Hundreds of protesters have gathered at a railway station in the western state of Maharashtra to protest against the alleged sexual assault of two children.

The girls were allegedly abused last week when they went to use the toilet in their nursery school in Thane district’s Badlapur city.

Police have arrested a male employee of the school, but the parents of the children have alleged there was a delay in action.

On Tuesday, train services at the Badlapur railway station were stopped as angry protesters blocked the tracks, demanding justice for the children.

Local reports say that some protesters also pelted stones at the police.

Videos shared on social media showed huge crowds jostling against each other at a railway platform.

The state’s Chief Minister Eknath Shinde announced that a special investigation team (SIT) has been formed to look into the matter and that action would be taken against the school.

“We are in the process of fast-tracking this case, and no-one will be spared if found guilty,” he said.

The school’s management has also come under scrutiny after the parents of the children alleged various safety lapses, including the lack of functional CCTV cameras at campus.

Priyank Kanungo, chairperson of the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights, called the school’s attitude towards the case “insensitive” and alleged that it had tried to “suppress the case”.

“The concerned police station did not register an FIR [First Information Report or an initial complaint] in due time,” he added.

The police and the school’s management has not responded to these allegations.

But the school has suspended its principal, a class teacher and a female employee over the incident, according to the Times of India newspaper.

The protest is taking place in the aftermath of an outpouring of anger across India over the rape and murder of a trainee doctor in the eastern state of West Bengal.

The 31-year-old woman’s body was found earlier this month in the seminar room of a state-run hospital in Kolkata where she worked.

OpenAI and global magazine giant Condé Nast have announced a partnership to allow ChatGPT and its search engine SearchGPT to display content from Vogue, The New Yorker, GQ and other well known publications.

The multi-year deal is the latest such agreement struck by OpenAI with major media firms.

The content produced by media organisations is sought after by technology companies that use it to train their AI (Artificial Intelligence) models.

Some media firms including the New York Times and the Chicago Tribune have resisted this and taken legal action to protect their content.

OpenAI and Condé Nast did not disclose the financial terms of the agreement.

“We’re committed to working with Condé Nast and other news publishers to ensure that as AI plays a larger role in news discovery and delivery, it maintains accuracy, integrity, and respect for quality reporting,” said Brad Lightcap, OpenAI’s chief operating officer.

News media organisations have seen their business models challenged by the rise of social media and other digital platforms.

“Our partnership with OpenAI begins to make up for some of that revenue, allowing us to continue to protect and invest in our journalism and creative endeavours,” said Condé Nast’s chief executive officer Roger Lynch.

OpenAI launched its prototype AI-powered search engine, SearchGPT, last month.

In a statement at the time, the company said it was gathering feedback and insights from its partners in the news industry to develop the new platform.

Others that have partnered with the AI firm include Time Magazine, the Financial Times and the Associated Press.

AI chatbot technology is seen by many analysts as a key part of internet search engines in the future.

Search engine giant Google has also been racing to add AI-powered tools to its products.

While other AI companies are pursuing search products, Google remains by far the dominant player, claiming more than 90% of the global market.

The changes to how search engines respond to queries – offering conversational paragraphs instead of directing users to links – have also raised alarm among news media firms, many of which rely on search traffic for audiences and revenue.

Last year, the BBC said it was taking steps to prevent content on its websites from being used by OpenAI and other firms without permission.

The blog post also said the BBC would explore opportunities offered by generative AI “to deliver more value to our audiences and to society.”

A body recovered near the luxury yacht which sank off the coast of Sicily is believed to be that of chef Recaldo Thomas.

The Canadian-Antiguan national was one of 22 people aboard the Bayesian when it sank during a violent storm on Monday.

His friend Gareth Williams described him as well-loved and kind, with “the deepest, most sultry voice in the world, and a smile that lit up the room”.

Divers are struggling to reach the cabins of the sunken vessel as they search for six missing passengers including the British tech entrepreneur Mike Lynch and the Morgan Stanley International bank chairman Jonathan Bloomer.

British investigators arrived in Italy on Tuesday to assess what happened during the extreme weather that hit the yacht.

The Bayesian capsized around 700m (2,300ft) from Porticello, just east of Sicily’s capital Palermo, early on Monday morning. It now lies on the seabed at the depth of 50m.

Of the 22 people on board, 15 survived – including a British mother who described holding her baby girl above the surface of the sea to save her from drowning.

Dr Fabio Genco was part of the local emergency medical service that treated the survivors.

He told the BBC’s Newsnight programme that the word all of them “kept repeating was the ‘darkness’ during the shipwreck.”

“They spoke of about five minutes, from three to five minutes, from the moment the boat was lifted, raised by the waves of the sea until it sank.”

Dr Genco added that all the survivors had been discharged from hospital.

So far only one body, that of Recaldo Thomas, has been found.

Mr Williams said he had known the chef for 30 years as they had grown up together in Antigua, where Thomas lived during yachting’s off-season.

“He told me just the other day that he needed to work two more seasons to fix up his late parents’ house. He loved yachting, but he was tired,” Mr Williams told the BBC’s Insaf Abbas.

Another friend, Eli Fuller, said he first met the chef 25 years ago and that he was a role model to young people.

“Personality was very important in his job. The world’s richest people want to hang out with someone social. He was sought after,” Mr Fuller said.

“The kids would see all these white people working on yachts. For them to see an Antiguan man travelling all over the world – it was important for our community,” he added.

It is believed the Bayesian was struck by a tornado over the water – otherwise known as a waterspout – which caused the vessel to capsize and sink to the seabed.

There are also reports that the boat’s mast snapped, while other factors include water entering through hatches which may have been open due to hot temperatures.

The Italian coastguard said on Tuesday afternoon that their search was continuing and that divers were working out how to safely enter the wreckage.

Earlier a member of the diving team, Marco Tilotta, said accessing it had been difficult because the hull of the Bayesian is titled at a 90 degree angle on the seafloor.

He told Reuters news agency that there was a “a world of objects” obstructing the narrow stairs leading into the cabins.

“We are not stopping,” he added. “We have resources, manpower and means. Our goal is to find all the people who are missing, so that is our job.”

Divers are only able to spend around 12 minutes under water, meaning that by the time they reach the wreckage, they only have about 10 minutes to search it.

As well as several teams of divers, the coastguard said they had five patrol boats, at least two helicopters and a remotely operated underwater vehicle.

Specialist divers trained to operate in small spaces have been flown in from Rome and Sardinia.

The sailing vessel, which was 56m (183ft) long and flying a British flag, was carrying 10 crew and 12 passengers when it sank.

Among the missing are Mike Lynch and his 18-year-old daughter Hannah, as well as Jonathan Bloomer and his wife Judy.

• Who are the missing and rescued?
• Survivor: ‘For two seconds I lost my baby in the sea’

Neda Morvillo, an American jewellery designer, and her husband Chris are also missing. The news was confirmed by his law firm Clifford Chance.

Mr Lynch was acquitted in June of multiple fraud charges relating to the $11bn (£8.6bn) sale of his company Autonomy to the US computing giant Hewlett-Packard in 2011.

A relative of one of the survivors said lawyers who had represented Mr Lynch in the legal proceedings – where Mr Bloomer had been a defence witness – had been invited on board the Bayesian to celebrate.

Ayla Ronald, a senior associate at Clifford Chance, and her husband were among the people rescued from the yacht when it sank.

Separately, it was confirmed on Tuesday that Mr Lynch’s co-defendant Stephen Chamberlain, 52, died after being hit by a car while out running in Cambridgeshire on Saturday.

His family described him as a “much-loved husband, father, son, brother and friend”.

When the owner of 7-Eleven announced this week that it had received a buyout offer from a Canadian rival it triggered shockwaves in Japan.

A Japanese company of this size has never been bought by a foreign firm.

Historically, companies from Japan were more likely to buy overseas businesses.

7-Eleven is the world’s biggest convenience store chain, with 85,000 outlets across 20 countries and territories.

And it’s been especially successful at selling itself as an option for a quick and cheap yet tasty meal, and in places where there is already an abundance of that, such as Japan and Thailand.

“We have more stores than McDonald’s or Starbucks,” the chief executive of Seven & i Holdings, Ryuichi Isaka, told BBC News before the firm received the buyout offer.

Around a quarter of those 85,000 shops are in Japan, while there are roughly 10,000 in the US.

In comparison, Quebec-based Alimentation Couche-Tard, which operates the Circle K chain, has almost 17,000 stores in 31 countries and territories. More than half of its outlets are in North America.

The approach valued Seven & i at more than $30bn (£23bn) before news of the preliminary offer emerged.

7-Eleven’s shares jumped by over 20% on Monday, before giving up some of those gains the following day.

Analysts point to the Japanese yen’s weakness against the US dollar and other major currencies for helping to make Seven & i affordable.

