Doctors in India have begun a national strike, escalating the protest against the rape and murder of a female colleague in the West Bengal city of Kolkata.

The Indian Medical Association (IMA), the country’s largest grouping of doctors, said all non-essential hospital services would be shut down across the country on Saturday.

The IMA described last week’s killing as a “crime of barbaric scale due to the lack of safe spaces for women” and asked for the country’s support in its “struggle for justice”.

Protests against the attack and calling for the better protection of women have intensified in recent days after a mob vandalised the hospital where it happened.

In a statement, the IMA said emergency and casualty services would continue to run and that the strike would last for 24 hours.

Doctors at some government hospitals announced earlier this week that they were indefinitely halting elective procedures.

The IMA also issued a list of demands including the strengthening of the law to better protect medical staff against violence, increasing the level of security at hospitals and the creation of safe spaces for rest.

It called for a “meticulous and professional investigation” into the killing and the prosecution of those involved in vandalising, as well as compensation for the woman’s family.

The rape of the 31-year-old female trainee doctor has shocked the country.

Her half-naked body bearing extensive injuries was discovered in a seminar hall at R G Kar Medical College last week after she was reported to have gone there to rest during her shift.

A volunteer who worked at the hospital has been arrested in connection with the crime.

The case has been transferred from local police to India’s Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) following criticism at the lack of progress.

More incidents of rape have made headlines in India since the woman’s death and Prime Minister Narendra Modi has said that “monstrous behaviour against women should be severely and quickly punished”.

The woman’s rape and killing has sparked a political blame game in West Bengal, with the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) accusing the governing Trinamool Congress Party (TMC) of orchestrating the attack.

The TMC has refuted the allegation and has blamed “political outsiders” for stoking the violence.

Tens of thousands of women across West Bengal participated in the Reclaim the Night march on Wednesday night to demand “independence to live in freedom and without fear”.

Though the protests were largely peaceful, clashes erupted between the police and a small group of unidentified men who barged into the RG Kar Hospital – the site of the crime – and ransacked its emergency ward.

At least 25 people have been arrested in connection with the incident so far.

Protests have also been held in many other Indian cities like Delhi, Hyderabad, Mumbai and Pune.

“It feels like hope is being reignited,” one demonstrator, Sumita Datta, told the AFP news agency as thousands of people marched through the streets of Kolkata on Friday.

US President Joe Biden has warned all sides involved in the negotiations for a possible Gaza ceasefire deal not to undermine efforts.

Biden declared that “we are closer than we’ve ever been” to a ceasefire following the latest round of negotiations, but a senior Hamas official expressed scepticism.

The president also announced he was sending Secretary of State Antony Blinken to Israel to continue the “intensive efforts to conclude this agreement”.

His comments come following a joint statement by the US, Qatar and Egypt – stating that they had presented a proposal for a ceasefire and hostage release deal that “narrows the gaps” between Israel and Hamas.

Any sign of progress in the Qatar talks is regarded as essential by governments desperate to avoid the war in Gaza spiralling into an all-out regional conflict.

The mediators said that the past two days of ceasefire discussions had been “serious, constructive and conducted in a positive atmosphere”.

Technical teams are expected to continue working over the coming days on the details of how to implement the proposed terms before senior government officials meet again in Cairo, hoping to reach an agreement on the terms set out in Doha.

Mr Biden later said in a statement that he had spoken separately with the leaders of Qatar and Egypt, who had expressed “strong support” for the proposal.

He added that he was also sending Mr Blinken back to the Middle East to “reaffirm my iron-clad support for Israel’s security” and to “underscore that with the comprehensive ceasefire and hostage release deal now in sight, no one in the region should take actions to undermine this process”.

While the mediators’ statement is clearly a positive development, there is still a long way to go before a ceasefire is agreed.

Nevertheless, Mr Blinken told US reporters that he had become more optimistic than ever that a deal was in reach but said if he revealed why, he’d “give it away”.

Asked when a potential ceasefire might start, he said “that remains to be seen”.

This is not the first time the US president has said he thought a deal was close and not everyone shares his cautious optimism.

A senior figure from Hamas – which did not participate in the talks, but was in contact with Qatari and Egyptian officials – told the BBC: “What the movement’s leadership was informed of today regarding the results of the Doha ceasefire meetings does not include a commitment to implement what was agreed upon on 2 July.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office, meanwhile, said he appreciated the efforts to “dissuade Hamas from its refusal on a deal that would release the hostages”.

The Israeli military launched a campaign in Gaza to destroy Hamas in response to an unprecedented attack on southern Israel on 7 October, during which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 others were taken hostage.

More than 40,000 people have been killed in Gaza since then, according to the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry.

A deal agreed in November saw Hamas release 105 of the hostages in return for a week-long ceasefire and the freeing of some 240 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails. Israel says 111 hostages are still being held, 39 of whom are presumed dead.

The first phase of the deal outlined by President Biden, based on Israel’s 27 May proposal, would include a “full and complete ceasefire” lasting six weeks, the withdrawal of Israeli forces from all populated areas of Gaza, and the exchange of some of the hostages – including women, the elderly and the sick or wounded – for Palestinian prisoners held in Israel.

The second phase would involve the release of all other living hostages and a “permanent end to hostilities”. The third would see the start of a major reconstruction plan for Gaza and the return of dead hostages’ remains.

Meanwhile, Israel’s military operation in Gaza continues, with new evacuation orders being made for several blocks in northern Khan Younis and Deir Balah – further shrinking the humanitarian zone.

Israel said the blocks had become dangerous for civilians “due to significant acts of terrorism” and the firing of rockets and mortars towards Israel.

The UN agency for Palestinian refugees (Unrwa) said: “Once again, fear spreads as families have nowhere to go. People remain trapped in an endless nightmare of death and destruction on a staggering scale.”

What is now making the need for a ceasefire deal even more urgent is the fact that the polio virus – which is spread through faecal matter – is now circulating inside the Israeli-designated humanitarian zone in Gaza, where hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians have sought refuge from the fighting.

“Let’s be clear: The ultimate vaccine for polio is peace and an immediate humanitarian ceasefire,” UN Secretary General António Guterres said.

Performers working in the games industry have spoken of their distress at being asked to work on explicit content without notice, including a scene featuring a sexual assault.

Sex scenes are common in modern games – and are often made by filming human actors who are then digitised into game characters.

But performers have told the BBC a culture of secrecy around projects – where scripts are often not shared until the last moment – means they frequently do not know in advance that scenes may involve intimate acts.

They describe feeling “shaken” and “upset” after acting them out.

Performing arts union Equity is demanding action from the industry – it has published guides on minimum pay, and working conditions in games, including on intimate or explicit scenes.

Jessica Jefferies is a professional casting director, who works mainly in video games and enjoys the medium.

Prior to that she was a motion capture performer – part of a small group who worked regularly for studios used by game developers.

Dressed in a skin-tight body suit, covered in markers, motion capture performers act-out the movements of characters in games on a large unfurnished set, where their motions are recorded digitally.

She said performers were often left in the dark about the nature of the game, or the scene, by developers.

“We’d get an email or a call from a studio saying we need you on these days for a shoot,” she said.

“That was all the information we’d get.”

Ms Jefferies told the BBC she was once asked to act out a scene with a male performer involving a sexual assault with no prior warning.

“I turned up and was told what I would be filming would be a graphic rape scene,” she said.

“This act could be watched for as long or as little time as the player wanted through a window, and then a player would be able to shoot this character in the head.

“It was just purely gratuitous in my opinion.”

She refused to act out the “disgusting” scene – which was made worse as she was the only female on set.

“There’s no nudity involved, but its still an act and there’s an intimacy in that act and also a violence in this situation,” she said.

“So yes there may be a layer of Lycra between us, but you are still there and still having to truly immerse yourself in this scene.”

In the end her concerns were listened to and the scene was not recorded.

But it reinforces her belief that performers should know in advance about explicit scenes so they don’t have to “kick up a fuss” on set or feel pressure to do something which makes them feel uncomfortable.

Jessica was consulted by Equity in the development of their guidance which requires that when recording explicit or intimate scenes:

• A summary of the story, scene breakdown and scripts should be distributed to all cast members in advance.
• performers should be able to request a closed set where access is kept to a minimum.
• a competent intimacy coordinator should be engaged.

She argues giving actors more information will help them deliver better performances and argues “there is an appetite for change”.

Ms Jefferies stresses the guidelines are not trying to put boundaries on storytelling. In the ten years since that incident there have also been major improvements, she says – and “these guidelines are just to bring it even more in line with the best practices in the film and TV industry”.

She says the studios she now works with are generally very open to being educated on good practices, and agree that treating people well leads to better performances.

One voice actor and Equity member who supports the guidelines, speaking on condition of anonymity, also told the BBC of problems she had encountered.

She “absolutely loves the industry” but argues the limited information shared with actors before a performance needs to change.

“We have to sign NDAs [non-disclosure agreements], we’re told almost nothing,” she said.

In one recording for a major game she first learned it was explicit only when she turned up for work.

“This was actually a full-on sex scene,” she said.

“I had to [vocally] match the scene and through the glass in the booth was the entire team, all male, watching me.

“It was excruciating… at that stage I had been in the games industry a while, and I had never felt so shaken”.

She compared the experience to unexpectedly being required to perform for a premium rate phone-sex line.

“What upset me so much about the situation is I was put on the spot, nobody thought to ask me if I was ok with it, and nobody checked to see if I was ok afterwards,” she said.

And as a freelancer, she feared being labelled as a troublemaker by refusing.

“Nobody has to justify why they’re not hiring you,” she said.

Like Ms Jefferies, she wants games to move closer to standards in film and TV.

Rhiannon Bevan of game news site The Gamer has covered the steps last year’s gaming blockbuster Baldur’s Gate 3 took in dealing with explicit scenes as an example of a modern game “getting it right”.

She says games are increasingly taking explicit scenes seriously “and not just using them for titillation”.

But it came with the risk that performers may not be comfortable with the work.

Baldur’s Gate 3 addressed this by employing intimacy co-ordinators – dedicated members of staff tasked with ensuring the well-being of performers in explicit scenes.

Its developer used one intimacy co-ordinator to look after performers voicing intimate scenes, while another looked after those who were also miming actions to be digitised into the game.

As well as intimate scenes, the Equity guidelines also cover the overuse of NDAs, safety during motion and performance capture, avoiding harmful vocal stress for artists and the protections around the use of artificial intelligence.

AI use is one of the key issues behind a continuing strike by games performers in the US.

UKIE, the trade body for the games industry, did not respond directly to the issue of the treatment of performers working on explicit material, but said in relation to Equity’s guidelines that its focus “remains on fostering a supportive environment for all stakeholders in the UK video game sector, ensuring it remains the best place to create, play, and sell video games”.

Ukraine has destroyed a strategically important bridge over the river Seym, as it continues its incursion into Russia’s Kursk region.

Russian officials have been quoted as saying the operation near the town of Glushkovo has cut off part of the local district.

The bridge was used by the Kremlin to supply its troops and its destruction could hamper their efforts.

President Volodymyr Zelensky said Ukrainian troops were strengthening their positions in Kursk, and called the captured territories an exchange fund, implying they could be swapped for Ukrainian regions occupied by Moscow.

Now in its second week, this is Ukraine’s deepest incursion into Russia since Moscow launched its full-scale invasion more than two years ago.

Ukraine’s surprise cross-border operation has resulted in more than 120,000 people fleeing to safety.

But amid Ukrainian claims of territorial gains, Kyiv has repeatedly maintained it does not wish to occupy Russia.

“Ukraine is not interested in occupying Russian territories,” a senior aide to Ukrainian President Zelensky said on Friday.

Mykhailo Podolyak said one of the key objectives they wanted out of their incursion into Russia was to get Moscow to negotiate “on our own terms”.

“In the Kursk region, we can clearly see how the military tool is being used objectively to persuade Russia to enter a fair negotiation process,” he wrote on X, adding Kyiv has proven “effective means of coercion”.

The head of the Ukrainian military, Oleksandr Syrsky, said on Friday that the offensive had made further progress.

“The troops of the offensive group continue to fight and have advanced in some areas from one to three kilometres towards the enemy,” he told President Zelensky in a video posted on social media.

Syrsky said he hoped to take “many prisoners” from a battle in the village of Mala Loknya, about 13km (8 miles) from the border.

As Ukraine’s advance continues, officials in Russia’s Belgorod region bordering Ukraine have said they will evacuate five villages starting on Monday.

“From 19 August, we are closing access to five settlements, removing residents and helping them bring out their property,” Belgorod governor Vyacheslav Gladkov wrote on the Telegram social messaging app, naming small villages near the border.

However, as Ukraine moves further into western Russian territory, Russian forces are equally making gains in Ukraine’s east.

On Friday, Moscow said its troops had captured Serhiivka, the latest in a string of towns claimed by Russian troops in recent weeks.

The latest advances bring the Russians closer to the city of Pokrovsk, a vital logistics hub that sits on a main road for supplies to Ukrainian troops along the eastern front.

Pokrovsk lies north-west of the Russian-held Donetsk region, which has been under Ukrainian fire since Friday morning, leaving several civilians injured.

A message from the head of the city’s military administration, Sergiy Dobryak, on Thursday, urged people to evacuate as Russia was “rapidly approaching the outskirts”.

Earlier, Russian-installed officials in the Moscow-controlled part of Ukraine’s Donetsk region blamed Kyiv for a strike on a shopping centre that wounded at least seven.

According to the Russia-backed governor of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic, Denis Pushilin, the city has been under shelling since midday on Friday.

Reuters news agency reported that over the past 24 hours, three civilians had been killed and five others injured, citing Donetsk’s regional head.

In Crimea, which was annexed by Russia in 2014, missiles targeting a bridge built under Russian President Vladimir Putin’s orders were shot down overnight, the defence ministry said on Telegram.

Kyiv has launched multiple attacks and attempted attacks on the Kerch Bridge since Moscow began its military offensive.

After almost a year off the platform, Donald Trump returned to X this week and asked his 89 million followers: “Are you better off now than you were when I was president?”

