“The safety and well-being of our employees is our highest priority, and we are deeply committed to ensuring a safe working environment.”

The attack took place last week on Brevoort Island, southeast of Baffin Island.

The site is one of dozens of North Warning System outposts in northern Canada, according to CBS News, the BBC’s partner in the US.

The network, which spans 3,100 miles (5,000km), exists to detect aircraft or missiles entering the region.

Polar bear attacks on humans are extremely rare, but this is at least the second recorded fatality from a polar bear attack since 2023.

Last year, a woman and her 1-year-old son were killed by a polar bear in an Alaskan village.

There are about 17,000 polar bears living in the country – making up around two-thirds of the global population of the species, according to the Canadian government.

The species is in decline, and scientists attribute it to the loss of sea ice caused by global warming – leading to shrinking of their hunting and breeding grounds.

Elsewhere, a three-year-old girl in the US state of Montana was dragged out of her tent at a private campground by a black bear on Sunday.

Wildlife officials have set traps, and euthanised one bear believed to have been involved in the attack.

Black bears are much smaller than polar bears but can still be very dangerous to humans.

In 2023, a woman in California was fatally attacked and eaten inside her home, marking the first death by a black bear in the state’s history.

Democratic congresswoman and member of the “Squad”, Ilhan Omar, has fended off a primary election challenge in Minnesota, according to US media projections.

Ms Omar faced three challengers in the primary contest to determine the party’s nominee and will now continue on to the November election in the state’s solidly Democratic-leaning 5th District.

The race had been closely watched after successful primary challengers took down two fellow members of the “Squad” – a group of progressive Democrats who have been among the most vocal critics in Congress of Israel’s handling of the war in Gaza.

It was one of several primary races on Tuesday in Connecticut, Wisconsin, Vermont and Minnesota.

With 99% of the votes counted on Tuesday night, the Associated Press reported that Ms Omar won with 67,524 votes, or by just over 56%.

Coming in second was Don Samuels, a former member of the Minneapolis City Council who had also narrowly lost to Ms Omar in 2022.

He received just under 49% of the votes on Tuesday.

Earlier this month Rep Cori Bush of Missouri lost her primary race and in June Jamaal Bowman in New York was also defeated – both after pro-Israel groups poured millions into those races backing other Democrats.

The pair were elected in 2020 amid a year marked by racial justice protests after the killing in Minneapolis of George Floyd, an unarmed Black man.

A Super-Pac operated by the pro-Israel group American Israel Public Affairs Committee appears to have stayed out of Ms Omar’s race.

It had spent millions in races against Mr Bowman and Ms Bush, according to data from Open Secrets, which tracks money in politics.

Super-Pacs are independent “political action committees” that can raise unlimited amounts of money to support an election candidate.

The Intercept reported on Sunday that a last-minute effort by wealthy pro-Israel donors raised six-figure sums to help Mr Samuels.

Opinion polls had suggested Ms Omar would win the challenge.

An internal poll taken last month indicated she was ahead by 30 points, according to media reports.

Ms Omar has gotten help on the campaign trail from progressive Senator Bernie Sanders and Vice-President Kamala Harris, who is running for president.

Ms Omar, who was born in Somalia, is one of the first Muslims to be elected to the US Congress.

She had been an outspoken critic of Israel even before the war in Gaza.

She was removed by the Republican-controlled House from the House Foreign Affairs Committee in February 2023 over a number of comments she’d made about Israel.

Democrats and Ms Omar said at the time it was revenge after two Republicans were ousted from committees in 2020 when Democrats held a House majority.

In 2019, Ms Omar seemed to suggest that Israel demands “allegiance” from American lawmakers and any criticism is viewed as antisemitic, implying money was behind the support for Israel.

Ms Omar apologised for those remarks.

In 2022, when the two last faced off, Ms Omar received 50% of the vote and Mr Samuels received 48%.

Minnesota Democratic Senator Amy Klobuchar, who has served in the upper chamber of the US Congress since 2007, also won her primary challenge on Tuesday.