Along with the weakness of the yen, efforts by the Japanese government to promote mergers and acquisitions appear to be working, said Manoj Jain from Hong Kong-based hedge fund Maso Capital.

However, the proposal is still at the preliminary stage and given the potential size of any deal it could face scrutiny from competition authorities.

7-Eleven has been keen to capitalise on the popularity of the food it sells – a wide range, including rice balls, sandwiches, cooked pasta, fried chicken and dumplings.

While in much of the world convenience stores are where people grab a bar of chocolate or a bag of crisps in an emergency, in Japan, shops like 7-Eleven are popular with visitors searching for culinary delights.

These 7-Eleven dishes have turned the chain into a social media sensation in Asia.

Dropping into a 7-Eleven store has even been touted as one of the top things to do in Thailand, where its ham and cheese toastie has become a TikTok hit.

British singer Ed Sheeran is among the celebrities who have helped raise 7-Eleven’s profile – a video of him trying snacks from a store in Thailand went viral.

Mr Isaka has been aiming to repeat that success in the US and European markets as the company came under pressure from investors to sell some of its businesses and focus on the 7-Eleven brand.

The firm has been updating its strategy so more stores could follow the approach of its Japanese shops.

“What we found is that stores which sell fresh food are attracting many more shoppers,” Mr Isaka said.

“We want to grow with high quality – not just increase the quantity. We want to make sure customers are happy, and increase sales of each store whilst increasing the number of stores,” he added.

Seven & i has also been on a shopping spree. In January, it bought more than 200 stores in the US from petrol station chain Sunoco for around $1bn (£770m).

In April, it bought back more than 750 stores from a franchisee in Australia.

For most of its almost century-long history 7-Eleven was an American brand.

Starting out in 1927 selling blocks of ice that were used to keep fridges cool, it later stocked essential items like eggs, milk and bread.

At the time, the stores were open between 07:00 and 23:00 – hence the name.

As the business grew, 7-Eleven began offering franchises outside the US.

In 1974, Japanese retail firm Ito-Yokado struck a deal to open the country’s first 7-Eleven. In 1991, it bought a 70% stake in the chain’s US parent company.

The founder of Ito-Yokado, Masatoshi Ito, who died in 2023 at the age of 98, is often credited with transforming 7-Eleven into a global empire.

Ito-Yokado was renamed Seven & i Holdings in 2005 with the “i” in its name being a nod to Ito-Yokado and Mr Ito, who was by then the company’s honorary chairman.

Now, as the company decides whether it will remain under Japanese ownership or return to its North American roots, experts are wondering whether more of Japan’s big firms could become takeover targets.

There is now a “greater willingness of Japanese boards and management teams to accept offshore capital and be receptive to foreign approaches,” Mr Jain said.

More foreign investors may now be encouraged to pursue their interest in Japanese companies, he added.

Sitting at an altitude of around 3,800m (12,467ft) is Thame, a small Sherpa village in Nepal’s Everest region.

It is home to many record-holding Sherpa mountaineers, including Sherpa Tenzing Norgay, the first person to climb Mount Everest along with explorer Edmund Hillary.

But on 16 August, the village was engulfed by icy flood waters after a glacial lake burst its banks, displacing some 60 people and destroying more than a dozen houses and hotels along with a school and health clinic.

The incident has left many of the village’s residents – around 300 people – wondering whether it is even safe to live there any longer.

No deaths or injuries were reported, but members of the Sherpa community said they were lucky that the flood hit during daytime, when everyone was awake and the alerts arrived quickly.

“If this had happened at night time, between 200 to 300 people would have lost their lives,” Ang Tshering Sherpa, former president of Nepal Mountaineering Association said.

“We are still in shock, and we are still crying when we (villagers) talk to each other,” said Yangji Doma Sherpa, a native of Thame who was born in the village.

“The bigger question is if this place is safe enough to live in now. This flood has shown that we face an even more dangerous situation now, and therefore people don’t feel safe.”

Some of Thame’s residents live nomadic lifestyles and live in different villages depending on the season.

But in this case, even villagers downhill from Thame have been affected.

“Because of the flood some parts of our village was swept away… luckily we managed to run up the hill,” said Pasang Sherpa at Tok Tok village which is almost two days’ trek downhill from Thame.

“The otherwise milky and frothy river turned so dark brown, with boulders and debris being swept down.

The sound and the sight was so scary that I am still shaken. I have taken refuge in a nearby village and am thinking if I should ever go back to Tok Tok.”

Locals say much of the risk could be reduced if there were proper monitoring mechanisms for glacial lakes located upstream from human settlements.

While a few lakes have drawn the attention of scientists and authorities, they added, the rest are simply ignored.

Meanwhile, disaster preparedness is non-existent in many villages.

“A few villages downstream of the Imja glacial lake have been trained on how to run in case of a flood,” Ms Doma Sherpa said.

“But there has been no training in our village whatsoever.”

Of the more than one dozen glacial lake outburst incidents recorded in Nepal in the past 50 years, four have been in the Everest’s Dudhkosi river basin.

One occurred upstream of Thame in 1985, when a large avalanche cascaded into the Dig Tsho glacial lake and created a wave that overtopped the dam. The ensuing flood destroyed a hydroelectricity plant downstream and caused more than three million dollars worth of damage.

The lack of monitoring is not a problem that is unique to just Thame.

There are thousands of glaciers and glacial lakes in the Himalayas – but very few in the Everest region are monitored and have early flood warning systems installed.

Meanwhile, global warming is accelerating the melting of glaciers which can fill up the lakes to bursting point.

A 2021 study led by the University of Leeds found that Himalayan glaciers have lost ice ten times more quickly over the last few decades than the average rate measured since their expansion 400 to 700 years ago.

Another study published in the Nature journal in 2022 found that Mount Everest’s South Col Glacier may have lost half its mass since the 1990s as a result of warming.

Imja Lake below Mount Everest was drained in 2016 after officials found it was in danger of overflowing and flooding downstream settlements, trekking trails and bridges.

But scientists have found that many new lakes have formed in recent years, while others have expanded and joined up to become larger ones.

Further inflaming the risk is the destabilisation of the local landscape caused by fast-retreating glaciers, leading to more landslides and avalanches that can pour into the lakes and cause them to rupture.

Authorities say they have listed around two dozen glacial lakes across the Nepali Himalayas as risky – but the two that burst on 16 August were neither mentioned in that list nor monitored by officials.

“They were the smallest ones and no one cared about them, and yet the damages have been so huge,” said Mr Tshering Sherpa.

“Imagine what could happen if the big ones burst out. There are many of them in the Everest region.”

Officials from Nepal’s Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Authority (NDRRMA) conducted a helicopter inspection and found there were a total of five small glacial lakes located near the source of the flooding. One of them had partially burst; another had burst completely.

“Which means the three other lakes at the same location could burst out anytime in the same way,” said Ms Doma Sherpa.

“Now that people know that, they don’t feel safe anymore. We are worried particularly about elderly people because of their mobility issues.”

Since then, the impacts of global warming on Himalayan glaciers and lakes has only become more striking – and locals say some damages from floods are now irreparable.

While the Thame river used to flow through the left part of the Khumbu valley, Friday’s flood has made it change course. Now it flows right through the village, claiming almost half of the land.

“Much of the remaining land now is full of debris and boulders,” Ms Doma Sherpa said.

“This is not like rebuilding the houses destroyed by the quake. When you have no land left, what can you build on?”

The flood has also damaged the reservoir of the only hydropower station that provides electricity to the region.

The station stopped functioning after the disaster led to deposition of mud and debris in the reservoir.

“As a result, power supply has been cut off, and because of that telecommunication systems were also not functioning,” Mingma Sherpa, chair of a youth club at Namche, a major tourist spot near Thame, said.

“The area has remained cut off from the outside world since the disaster struck. This is quite scary.”

“We had been worrying about slow onset impacts of climate change, like dwindling water resources, but this disaster has shown how unsafe and vulnerable we are.”

Government officials are aware of locals’ fears.

Anil Pokhrel, head of NDRRMA, said the authority is now forming a team of experts that will “study the risks posed by the three remaining lakes upstream of Thame village and find out if the downstream settlement areas are safe for people to live in or not”.

“We are also working on disaster risk reduction in the region,” she added.

Members of local Sherpa communities, however, say they’ve seen more talk and less action over the years when it comes to dealing with risks from glacial lake outbursts.

“We hear all big plans, especially during conferences, and soon the plans are forgotten,” Ms Doma Sherpa said.

“But we can’t forget about what this flood has done – and that there are other lakes lurking up there that can unleash disasters on us anytime.”

Pakistan’s parliament has a problem – and it is nothing to do with the politicians.

No, the problem besieging the building – terrifying new starters and turning its offices into overnight “marathon” tracks – is rats. Big ones.

The scale of the problem came to light after an official committee asked to see the records of meetings from 2008. When the records were collected, it was found most had been badly gnawed by rats.