It was a clear echo of the famous quote from Ronald Reagan during his victorious 1980 presidential campaign, when he asked: “Are you better off today than you were four years ago?”

This messaging isn’t surprising. It seems like an obvious strategy for Trump to focus on the economy.

That’s because polls consistently suggest it’s the issue American voters care about the most. One such poll conducted by The Economist and YouGov in recent days listed “inflation/prices” and “jobs and the economy” among voters’ top concerns.

Perhaps more importantly, polls also indicate voters are deeply unhappy with the current state of affairs.

That seems like a perfect situation for any presidential challenger.

But in an election that’s been transformed by Kamala Harris taking over from Joe Biden as the Democratic candidate, Trump seems to be struggling to land his simple message on the economy.

It is less than a month since he was on stage at the Republican National Convention looking unbeatable, having survived an assassination attempt and riding high in the opinion polls.

Now, he has lost that lead and seems to have lost his way. Meanwhile, in the opposition corner, Ms Harris is riding a wave of excitement and enthusiasm that he is finding difficult to counter.

The easiest way to burst her bubble would be to remind voters how unhappy they are about high prices and blame her for the inflation that has pushed up the cost of living during the time she has been beside President Biden in the White House.

One of the reasons Trump is failing to land that message is the Harris campaign’s strategy of putting proposals to try to lower the cost of living at the heart of her pitch.

In a speech in North Carolina on Friday, Ms Harris promised to expand child tax credits, help people to purchase their first homes, and to encourage the building of more affordable housing.

She also said she hoped to tackle the persistently high price of food and groceries by banning “price gouging” or excessive corporate profiteering.

“By any measure, our economy is the strongest in the world,” she said. “Many Americans don’t yet feel that progress in their daily lives.”

Joe Biden and Kamala Harris ought to be able to boast about some very good economic indicators. There is strong growth, record levels of job creation, and this week the inflation rate fell below 3% for the first time during Mr Biden’s presidency.

But because prices are still high, voters don’t feel any better off. Voters don’t care about the rate of inflation – they care about the level of prices.

“A central banker wants inflation to get back to target. A shopper wants his or her old price back,” Jared Bernstein, the chair of President Biden’s Council of Economic Advisers, said in a July speech.

When it comes to the economy, “the vibes are off”.

“Vibes matter,” Mr Bernstein said.

So will the bad economic vibes hurt the Harris campaign?

That is what I asked voters over lunch at a crab shack on the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland.

Jeff Tester, who works in a nearby marina, said high prices are really hurting him.

“I get paid by the hour. I get up to go to work every day. I think you have to do that to get the American dream,” he said. “But I just know it’s getting harder.”

And he is very clear about who he sees as responsible. “I blame the Democrats. I believe their policies are hurting the working man,” he said.

Every diner I met complained about inflation, but not everyone held Mr Biden or Ms Harris responsible.

Dan Nardo, a retired boat broker, said he believed the pandemic, oil prices, foreign wars and supply chain issues have more to do with price rises than the US president.

His friend Randy Turk, a retired lawyer, told me that he felt a new administration is likely to follow a similar path to try to reduce inflation, regardless of who wins.

“It’s not like a different president can really make that much of a difference,” he said.

Ms Harris struggled for prominence and media coverage during most of her time as vice-president. Previously that was seen as a weakness. But if it means she can emerge untainted by “Bidenomics”, it could be one of her greatest strengths.

Ruth Igielnik, polling editor at the New York Times, says the latest data she has collected suggests “voters very much tied their negative feelings about the economy to Joe Biden”.

Talking to me on the BBC’s Americast podcast, she explained that in her polling Trump is still favoured on the economy, but where he once had an 18-point lead over Mr Biden he now leads Ms Harris by only about 8 points.

“That makes me think voters aren’t necessarily attaching their feelings about the economy to her,” she said.

A separate poll this week conducted for the Financial Times and the University of Michigan Ross School of Business indicated Ms Harris holds a narrow lead over Trump on who Americans trust to handle the economy.

No wonder Republicans are publicly begging Trump to focus on the issues, the economy in particular, and stop launching personal attacks against Ms Harris.

In a speech this week, Trump told supporters he was going to talk about the economy but struggled to stay on topic.

“They say it’s the most important subject,” he said, “they” referring to his advisers and strategists who believe this is his strongest line of attack.

“I’m not sure it is. But they say it’s the most important,” he added, before going on to list immigration, crime and the way Ms Harris laughs as top issues. You could practically hear his campaign managers pulling their hair out.

“Voters don’t care about personalities or who is drawing larger crowd sizes,” said Matt Terrill, former chief of staff for Marco Rubio’s presidential campaign.

“Independent, undecided, swing voters in key states care about the economy and inflation so just focus on those core issues,” he said.

“Stay focused on talking about how you are going to make the lives of Americans better over the next four years.”

It was back in 1992 that the Democrat Jim Carville coined the slogan “It’s the economy, stupid” while he was working on Bill Clinton’s presidential campaign.

It’s advice that every campaign since has clung to. But Trump, this time around, seems to be finding it uncommonly difficult to stick with.

It ought to be a winner for him. After all, according to the Financial Times poll, in answer to his question “Are you better off now than you were when I was president?” only 19% of voters say they are.

• SIMPLE GUIDE: Everything you need to know about the vote

• ANALYSIS: Three ways Trump will try to end Harris honeymoon

• EXPLAINER: Where the election could be won and lost

• FACT-CHECK: Trump falsely claims Harris crowd was faked

• VOTERS: What Democrats make of Tim Walz as VP

Kamala Harris has called for millions of new-build homes and first-time buyer help, tax breaks for families and a ban on grocery “price-gouging” in her first speech focused on economic policy.

The Democratic presidential nominee’s plans build on ideas from the Biden administration and aim at addressing voter concerns after a surge in prices since 2021.

Many of the proposals would require action from Congress, where similar ideas have stalled in the past.

Donald Trump said the vice-president had already had more than three years with the administration to deliver her promises, which his campaign called “dangerously liberal”.

“Where has she been and why hasn’t she done it?” he asked.

Ms Harris hit back in a speech on Friday in North Carolina, stating: “I think that if you want to know who someone cares about, look at who they fight for.

“Donald Trump fights for billionaires and large corporations. I will fight to give money back to working and middle class Americans.”

The campaign’s proposals include a “first-ever” tax credit for builders of homes sold to first-time buyers, as well as up to $25,000 in down-payment assistance for “eligible” first time buyers, a move that her campaign estimated could reach four million households over four years.

She has also called for capping the monthly price of diabetes-drug insulin at $35 for everyone, finding ways to cancel medical debt, and giving families a $6,000 tax credit the year they have a new child.

She is supporting a federal law banning firms from charging excessive prices on groceries and urged action on a bill in Congress that would bar property owners from using services that “coordinate” rents.

Democrats and their allies are hoping Ms Harris will prove a more forceful and trusted messenger than President Joe Biden on economic pain.

Robert Weissman, the co-president of the consumer watchdog Public Citizen, characterised Ms Harris’s plans as a “pro-consumer, anti-corporate abuse agenda”.

“The [Biden] administration did talk about it but they did not promote proposed measures anywhere near as aggressive as Harris is doing,” he said.

But pollster Micah Roberts, a partner at Public Opinion Strategies, said inflation was likely to remain a challenge for Democrats, noting that voters have a long history of trusting Trump – and Republicans – more on economic issues.

“Trump’s been holding the advantage on this stuff for like a year plus,” said Mr Roberts, the Republican half of a bipartisan team that recently conducted a survey on economic issues for CNBC, which found that Trump still held a big lead over Ms Harris on the topic.

Without a huge change, he said it would be “hard for me to believe” that the margin had suddenly closed.

Though analysts say some of Harris’s proposals, such as the ban on price-gouging, are likely to be popular, they have also sparked criticism from some economists.

Bans on price-gouging already exist in many states, applied during emergencies such as hurricanes.

But economists say the term is difficult to define and widening such rules could end up backfiring, by discouraging firms from making more at times of short supply.

Michael Salinger, a professor of markets, public policy and law at Boston University’s Questrom School of Business, said a similar ban was discussed when he served as the lead economist at the Federal Trade Commission during the administration of George W Bush.

“I thought then that it was a bad idea and I think now that it’s a bad idea,” he said. “To impose controls on competitive markets will lead to shortages – that’s always been our experience.”

He said the Harris campaign’s other plans would also face questions, given their cost.

For example, the proposal to increase the tax credit for children to as much as $3,600, which Congress did temporarily during the pandemic and opted against extending, would cost more than $1tn, according to some estimates.

With populism ascendant in both parties, that cost has not dissuaded Trump’s choice for vice president, JD Vance, from backing an even bigger tax credit expansion.

Prof Salinger said Trump’s other economic plans would be unlikely to tackle inflation concerns.

Economists predict that increased drilling would have limited impact given the global nature of energy markets and have warned that Trump’s pledge to impose a tax of 10% or more on imports would drive up prices.

As it stands, price increases have been subsiding, as the shocks from pandemic-era supply chain issues and the war in Ukraine fade.

Inflation, which tracks the pace of price increases, was 2.9% in July, the smallest annual increase since March 2021, the Labor Department said this week.

That is getting closer to the 2% pace considered normal, though prices are up roughly 20% since January 2021.

“The problem that people object to is that even if inflation is down, the prices are still higher and that’s true but they’re higher because of the natural working of market forces,” Prof Salinger said.

“Trying to stand in the way of the working of market forces is a lot like trying to stop the tides,” he added. “You just can’t do it.”

Millions of screaming fans. A global phenomenon. A multi-billion pound business. No, it’s not Taylor Swift (this time). We’re talking K-pop.

And with four of 2023’s top 10 best-selling acts coming out of South Korea, the Brits want a piece of the action.

Step forward newly created boy band, Dear Alice, who applied to take part in the latest BBC One talent show, Made in Korea: The K-pop Experience.

Meet Blaise, Dexter, James, Olly and Reese. You might be hearing a bit more about them from now on.

None of them knew each other before they individually auditioned and were put together as a band by the showrunners.

The fresh-faced quintet were then flown out to South Korea’s capital, Seoul, for 100 days of rigorous K-pop training with stardom in their sights.

Most K-pop training takes years rather than months. Not for the faint-hearted, the boys’ experience involved long hours of vocal coaching and learning intricate choreography with a bit of Korean sight-seeing thrown in for good measure (and good TV – the South Korean tourist board will be thrilled).

• Where did K-pop come from?

The six-part series is a collaboration between the BBC, K-pop powerhouse agency SM Entertainment and Moon&Back Media, run by TV veterans Dawn Airey, Nigel Hall and Russ Lindsay, whose back catalogue includes shows such as The X Factor, Britain’s Got Talent and Saturday Night Takeaway.

K-pop expert Hee Jun Yoon, the creative force behind some of the biggest K-pop bands of the last 20 years, critiques the band’s performance at the end of each week and it’s safe to say she pulls no punches. Even the head of BBC unscripted content, Kate Phillips, says Hee Jun “makes Simon Cowell look like Mary Poppins”.

Former X Factor head judge Cowell is, of course, launching his own search for a boy band in an upcoming Netflix series which is still in production.

Without giving too much away from Made in Korea’s first episode, Hee Jun gives the band a huge wake-up call in week one with some unflinching criticism. “The level of choreo is so basic, it’s nursery level.” Ouch. Her facial expressions alone could go viral.

The boys won’t be drawn on whether any of them wanted to quit the show at any point. “You’ll have to wait and see,” says Olly Quinn, 20, from Sunderland, a recent graduate in dance and musical theatre. (Clearly, the media training has also been exacting).

They also won’t reveal whether they’ve signed a record deal yet, only saying they’re still “rehearsing hard” and commenting that all the effort and brutal feedback was worth it.

Londoner Dexter Greenwood, 22, who also trained in musical theatre, says: “It was hard work, really challenging but the end justifies the means. Everyone at SM was so supportive but I think we were different to what they expected!”

Reese Carter, 20, from Wiltshire and a former cruise ship performer, adds: “At first it hit hard but we had a great welfare team in place… and it was all done with love.

“They’re honest because they want to push us to be that much better. I enjoy the feedback. They’re on our side. We had welfare, a life coach, we had people living with us constantly, you could walk downstairs and speak to someone,” he adds.

Olly concurs: “It’s the brutal honestly. We needed it.”

There’s certainly a vast difference between the band’s performances in episode one and a later video clip journalists were shown at a preview.

Coco Yeonsoo Do is a K-pop dancer and choreographer, and was a former member of KAACHI, considered the UK’s first K-pop girl group.

“It’s really hard to make a K-pop group reach BTS or Blackpink level,” she tells the BBC, but training is what sets successful groups apart.

“It’s very intense and competitive,” says Coco.

One key difference between UK and US pop groups and K-pop ones is how produced the latter are, she adds.

“It’s obvious, but K-pop groups work more like a group, and emphasise the group identity, rather than individuality,” she adds.

Following allegations over very strict and punishing training regimes by wannabe K-pop stars over the past few years, Korean press reported the introduction of regulations to ban some unfair practices in contracts between K-pop trainees and entertainment companies.

Clearly welfare has been a priority for the series producers of The K-pop Experience.

Helen Wood is a professor of Media and Cultural Studies at Aston University, and is working on a research project on duty of care in TV.

In 2019, there was a Parliamentary inquiry and Ofcom consultation on the broadcasting code, following a handful of reality stars’ deaths by suicide.

In 2020, the media watchdog announced new rules to protect those taking part in TV shows.

“Now there’s more pressure on production to make sure that they’re taking due care of the welfare, dignity and wellbeing of participants that go through production,” she says.

“That’s not to say that things weren’t in place before 2021, but there’s now much more regulation.”

Another key difference brought in through the new Ofcom code is a requirement to show audiences that a duty of care to participants is being enacted, she adds.

This means drawing back the curtain to show audiences some of the backstage production processes to ensure they understand and feel confident that contestants are adequately cared for.

A spokesperson for Made in Korea told the BBC: “The welfare of the band members has been at the centre of their training process,” adding that there was a “strong support team in place” and that the band’s welfare “remains the highest priority”.

Reese says they also relied on each other for support.

“We’ve [the band] grown closer and closer over the last couple of months. Much as it was great to have welfare there, there was a lot of times when we didn’t need to go to them because we’re strong enough as a group.”

Blaise Noon, 19, from London, is the baby of the band but appears to be taking it all in his stride. He is a Brit School graduate and comes across as the most confident.

He says they are really “lucky” to have had the advantage as a British band to be immersed in the Korean training regime: “There’s a lot of really good things we can take away to create this hybrid fusion.”

Interestingly, most of them have never had any desire to be in a boy band until now.

James Sharp, 23, from Huddersfield, is one half of the Sharp twins, whose TikTok account has amassed 5.5 million followers.

He says he thought boy bands were “cringey”, Blaise laughs as he recalls feeling “too cool” for them although Dexter was always a fan. And Olly has had a K-pop education from his auntie who runs K-pop fan pages.

All agree, though, that this was too big an opportunity to pass up.

But how did they come up with the band name?

After Olly’s suggestion of British Bulldogs was quickly scotched (can’t think why), they stumbled upon a restaurant in Seoul called Dear Alice.

They all liked it and it stuck.

“The ‘dear’ is like a letter to the fans” and Alice stands for ‘a love I can’t explain,” says Blaine.

More to the point, the restaurant “sold the best beef wellington in the world” according to the lads.

Not exactly your classic Korean dish but Dear Alice will be hoping a similar culture fusion will be the secret to their success.

Travellers should consider getting vaccinated against mpox if they will be visting affected areas in Africa, new advice says.

The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) has updated its recommendations in response to outbreaks of a new strain of the virus. Other continents, including Europe, can expect some cases too, it says.

ECDC says the risk of it spreading everywhere is low, despite the World Health Organization recently declaring the mpox situation a global emergency.

The disease – formerly known as monkeypox – can be passed on by close contact with anyone with the infection.

Those who have been vaccinated against mpox in the past might only need one-top up dose, rather than two shots.

Booster vaccine doses are typically recommended every two to 10 years if a person remains at continued risk for exposure.

Mpox has killed at least 450 people in the DRC in recent months, linked to a new type or Clade called 1b.

Mpox can be passed on from person to person through:

• any close physical contact with mpox blisters or scabs (including during sexual contact, kissing, cuddling or holding hands)
• touching clothing, bedding or towels used by someone with mpox
• the coughs or sneezes of a person with mpox when they’re close to you

It causes flu-like symptoms, skin lesions and can be fatal for some.

• What is mpox and how is it spread?
• Mpox: What does the new strain mean for you?

Experts say there is still a lot to learn about 1b, but it may be spreading more easily, causing more serious disease.

Pamela Rendi-Wagner from the ECDC said: “As a result of the rapid spread of this outbreak in Africa, ECDC has increasd the level of risk for the general population in the EU/EEA and travellers to affected areas. Due to the close links between Europe and Africa we must be prepared for more imported Clade 1 cases.”

Currently, there are no cases of Clade 1b mpox confirmed in the UK but experts say cases can spread if international action is not taken.

A case of mpox has also been detected in Sweden after a person became infected during a stay in an area of Africa where the disease is spreading.

The ECDC recommends that public health authorities plan and prepare for quick detection of any more cases that may reach Europe.

A previous mpox public health emergency, declared in 2022, was caused by a different, milder strain called Clade 2.

Despite having effective vaccines against mpox, too few doses are currently getting to where they are needed most.

A Missouri woman is accused of trying to defraud Elvis Presley’s family of millions of dollars and steal the family’s ownership interest in Graceland, the US singing legend’s family home.

Lisa Jeanine Findley, who used a variety of aliases, was arrested for allegedly orchestrating a scheme to conduct a fraudulent sale of Graceland, located in Memphis, Tennessee home.

Ms Findley, 53, was federally charged with mail fraud and aggravated identity theft and was expected to appear in court Friday. If convicted, she could face up to 20 years in prison.

The Presley family has not publicly commented on the charges.

The US Justice Department claims Ms Findley posed as three different individuals associated with a fictitious private lender called Naussany Investments & Private Lending LLC (Naussany Investments).

The DOJ alleges she falsely claimed Elvis Presley’s daughter – Lisa Marie Presley, who died in January 2023 – had borrowed $3.8m (£3m) from Naussany Investments, pledged Graceland as collateral for the loan and failed to repay the debt.

Ms Findley allegedly was seeking $2.85m ($2.2m GBP) from Presley’s family to settle the alleged debt, according to the DOJ.

Among the fraudulent actions she’s accused of are allegedly fabricating loan documents, forging the signature of Elvis Presley’s daughter and publishing a fraudulent foreclosure notice in one of Memphis’s daily newspapers, announcing that Naussany planned to auction Graceland on 23 May.

When the Presley family sued Naussany Investments attempting to stop the sale of Graceland, Ms Findley also allegedly submitted false court filings, the DOJ said.

The auction to sell Graceland sparked international attention earlier this year, after Presley’s granddaughter, actress Riley Keough, claimed that the paperwork on the loan was fraudulent. She said that her mother’s signature was forged.

Ms Keough inherited Graceland, which has long been a public museum honoring Mr Presley, and much of Presley’s estate after her mother, Lisa Marie Presley, died last year.

She filed a legal action to stop the planned auction and a Tennessee judge agreed.

At the time, Graceland and Elvis Presley Enterprises issued a statement to the BBC: “As the court has now made clear, there was no validity to the claims.”

Elvis bought Graceland mansion in 1957 and lived there until he died two decades later.

The 14-acre compound was opened to the public as a music history park, in the early 1980s. Now officially a National Historic Landmark, it attracts roughly 600,000 visitors a year, according to the venue.

Elvis died at Graceland and is buried there, as are his parents, daughter Lisa Marie Presley, and her son, Benjamin Keough.

The BBC’s efforts to reach an attorney for Ms Findley were unsuccessful.

On Friday, she made a brief court appearance and was booked into jail in Greene County, Missouri.

A Sherpa village in Nepal’s Everest region has been engulfed by icy flood waters, officials say.

Experts suspect Thame – which sits at an altitude of about 3,800m – was flooded after a glacial lake burst its banks. Scientists have warned that climate change is causing many glaciers in the Himalayas to melt at an alarming rate.

No deaths or injuries have been reported, but more than a dozen buildings including houses, a school and a health clinic have been completely destroyed by Friday’s deluge.

Thame is home to many record-holding Sherpa mountaineers and is also where Sherpa Tenzing Norgay, the first person to climb Mount Everest along with explorer Edmund Hillary, hailed from.

Videos show frothy, milky waters surging through the village in floods turned brown by mud and debris.

A spokesman for the Nepalese army, Gaurav Kumar KC, told AFP about 15 homes had been swept away, while rescue teams were helping people to safety.

Local authorities say bad weather did not permit the use of helicopters during their investigation, adding they plan to fly to the mountains on Saturday morning.

While the cause of the flood is unknown, Arun Bhakta Shrestha, a climate change specialist at the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) said there are “indications” it was the result of a glacial lake outburst and they were working to confirm it.

Scientists have warned that Himalayan glaciers are melting because of climate change and creating glacial lakes, often dammed by loose rock and debris, which makes them unstable and prone to bursting their banks.

Hundreds of glacial lakes formed from glacial melt have appeared out of nowhere in the Himalayas in recent decades. According to a 2020 report by the ICIMOD, 2,070 were documented in Nepal, of which 21 were ranked “potentially dangerous”.

Fortnite, one of the world’s biggest video games, is available as an iPhone app for the first time in four years.

However, it will only be available to players in the European Union.

This is because EU law requires Apple to allow third-party app stores on its devices – other parts of the world do not have comparable legislation.

The game was removed from the App Store in 2020 following a payments row between Apple and Epic.

Users will have to install an alternative app store on to their phones in order to download the game.

One of these alternative shopfronts is the newly-launched Epic Games Store, which is also available on Google Android devices for the first time.

Epic admits the process is “lengthy” and blames Apple and Google for “introducing intentionally poor-quality install experiences laden by multiple steps, confusing device settings, and scare screens.”

Apple said in a statement that new EU law “required us to enable new capabilities for developers in the EU, and we have worked to make them as easy as possible for users while also trying to protect their privacy and security.”

The BBC has approached Google for comment.

It comes as Fortnite launches its new season based around Marvel’s Doctor Doom.

New EU legislation, called the Digital Markets Act, came into force in March, which means that Apple has to allow alternative app stores on its devices.

However, those laws do not exist in other parts of the world, where apps can only be downloaded from Apple’s official App Store.

“Fortnite has been freed on iOS in Europe, thanks to the Digital Markets Act”, Epic boss Tim Sweeney said on X.

“Apple continues to block Fortnite from a billion players in the rest of the world, and the battle rages on to restore free market competition.”

Apple says this is mainly for security reasons.

However, Epic argues that it means Apple has a monopoly and can charge high rates – up to 30% commission on purchases – to app developers.

A similar commission is charged by Google when apps are downloaded through its Google Play store.

However, Google does allow alternative app stores on its Android devices.

Android users could already download the Fortnite app directly from Epic Games on to their phones.

Fortnite is free to play, but makes money by charging players for in-game purchases for items such as new skins or weapons.

It was removed from Apple and Google’s app stores in 2020 after Epic Games stopped paying the commission.

Currently, UK iPhone users cannot download Fortnite, however they can play on a browser.

The Guardian reports Epic Games wants to bring the Fortnite app back to UK iPhones in late 2025.

“Unless Apple and Google manage to lobby the UK government that they should be able to continue blocking competition, we should be able to move on that by the end of next year,” Tim Sweeney told them.

New competition law was passed in May, which could pave the way for alternative app stores on iPhones.

“The fight is far from over, but this is tangible progress for developers and consumers who can begin to benefit from competition and choice,” Mr Sweeney said in a press release.

Epic Games has also made its games Rocket League Sideswipe and Fall Guys available on its new app store.

Dubbed the “Ketamine Queen” by US prosecutors, alleged drug dealer Jasveen Sangha is one of five people who US officials say supplied ketamine to Friends star Matthew Perry, exploiting his drug addiction for profit, and leading to his overdose death.

Ms Sangha now faces nine charges, including conspiracy to distribute ketamine and distribution of ketamine resulting in death.

The American-British dual-national, who wore a Nirvana sweatshirt for her court appearance, pleaded not guilty to the charges on Thursday.

Her bail request was denied by US officials and she will remain in custody until her trial in October.

The indictment alleges that Ms Sangha’s distribution of ketamine on 24 October 2023 caused Perry’s death.

Ketamine is a dissociative anaesthetic that has some hallucinogenic effects, according to the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). It can distort perception of sight and sound and makes the user feel disconnected and not in control.

It is used as an injectable anaesthetic for humans and animals because it makes patients feel detached from their pain and environment.

The substance is supposed to be administered only by a physician, investigators say, and patients who have taken the drug should be monitored by a professional because of its possible harmful effects.

Ms Sangha is alleged to have supplied ketamine from her “stash house” since at least 2019.

Her North Hollywood home was a “drug-selling emporium”, Martin Estrada, the US attorney for California’s Central District, told a news conference on Thursday.

More than 80 vials of ketamine were allegedly found there in a search, along with thousands of pills that included methamphetamine, cocaine and Xanax.

The home, called the “Sangha Stash House” in the indictment, was where she is alleged to have packaged and distributed drugs.

She “only deal[s] with high end and celebs,” the indictment quoted her co-accused Erik Fleming as saying of Ms Sangha.

At the same time, she lived a jetsetter life which she shared widely on social media.

Ms Sangha is said to have mixed with celebrities socially as well, with one of her friends telling the Daily Mail she attended the Golden Globes and the Oscars.

Shortly after Perry’s overdose she posted pictures depicting her extravagant lifestyle, including parties and a trip to Japan and Mexico.

And the day before arrests were announced, her social media activity suggests she went to a hairdresser and dyed her hair purple.

The Instagram account where these posts were shared was confirmed as belonging to her by a spokesman for the US Attorney’s Office Central District of California.

Prosecutors claim Ms Sangha came to supply ketamine to Perry after fellow defendant Dr Salvador Plasencia initially learned that the actor was interested in the drug. Dr Plasencia sourced it from Dr Mark Chavez, another defendant in the case who had previously operated a ketamine clinic.

They allege Dr Plasencia also taught Perry’s live-in assistant, co-accused Kenneth Iwamasa, how to inject Perry with ketamine.

Beginning in October 2023, Ms Sangha began supplying Mr Iwamasa with ketamine and prosecutors say she knew the ketamine she distributed could be deadly.

“These defendants cared more about profiting off of Mr Perry than caring for his well-being,” said Mr Estrada.

He also alleged that Ms Sangha was a “major source of supply for ketamine to others as well as Perry”.

If convicted of all charges in Perry’s case, Sangha would face a mandatory minimum sentence of 10 years in federal prison and a statutory maximum sentence of life imprisonment, the justice department says.

US authorities say they also uncovered Ms Sangha’s alleged connection to another overdose death, this time in 2019.

Court documents suggest she knew about the dangers of ketamine after selling it to a customer named Cody McLaury, who died of an overdose after buying the drug.

She was reported to have been contacted by one of his family members, who texted her saying: “The ketamine you sold my brother killed him. It’s listed as the cause of death.”

Days later Ms Sangha is said to have searched on Google: “Can ketamine be listed as a cause of death?”, according to investigators.

Authorities say Ms Sangha will face charges in that case.

“All you can fly” – unlimited flights for an annual subscription fee. What’s not to like? A fair amount, for some passengers, it turns out.

Wizz Air’s new scheme under that title has divided opinion. Some have praised the €499 (£426) scheme’s “insanely great” value on trips as far as the Maldives, and the budget airline says it has been “overwhelmed” by the positive response.

But others hit out at the airline’s service and recalled their own experience of delays, while questioning the scheme’s terms and conditions.