“The rats on this floor are so huge that even cats might be afraid of them,” National Assembly spokesman Zafar Sultan admitted to the BBC.

The infestation is now so widespread that an annual budget of 1.2m rupees ($4,300; £3,300) has been dedicated to making Pakistan’s halls of power rat-free.

It seems most of the rats are located on the first floor – an area which not only houses the office of the senate opposition leader, but also hosts most of the political party meetings and standing committees.

It is also, perhaps crucially, the location of a food hall.

But the rats generally keep themselves out of sight – until, that is, people have departed for the day.

“When there are usually no people here in the evening, the rats run around in there like it’s a marathon,” a National Assembly official said.

“The staff posted there are now used to this, but if someone comes here for the first time, they get scared.”

Advertisements have now gone out in several Pakistan newspapers, in order to find a pest control company which can help officials deal with the rats.

So far, just two have shown any interest.

A senior US administration official has pushed back at reported comments by Benjamin Netanyahu, accusing the Israeli prime minister of making “maximalist statements” that are “not constructive to getting a ceasefire deal across the finish line”.

It comes in the midst of an intense round of regional diplomacy by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, as Washington tries to drive forward progress on a ceasefire and hostage release deal.

On Monday, Mr Blinken had talks lasting three hours with the Israeli leader in Jerusalem.

He later said Mr Netanyahu had accepted Washington’s so-called “bridging proposal” aimed at trying to solve sticking points and bring Israel and Hamas closer to a deal.

According to an Israeli media report, Mr Netanyahu later told a meeting of hostage families that he “convinced” Mr Blinken that the deal must see Israeli troops remaining in areas of Gaza he described as “strategic military and political assets”, including along the southern border with Egypt.

The reported comments appear to have irritated the US administration.

“We saw the prime minister’s comments, specifically on some of these items,” said the senior official who spoke on condition of anonymity.

“We’re certainly not going to negotiate in public but what I can say is that the only thing Secretary Blinken and the United States are convinced of is the need for getting a ceasefire proposal across the finish line.”

“We fully expect that… if Hamas were also to also accept this bridging proposal, discussions will continue on some of the more technical… details.

“I would also just add that maximalist statements like this are not constructive to getting a ceasefire deal across the finish line and they certainly risk the ability of implementing level, working level and technical talks to be able to move forward when both parties agree to a bridging proposal.”

The senior official’s remarks followed Tuesday’s round of talks between Mr Blinken and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi in the coastal city of El-Alamein.

Egyptian officials are said to be strongly opposed to the idea of Israeli troops remaining along Egypt’s border in Gaza.

Following his stop in Egypt, Mr Blinken travelled on to Qatar for further talks in Doha – the last stop on his Middle East tour.

The BBC has been travelling with the secretary of state and asked him about the conversation shortly before he left Doha.

He revealed for the first time that the American bridging proposal included a “detailed plan” about Israeli withdrawal from Gaza.

“The agreement is very clear on the schedule and locations of IDF [Israel Defense Forces] withdrawals from Gaza and Israel has agreed to that,” said Mr Blinken.

Asked by the BBC whether Mr Netanyahu’s reported claim that the Israeli leader had “convinced” Mr Blinken to keep troops in Gaza, he said: “I can’t speak to what he’s quoted as saying, I can just speak to what I heard from him directly yesterday [Monday] when we spent three hours together,” he said.

“[That included] Israel’s endorsement of the bridging proposal and thus the detailed plan. And that plan among other things includes a very clear schedule and locations for withdrawals.”

Asked whether the proposal was for a “full withdrawal”, Mr Blinken said he would not comment on the details of the plan.

Hamas said the latest ceasefire proposals constituted “a coup” against what had been agreed upon in earlier negotiations, and reiterated its wish that a ceasefire plan for Gaza be based on where talks were in July rather than any new rounds of negotiations.

Hollywood stars Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck are divorcing after two years of marriage.

Lopez filed for divorce on Tuesday in the Los Angeles County Superior Court, according to court documents seen by the BBC.

The pair – dubbed Bennifer by tabloids – formally tied the knot in Las Vegas in July 2022 and held a larger wedding ceremony in Georgia the following month.

Their romance began after they met while working on the set of the 2003 crime caper Gigli. They had originally planned to marry that year, but called off their relationship early in 2004.

Almost two decades later they rekindled their relationship.

“Love is beautiful. Love is kind. And it turns out love is patient. Twenty years patient,” Lopez said in 2022 after announcing the Las Vegas wedding.

The BBC has contacted their representatives for comment.

A court filing in the case says Lopez or her attorney has to notify Affleck with a copy of her petition to dissolve their marriage.

Media reports indicate Lopez, who had legally changed her last name to Affleck, did not list any details of a prenuptial agreement in her petition for divorce.

A document filed in LA’s Superior Court in the case says both Lopez, 55, and Affleck, 52, must share financial information, including their current income, expenses, properties and debts.

The document says both are mandated to divulge any changes to their finances “until there is a final agreement about all financial issues in your case”.

The court gave Lopez 60 days to file a financial disclosure and Affleck will have another 60 days after she submits her information to do likewise.

The filing says if either fails to report or update financial information, it could result in a court-imposed sanction.

There has been months of speculation over their relationship. They reportedly put their Beverly Hills mansion up for sale at $65m (£50m) and were pictured out separately not wearing their wedding rings.

Affleck, a two-time Oscar winner, was previously married to the actress Jennifer Garner, who he met on the set of 2001 romance Pearl Harbor. They split in 2015 after a decade of marriage and have three children together.

Lopez has been married four times, first to Cuban-born waiter Ojani Noa from 1997-98; then her former back-up dancer Cris Judd from 2001-03; and to singer Marc Anthony, with whom she had twins, from 2004-14.

The singer and actress, known as J.Lo, was also once engaged to New York Yankees star Alex Rodriguez.

Robert F Kennedy Jr’s running mate says the independent presidential candidate is considering joining forces with Donald Trump’s campaign or staying in and forming a third party.

On a podcast, Nicole Shanahan said they were considering the two options to avoid the “risk” of a Kamala Harris presidency.

She also accused the Democrats of “sabotage”, including planting insiders in their campaign.

Mr Kennedy has faced a number of hurdles in his longshot third-party campaign, from legal challenges over getting his name on state ballots to funding his run.

“There’s two options that we’re looking at and one is staying in, forming that new party, but we run the risk of a Kamala Harris and [Tim] Walz presidency because we draw votes from Trump, or we draw somehow more votes from Trump,” Ms Shanahan, 38, said on the Impact Theory with Tom Bilyeu podcast released on Tuesday.

“Or we walk away right now and join forces with Donald Trump and you know, we walk away from that and we explain to our base why we’re making this decision.”

She said it was “not an easy decision”.

BBC News has reached out to the Kennedy campaign for clarity on Ms Shanahan’s comments.

In a post on X, formerly Twitter, on Tuesday, Mr Kennedy said: “As always, I am willing to talk with leaders of any political party to further the goals I have served for 40 years in my career and in this campaign.”

Mr Kennedy’s running mate said she trusts the future of the country more under the leadership of Trump, a Republican, than under the Democratic nominee, Vice-President Kamala Harris.

Ms Shanahan rejected recent reports that the Kennedy campaign had been in talks with the Harris team about a potential endorsement or cabinet position.

“That said, we have offered to talk to everybody about what your policies are, who’s going to be in your cabinet, do you want to hear any of our takes on policy and what might work,” she said.

She noted that former President Trump has taken a keen interest in some of their campaign’s policies around chronic disease.

“For that reason, it behooves us to sit and see if we can actually make some real change and if that is a unity party, I think that it is something that we absolutely owe to the American public to explore,” said Ms Shanahan.

She also accused the Democratic party of “sabotage”, arguing that “had we had a fair shot we would have won”.

Ms Shanahan said the Democrats “have banned us, shadow-banned us, kept us off stage, manipulated polls, sued us in every possible state,” and “planted insiders into our campaign to disrupt it”.

The BBC has contacted the Democratic party for comment.

Media reports over the last few months have indicated that Mr Kennedy, 70, has offered to endorse the former president in exchange for a role in his next administration.

A leaked phone call in July between the two candidates had Trump saying he would “love” Mr Kennedy “to do something” to support him.

Mpox is “not the new Covid”, because authorities clearly know how to control its spread, a leading World Health Organization expert has said.

Despite real concern about a new variant of the virus, and a global alert, Europe regional director Dr Hans Kluge told journalists, together we could – and must – tackle mpox.

And strong action now – including ensuring vaccines reach the areas most in need – could stop another cycle of panic and neglect.

A case of the new variant, Clade Ib, was confirmed in Sweden last week and linked to a growing outbreak in Africa.

Mpox has killed at least 450 people in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), the former Zaire, in recent months, linked to Clade Ib.

There is still a lot to learn about the new variant, experts say, but it may be spreading more easily, causing more serious disease.