Wizz says its new membership, effective from September, will allow frequent flyers to “save money, visit friends and family more regularly and spontaneously visit off-the-beaten-track destinations”.

It says it sold out in most markets within 24 hours, but some customers have been pointing out what they describe as a “catch”. Those who sign up can only book flights up to three days before departure and must pay a fee of about €10 per flight.

Flights do not include “trolley bags” to stow in overhead compartments or checked baggage. And crucially, the scheme is limited to just 10,000 people. It’s also dependent on whether there are any seats left.

Wizz, which flies to 53 countries, carried 62 million passengers in the year to the end of March.

Its scheme is similar to those being offered by Frontier Airlines in the US and Malaysia-based AirAsia.

Rory Boland, editor of Which? Travel, advises passengers to look behind the enticing headline price to work out if this really is a good deal for them.

Once booking fees, seat selection and luggage costs are added on, travellers will see costs climb, he says – particularly as multiple short-notice journeys will be required to break even on the original cost of the subscription.

“It is also ironic to see an airline which claims to be Europe’s ‘greenest’ encouraging consumers to take unlimited flights,” he adds.

The Hungarian airline has faced a number of hurdles in the last year, which it might be hoping to overcome with the new scheme.

In June, the airline was named the worst for UK flight delays for the third year in a row, based on analysis of official data by the PA news agency.

And in January, it had to pay an extra £1.2m to customers in compensation, after the industry regulator intervened over the way it had handled flight disruption.

Wizz Air points out that it has been working on improvements, such as investing an extra £90m in its operations and customer service last year. And it says 1.8% of its UK flights were delayed for more than three hours in the first half of this year – a 50% reduction on last year.

Talie Delemere, 34, is excited about the scheme and has already signed up. She lives near Luton airport and likes being able to travel whenever she likes.

“I travel a lot anyway, between eight and 12 times a year and I mostly travel with hand luggage,” she tells the BBC.

“Wizz Air are a mixed bag but I don’t find them any better or worse service-wise than any other low cost carriers and their aircraft are far nicer and more comfortable than Ryanair’s.”

But others are not convinced.

“You can subscribe to this scheme but you might never take off,” says James Glenton, 36, from York, who is still hoping for compensation for a cancelled Wizz Air flight a year on.

In July 2023, Wizz cancelled Mr Glenton’s flight from Leeds Bradford Airport to Wroclaw in Poland and rebooked him on one from London Luton the next day, he says.

That meant he lost two days of his holiday, the parking he’d booked at Leeds Bradford, money spent on his hotel, and the petrol costs getting to Luton and back, he says.

According to Mr Glenton, Wizz has blamed air traffic control restrictions for the cancellation so won’t refund him. But he claims the airport denies this and has told him it was the airline that cancelled the flight directly.

“I am not hopeful about a refund, I won’t get anything from them,” he says. “I am angry, I would never fly with Wizz Air again.”

Mark Shatliff, 39, from Reading, also says he won’t be signing up to the scheme.

His Wizz Air flight from Istanbul to London was delayed by six hours last July and was so late when he landed that he had to pay an additional £120 for a taxi home, he says.

Wizz initially refused to refund him but relented when he took the matter to a dispute resolution company.

“I think people who subscribe to this scheme won’t get the value out of it,” he tells the BBC.

“What you end up paying if things go wrong is so much more – it isn’t worth it.”

While Wizz said it could not comment on individual cases, it offered to look into James’ and Mark’s reports.

Travel expert Simon Calder thinks the scheme could be a good deal for some fliers but not others.

He believes the subscription offer is aimed at travellers such as Eastern Europeans in the UK who go home regularly to see family. Wizz already offers other discount schemes for travellers, he adds.

“People will do their sums and I’ve done mine, it won’t really work for me,” he tells the BBC.

Some have raised concerns that the scheme could encourage frivolous flying that harms the environment, but Mr Calder thinks the impact will be minimal. He also thinks criticism of the airline’s performance is overblown.

Mr Calder says: “I fly on lots of airlines, if I want to be on time I generally go with Ryanair. In general I find Wizz and EasyJet pretty much the same.

While he says that Wizz’s recovery “when things go wrong has historically not been great”, they are still a “perfectly reasonable choice” for the thousands of passengers who may opt for its “all you can fly” option.

Paetongtarn Shinawatra brings a fresh, young face, and yet another member of the powerful Shinawatra clan, to the country’s top job.

She is the daughter of Thaksin Shinawatra, the deposed former PM who returned to Thailand last August after 15 years in exile.

The 37-year-old is also the youngest prime minister in Thailand’s history, and only the second woman – the first was her aunt Yingluck Shinawatra.

Known in Thailand by her nickname Ung Ing, Ms Paetongtarn has become a very familiar figure here since leading her party, Pheu Thai, in the general election last year. She proved a popular campaigner, speaking at rallies up to the last month of pregnancy with her second child.

However her family, in particular her mother Potjaman, who is still a powerful figure in Pheu Thai, did not want her to become prime minister, fearing she would be vulnerable to the kinds of legal interventions which forced both Ms Yingluck and Mr Thaksin into exile.

But the unexpected court ruling that brought down the premiership of Srettha Thavisin earlier this week forced the family’s hand. Aside from Mr Srettha, Pheu Thai had just two other registered PM candidates eligible to replace him; Ms Paetongtarn was one, the other an elderly former prosecutor who the party’s MPs believed did not have the energy or charisma to lead them into the next election, expected in three years time.

Ms Paetongtarn’s main experience has been working in the Shinawatra-owned Rende hotel group. She was not expected to go into politics, and only joined the Pheu Thai party in 2021.

In taking on the job of prime minister, she is entering a political minefield.

She describes herself as a compassionate capitalist, a social liberal who fully supports Thailand’s new equal marriage law.

But the phrase most people will remember her using is “daddy’s girl”. No matter what she does in government, she will always be presumed to be acting under the instruction of her father. And Mr Thaksin remains a very divisive figure.

His return from exile a year ago was the outcome of a grand bargain with powerful conservative forces. They include the military, which deposed two Shinawatra governments in coups, and groups close to the monarchy, which have opposed Mr Thaksin for more than two decades.

The stunning success of the reformist Move Forward party in last year’s election, pushing Pheu Thai and the Shinawatra clan into second place for the first time, forced conservatives, whose parties fared even worse, to recalibrate.

With Move Forward pushing for reform of the lese majetse law and the powers of the military, Pheu Thai, whose free-spending populism is now being copied by many other parties, was no longer the main threat.

So Pheu Thai was allowed to cobble together a coalition of 11 parties, many of them long-term enemies of Mr Thaksin, to keep Move Forward out.

But the mistrust of Mr Thaksin never went away.

The unstated condition of his return, and the royal pardon given to him by King Vajiralongkorn, was that he would keep a low profile and, as he had promised from exile, spend his time with his grandchildren.

Officially Mr Thaksin is not even a member of Pheu Thai. But even in exile Mr Thaksin constantly interfered, often to the detriment of his party. He is still presumed to be the Pheu Thai’s main financial backer. And since being released on parole earlier this year he has been both visible and vocal at party events.

Some have accused Mr Thaksin of pushing for Mr Srettha’s cabinet appointment of a lawyer who was convicted in 2008 of trying to bribe a supreme court judge with a shopping bag full of cash.

Back then the judge had been about to rule on a criminal case against Mr Thaksin.

On Wednesday the constitutional court, known for repeatedly ruling against the Shinawatra clan, found that appointment was unethical and sufficient grounds for dismissing Mr Srettha. The ruling is being interpreted in Thailand as a warning to Mr Thaksin to rein in his ambitions.

He was also charged earlier this year with lese majeste, over comments he made nine years ago in exile – a case with potentially serious consequences which may hang over him for years.

All of this makes Ms Paetongtarn’s job even more difficult. Pheu Thai’s past success was built on its reputation for driving the economy, and improving the living standards of poorer Thais.

But Thailand’s economy is now being held back by long-term structural challenges – and they are unresponsive to the populist measures tried by previous Shinawatra-led governments.

The party’s signature policy in the last election – a one-time payment of 10,000 baht ($284; £221) via a digital wallet to most of the population – has run into opposition from the central bank and others over its cost to the public purse.

The party has little else in its policy arsenal to lift its political fortunes over the next three years. It will also face constant and effective opposition from the reformist Move Forward Party, now reconstituted as the People’s Party, after being dissolved by the constitutional court last week.

And Pheu Thai finds itself in a coalition where for the first time it’s share of seats is less than half. Its conservative political partners also have little incentive to see a Pheu Thai-led administration achieve enough success to start rebuilding its once-formidable support base among voters.

All four of the last Shinawatra-led governments were ousted before the end of their elected terms by constitutional court rulings or military coups.

Ms Paetongtarn will be hoping to break that dismal record, but given the unending turmoil in Thai politics the odds do not look good.

Vice-President Kamala Harris has had to speedily re-introduce herself to US voters, who are now having to size her up as a potential commander-in-chief, instead of Joe Biden’s deputy.

And during the biggest moment of Ms Harris’s career so far – the Democratic convention in Chicago – they will also get to know the family members who will stand beside her, as well as those who helped her get there.

Unlike her rival Donald Trump, Ms Harris has only been married once and is a step-parent. Here are the members of her big, modern family.

Ms Harris met her now-husband, Los Angeles entertainment lawyer Doug Emhoff in 2013, while she was serving as California’s attorney general. They were married the following year. Since then Mr Emhoff, 59, has stuck close to his wife’s side as she has risen in the ranks of US politics.

In 2020, when Ms Harris made history as the first black and South Asian woman to become vice-president, Mr Emhoff made history too as the first husband of an American president or vice-president, as well as the first Jewish spouse of a vice-president.

He left his law firm that year to focus full-time on his role as “second gentleman”, a position that has pulled him out of relative obscurity. He is now known as an enthusiastic champion for Democratic party causes and Ms Harris’s most loyal surrogate on the campaign trail.

The vice-president’s marriage made her a step-mother to Cole and Ella, the two children Mr Emhoff shares with his first wife, Kerstin Emhoff.

Ms Harris has said often that of all her many titles, being “Momala” – the term coined by Cole and Ella – is the most important. That affection seems to go both ways – Cole and Ella, now 30 and 25, respectively, have been vocal supporters of Ms Harris.

“The world’s greatest step-mother”, was Ella’s introduction during the 2020 Democratic convention. “You’re a rock, not just for our dad, but for three generations of our big, blended family.”

Cole, who graduated from Colorado College in 2017, has followed his father into the entertainment industry, with jobs at talent agency WME and, later, Brad Pitt’s production company Plan B.

Ella, who graduated from Parsons School of Design in New York City, signed with IMG Models in 2021 and walked in shows for high-fashion brands like Balenciaga and Proenza Schouler. She’s also an artist and a prolific knitter, who launched the knitwear brand and club Soft Hands in 2021.

Cole and Ella’s mom, Kerstin, has – perhaps unexpectedly – gone out of her way to speak warmly and positively of Ms Harris. Recently, Kerstin came to Ms Harris’s defence when JD Vance’s “childless cat lady” comments resurfaced.

“For over 10 years, since Cole and Ella were teenagers, Kamala has been a co-parent with Doug and I,” Kerstin said in a statement to CNN. “She is loving, nurturing, fiercely protective, and always present. I love our blended family and am grateful to have her in it.”

• The many identities of the first woman vice-president
• Doug Emhoff: The first ‘second dude’ in the White House

Kerstin, the founder and CEO of production company Prettybird, even provided her creative expertise and connections to the 2020 campaign.

“They were like, ‘The ex-wife wants to do what?'” Kerstin said to Marie Claire in 2020.

Kamala Harris is known to be very close to her only sibling and younger sister, Maya Harris. After their parents’ divorce, the two girls were primarily raised by their mother, Shyamala Gopalan, in Berkeley, California.

Like her older sister, Maya pursued a career in law, graduating from Stanford University law school in 1992. She worked as a litigator and taught law classes before joining the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Northern California, where she became executive director in 2006.

Maya, 57, eventually shifted to politics, serving as a senior policy advisor to Hillary Clinton on her 2016 presidential campaign. She then served as campaign chair to her sister’s failed 2020 bid for Democratic nominee, before becoming a surrogate for the Biden-Harris ticket.

Maya’s only child, Meena, followed the Harris family tradition by graduating from law school. Meena advised her “Aunty” Kamala through the early stages of her political career, as she moved through positions at elite Silicon Valley companies like Uber, Facebook and Slack.

Beginning in 2017, the mother of two launched Phenomenal, a media and merchandising company that focuses on projects led by women and other underrepresented groups.

But Meena’s career is still linked in some ways to her aunt’s.

In June 2020, she published a children’s book about her aunt and mother called “Kamala and Maya’s Big Idea”. And after Mr Biden selected Ms Harris as his running mate, Phenomenal began selling “Vice President Aunty” sweatshirts.

Husband to Maya, step-father to Meena, Tony West is another accomplished member of the Harris clan, and another lawyer.

A graduate of Stanford law (where he met Maya and her then-toddler daughter), Mr West has worked at high levels of the private and public sector. He was associate attorney general under President Barack Obama and worked as general counsel of PepsiCo.

Mr West is now the chief legal officer of Uber, but he’s also emerged as a key adviser to his sister-in-law’s campaign.

Uber said this month he would take a leave of absence to devote himself to Team Harris.

“I have always believed family comes first,” Mr West said in a statement. “So I’ve decided to dedicate myself full-time to supporting my family and my sister-in-law on the campaign trail.”

Although Dr Shyamala Gopalan died before she could see her daughter run for president, Kamala and Maya Harris say their scientist mother inspired both of their careers.

“My mother was the first person to tell me that my thoughts and experiences mattered,” Ms Harris wrote on Facebook in 2022. “My mother would often say to me: ‘Kamala, you may be the first to do many things. Make sure you are not the last.'”

Ms Gopalan, who died in 2009, moved to the US from India at age 19 to study science, going on to work as a breast cancer researcher.

Her activism in the civil rights movement led her to her future husband: economist and Jamaican immigrant Donald Harris. Ms Harris has credited her mother with raising both her and Maya and her current relationship with her father is unclear.

Millions of screaming fans. A global phenomenon. A multi-billion pound business. No, it’s not Taylor Swift (this time). We’re talking K-pop.

And with four of 2023’s top 10 best-selling acts coming out of South Korea, the Brits want a piece of the action.

Step forward newly created boy band, Dear Alice, who applied to take part in the latest BBC One talent show, Made in Korea: The K-pop Experience.

Meet Blaise, Dexter, James, Olly and Reese. You might be hearing a bit more about them from now on.

None of them knew each other before they individually auditioned and were put together as a band by the showrunners.

The fresh-faced quintet were then flown out to South Korea’s capital, Seoul, for 100 days of rigorous K-pop training with stardom in their sights.

Most K-pop training takes years rather than months. Not for the faint-hearted, the boys’ experience involved long hours of vocal coaching and learning intricate choreography with a bit of Korean sight-seeing thrown in for good measure (and good TV – the South Korean tourist board will be thrilled).

• Where did K-pop come from?

The six-part series is a collaboration between the BBC, K-pop powerhouse agency SM Entertainment and Moon&Back Media, run by TV veterans Dawn Airey, Nigel Hall and Russ Lindsay, whose back catalogue includes shows such as The X Factor, Britain’s Got Talent and Saturday Night Takeaway.

K-pop expert Hee Jun Yoon, the creative force behind some of the biggest K-pop bands of the last 20 years, critiques the band’s performance at the end of each week and it’s safe to say she pulls no punches. Even the head of BBC unscripted content, Kate Phillips, says Hee Jun “makes Simon Cowell look like Mary Poppins”.

Former X Factor head judge Cowell is, of course, launching his own search for a boy band in an upcoming Netflix series which is still in production.

Without giving too much away from Made in Korea’s first episode, Hee Jun gives the band a huge wake-up call in week one with some unflinching criticism. “The level of choreo is so basic, it’s nursery level.” Ouch. Her facial expressions alone could go viral.

The boys won’t be drawn on whether any of them wanted to quit the show at any point. “You’ll have to wait and see,” says Olly Quinn, 20, from Sunderland, a recent graduate in dance and musical theatre. (Clearly, the media training has also been exacting).

They also won’t reveal whether they’ve signed a record deal yet, only saying they’re still “rehearsing hard” and commenting that all the effort and brutal feedback was worth it.

Londoner Dexter Greenwood, 22, who also trained in musical theatre, says: “It was hard work, really challenging but the end justifies the means. Everyone at SM was so supportive but I think we were different to what they expected!”

Reese Carter, 20, from Wiltshire and a former cruise ship performer, adds: “At first it hit hard but we had a great welfare team in place… and it was all done with love.

“They’re honest because they want to push us to be that much better. I enjoy the feedback. They’re on our side. We had welfare, a life coach, we had people living with us constantly, you could walk downstairs and speak to someone,” he adds.

Olly concurs: “It’s the brutal honestly. We needed it.”

There’s certainly a vast difference between the band’s performances in episode one and a later video clip journalists were shown at a preview.

Coco Yeonsoo Do is a K-pop dancer and choreographer, and was a former member of KAACHI, considered the UK’s first K-pop girl group.

“It’s really hard to make a K-pop group reach BTS or Blackpink level,” she tells the BBC, but training is what sets successful groups apart.

“It’s very intense and competitive,” says Coco.

One key difference between UK and US pop groups and K-pop ones is how produced the latter are, she adds.

“It’s obvious, but K-pop groups work more like a group, and emphasise the group identity, rather than individuality,” she adds.

Following allegations over very strict and punishing training regimes by wannabe K-pop stars over the past few years, Korean press reported the introduction of regulations to ban some unfair practices in contracts between K-pop trainees and entertainment companies.

Clearly welfare has been a priority for the series producers of The K-pop Experience.

Helen Wood is a professor of Media and Cultural Studies at Aston University, and is working on a research project on duty of care in TV.

In 2019, there was a Parliamentary inquiry and Ofcom consultation on the broadcasting code, following a handful of reality stars’ deaths by suicide.

In 2020, the media watchdog announced new rules to protect those taking part in TV shows.

“Now there’s more pressure on production to make sure that they’re taking due care of the welfare, dignity and wellbeing of participants that go through production,” she says.

“That’s not to say that things weren’t in place before 2021, but there’s now much more regulation.”

Another key difference brought in through the new Ofcom code is a requirement to show audiences that a duty of care to participants is being enacted, she adds.

This means drawing back the curtain to show audiences some of the backstage production processes to ensure they understand and feel confident that contestants are adequately cared for.

A spokesperson for Made in Korea told the BBC: “The welfare of the band members has been at the centre of their training process,” adding that there was a “strong support team in place” and that the band’s welfare “remains the highest priority”.

Reese says they also relied on each other for support.

“We’ve [the band] grown closer and closer over the last couple of months. Much as it was great to have welfare there, there was a lot of times when we didn’t need to go to them because we’re strong enough as a group.”

Blaise Noon, 19, from London, is the baby of the band but appears to be taking it all in his stride. He is a Brit School graduate and comes across as the most confident.

He says they are really “lucky” to have had the advantage as a British band to be immersed in the Korean training regime: “There’s a lot of really good things we can take away to create this hybrid fusion.”

Interestingly, most of them have never had any desire to be in a boy band until now.

James Sharp, 23, from Huddersfield, is one half of the Sharp twins, whose TikTok account has amassed 5.5 million followers.

He says he thought boy bands were “cringey”, Blaise laughs as he recalls feeling “too cool” for them although Dexter was always a fan. And Olly has had a K-pop education from his auntie who runs K-pop fan pages.

All agree, though, that this was too big an opportunity to pass up.

But how did they come up with the band name?

After Olly’s suggestion of British Bulldogs was quickly scotched (can’t think why), they stumbled upon a restaurant in Seoul called Dear Alice.

They all liked it and it stuck.

“The ‘dear’ is like a letter to the fans” and Alice stands for ‘a love I can’t explain,” says Blaine.

More to the point, the restaurant “sold the best beef wellington in the world” according to the lads.

Not exactly your classic Korean dish but Dear Alice will be hoping a similar culture fusion will be the secret to their success.

Having lived for exactly half his life under a bridge in Nigeria’s biggest city, Lagos, Liya’u Sa’adu sees himself as the “guardian” for the many other homeless people who have joined him there.

More than 60 men now live in the tightly knit outdoor community – with the busy and noisy Obalende Bridge over them – as renting even a shack has proved unaffordable for them.

Mr Sa’adu advises the newcomers – often young people from far-away towns and villages – on how to be streetwise in fast-paced Lagos, where it is easy to fall into crime and drugs.

“I am 60 and there are young people who came here a few months ago or a few years ago. I see it as my responsibility to guide them,” he tells the BBC.

“It is so easy to lose track here in Lagos, especially for young people because there is no family to watch their steps.”

Like most of those who live under the bridge, he speaks Hausa, the most widely spoken language in the north of Nigeria.

He arrived here from the small town of Zurmi in north-western Zamfara state in 1994 – but all those he made friends with then have either died or have moved back to their hometowns or villages.

Tukur Garba, who began living under the bridge five years ago, says Mr Sa’adu’s advice has been invaluable and he commands huge respect from those who arrive to try their luck in Nigeria’s economic hub.

The 31-year-old hails down from the far northern state of Katsina, about 1,000km (621 miles) away.

“He is like our elder brother because he has been here for so long. We do need words of wisdom from him because it is easy to get in trouble in Lagos,” he says.

The area has now been dubbed “Karkashin Gada”, which in the Hausa language means “Under the Bridge”.

“The people who come here know someone who is already staying here or have a contact who told them about Karkashin Gada,” Mr Sa’adu says.

“When I came here, there were less than 10 people.”

Adamu Sahara, who has lived in an apartment close to Karkashin Gada for more than 30 years, says that homelessness is increasing in Lagos.

“Insecurity [including an insurgency by jihadist groups] and the failing economy has made a lot of people to flee northern Nigeria,” Mr Sahara says.

“Nigerian leaders have to be aware of what is happening so they can fix the problem because no human being is supposed to sleep under a bridge.”

Karkashin Gada’s longest resident has no plans to return to Zamfara as economic opportunities there remain bleak with kidnapping and banditry on the rise.

This has forced many people to abandon their businesses and farms as they risk being taken hostage by gangs demanding ransom payments.

To make life as comfortable as possible, Mr Sa’adu has acquired a mattress, some bedding, a wooden cabinet and a mosquito net.

He has put the mattress on top of the cabinet, and that is where he sleeps.

Mr Sa’adu is among the better-off as some of the other men who live there have no furniture, and share sleeping mats which they roll out on the floor.

Thankfully the risk of theft is minimal as some “residents” of Karkashin Gada are usually around, either working or enjoying their time off.

They all use a nearby public bath and toilet at a cost of 100 naira ($0.06; £0.05) a visit.

Cooking – or lighting fires, even in winter – rarely happens in Karkashin Gada as most of its inhabitants buy food from vendors who sell dishes popular with northerners.

“This is one of the places in Lagos where you see a large number of people from northern Nigeria so I sell fura [millet flour mixed with fermented milk] here and I am happy to say a lot of people do buy,” food vendor Aisha Hadi tells the BBC.

During his three decades in Lagos, Mr Sa’adu has progressed from being a shoe-shiner to being a scrap-metal seller – picking up metal from the streets and workshops for a business that sells it on for recycling.

It earns him an average of 5,000 naira ($3; £2) a day, above the extreme poverty threshold of $1.90 a day but barely enough for him to survive.

“Don’t forget I have to also send money to my family back in Zamfara every week, so it is a continuous struggle,” Mr Sa’adu says.

It is unclear how many people sleep on Lagos’ streets, but non-governmental organisations say they are up to half-a-million.

In the last few months, the Karkashin Gada community has come under heavy pressure from the Lagos state environmental task force.

Its officers carry out occasional raids as they say people are living there illegally.

Those arrested risk fines of up to 20,000 naira ($12; £9), a week’s income for many of the people living under the bridge.

“They come at around 1am or 2am, to arrest people sleeping here. Where do they want us to go?” Mr Garba says, adding that by morning most “residents” will have returned.

He urges the government to show compassion, and “to look into the issue of housing so that poor people like us can get good places to live”.

But in Nigeria, the government does not provide shelter for homeless people. Nor is there any plan to do so.

Instead, the current focus in Lagos is on helping people on low salaries – such as cleaners, drivers and messengers in offices – to buy homes.

For people like Mr Sa’adu, any type of housing in Lagos is unaffordable – renting a shack in an informal settlement costs around 100,000 naira ($48; £62) a year, while in a working-class area, a small apartment costs around 350,000 naira ($220; £170) annually.

Worse still, many landlords demand a year’s rent at the time of occupation, with no plans by the government to regulate the market despite the fact that the cost-of-living crisis is making housing unaffordable for even some young professionals.

Against this backdrop, the likes of Mr Sa’adu have resigned themselves to continue living under Obalende Bridge.

“Considering what I do, it’s difficult to save enough to get a decent place to stay,” he says as he lies on his mattress with the noise of vehicles driving just above his head.

“I am already used to the sound of cars. It doesn’t affect my sleep at all especially after a tired day,” he adds.

• Landlords in Nigeria can demand $20,000 rent upfront
• Why single Nigerian women battle to rent homes
• The Nigerian professor who makes more money welding
• Is Nigeria on the right track after a year of Tinubu?
• Should I stay or should I go? The dilemma for young Nigerians

When 10-year-old Tegan went for a summer holiday beach stroll with her mum, she had no idea they would be actually walking in the footsteps of dinosaurs.

The schoolgirl spotted five enormous footprints that dinosaur experts believe are the mark of a camelotia that was there more than 200 million years ago.

Palaeontologists think the footprints, which are up to 75cm (30in) apart, were made by a huge herbivore from the late triassic period, and now there are efforts to get them verified.

Tegan and mum Claire have been told by the National Museum Wales palaeontology curator that she is “fairly certain they are genuine dinosaur prints”.

“We’ve got five footprints and we’re talking about half-to-three-quarters of a metre between each one,” Cindy Howells told the BBC’s Our Lives programme.

“These footprints are so big, it would have to be a type of dinosaur called a sauropodomorpha.”

Tegan’s monster discovery was on the south Wales coast near where her mum used to live.

“It was so cool and exciting,” said Tegan, who had travelled from Pontadawe near Swansea to the Vale of Glamorgan looking for fossils.

“We were just out looking to see what we could find, we didn’t think we’d find anything.

“We found these were big holes that looked like dinosaur footprints, so mum took some pictures, emailed the museum and it was from a long-necked dinosuar.”

Claire emailed Cindy a few days after the find in the red siltstone at Lavernock Point between Cardiff and Barry on a stretch of the Glamorgan Heritage Coast known to be a prehistoric hotspot.

Cindy, the go-to dinosaur expert of 40 years in this part of the UK, said what convinced her they were genuine was the consistent stride pattern.

“If they were random holes, we’d be wary but because we have a left foot, a right foot and then a left and another right… there’s a consistent distance between them,” she said.

“It”s quite a significant find – the buzz you get when someone contacts us with a definite dinosaur find, it’s amazing.”

Claire was chuffed their hunch was right and has invigorated her junior dino hunter daughter.

“It’s hard to comprehend you’re walking on the same beach that hundreds of millions of years ago some massive prehistoric animal was here,” she said.

“You can spent a lifetime looking for dinosaur treasures so for it to happen for Tegan at this age is great.”

The latest prehistoric find on this stretch of coast is a print from the sauropod family of dinosaurs – including the brachiosaurus and diplodocus, distinctive by their very long necks, long tails, big body and small head.

Cindy believes the footprint is from a camelotia, that lived across parts of Europe.

Little is known about them – compared what experts know about stegosaurus, triceratops and the mighty T-rex – but it is thought they walked on their front feet and their hind limbs, were herbivorous and from the late triassic period.

“We think these prints were made by a reasonably large, herbivorous dinosaur, added Cindy.