No Clade Ib cases have been seen in the UK – but experts warn it can spread unless international action is taken.

A different variant, Clade II, was behind the 2022 outbreak that initially affected Europe and continues to circulate in many parts of the world.

But experts know how to control mpox, regardless of the variant – through non-discriminatory public-health action and equitable access to vaccines, Dr Kluge says.

The virus, which causes a fever and rash, can be spread by skin-to-skin contact with lesions, including during sex.

Dr Kluge said the risk to the general population was low.

“Are we going to go in lockdown in the WHO European region, it’s another Covid-19? The answer is clearly: ‘no’,” he said.

“Two years ago, we controlled mpox in Europe thanks to the direct engagement with the most affected communities of men who have sex with men,” Dr Kluge said.

“In 2022, mpox showed us it can spread quickly around the world.

“We can, and must, tackle mpox together – across regions and continents.

“Will we choose to put the systems in place to control and eliminate mpox globally or will we enter another cycle of panic, then neglect?”

About 100 new Clade II cases were now being reported in the European region every month, Dr Kluge added.

Travellers to affected areas in Africa have been advised to consider vaccination.

WHO spokesman Tarik Jasarevic said the WHO was not recommending the use of masks.

“We are not recommending mass vaccination. We are recommending to use vaccines in outbreak settings for the groups who are most at risk,” he added.

The Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention has said it has a “clear plan” to get 10 million doses of vaccine for the continent.

The DRC and Nigeria will begin vaccinating from next week.

Danish vaccine manufacturer, Bavarian Nordic, will transfer its technology to African manufacturers so the vaccine can be made locally in order to increase the supply and reduce the cost, it added.

Speaking in a press briefing, Director General of Africa CDC, Dr Jean Kaseya, also pleaded countries not to punish Africa with travel bans.

“I clearly request our partners to stop thinking about travel bans against Africans, that one will bring us back on the unfair treatment that we had during the Covid time.

“Solidarity means we need you to provide appropriate support in terms of medical counter-measures,” he said.

Russia’s military says it has captured a small town in eastern Ukraine called Niu-York, as part of its push towards big population centres in the Donetsk region.

Ukraine’s military has not confirmed the loss of Niu-York, saying only that Russian forces are attacking close to the town and other areas. The army was giving the attacks “a worthy rebuff… and the fighting continues”, it said.

Although only a small settlement, controlling Niu-York would represent another step towards the two Donetsk hubs of Toretsk and Pokrovsk.

One of the aims of Ukraine’s seizure of territory in Russia’s Kursk region is thought to be to force Russia to move some of its forces away from the eastern campaign.

There is no indication so far of that happening, despite Ukraine’s commander-in-chief Oleksandr Syrskyi now claiming control of 93 Russian villages and towns.

President Volodymyr Zelensky described the situation in the east as difficult, but said Ukrainian troops were doing all they could to destroy the Russian forces. The military chief told a briefing that Russia was sending additional troops to the front line in the east.

A Russia defence ministry statement said active operations by units of its Centre forces group had defeated Ukrainian troops, referring to Niu-York as “one of the largest settlements of the Toretsk agglomeration and a strategically important logistics hub”. It also called the town by the Russian name of Novgorodskoye.

Russian military bloggers shared footage late on Monday of a Russian tricolor flag being posted on the roof of a school in Niu-York with the Ukrainian flag lying on the ground.

However, the video first circulated two weeks ago and Ukrainian forces had since blown up the flag and damaged the roof with a drone on 8 August.

Niu-York is just south of the mining town of Toretsk, and Russian forces on Monday said they had also captured Zalizne, to the south-east of Toretsk.

Ukrainian forces said they were still fighting back in Zalizne and local sources were quoted as saying they still had control of 20% of Niu-York too, although they had far fewer reserves than the Russians.

On Monday, Ukrainian authorities ordered the evacuation of Pokrovsk, as Russian forces continue to advance on the town.

According to a military briefing on Tuesday, Russia had directed more than a third of its 87 attacks during the day on it push towards Pokrovsk. Local officials say Russia’s military is now about 10km (6 miles) from the outskirts of the town.

Regional head Vadym Filashkin has said 53,000 people still live in Pokrovsk, including almost 4,000 children.

Ukraine’s commander in chief said the counter-offensive in Russia’s Kursk region had now advanced 28-35km beyond the border, with 1,263 sq km under Ukrainian control and a total of 93 population centres.

Russian Defence Minister Andrei Belousov said three new military groupings had been formed to counter the Ukrainian operation in three border regions, Kursk, Belgorod and Bryansk.

Their task would be to protect “citizens and territories from attacks” from drones and other and other assault means.

Russian officials have played down the success of the Ukrainian operation in the Kursk region.

Maj Gen Apti Alaudinov, commander of Chechnya’s Akhmat special forces unit, told Russian TV that Ukraine’s military had sustained very serious losses.

Asked to respond to reports that three bridges had been blown up over the River Seym, cutting off evacuation and supply routes, he said “the fact that some bridge has been blown up doesn’t mean anything”.

However, state news agency Tass says local police are now having to use privately owned boats to get civilians to safety because bridges are down.

German photographer Nanna Heitmann said she had spoken to Russians in the region who were furious that state media were not giving the full picture: “They’re shocked, they are angry. A lot of people wait, thousands of people waiting in lines to find shelter, to find basic needs like blankets, pillows etc.”

Russia’s Vladimir Putin, who has appeared wrong-footed by the Ukrainian offensive, compared it on Tuesday to a 2004 school massacre by Chechen militants in Beslan where more than 300 people were killed.

On a visit to the school and to mothers of the victims in North Ossetia, he said “just as we fought with terrorists previously, now we fight with those who commit crimes in Kursk region, Donbas and Novorossiya”, using an old Russian imperial term for areas of occupied Ukraine.

Former President Barack Obama will return to the Democratic National Convention stage in his hometown of Chicago to deliver the keynote address on Tuesday, 20 years after his convention debut thrust him into the national spotlight.

It’s a tricky moment for one of the party’s most popular figures.

He will use his speech to touch on the historic nature of Kamala Harris’s candidacy – the first female of colour to lead the ticket – as a continuation of his legacy. But he must also pay tribute to his own vice-president and the man responsible for her rise – President Joe Biden.

Mr Obama, 63, and Ms Harris, 59, have moved in overlapping political orbits as early as his days as an Illinois state senator running for the US Senate. The two, both on the rise in their nascent political careers, met at a California fundraiser in 2004.

As an early supporter, Ms Harris would later volunteer for his presidential campaign and help power his first victory in 2008. Buoyed by party enthusiasm for Ms Harris’s campaign, Mr Obama – and his popular wife Michelle Obama – will try to return the favour and help propel her to the Oval Office.

“I think he can excite people about her and about the stakes [of the election] and I think that’s what he intends to do today,” David Plouffe, Mr Obama’s 2008 campaign manager and a now Harris campaign adviser, told Axios.

Here’s a look at key moments in their two-decade relationship.

Ms Harris, then a San Francisco district attorney, was in the crowd of more than 15,000 people as then-junior senator announced his longshot bid for the White House on the steps of the Old State Capitol in the Illinois capital city of Springfield in February 2007. She would go on to knock on doors and raise money for Mr Obama ahead of the Iowa caucuses in 2008, later serving as his California campaign co-chair.

Mr Obama lent her some of his national star power two years later when she mounted a statewide bid for attorney general against Republican Steve Cooley, a popular Los Angeles district attorney. She had been affectionately referred to as “the female Barack Obama” by longtime PBS News anchor Gwen Ifill, but remained locked in a tight contest.

Mr Obama, who would endure widespread congressional losses in that election year, made time to appear at a Los Angeles rally in October 2010 in which he referred to Ms Harris as “dear, dear friend of mine”.

“I want everybody to do right by her,” he told the crowd. Ms Harris eked out a victory by less than a percentage point, setting her on a path toward higher office.

Mr Obama gave Ms Harris a coveted speaking role at the 2012 Democratic National Convention for his re-election.

She had already made a name for herself in California in barrier-breaking roles as the first person of colour or woman to serve as San Francisco’s district attorney. She was also the first African American and South Asian American elected as the state’s top lawyer.

But as attorney general, she had made headlines for standing firm in negotiations on a financial settlement between state attorneys general and the banks responsible for the foreclosure crisis, securing more than $25 billion on behalf of homeowners.

She spoke of her accomplishment, weaving in her personal story, praising Mr Obama for standing up for Americans during the housing crisis and attacking his Republican challenger Mitt Romney as an ally of Wall Street.

“We need to move forward.” she said in her speech, a phrase she has reprised in her 2024 campaign. “President Obama will fight for working families. He will fight to level the economic playing field and fight to give every American the same fair shot my family had.”

Her high-profile remarks came just before former President Bill Clinton, landing a spot that was guaranteed to catch the attention of national Democrats, powerbrokers and key donors.