“While we haven’t any bones here, bones of similiar dinosaurs were found on the otherside of the Bristol Channel.

“A camelotia would have stood about 3m (4ft) tall, 4-5m (13-16ft) long and is an early sauropodomorph with a relatively long neck, long tail and walked on two legs but could walk on all four when grazing for food.”

Cindy is pretty certain “Tegan’s footprints” are linked to the first dinosaur prints found in Wales in 1879 in nearby Porthcawl.

Bones were then unearthed in Cowbridge in the Vale of Glamorgan before more footprints were found at The Bendricks near Barry and Sully – now a site of special scientific and paleontological interest.

A full dinosaur skeleton was unearthed in 2014 on the same beach near Penarth where Tegan found her footprints – although that was a 201-million-year-old dracoraptor and a meat-eating cousin of the T-rex.

Four-year-old Lily found a well-preserved dinosaur footprint at The Bendricks three years ago and now Tegan has spotted some more just down the coast.

“It’s amazing as up until recently, we had so few dinosaurs finds in Wales we didn’t think we had much in the way of dinosaurs here,” said Cindy.

“Now we’re getting a footprint or bone find every five to six years and we now know we’ve a continuous sequence of dinosaurs living in Wales over 15 million years or so – it’s amazing.

The south Wales group of the Geologists’ Association, of which Cindy is vice-president, believes it is “the best site in Britain for dinosaur tracks, external of the triassic period”.

Cindy has said Wales, whose geolological history dates back 700 million years, was a hot desert subject to flash floods when the dinosaur that formed the footprints found by Tegan roamed.

She was keen to quickly analyse the prints as she knew it as a well-known spot for prehistoric finds.

“The rocks around this area are triassic rocks, formed in the deserts and we know we’ve got dinosaur footprints in them,” added Cindy.

“Some 220 million years ago, Wales looked like what the Middle East does now so very hot, dry with deserts, and the sea was hundreds of miles away.

“But sea level started to change and continents breaking apart, it was getting damper, the sea was flooding the deserts and the environment was more favourable for dinosaurs.

“Then 200 million years ago, Wales was like the Mediterranean is now, with shallow, warm tropical seas and little islands.”

Cindy has now written a report for other palaeontologists on her view they are from a dinosaur, to verify for the find.

“It’s brilliant to say to people we have dinosaur footprints on our coast in south Wales,” she added. “You’ve just got to be in the right place at the right time.

“In museums, we don’t have time to go out and do that exploration ourlseves so we rely on people like Tegan doing it for us. We can’t do our job without it.”

The Geologists’ Association has told amateur dino hunters that footprints can be “difficult to see” as many are covered at high tide.

“It is best to go after high tide when the tracks may retain small puddles of water,” the group advises.

“It is also easier to spot the footprints when the sun is low in the sky as longer shadows will help throw the footprints into relief.”

• You can watch Our Lives on BBCiPlayer.

A selection of striking news photographs taken around the world this week.

Hong Kong is celebrating the birth of twin giant pandas by its beloved Ying Ying, who is a first-time mum.

The birth is a “true rarity” as their mother is the oldest giant panda on record to give birth for the first time.

Ying Ying delivered the cubs on Thursday, one day before her 19th birthday. If she were a human, she would be the equivalent of a 57-year-old.

A photo of the twins – a male and a female – has received over a thousand congratulatory comments on Facebook.

The cubs are currently “very fragile and need time to stabilise” under 24-hour intensive care, according to their caretakers.

“We are all looking forward to meet the giant panda cubs. Please wait a few months patiently to make their debut and officially meet everyone!” Ocean Park Hong Kong said.

Of Ying Ying’s twins, the female cub appears to be more fragile because her body temperature is lower and her cries are weaker compared to her brother, the park operator said.

She weighs just 122g.

Ying Ying was “understandably nervous” during birth and spent most of the time lying and twisting on the ground, Ocean Park said.

Giant pandas are notoriously reluctant to mate. Ying Ying and the twins’ father, Le Le, have been housed at Ocean Park since 2007, when they were gifted to Hong Kong by Beijing. They mated successfully in March.

China’s long-term conservation effort has reversed the population decline of giant pandas. They are now considered a vulnerable species and no longer endangered.

Aside from serving as theme park attractions, pandas have also figured in China’s diplomatic efforts.

A wreck discovered off the Aberdeenshire coast is believed to be a lost Royal Navy warship sunk by a torpedo during World War One.

HMS Hawke was discovered by a team of divers about 70 miles east of Fraserburgh earlier this week in “remarkable” condition.

More than 500 of the ship’s crew died when it was attacked by a German U-boat in October 1914.

The ship caught fire and, following an explosion, sank in less than eight minutes with just 70 sailors surviving.

It is hoped that the wreckage will be formally identified by the Royal Navy in the coming weeks.

The wreckage was found by the Lost in Waters Deep group – which searches for shipwrecks to remember wartime losses in Scottish waters.

HMS Hawke, a 387ft (118m) long and 60ft (18m) wide Edgar-class protected cruiser, was first launched in 1891.

In 1911, it was badly damaged in a collision in the Solent with the Titanic’s sister ship, RMS Olympic.

When World War One broke out Hawke was deployed to the 10th Cruiser Squadron and took part in blockade duties between Shetland and Norway.

In October 1914, the squadron deployed further south in the North Sea as part of efforts to stop German warships from attacking troop convoys from Canada.

On 15 October 1914, the squadron was on patrol off the coast of Aberdeen when HMS Hawke was struck by a single torpedo from German submarine U-9

This major attack in the early stages of the war was an early indication of the Royal Navy’s vulnerability to German U-boats, even in the north of Scotland.

The wreck, the last resting place of 524 sailors, was located on 12 August, 360ft (110m) below the surface.

Steve Mortimer, a diver who is working alongside the Lost in Waters Deep project, told BBC Scotland that finding the location of HMS Hawke took a lot of hard work.

The team’s research involved going back to data from the time such as the U-boat commander’s day journal which gave an indication of where it had been when it fired the torpedo.

They also looked at the logs of other Navy cruisers which had “exchanged post” with HMS Hawke just before it was sunk, giving them a general area for where the ship might lie.

Another piece of data was an “obstruction” on the seabed reported by Scottish fisheries in the 1980s.

The dive ship investigated the obstruction site but found nothing.

However, just a kilometre away they found a huge shipwreck.

“It took years of research but the actual time on the ground was just a few hours,” Mr Mortimer said.

He said HMS Hawke had clearly deteriorated after a century on the seabed but it was still in remarkable condition.

“Lots of the decking is still in place – teak decking,” he said.

“There is a wonderful captain’s walkway around the back of the stern. There’s loads of guns because obviously she was a warship.

“There’s lots of Royal Navy crockery. It is fascinating. She clearly was taken completely by surprise because lots of the portholes are still open.”

Mr Mortimer said the area of the sea that the ship was in has few nutrients, which means the wreck has not been eaten away by organisms.

He said: “You can look into the portholes and see rooms with artefacts – teacups, bowls and plates just there on the floor.

“It’s a really remarkable time capsule.”

Police have identified two murder suspects thought to have been involved in the death of a miner whose remains were discovered more than 50 years after he went missing.

Alfred Swinscoe’s remains were found in a field on farmland in Nottinghamshire last April, after the father of six was last seen drinking at a pub on 27 January 1967.

Work on Mr Swinscoe’s bones has found he sustained a “significant” stab injury and blunt force trauma, and police say he died with a broken hand.

Now officers have identified two suspects, both of whom are no longer alive.

Nottinghamshire Police launched a murder inquiry following the discovery of the remains, later confirmed as belonging to the 54-year-old.

They were found off Coxmoor Road in Sutton-in-Ashfield, on 26 April, when digging work was being carried out on farmland.

Officers believe Mr Swinscoe – who was last seen at the former Pinxton Miners Arms in Derbyshire – was murdered and then buried in a grave between 4ft (1.2m) and 6ft (1.8m) deep.

Police said since the remains were found, scientists had carried out “extensive” work on Mr Swinscoe’s bones to determine a cause of death.

It is thought Mr Swinscoe could have sustained his broken hand while fighting his attacker or attackers off.

One of the suspects had a history of violence, police added.

Some of the injuries the suspect had inflicted on another man he was convicted of assaulting in April 1966, were similar to those found on Mr Swinscoe.

As some of the bones were missing, experts believe it was “highly likely” Mr Swinscoe was killed at a different location, and then moved to where his remains were found “at a much later date”.

Mr Swinscoe’s grandson, Russell Lowbridge, told the BBC he recognised the former miner’s sock that was found with the remains.

“Finding out he was murdered was a shock. It took some sinking in,” Mr Lowbridge said. “It’s all a bit disturbing and upsetting.

“Anybody that knew anything, they’ve kept it a secret. It would be wonderful if [people] did come forward – it would help put our minds at rest.

“It will always haunt us; we’ll always be left wondering. We have got some closure, but not full closure. There are still questions to be answered.”

Since the age of 14, Mr Swinscoe had worked at Langton Colliery as a “cutter”, known for operating a machine that cut large chunks of coal out of the coal face for others to then break down.

He had the nickname “Sparrow”, and was also known as “Champion Pigeon Man of Pinxton”, due to his love of pigeon racing.

Four of his six children are still alive and he has a number of grandchildren.

It is believed Mr Swinscoe was drinking with his two sons and friends on the night of his disappearance.

He was last seen giving money to son Gary to buy a round, and then left to use the outside toilet.

Mr Lowbridge previously told the BBC that the disappearance had “tormented” Gary, who died in 2012 “never knowing what happened to his dad”.

Detectives believe a vehicle would have been used in the killing, as it was “some distance” between the pub and where Mr Swinscoe was buried.

They added it “would have been rare” to own a car in the village of Pinxton in 1967.

Assistant Chief Constable Rob Griffin said many of the people who were with Mr Swinscoe at the time he went missing were no longer alive, adding “we may never get the full picture” of what happened.

“That certainly hasn’t stifled our determination to investigate this crime and leave no stone unturned to find his killer or killers,” he said.

“We will continue to investigate this crime and continue to look at all new and existing avenues available to us.”

Mr Swincoe’s cause of death will be determined by a pathologist ahead of an inquest.

Police are continuing to appeal for information, with Mr Swinscoe’s final movements recreated as part of a BBC Crimewatch appeal in October.

The family held a small funeral for Mr Swinscoe in Sutton-in-Ashfield in January.

The service – arranged by A Wass Funeral Directors – was officiated by Stephen Blakeley, a celebrity celebrant who was known for playing PC Younger in the television series Heartbeat.

“He did a nice talk about grandad for us and it was lovely,” Mr Lowbridge said.

“It’s good to have him back home buried properly with his family and we feel content that he’s not lost any more.”

Thailand’s parliament has picked Paetongtarn Shinawatra, the daughter of billionaire tycoon and former leader Thaksin, as prime minister.

At 37, she will be the country’s youngest PM and the second woman in the post, after her aunt Yingluck.

Her selection comes just two days after former PM Srettha Thavisin was dismissed by a constitutional court. Both are from the Pheu Thai Party, which came second at the 2023 election but formed a ruling coalition.

Ms Paetongtarn faces the difficult task of reviving Thailand’s stalled economy and avoiding the military coups and court interventions which have deposed four previous administrations led by her party.

“I really hope that I can make people feel confident that we can build opportunities and to improve the qualify of life and to empower all Thais,” Ms Paetongtarn told reporters after the vote on Friday.

She was visibly overwhelmed, saying her hands were trembling from excitement.

She acknowledged that she is “neither the best, nor the most talented one in the room”.

“But I always think I have a strong will and I have a good team… My team is strong, experienced, determined and we share the same ideas. That’s something I value highly,” she said.

Ms Paetongtarn, who received 319 endorsement and 145 against votes, is the fourth member of the Shinawatra clan to become prime minister in the past two decades.

The other three, including her father Thaksin and aunt Yingluck, were deposed by military coups or constitutional court rulings.

The same court dismissed Mr Thavisin on Wednesday for appointing to his cabinet a former lawyer who was once jailed.

On Friday, Ms Paetongtarn said she was “confused” and “very sad” to learn about Mr Srettha’s dismissal.

She decided it was “about time to do something for the party and for the country” after speaking to him and to her family, she said.

She added that Mr Thaksin called to encourage her to “do your best” and said he is glad to still be able to see her take on the job in his old age.

Educated at elite schools in Thailand and at university in the UK, she spent some years working at the Shinawatra family’s Rende hotel group, where her husband serves as deputy chief investment officer.

She joined Pheu Thai in 2021 and was appointed party leader in October 2023.

Ms Paetongtarn’s appointment brings fresh energy to Thailand’s top leadership. Members of Pheu Thai may also be holding out hope that she can help revive the party’s political fortunes.

Mr Thaksin first became prime minister in 2001, but his second term in office ended abruptly after his government was deposed by a military coup in 2006. He returned to Thailand after 15 years in exile last October, hours before Mr Srettha was voted prime minister.

He was allowed to return as part of a grand bargain with his old conservative enemies, who are now in coalition with Pheu Thai.

In June, he was charged with insulting the monarchy. He is the most high-profile figure to face charges under Thailand’s notorious lese majeste law, which has been used against political dissidents.

Wednesday’s ruling to dismiss Mr Srettha is also being widely interpreted as a warning to Mr Thaksin, who still dominates Pheu Thai, to rein in his ambitions.

Mr Thaksin’ sister, Ms Yingluck, won a landslide in the 2011 election, but she too was later disqualified by the courts, and her government ousted by a second coup. She is now living in exile.

Ms Paetongtarn led Pheu Thai’s campaign in last year’s election, when she was in the final stages of her pregnancy, which won her many admirers.

“I think after eight years the people want better politics, better solutions for the country than just coup d’etats,” she told the BBC at the time. “They are seeking policies that will help their lives.”

The election winner, Move Forward, was prevented from forming the government by the military-appointed senate – which paved the way for a Pheu Thai-led coalition with Mr Srettha as PM.

Earlier this month, the consitutional court dissolved Move Forward and banned 11 of its leaders from politicis for a decade.

Performers working in the games industry have spoken of their distress at being asked to work on explicit content without notice, including a scene featuring a sexual assault.

Sex scenes are common in modern games – and are often made by filming human actors who are then digitised into game characters.

But performers have told the BBC a culture of secrecy around projects – where scripts are often not shared until the last moment – means they frequently do not know in advance that scenes may involve intimate acts.

They describe feeling “shaken” and “upset” after acting them out.

Performing arts union Equity is demanding action from the industry – it has published guides on minimum pay, and working conditions in games, including on intimate or explicit scenes.

Jessica Jefferies is a professional casting director, who works mainly in video games and enjoys the medium.

Prior to that she was a motion capture performer – part of a small group who worked regularly for studios used by game developers.

Dressed in a skin-tight body suit, covered in markers, motion capture performers act-out the movements of characters in games on a large unfurnished set, where their motions are recorded digitally.

She said performers were often left in the dark about the nature of the game, or the scene, by developers.

“We’d get an email or a call from a studio saying we need you on these days for a shoot,” she said.

“That was all the information we’d get.”

Ms Jefferies told the BBC she was once asked to act out a scene with a male performer involving a sexual assault with no prior warning.

“I turned up and was told what I would be filming would be a graphic rape scene,” she said.

“This act could be watched for as long or as little time as the player wanted through a window, and then a player would be able to shoot this character in the head.

“It was just purely gratuitous in my opinion.”

She refused to act out the “disgusting” scene – which was made worse as she was the only female on set.

“There’s no nudity involved, but its still an act and there’s an intimacy in that act and also a violence in this situation,” she said.

“So yes there may be a layer of Lycra between us, but you are still there and still having to truly immerse yourself in this scene.”

In the end her concerns were listened to and the scene was not recorded.

But it reinforces her belief that performers should know in advance about explicit scenes so they don’t have to “kick up a fuss” on set or feel pressure to do something which makes them feel uncomfortable.

Jessica was consulted by Equity in the development of their guidance which requires that when recording explicit or intimate scenes:

• A summary of the story, scene breakdown and scripts should be distributed to all cast members in advance.
• performers should be able to request a closed set where access is kept to a minimum.
• a competent intimacy coordinator should be engaged.

She argues giving actors more information will help them deliver better performances and argues “there is an appetite for change”.

Ms Jefferies stresses the guidelines are not trying to put boundaries on storytelling. In the ten years since that incident there have also been major improvements, she says – and “these guidelines are just to bring it even more in line with the best practices in the film and TV industry”.

She says the studios she now works with are generally very open to being educated on good practices, and agree that treating people well leads to better performances.

One voice actor and Equity member who supports the guidelines, speaking on condition of anonymity, also told the BBC of problems she had encountered.

She “absolutely loves the industry” but argues the limited information shared with actors before a performance needs to change.

“We have to sign NDAs [non-disclosure agreements], we’re told almost nothing,” she said.

In one recording for a major game she first learned it was explicit only when she turned up for work.

“This was actually a full-on sex scene,” she said.

“I had to [vocally] match the scene and through the glass in the booth was the entire team, all male, watching me.

“It was excruciating… at that stage I had been in the games industry a while, and I had never felt so shaken”.

She compared the experience to unexpectedly being required to perform for a premium rate phone-sex line.

“What upset me so much about the situation is I was put on the spot, nobody thought to ask me if I was ok with it, and nobody checked to see if I was ok afterwards,” she said.

And as a freelancer, she feared being labelled as a troublemaker by refusing.

“Nobody has to justify why they’re not hiring you,” she said.

Like Ms Jefferies, she wants games to move closer to standards in film and TV.

Rhiannon Bevan of game news site The Gamer has covered the steps last year’s gaming blockbuster Baldur’s Gate 3 took in dealing with explicit scenes as an example of a modern game “getting it right”.

She says games are increasingly taking explicit scenes seriously “and not just using them for titillation”.

But it came with the risk that performers may not be comfortable with the work.

Baldur’s Gate 3 addressed this by employing intimacy co-ordinators – dedicated members of staff tasked with ensuring the well-being of performers in explicit scenes.

Its developer used one intimacy co-ordinator to look after performers voicing intimate scenes, while another looked after those who were also miming actions to be digitised into the game.

As well as intimate scenes, the Equity guidelines also cover the overuse of NDAs, safety during motion and performance capture, avoiding harmful vocal stress for artists and the protections around the use of artificial intelligence.

AI use is one of the key issues behind a continuing strike by games performers in the US.

UKIE, the trade body for the games industry, did not respond directly to the issue of the treatment of performers working on explicit material, but said in relation to Equity’s guidelines that its focus “remains on fostering a supportive environment for all stakeholders in the UK video game sector, ensuring it remains the best place to create, play, and sell video games”.

Ukraine has destroyed a strategically important bridge over the river Seym, as it continues its incursion into Russia’s Kursk region.

Russian officials have been quoted as saying the operation near the town of Glushkovo has cut off part of the local district.

The bridge was used by the Kremlin to supply its troops and its destruction could hamper their efforts.

President Volodymyr Zelensky said Ukrainian troops were strengthening their positions in Kursk, and called the captured territories an exchange fund, implying they could be swapped for Ukrainian regions occupied by Moscow.

Now in its second week, this is Ukraine’s deepest incursion into Russia since Moscow launched its full-scale invasion more than two years ago.

Ukraine’s surprise cross-border operation has resulted in more than 120,000 people fleeing to safety.

But amid Ukrainian claims of territorial gains, Kyiv has repeatedly maintained it does not wish to occupy Russia.

“Ukraine is not interested in occupying Russian territories,” a senior aide to Ukrainian President Zelensky said on Friday.

Mykhailo Podolyak said one of the key objectives they wanted out of their incursion into Russia was to get Moscow to negotiate “on our own terms”.

“In the Kursk region, we can clearly see how the military tool is being used objectively to persuade Russia to enter a fair negotiation process,” he wrote on X, adding Kyiv has proven “effective means of coercion”.

The head of the Ukrainian military, Oleksandr Syrsky, said on Friday that the offensive had made further progress.

“The troops of the offensive group continue to fight and have advanced in some areas from one to three kilometres towards the enemy,” he told President Zelensky in a video posted on social media.

Syrsky said he hoped to take “many prisoners” from a battle in the village of Mala Loknya, about 13km (8 miles) from the border.

As Ukraine’s advance continues, officials in Russia’s Belgorod region bordering Ukraine have said they will evacuate five villages starting on Monday.

“From 19 August, we are closing access to five settlements, removing residents and helping them bring out their property,” Belgorod governor Vyacheslav Gladkov wrote on the Telegram social messaging app, naming small villages near the border.

However, as Ukraine moves further into western Russian territory, Russian forces are equally making gains in Ukraine’s east.

On Friday, Moscow said its troops had captured Serhiivka, the latest in a string of towns claimed by Russian troops in recent weeks.

The latest advances bring the Russians closer to the city of Pokrovsk, a vital logistics hub that sits on a main road for supplies to Ukrainian troops along the eastern front.

Pokrovsk lies north-west of the Russian-held Donetsk region, which has been under Ukrainian fire since Friday morning, leaving several civilians injured.

A message from the head of the city’s military administration, Sergiy Dobryak, on Thursday, urged people to evacuate as Russia was “rapidly approaching the outskirts”.

Earlier, Russian-installed officials in the Moscow-controlled part of Ukraine’s Donetsk region blamed Kyiv for a strike on a shopping centre that wounded at least seven.

According to the Russia-backed governor of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic, Denis Pushilin, the city has been under shelling since midday on Friday.

Reuters news agency reported that over the past 24 hours, three civilians had been killed and five others injured, citing Donetsk’s regional head.

In Crimea, which was annexed by Russia in 2014, missiles targeting a bridge built under Russian President Vladimir Putin’s orders were shot down overnight, the defence ministry said on Telegram.

Kyiv has launched multiple attacks and attempted attacks on the Kerch Bridge since Moscow began its military offensive.

US President Joe Biden has warned all sides involved in the negotiations for a possible Gaza ceasefire deal not to undermine efforts.

Biden declared that “we are closer than we’ve ever been” to a ceasefire following the latest round of negotiations, but a senior Hamas official expressed scepticism.

The president also announced he was sending Secretary of State Antony Blinken to Israel to continue the “intensive efforts to conclude this agreement”.

His comments come following a joint statement by the US, Qatar and Egypt – stating that they had presented a proposal for a ceasefire and hostage release deal that “narrows the gaps” between Israel and Hamas.

Any sign of progress in the Qatar talks is regarded as essential by governments desperate to avoid the war in Gaza spiralling into an all-out regional conflict.

The mediators said that the past two days of ceasefire discussions had been “serious, constructive and conducted in a positive atmosphere”.

Technical teams are expected to continue working over the coming days on the details of how to implement the proposed terms before senior government officials meet again in Cairo, hoping to reach an agreement on the terms set out in Doha.

Mr Biden later said in a statement that he had spoken separately with the leaders of Qatar and Egypt, who had expressed “strong support” for the proposal.

He added that he was also sending Mr Blinken back to the Middle East to “reaffirm my iron-clad support for Israel’s security” and to “underscore that with the comprehensive ceasefire and hostage release deal now in sight, no one in the region should take actions to undermine this process”.

While the mediators’ statement is clearly a positive development, there is still a long way to go before a ceasefire is agreed.

Nevertheless, Mr Blinken told US reporters that he had become more optimistic than ever that a deal was in reach but said if he revealed why, he’d “give it away”.

Asked when a potential ceasefire might start, he said “that remains to be seen”.

This is not the first time the US president has said he thought a deal was close and not everyone shares his cautious optimism.

A senior figure from Hamas – which did not participate in the talks, but was in contact with Qatari and Egyptian officials – told the BBC: “What the movement’s leadership was informed of today regarding the results of the Doha ceasefire meetings does not include a commitment to implement what was agreed upon on 2 July.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office, meanwhile, said he appreciated the efforts to “dissuade Hamas from its refusal on a deal that would release the hostages”.

The Israeli military launched a campaign in Gaza to destroy Hamas in response to an unprecedented attack on southern Israel on 7 October, during which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 others were taken hostage.

More than 40,000 people have been killed in Gaza since then, according to the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry.

A deal agreed in November saw Hamas release 105 of the hostages in return for a week-long ceasefire and the freeing of some 240 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails. Israel says 111 hostages are still being held, 39 of whom are presumed dead.

The first phase of the deal outlined by President Biden, based on Israel’s 27 May proposal, would include a “full and complete ceasefire” lasting six weeks, the withdrawal of Israeli forces from all populated areas of Gaza, and the exchange of some of the hostages – including women, the elderly and the sick or wounded – for Palestinian prisoners held in Israel.

The second phase would involve the release of all other living hostages and a “permanent end to hostilities”. The third would see the start of a major reconstruction plan for Gaza and the return of dead hostages’ remains.

Meanwhile, Israel’s military operation in Gaza continues, with new evacuation orders being made for several blocks in northern Khan Younis and Deir Balah – further shrinking the humanitarian zone.

Israel said the blocks had become dangerous for civilians “due to significant acts of terrorism” and the firing of rockets and mortars towards Israel.

The UN agency for Palestinian refugees (Unrwa) said: “Once again, fear spreads as families have nowhere to go. People remain trapped in an endless nightmare of death and destruction on a staggering scale.”

What is now making the need for a ceasefire deal even more urgent is the fact that the polio virus – which is spread through faecal matter – is now circulating inside the Israeli-designated humanitarian zone in Gaza, where hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians have sought refuge from the fighting.

“Let’s be clear: The ultimate vaccine for polio is peace and an immediate humanitarian ceasefire,” UN Secretary General António Guterres said.

A police sniper potentially saved lives by shooting the rifle of Donald Trump’s would-be assassin and knocking him down, an investigation says.

According to a report by Louisiana Congressman Clay Higgins, the sniper’s bullet damaged Thomas Matthew Crooks’s gun and disrupted his aim after he took his first shots in Butler, Pennsylvania. Moments later, a Secret Service sniper killed him.

The report comes as the Secret Service temporarily reassigns some bodyguards from President Joe Biden to Trump, according to US media.

Trump will also be given bulletproof glass protection to allow him to resume outdoor rallies.

The former president did not have the protection during his 13 July rally in Butler when a bullet nearly hit him squarely in the head.

Mr Higgins’ report said a Butler SWAT operator was the first to fire at Trump’s assassin – from 100 yards away.

The congressman said the sniper “ran towards the threat, running to a clear shot position directly into the line of fire”.

Then, in a single shot, he fired at the gunman and hit part of his rifle, the report said.

This knocked the gunman off his position temporarily, but, “after just a few seconds”, he “popped back up” before he was fatally shot by a Secret Service sharpshooter.

Crooks killed one crowd member and critically injured two others in the attack.

Security levels around the former president have increased since then.

The transfer of Secret Service agents is due to threats against Trump, 78, and made possible by the reduced travel schedule of Mr Biden after he dropped out of the election race, according to a report in The New York Times.

The reassigned officers were responsible for either travelling with Mr Biden, or going in advance of him to set up security measures at an event, a source told the newspaper.

Kimberly Cheatle, the director of the Secret Service, resigned on 23 July following a hearing at the US House of Representatives about the assassination attempt.

Politicians on the House Oversight Committee criticised the lack of information in her answers to their questions regarding security planning and how officers responded to reports of the gunman’s suspicious behaviour prior to the shooting.

Gunman Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, was shot and killed by a Secret Service counter-sniper team after he fired eight bullets in Mr Trump’s direction from a rooftop just outside the rally’s security perimeter.

The FBI is currently investigating the protection failure and political leaders in the US Congress have also started inquiries.

How the Secret Service failed Donald Trump

Americast gets the inside track on presidential security at the highest levels from Miles Taylor, a former chief of staff at the Department for Homeland Security, who served during the Trump presidency.

Listen now on BBC Sounds

After almost a year off the platform, Donald Trump returned to X this week and asked his 89 million followers: “Are you better off now than you were when I was president?”