Though Mr Obama quietly supported Ms Harris as she rose through California politics, he raised eyebrows in 2013 when he referred to her as “the best looking attorney general in the country”.

“You have to be careful to, first of all, say she is brilliant and she is dedicated and she is tough, and she is exactly what you’d want in anybody who is administering the law, and making sure that everybody is getting a fair shake,” the president said at a San Francisco fundraiser. “She also happens to be, by far, the best looking attorney general in the country.”

He phoned Ms Harris hours later to apologise for the comment.

“They are old friends and good friends and he did not want in any way to diminish” her accomplishments, White House spokesman Jay Carney later told reporters.

At the height of his Democratic power in 2016, finishing his second term as president, Mr Obama waded into the contentious California Senate race to endorse Ms Harris, who launched a bid to replace retiring Senator Barbara Boxer.

In July of that year, he and Vice-President Joe Biden formally announced their support for Ms Harris, who was running against fellow Democrat and US Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez. In California’s primary system, the two top vote-getters advance to the general election, regardless of party.

“Kamala is a lifelong courtroom prosecutor with only one client: the people of the State of California. That’s the approach she’ll take to the United States Senate,” Mr Obama said in a statement released by the Harris campaign.

Mr Biden said he had known her through his son Beau Biden, who forged a friendship with Ms Harris as Delaware’s attorney general during their mortgage settlement negotiations.

Ms Harris handily won the election, and became only the second black female to serve in the US Senate.

Ms Harris’ 2020 presidential primary bid began as a spectacle, launched in her hometown of Oakland, California, before a crowd of 20,000 people in 2019. Like others in the crowded field of candidates vying for the Democratic nomination, she met with Mr Obama to lay out her case for her candidacy.

But Mr Obama, whose own vice-president was mounting an election bid, wanted to stay out of the political fray and wait until the party selected its nominee before offering his coveted endorsement.

Ms Harris’s campaign collapsed in less than a year, and Joe Biden would offer her a political reprieve as his running mate. Mr Obama reportedly supported Mr Biden’s selection of Ms Harris, despite their early debate clash over the former vice-president’s record on school desegregation.

Mr Obama said his former vice-president “nailed this decision” in selecting Ms Harris.

“Choosing a vice-president is the first important decision a president makes. When you’re in the Oval Office, weighing the toughest issues, and the choice you make will affect the lives and livelihoods of the entire country — you need someone with you who’s got the judgement and the character to make the right call,” Mr Obama said in a statement at the time.

Since 2020, Mr Obama has been in regular touch with Ms Harris, providing counsel and serving as a sounding board whenever she’s asked.

The Obamas waited several days to endorse Ms Harris until it was clear that there were no challengers and she was the party’s choice. The couple released a video of them calling her to formally announce their support for her campaign.

“We’ve known each other for 20 years. I’ve watched how you have excelled in every position you’ve been in,” Mr Obama told her in the phone call. “Just to see all that hard work be recognised is something that we couldn’t be more thrilled about. And so the main thing we wanted to do was just let you know and let Doug [Emhoff] know, our soon-to-be first gentleman, that we are gonna do everything we can to help propel you into the presidency.”

Over the last few months, the two have been in close contact as Mr Obama has sought to offer support for her campaign, including policy or strategic advice, fundraising and get-out-the-vote efforts.

Ms Harris has also relied on many of Mr Obama’s old hands to help run her campaign. Eric Holder, who served as Mr Obama’s attorney general, led efforts to vet Ms Harris’s shortlist for vice-president, while Mr Plouffe is now serving as one of her most senior advisers.

The Harris campaign has also enlisted other Obama aides including Jennifer O’Malley Dillion, her campaign chairwoman, and senior adviser Stephanie Cutter. Former Obama communications director Jennifer Palmieri is also helping Ms Harris’s husband, Doug Emhoff.

Wrestling legend Hulk Hogan has joked about body slamming Vice-President Kamala Harris in front of a fired up crowd, and questioned her racial identity.

In a video obtained by TMZ, the 71-year-old can be seen asking the jeering crowd: “Do you want me to body slam Kamala Harris?!”

“Do you want me to drop the leg on Kamala?!” he shouts, referring to one of his iconic wrestling moves.

The comments were made during a promotional event for his new beer, and come amid calls to stop violent political rhetoric, following the assassination attempt on Donald Trump nearly six weeks ago.

Hogan continued to make more comments about Ms Harris including one about her Indian heritage.

Kamala Harris is bi-racial – her mother was from India and her father is Jamaican.

“Is Kamala a chameleon? Is she Indian?” Hogan asked the crowd, before using an outdated and stereotypical greeting associated with Native American Indians.

The video stops after he could be heard saying he “was going to get heat for that one”.

“That was not me, that was the beer talking,” he added.

The BBC has contacted Hulk Hogan’s management for comment.

Trump recently attacked the vice-president’s racial identity, falsely claiming she had only ever emphasised her Asian-American heritage until recently when, he claimed, “she became a black person”.

Last month, Hulk Hogan appeared at the Republican National Convention where he gave a speech praising Trump.

He also ripped off a shirt to reveal a vest with Trump’s name and his vice-presidential pick, JD Vance.

The former wrestler’s latest comments come as the Democrats are holding their party’s convention this week in Chicago, where they will formally endorse Kamala Harris as the Democratic presidential candidate for November’s election.

With just three months to go before the 2024 election, thousands of people have gathered in Chicago this week for the Democratic National Convention.

This year’s event is at the United Center Arena and started Monday 19 August, continuing through Thursday.

The convention, which happens every four years before a presidential election, looks slightly different from those in the past. The party already has officially nominated Vice-President Kamala Harris in a virtual roll call after President Joe Biden dropped out of the race.

But many of the other DNC traditions – including appearances from celebrities and memorable speeches from party leaders – will remain the same. US conventons date back to the 1830s, when a group of Democratic delegates supporting President Andrew Jackson gathered in Baltimore to nominate him for a second term.

Here’s what to know.

On Tuesday, former President Barack Obama is expected to deliver a prime-time speech at around 21:00 local time (03:00 BST). Former First Lady Michelle Obama will also speak.

The evening will also feature several prominent senators on the convention stage: Majority Leader Chuck Schumer; Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders and Illinois Senator Tammy Duckworth.

Other key speakers include Illinois Governor JB Pritzker, New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham, Mesa, Arizona Mayor John Giles and Ms Harris’s husband, Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff.

After the convention experienced a number of delays on Monday, DNC organisers said that the programme would begin earlier, at approximately 17:30 local time.

Wednesday’s line-up reportedly features former President Bill Clinton and former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, among others.

Ms Harris’s running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, will give the prime-time speech that night after his nomination.

The most important night of the convention is Thursday, when Vice-President Harris will take the stage. She will formally accept the presidential nomination and give her speech on the final night of the convention dedicated “For the Future”.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries will also take the stage at some point during the week.

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Several prominent Democrats and celebrities took the stage on the first night in Chicago.

The convention heard from President Joe Biden, who was the headline speaker on Monday. He was introduced by his wife Jill and daughter Ashley. During an emotional defence of his presidency, he said: “America, I gave my best to you.”

2016 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton offered her own tribute to Mr Biden the same evening, and voiced her hope that Kamala Harris could finally break the “highest, hardest glass ceiling” in the US by becoming the first female president.

Others who spoke on Monday included progressive lawmaker Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Americans affected by abortion bans in Republican-controlled states, and voices from the labour movement, including United Auto Workers head Shawn Fain.

Because Ms Harris and Mr Walz have already been nominated, this year’s convention will focus on speeches from prominent Democrats and the adoption of the party’s platform.

Delegates work during the day to finalise the platform, a draft of which has already been released.

It focuses on a broad range of issues, including plans to lower inflation, mitigate climate change and tackle gun violence.

In the draft, Democrats contrast each of the party positions with Project 2025, an ultra-conservative blueprint for what a second Trump administration could look like, authored by the Heritage Foundation. Trump has sought to distance himself from the project, though several of his allies were involved in writing it.

Members of the public can only attend the convention in person by becoming volunteers. But as with the Republican convention, there will be plenty of national media coverage, and the convention itself will offer live-streams on social media platforms.

You’ll be able to follow BBC News coverage – featuring on-site reporting and analysis – across the website and app, and on our live-stream.

The BBC News Channel will carry special coverage from 20:00 ET (01:00 BST) each night. You can find special episodes of The Global Story and Americast podcasts on BBC Sounds and other podcast platforms.

Sign up to North America correspondent Anthony Zurcher’s election newsletter US Election Unspun for his take on the week’s events direct to your inbox.

Around 50,000 people are expected at this year’s convention in Chicago. This includes thousands of delegates chosen by state Democratic parties as well as super delegates, who are major elected officials, notable members of the Democratic Party and some members of the Democratic National Committee.

Thousands of members of the media will also be in attendance.