It was a clear echo of the famous quote from Ronald Reagan during his victorious 1980 presidential campaign, when he asked: “Are you better off today than you were four years ago?”

This messaging isn’t surprising. It seems like an obvious strategy for Trump to focus on the economy.

That’s because polls consistently suggest it’s the issue American voters care about the most. One such poll conducted by The Economist and YouGov in recent days listed “inflation/prices” and “jobs and the economy” among voters’ top concerns.

Perhaps more importantly, polls also indicate voters are deeply unhappy with the current state of affairs.

That seems like a perfect situation for any presidential challenger.

But in an election that’s been transformed by Kamala Harris taking over from Joe Biden as the Democratic candidate, Trump seems to be struggling to land his simple message on the economy.

It is less than a month since he was on stage at the Republican National Convention looking unbeatable, having survived an assassination attempt and riding high in the opinion polls.

Now, he has lost that lead and seems to have lost his way. Meanwhile, in the opposition corner, Ms Harris is riding a wave of excitement and enthusiasm that he is finding difficult to counter.

The easiest way to burst her bubble would be to remind voters how unhappy they are about high prices and blame her for the inflation that has pushed up the cost of living during the time she has been beside President Biden in the White House.

One of the reasons Trump is failing to land that message is the Harris campaign’s strategy of putting proposals to try to lower the cost of living at the heart of her pitch.

In a speech in North Carolina on Friday, Ms Harris promised to expand child tax credits, help people to purchase their first homes, and to encourage the building of more affordable housing.

She also said she hoped to tackle the persistently high price of food and groceries by banning “price gouging” or excessive corporate profiteering.

“By any measure, our economy is the strongest in the world,” she said. “Many Americans don’t yet feel that progress in their daily lives.”

Joe Biden and Kamala Harris ought to be able to boast about some very good economic indicators. There is strong growth, record levels of job creation, and this week the inflation rate fell below 3% for the first time during Mr Biden’s presidency.

But because prices are still high, voters don’t feel any better off. Voters don’t care about the rate of inflation – they care about the level of prices.

“A central banker wants inflation to get back to target. A shopper wants his or her old price back,” Jared Bernstein, the chair of President Biden’s Council of Economic Advisers, said in a July speech.

When it comes to the economy, “the vibes are off”.

“Vibes matter,” Mr Bernstein said.

So will the bad economic vibes hurt the Harris campaign?

That is what I asked voters over lunch at a crab shack on the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland.

Jeff Tester, who works in a nearby marina, said high prices are really hurting him.

“I get paid by the hour. I get up to go to work every day. I think you have to do that to get the American dream,” he said. “But I just know it’s getting harder.”

And he is very clear about who he sees as responsible. “I blame the Democrats. I believe their policies are hurting the working man,” he said.

Every diner I met complained about inflation, but not everyone held Mr Biden or Ms Harris responsible.

Dan Nardo, a retired boat broker, said he believed the pandemic, oil prices, foreign wars and supply chain issues have more to do with price rises than the US president.

His friend Randy Turk, a retired lawyer, told me that he felt a new administration is likely to follow a similar path to try to reduce inflation, regardless of who wins.

“It’s not like a different president can really make that much of a difference,” he said.

Ms Harris struggled for prominence and media coverage during most of her time as vice-president. Previously that was seen as a weakness. But if it means she can emerge untainted by “Bidenomics”, it could be one of her greatest strengths.

Ruth Igielnik, polling editor at the New York Times, says the latest data she has collected suggests “voters very much tied their negative feelings about the economy to Joe Biden”.

Talking to me on the BBC’s Americast podcast, she explained that in her polling Trump is still favoured on the economy, but where he once had an 18-point lead over Mr Biden he now leads Ms Harris by only about 8 points.

“That makes me think voters aren’t necessarily attaching their feelings about the economy to her,” she said.

A separate poll this week conducted for the Financial Times and the University of Michigan Ross School of Business indicated Ms Harris holds a narrow lead over Trump on who Americans trust to handle the economy.

No wonder Republicans are publicly begging Trump to focus on the issues, the economy in particular, and stop launching personal attacks against Ms Harris.

In a speech this week, Trump told supporters he was going to talk about the economy but struggled to stay on topic.

“They say it’s the most important subject,” he said, “they” referring to his advisers and strategists who believe this is his strongest line of attack.

“I’m not sure it is. But they say it’s the most important,” he added, before going on to list immigration, crime and the way Ms Harris laughs as top issues. You could practically hear his campaign managers pulling their hair out.

“Voters don’t care about personalities or who is drawing larger crowd sizes,” said Matt Terrill, former chief of staff for Marco Rubio’s presidential campaign.

“Independent, undecided, swing voters in key states care about the economy and inflation so just focus on those core issues,” he said.

“Stay focused on talking about how you are going to make the lives of Americans better over the next four years.”

It was back in 1992 that the Democrat Jim Carville coined the slogan “It’s the economy, stupid” while he was working on Bill Clinton’s presidential campaign.

It’s advice that every campaign since has clung to. But Trump, this time around, seems to be finding it uncommonly difficult to stick with.

It ought to be a winner for him. After all, according to the Financial Times poll, in answer to his question “Are you better off now than you were when I was president?” only 19% of voters say they are.

• SIMPLE GUIDE: Everything you need to know about the vote

• ANALYSIS: Three ways Trump will try to end Harris honeymoon

• EXPLAINER: Where the election could be won and lost

• FACT-CHECK: Trump falsely claims Harris crowd was faked

• VOTERS: What Democrats make of Tim Walz as VP

Dubbed the “Ketamine Queen” by US prosecutors, alleged drug dealer Jasveen Sangha is one of five people who US officials say supplied ketamine to Friends star Matthew Perry, exploiting his drug addiction for profit, and leading to his overdose death.

Ms Sangha now faces nine charges, including conspiracy to distribute ketamine and distribution of ketamine resulting in death.

The American-British dual-national, who wore a Nirvana sweatshirt for her court appearance, pleaded not guilty to the charges on Thursday.

Her bail request was denied by US officials and she will remain in custody until her trial in October.

The indictment alleges that Ms Sangha’s distribution of ketamine on 24 October 2023 caused Perry’s death.

Ketamine is a dissociative anaesthetic that has some hallucinogenic effects, according to the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). It can distort perception of sight and sound and makes the user feel disconnected and not in control.

It is used as an injectable anaesthetic for humans and animals because it makes patients feel detached from their pain and environment.

The substance is supposed to be administered only by a physician, investigators say, and patients who have taken the drug should be monitored by a professional because of its possible harmful effects.

Ms Sangha is alleged to have supplied ketamine from her “stash house” since at least 2019.

Her North Hollywood home was a “drug-selling emporium”, Martin Estrada, the US attorney for California’s Central District, told a news conference on Thursday.

More than 80 vials of ketamine were allegedly found there in a search, along with thousands of pills that included methamphetamine, cocaine and Xanax.

The home, called the “Sangha Stash House” in the indictment, was where she is alleged to have packaged and distributed drugs.

She “only deal[s] with high end and celebs,” the indictment quoted her co-accused Erik Fleming as saying of Ms Sangha.

At the same time, she lived a jetsetter life which she shared widely on social media.

Ms Sangha is said to have mixed with celebrities socially as well, with one of her friends telling the Daily Mail she attended the Golden Globes and the Oscars.

Shortly after Perry’s overdose she posted pictures depicting her extravagant lifestyle, including parties and a trip to Japan and Mexico.

And the day before arrests were announced, her social media activity suggests she went to a hairdresser and dyed her hair purple.

The Instagram account where these posts were shared was confirmed as belonging to her by a spokesman for the US Attorney’s Office Central District of California.

Prosecutors claim Ms Sangha came to supply ketamine to Perry after fellow defendant Dr Salvador Plasencia initially learned that the actor was interested in the drug. Dr Plasencia sourced it from Dr Mark Chavez, another defendant in the case who had previously operated a ketamine clinic.

They allege Dr Plasencia also taught Perry’s live-in assistant, co-accused Kenneth Iwamasa, how to inject Perry with ketamine.

Beginning in October 2023, Ms Sangha began supplying Mr Iwamasa with ketamine and prosecutors say she knew the ketamine she distributed could be deadly.

“These defendants cared more about profiting off of Mr Perry than caring for his well-being,” said Mr Estrada.

He also alleged that Ms Sangha was a “major source of supply for ketamine to others as well as Perry”.

If convicted of all charges in Perry’s case, Sangha would face a mandatory minimum sentence of 10 years in federal prison and a statutory maximum sentence of life imprisonment, the justice department says.

US authorities say they also uncovered Ms Sangha’s alleged connection to another overdose death, this time in 2019.

Court documents suggest she knew about the dangers of ketamine after selling it to a customer named Cody McLaury, who died of an overdose after buying the drug.

She was reported to have been contacted by one of his family members, who texted her saying: “The ketamine you sold my brother killed him. It’s listed as the cause of death.”

Days later Ms Sangha is said to have searched on Google: “Can ketamine be listed as a cause of death?”, according to investigators.

Authorities say Ms Sangha will face charges in that case.

A woman who fatally shot her neighbour through her front door in June 2023 has been convicted of manslaughter by a Florida jury.

Susan Lorincz, 60, who is white, shot 35-year-old Ajike “AJ” Owens, who was black, as she knocked at Lorincz’s door over a dispute about children playing outside.

Lawyers for Lorincz argued that she fired in self-defence. According to Owens’ family and an arrest affidavit, Lorincz had shouted racial epithets at Owens’ children prior to the shooting.

The incident came in the wake of a series of quarrels between the two women that had seen police called at least six times since January 2021.

Lorincz was inside her home when she opened fire with a handgun, striking Owens in the chest.

The incident is believed to have stemmed from an altercation earlier in the day in which Lorincz shouted at Owens’ children and struck one of them with a pair of skates.

Prosecutors had argued that there was no immediate threat to Lorincz’s safety when she fired through her locked metal door, knowing that Owens was on the other side.

Prosecutor Rich Buxman said the accused had acted with “utter disregard for the life of others”.

“She pointed a loaded firearm towards a door, towards a person that she knew was there in the opposite side of the door and intentionally pulled the trigger. That shows a reckless disregard for human life,” he told jurors, according to CNN.

The all-white Florida jury reached its verdict after less than three hours of deliberations on Friday.

The trial lasted one week. Lorincz will be sentenced at a later date and faces up to 30 years in jail.

Owens’ mother swiftly praised the ruling, according to reporters in court.

“Oh God, thank you, Jesus!” said Pamela Dias.

Owens leaves behind four children, ages four through 13.

Lorincz was arrested five days after the shooting, after investigators initially chose not to charge her due to a self-defence doctrine known as “stand your ground”.

Florida introduced a “stand your ground” law in 2005 which gives individuals a right to protect themselves with reasonable force – including deadly force – to prevent death or bodily harm.

Versions of stand your ground laws are in effect in at least 28 states.

State Attorney Bill Gladson issued a statement following the ruling on Friday, according to the Ocala Star Banner newspaper, saying: “This case has always been about getting justice for the victim and her children.”

“Cases involving self defense are often difficult because the jurors are asked to decide whether or not a particular person’s response to a situation is reasonable under the law.”

“We are pleased with their decision and believe that, while nothing can bring AJ Owens back, this verdict holds her killer accountable,” he added.

Travellers should consider getting vaccinated against mpox if they will be visting affected areas in Africa, new advice says.

The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) has updated its recommendations in response to outbreaks of a new strain of the virus. Other continents, including Europe, can expect some cases too, it says.

ECDC says the risk of it spreading everywhere is low, despite the World Health Organization recently declaring the mpox situation a global emergency.

The disease – formerly known as monkeypox – can be passed on by close contact with anyone with the infection.

Those who have been vaccinated against mpox in the past might only need one-top up dose, rather than two shots.

Booster vaccine doses are typically recommended every two to 10 years if a person remains at continued risk for exposure.

Mpox has killed at least 450 people in the DRC in recent months, linked to a new type or Clade called 1b.

Mpox can be passed on from person to person through:

• any close physical contact with mpox blisters or scabs (including during sexual contact, kissing, cuddling or holding hands)
• touching clothing, bedding or towels used by someone with mpox
• the coughs or sneezes of a person with mpox when they’re close to you

It causes flu-like symptoms, skin lesions and can be fatal for some.

• What is mpox and how is it spread?
• Mpox: What does the new strain mean for you?

Experts say there is still a lot to learn about 1b, but it may be spreading more easily, causing more serious disease.

Pamela Rendi-Wagner from the ECDC said: “As a result of the rapid spread of this outbreak in Africa, ECDC has increasd the level of risk for the general population in the EU/EEA and travellers to affected areas. Due to the close links between Europe and Africa we must be prepared for more imported Clade 1 cases.”

Currently, there are no cases of Clade 1b mpox confirmed in the UK but experts say cases can spread if international action is not taken.

A case of mpox has also been detected in Sweden after a person became infected during a stay in an area of Africa where the disease is spreading.

The ECDC recommends that public health authorities plan and prepare for quick detection of any more cases that may reach Europe.

A previous mpox public health emergency, declared in 2022, was caused by a different, milder strain called Clade 2.

Despite having effective vaccines against mpox, too few doses are currently getting to where they are needed most.

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.

Tens of thousands of women in Kolkata and across West Bengal state are expected to participate in a ‘Reclaim the Night’ march at midnight on Wednesday, demanding the “independence to live in freedom and without fear”. The march takes place just before India’s Independence Day on Thursday. Outraged doctors have struck work both in the city and across India, demanding a strict federal law to protect them.

The tragic incident has again cast a spotlight on the violence against doctors and nurses in the country. Reports of doctors, regardless of gender, being assaulted by patients and their relatives have gained widespread attention. Women – who make up nearly 30% of India’s doctors and 80% of the nursing staff – are more vulnerable than their male colleagues.

The crime in the Kolkata hospital last week exposed the alarming security risks faced by the medical staff 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 volunteer worker 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 in the state 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. A 2015 survey by IMA found that 75% of doctors in India have faced some form of violence at work. “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.