It will be a star-studded convention with appearances from several celebrities. In 2020, actors Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Eva Longoria attended the convention, while Elizabeth Banks and America Ferrera appeared in 2016.

Rumours have swirled about whether mega-stars Beyoncé and Taylor Swift will attend this year, but neither has confirmed.

Demonstrations outside the DNC venue centre around opposition to US support of Israel’s war in Gaza.

Thousands of marchers took to the streets for a mostly peaceful protest on Monday, calling for a ceasefire in Gaza and an end to US support for Israel. Several were arrested when dozens of them broke through a security fence.

The turnout appeared to be well below the tens of thousands that organisers had hoped for and short of the 15,000 they claimed were there.

In that night’s address, Mr Biden acknowledged that the activists “have a point”, going on to say that “a lot of innocent people are being killed, on both sides”.

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Hillary Clinton has spoken at the Democratic National Convention of her hope that Kamala Harris can finally break the “highest, hardest glass ceiling” in America by becoming the first female president.

Ms Clinton said she had broken a glass ceiling of her own by becoming the first woman to win a major party nomination for president.

“When a barrier falls for one of us, it clears the way for all of us,” she said, echoing her convention speech from eight years before.

But while her bid for the presidency in 2016 was historic, it ultimately ended in defeat when she lost the election to Donald Trump.

Now, as the Democratic Party takes its next shot at putting the first woman in the White House, she told a crowd of thousands in Chicago the time had come to pass the torch.

“Together, we’ve put a lot of cracks in the highest, hardest glass ceiling,” Mrs Clinton said. “On the other side of that glass ceiling is Kamala Harris raising her hand and taking the oath of office as our 47th President of the United States.”

Times have changed since Mrs Clinton’s presidential bid, according to several female delegates and politicians attending the 2024 DNC in Chicago.

Back then, she made her gender a central part of the campaign – a move Ms Harris has seemingly chosen to avoid. Whether the political backdrop has transformed enough for the vice-president to reach the nation’s highest office remains an open question.

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Mrs Clinton “shattered a lot of glass for many people”, Minyon Moore, the chair of the Democratic National Convention Committee, told reporters on Monday morning.

But, she added: “It’s not easy. We’re trying to shift the mindset of people.”

Women politicians and delegates who spoke to the BBC said they faced a number of barriers in politics, both in running for office and while serving their communities.

When Mallory McMorrow, a state senator from Michigan, ran for office in 2018, she remembers one woman in her district asked if she was planning on having children.

“She told me to my face, this is not a job for a mom,” Ms McMorrow said. She went on to become the second senator in Michigan history to give birth while in office.

Judy Mount, the first African-American female chair of the Florida Democrats, said it took years for women to be able to serve as chairs of their state political parties.

“People just do not want to see a woman in charge of anything,” she said. “They do not.”

During her run for president in 2016, Mrs Clinton faced a barrage of criticisms over her appearance, her clothing and even the sound of her voice.

She came into the race with more “baggage” than the average candidate, said Deloris Hudson, an Ohio delegate at the DNC.

Voters judged Mrs Clinton not only based on her own credentials and record as a senator and US secretary of state but also on her relationship with her husband, former President Bill Clinton, Ms Hudson said.

Ms Hudson believes many women judged Mrs Clinton for staying with her husband after he had an affair with Monica Lewinsky, an intern in the White House.

Mrs Clinton’s loss to Trump in 2016 was also a catalyst for change. It sparked women’s marches across the country and propelled a record number of female candidates to run for office in 2018. Now, 28.5% of the House of Representatives is female, compared to just 19.1% in 2017, according to the Pew Research Center.

Meanwhile, over the past decade, the percentage of Americans who believe men are better suited for politics than women fell continuously, according to data from the University of Chicago’s National Opinion Research Center.

Several elections later, Ms Harris does not face the same pressure as Mrs Clinton to be “everything to every woman”, Ms McMorrow said.

“Since then, we’ve seen more women running and winning at every single level all the way up that allows us more freedom and flexibility to be ourselves,” she said.

Though the vice-president’s aides and allies have pointed to deep-rooted sexism she’s faced over her career, Ms Harris has tried to focus on her record rather than her gender identity. While Mrs Clinton tried to galvanise voters around her female candidacy, coining the slogan “I’m with Her”, Ms Harris has largely avoided conversations about gender.

The move is perhaps both intentional and natural, Ms McMorrow said.

“There are so many more of us [women politicians] that I don’t think you have to mention it anymore,” she said.

Instead, this conversation has largely been left up to her supporters, including women and voters of colour who have helped raise millions of dollars for Ms Harris. They have painted the 59-year-old as a younger, fresh alternative to the 78-year-old Trump, and a candidate who has given the Democratic ticket some much-needed momentum with two and a half months until November’s election.

For some Democrats like US congresswoman Debbie Dingell of Michigan, Ms Harris’s ascension to the top of the ticket is representative of the progress women have made in politics in recent years.

But, she added, there remains more work to be done.

“We need to make sure that we include everybody, that no demographic feels left behind because someone else succeeds,” Ms Dingell said. “As a country, I think that’s something we’ve got to continue to work at.”

Specialist divers continue to search for six people who were onboard a luxury superyacht which capsized off the coast of Sicily on Monday morning – but questions have been asked about why the vessel sank.

According to vessel tracking app Vesselfinder, the boat left the Sicilian port of Milazzo on 14 August and was last tracked east of Palermo on Sunday evening, with a navigation status of “at anchor”.

It is believed the ship was struck by a tornado over the water – otherwise known as a waterspout – causing Bayesian to capsize.

There are separate reports the boat’s mast snapped during the freak storm and other factors in the boat’s sinking include water entering through hatches and doors which had been left open because of warm weather off the Italian coast.

Witnesses have described seeing a waterspout form during the storm before the sinking of the Bayesian.

Most are familiar with what tornadoes look like – they are rotating columns of destructive winds, protruding from the base of clouds down to the ground.

According to BBC Weather, waterspouts are just that too, but are over water rather than land.

Instead of dust and debris swirling around the core of strong winds, it is water mist whipped up from the surface.

Like tornadoes, most are only short-lived, narrow columns and are not easily picked out on weather radars, so many will go unreported.

However, they are not as rare as you may think.

According to the International Centre for Waterspout Research there were 18 confirmed waterspouts off the coast of Italy on 19 August alone.

In the northern hemisphere, waterspouts are most common in late summer and through the autumn, when sea temperatures are at their highest, fuelling the storm clouds.

However, with sea temperatures rising due to climate change there is a concern that they could become more common.

In the last week, the Mediterranean has registered its highest sea surface temperature on record, which has helped to energise this recent storm outbreak.

The Bayesian was built by Italian shipbuilder Perini in 2008 and was last refitted in 2020.

According to Perini’s website Bayesian has a 75m (246ft) mast which it claims is the tallest aluminium mast in the world.

Karsten Borner, the captain of another yacht anchored nearby at the time of the storm, said there was a “very strong hurricane gust” and he had to battle to keep his vessel steady.

He saw the Bayesian’s mast “bend and then snap”, according to Italy’s Corriere della Sera daily newspaper.

But, providing an update on the rescue mission, Marco Tilotta, from the Palermo fire service divers’ unit, told AFP the ship was lying on its side in one piece.

Matthew Schanck, chair of the Maritime Search and Rescue Council, explained it is difficult to say whether the mast broke.

“I think, and this is pure guess work, but the evidence that we are getting from the divers is the vessel is basically intact, lying on its side reportedly,” he told the BBC.

“If the mast was broken, that would be a significant thing that would be reported.”

Mr Schanck added he believed what happened to Bayesian was “a freak event”.

“Vessels aren’t designed to be out sailing in that weather – 65 to 85mph that’s the top of what a vessel would be out in and that’s with its sails down,” he said.

“They aren’t designed to sail through tornadoes or water spouts.”

Since mid-June the sea surrounding Sicily – the western Mediterranean Basin – has been experiencing a severe heatwave.

The European Union’s climate change service, Copernicus, has been reporting sea surface temperatures in the region have repeatedly breached 30°C (86F) – four degrees higher than the 20-year average for this time of the year.

Spanish researchers at the Institut de Ciencies del Mar in Barcelona confirmed last Thursday the maximum sea surface temperature record had been broken in the Mediterranean Sea.

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In both 2023 and 2024, the record was broken for the highest average temperature recorded around the world on one day.

Scientists put the rapidly rising temperatures down to climate change – oceans have taken the brunt of rising temperatures absorbing around 90% of the excess heat.

Following last year’s record ocean temperatures, Prof Mike Meredith from the British Antarctic Survey told the BBC: “The fact that all this heat is going into the ocean, and in fact, it’s warming in some respects even more rapidly than we thought it would, is a cause for great concern.”

One sailing expert says hatches and doors left open overnight on the Bayesian may have caused it to sink.

Weather records show temperatures reached about 33C the day before the sinking

Sam Jefferson, editor of magazine Sailing Today, believe this may have led to the Bayesian’s occupants wanting air to flow through while they slept.

“I would have said that the boat got hit very hard by the wind, it was pinned over on its side,” Mr Jefferson said.

“I imagine all the doors were open because it was hot, so there were enough hatches and doors open that it filled with water very quickly and sank like that.

“The reason it got pinned over so hard was because the mast is huge. It acted almost like a sail. [It] pushed the boat hard over on its side.

“[The boat] filled with water before it could right. This is all speculation, but that’s the only logical explanation.”

A rescue mission is under way off the coast of Sicily after the British-flagged luxury yacht Bayesian sank during freak weather early on Monday morning.

The vessel’s cook – understood to be Recaldo Thomas – has died and his body has been recovered, according to Sicily’s civil protection agency.

Some 15 people have been rescued from the boat, while six remain missing.

Specialist divers from the Italian fire brigade resumed their search early on Tuesday morning.

The body of a man recovered near the Bayesian yacht is believed to be that of Recaldo Thomas, a Canadian-Antiguan chef who was working on the boat.

His friends have been paying tribute to him. Gareth Williams, who lives in Antigua, knew Thomas for 30 years.

“I can talk for everyone that knew him when I say he was a well-loved, kind human being with a calm spirit,” he told the BBC.

The two grew up together in Antigua, where Thomas spent his time during off-season.

“He would come over to mine over the weekend and he would sing. He had the deepest, most sultry voice in the world, and a smile that lit up the room.

“He told me just the other day that he needed to work two more seasons to fix up his late parents’ house. He loved yachting, but he was tired.”

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The six people who are unaccounted for have all been named.

Among them are British businessman Mike Lynch, who was recently acquitted of fraud in the US.

Several people on the boat, including some who are missing, were involved in his recent trial and there have been reports that the yacht trip was a celebration of Mr Lynch’s acquittal.

Mr Lynch is a tech entrepreneur who was once regarded by some as “Britain’s Bill Gates”.

Raised in Essex, he went on to study at the University of Cambridge, before co-founding software company Autonomy in 1996.

The 59-year-old made his riches by selling the company to US tech giant Hewlett-Packard in 2011 for $11bn (£8.6bn).

Mr Lynch became embroiled in a decade-long legal battle following the acquisition. He was acquitted in the US in June on multiple fraud charges, over which he had been facing two decades in jail.

He told BBC Radio 4 in August that he believed he had only been able to prove his innocence in US court because he was rich enough to pay the enormous legal fees involved.

“You shouldn’t need to have funds to protect yourself as a British citizen,” he said.

Mr Lynch was travelling with his daughter Hannah, who is also missing.

The 18-year-old is reportedly the younger of Mr Lynch’s two daughters.

She had just completed her A-levels and secured a place to read English at Oxford University, according to the Times.

Chris Morvillo is a lawyer who represented Mr Lynch in his US trial. Since 2011, he has been a partner at the Clifford Chance law firm in New York.

His biography on the firm’s website says that he served as assistant attorney for the southern district of New York from 1999 to 2005.

During his tenure, he worked on the criminal investigation surrounding the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center.

American jewellery designer Neda Morvillo, wife of Mr Morvillo, is also unaccounted for.

Mr Morvillo’s employer, Clifford Chance, confirmed the news.

In a statement, a spokesperson for the law firm said: “We are in shock and deeply saddened by this tragic incident.”

Ms Morvillo designs jewellery under the name Neda Nassiri. Her website says she “has been designing and hand-crafting fine jewelry in New York City for over 20 years”.

Jonathan Bloomer is the chairman of the Morgan Stanley International bank and insurance company Hiscox.

The 70-year-old Briton was educated at Imperial College London and has previously served on a number of company boards.

Mr Bloomer appeared at trial as a defence witness for Mr Lynch, according to the the Financial Times. Media reports suggest the pair are close friends.

Aki Hussain, group chief executive of Hiscox, which Mr Bloomer has chaired since 2023, said: “We are deeply shocked and saddened by this tragic event.

“Our thoughts are with all those affected, in particular our chair, Jonathan Bloomer, and his wife Judy, who are among the missing.”

Judy, the wife of Jonathan Bloomer, is also among the six people missing.

Ms Bloomer is listed as a former director of property developer Change Real Estate along with her husband.

She has been called a “brilliant champion for women’s health” by a charity she has worked closely with.

Ms Bloomer has been a trustee and supporter of gynaecological cancer research charity the Eve Appeal for more than 20 years.

The charity’s chief executive, Athena Lamnisos, said she was “deeply shocked to hear the news that our very dear friend and her husband Jonathan, are among those missing”.

“Our thoughts are with Judy and Jonathan’s family, as well as all those who are still waiting for news after this tragic event,” she added in a statement.

Among the 15 people who were rescued are nine members of the yacht’s crew.

This means every member of the crew is accounted for minus the chef, who local authorities say has died.

Eight of the 15 who were rescued have been taken to hospital.

Dr Fabio Genco, who was part of the local emergency medical service that treated the survivors, said all of them had been discharged from hospital by Tuesday.

A British mother, named locally as Charlotte Golunski, was travelling on the yacht with her partner and baby girl. All three were rescued from the boat.

In an interview, she described holding her infant daughter above the surface of the sea to save her from drowning.

Ms Golunski is a partner at Mr Lynch’s company, Invoke Capital, where she has worked since 2012, according to her LinkedIn profile.

The Times has reported that she has previously worked for Autonomy, the company at the centre of Mr Lynch’s recent court case.

Another lawyer, Ayla Ronald, was also rescued along with her partner.

The New Zealand national works for Clifford Chance, where Mr Morvillo is a partner, and was part of Mr Lynch’s legal team for his June trial.

Her father told the Telegraph that she was “invited to go sailing as a result of the success in the recent United States court case”.

Angela Bacares, Mr Lynch’s wife and Hannah Lynch’s mother, is also among those who have been rescued.

On Monday, Ms Bacares was using a wheelchair after suffering ­abrasions on her feet, according to the newspaper La Repubblica.

Rescue teams searching the luxury yacht off the coast of Italy for six missing people are facing tough conditions, including short dive window and scattered debris on board, an expert has told the BBC.

Crews have spent the past two days searching the ship, and trying to access the areas where the passengers may be.

The Bayesian yacht was carrying 22 people when it sank in freak weather conditions early on Monday.

One man has been confirmed to have died in the incident, and a search for the six people still missing continues – the Italian coastguard believes they could still be trapped in the sunken yacht.

“You have current, you have wind, you have waves, you have everything,” Guy Thomas, a diving instructor and a member of the special rescue team of the Italian Red Cross, tells the BBC.

He is not involved in this specific rescue attempt, but says he believes “there will be a lot of debris” – making conditions for rescue crews challenging.

The Italian fire department has said that its divers initially struggled to even get inside the vessel, as furniture was obstructing the passageway.

And the ship’s hull’s location – tilted at a 90-degree angle – has created similar difficulties, the inspector of the diving unit, Marco Tilotta, told the Reuters news agency.

The issue for rescuers is that when a boat goes down in a tornado-like storm, everything that is not attached will either fall or float, Mr Thomas explains.

Rescuers also face challenges trying to access the part of the yacht where they believe the missing passengers may be.

“We know the boat sank quickly,” spokesman Vincenzo Zagarola told the PA news agency, “we suppose that the six people missing may not have had time to get out”.

The timing of its sinking – at night – means those missing were likely to have been in the yacht’s inner cabins if they did not have time to escape.

“Going into all the cabins,” Mr Tilotta said “is a really hard and difficult job.”

Because of the depths at which the wreckage sits – about 50m (164ft) below the surface – divers are limited to how long they can spend under water.

After descending to the wreckage, they only have 10 minutes to search the Bayesian before needing to resurface, according to the head of emergency communications of Italy’s fire and rescue department, Luca Cari.

During deeper dives, Mr Thomas says, “your body starts to accumulate nitrogen, and your body needs to stop and go back up”.

If a diver returns to the surface too quickly, the nitrogen bubbles don’t have time to dissipate – leading to a dangerous condition known as decompression sickness, also known as the bends.

The rescue attempt poses a real risk for the divers themselves, Mr Thomas says, with the possibility that they too could get stuck inside the yacht while carrying a limited amount of air.

“You could get lost in the ship,” he says. “It’s not a huge ship, there’s probably going to be a limited amount of light.”

Finally, there’s the issue of time.

In these situations, Mr Thomas says “you need to get there immediately”.

“When the boat goes down, rescue divers are trying to find people alive in air bubbles.

“But most people will not be in an air bubble.”

And when asked about the likelihood of any of the six people missing being found alive on the vessel, Mr Zagarola – the Italian coastguard spokesman – was not optimistic.

“Never say never, but reasonably the answer should be not.”

In the cloudy skies and on the choppy waters, the emergency operation is continuing here in Porticello, where a luxury yachting holiday turned to horror.

As a coastguard helicopter whirls overhead, divers are being despatched from the port, continuing their search for the six missing passengers of the Bayesian, which capsized before dawn on Monday and whose wreckage now lies some 50m (165ft) underwater on the seabed.

Luca Cari from Italy’s fire and rescue department said that, given the depth, divers were only allowed 10 minutes underwater before resurfacing, limiting their work.

Divers trained to work in small spaces have been flown in from Rome and Sardinia. Strong winds are making the conditions even harder.

The divers found no bodies on the bridge – the room in which the captain controlled the vessel – and have made it into the lounge, from where they are working to gain access to the rest of the yacht.

It’s expected that the six missing passengers will be trapped in the cabins, where they were likely sleeping when it capsized.

Among the missing are the British tech entrepreneur Mike Lynch along with his 18-year-old daughter Hannah; his lawyer, Mike Corvillo and his wife Neda; and the president of Morgan Stanley international Jonathan Bloomer and his wife Judy.

The body of the yacht’s chef has already been found. He is believed to be Recaldo Thomas, a Canadian-Antiguan.

Mr Lynch’s wife, Angela Bacares, is among the 15 people rescued, when they scrambled into a life raft and set off a flare, that drew the attention of another boat captain.

• LIVE: Body recovered near sunken Sicily yacht believed to be that of chef Recaldo Thomas
• ‘For two seconds I lost my baby in the sea’ – Sicily yacht survivor
• How sinking of luxury yacht off Sicily unfolded
• Who are the missing and rescued?

The tragedy began on Sunday night with violent storms buffeting the boats here.

In the early hours of Monday, that prompted a waterspout – a tornado-like rotating column of cloud and water that engulfed the Bayesian. Witnesses say it snapped the 76m (249ft) tall aluminium mast and quickly engulfed it.

Recent searing heat and heavy winds had reportedly prompted a weather warning prior to the capsizing. The temperature of the Mediterranean was 30C – higher than normal – amplifying the likelihood of an extreme weather event.

Among the survivors are several British nationals, who are staying at a local hotel, to which journalists were denied access.

They include Charlotte Golunski, who clutched her one-year-old daughter above the water to keep her alive, telling how all she could hear were the screams around her.

The British ambassador to Italy, Ed Llewellyn, told me he had visited the survivors and heard their anguish.

“It underlines what a desperately sad and distressing situation they found themselves in,” he said.

“My heart, and I’m sure that of the whole country, goes out to them. We will do whatever we can practically to help in this very difficult and heartbreaking situation.”

He confirmed that marine investigators sent from the UK had arrived in Sicily and were working with their Italian counterparts on a preliminary assessment.

Local prosecutors have also opened an investigation into the circumstances of the tragedy – and if anything could have been done to mitigate it, including closing the ship’s hatches overnight.

The yacht’s captain, James Catfield, from New Zealand, told Italian media of the suddenness of the waterspout that turned a luxury super yacht into a death trap. “We just didn’t see it coming”, he said.

Fayaz and his wife believed they were moments from safety when the bombs began to fall: “We were getting on the boat one after another – that’s when they started bombing us.”

Wails and shouts filled the air around 17:00 local time on 5 August, Fayaz* says, as thousands of scared Rohingyas made their way to the banks of the Naf river in the town of Maungdaw.

Attacks on villages earlier in the area meant this was what hundreds of families, including Fayaz’s, saw as their only option – that to get to safety, they had to escape from western Myanmar to Bangladesh’s safer shores.

Fayaz was carrying bags stuffed with whatever they had managed to grab. His wife was carrying their six-year-old daughter, their eldest was running alongside them. His wife’s sister was walking ahead, with the couple’s eight-month-old son in her arms.

The first bomb killed his sister-in-law instantly. The baby was badly injured – but alive.

“I ran and carried him… But he died while we were waiting for the bombing to stop.”

Nisar* had also made it to the riverbank by about 17:00, having decided to escape with his mother, wife, son, daughter and sister. “We heard drones overhead and then the loud sound of an explosion,” he recalls. “We were all thrown to the ground. They dropped bombs on us using drones.”

Nisar was the only one of his family to survive.

Fayaz, his wife and daughters escaped and would eventually make it across the river. Despite his pleas, the boatman refused to allow Fayaz to bring the baby’s body with them. “He said there was no point in carrying the dead, so I dug a hole by the river bank and hastily buried him.”

Now they’re all in the relative safety of Bangladesh, but if they are caught by authorities here they could be sent back. Nisar clutches a Quran, unable still to process how his world was shattered in a single day.

“If I’d known what would happen, I would never have tried to leave that day,” Nisar says.

It is notoriously difficult to piece together what is happening in Myanmar’s civil war. But the BBC has managed to construct a picture of what happened on the evening of 5 August through a series of exclusive interviews with more than a dozen Rohingya survivors who escaped to Bangladesh, and the videos they shared.

All of the survivors – unarmed Rohingya civilians – recount hearing many bombs exploding over a period of two hours. While most described the bombs being dropped by drones, a weapon increasingly being used in Myanmar, some said they were hit by mortars and gunfire. The MSF clinic operating in Bangladesh has said it saw a big surge in wounded Rohingya in the days that followed – half of the injured were women and children.

Survivors’ videos analysed by BBC Verify show the river bank covered in bloodied bodies, many of them women and children. There’s no verified count of the number of people killed, but multiple eyewitnesses have told the BBC they saw scores of bodies.

Survivors told us they were attacked by the Arakan Army, one of the strongest insurgent groups in Myanmar which in recent months has driven the military out of nearly all of Rakhine State. They said they were first attacked in their villages, forcing them to flee, and then were attacked again by the river bank as they sought to escape.

The AA declined to be interviewed but its spokesman Khaing Tukha denied the accusation and responded to the BBC’s questions with a statement which said “the incident did not occur in areas controlled by us”. He also accused Rohingya activists of staging the massacre and falsely accusing the AA.

Nisar stands by his account, however.

“The Arakan Army are lying,” he says. “The attacks were done by them. It was only them in our area on that day. And they have been attacking us for weeks. They don’t want to leave any Muslim alive.”

Most of Myanmar’s Rohingya Muslims live as a minority in Rakhine – a Buddhist-majority state, where the two communities have long had a fraught relationship. In 2017, when the Myanmar military killed thousands of Rohingyas in what the UN described as “a textbook example of ethnic cleansing”, local Rakhine men also joined the attacks. Now, amid a spiralling conflict between the junta and the AA, which has strong support in the ethnic Rakhine population, Rohingyas once again find themselves trapped.

Despite the risk of being caught and returned to Myanmar by the Bangladeshi authorities, Rohingya survivors told the BBC they wished to share details of the violence they faced so it would not go undocumented, especially as it unfolded in an area that is no longer accessible to rights groups or journalists.

“My heart is broken. Now, I’ve lost everything. I don’t know why I survived,” Nisar says.

A wealthy Rohingya trader, he sold his land and house as the shelling increased near his home in Rakhine. But the conflict intensified faster than he expected, and on the morning of 5 August, the family decided to leave Myanmar.

He is crying as he points to his daughter’s body in one of the videos: “My daughter died in my arms saying Allah’s name. She looks so peaceful, like she’s sleeping. She loved me so much.”

In the same video, he also points to his wife and sister, both severely injured but alive when the video was filmed. He could not carry them out as bombs were still falling, so he made the agonising choice to leave them behind. He found out later they had died.

“There was nowhere left that was safe, so we ran to the river to cross over to Bangladesh,” Fayaz says. The gunfire and bombs had followed them from village to village, and so Fayaz gave all his money to a boatman to carry them across the river.

Devastated and angry, he holds up a photo of his son’s bloodied body.

“If the Arakan Army didn’t fire at us, then who did?” he asks. “The direction that the bombs came from, I know the Arakan Army was there. Or was it thunder falling from the sky?”

These accusations raise serious questions about the Arakan Army, which describes itself as a revolutionary movement representing all the people of Rakhine.

Since late last year, the AA, part of the larger Three Brotherhood Alliance of armed insurgents in Myanmar, has made huge gains against the military.

But the army’s losses have brought new dangers for Rohingyas, who have previously told the BBC they were being forcibly recruited by the junta to fight the AA.

This, together with the decision by the Rohingya militant group ARSA to ally itself with the junta against the Rakhine insurgents, has soured already poor relations between the two communities and left Rohingya civilians vulnerable to retribution.

One survivor of the 5 August attack told the BBC that ARSA militants who had aligned themselves with the junta had been among the fleeing crowd – and that might have provoked the attack.

“Even if there was any military target, there was a disproportionate use of force. There were children, women, the elderly that were killed that day. It was also indiscriminate,” says John Quinley, a director of the human rights group Fortify Rights, which has been investigating the incident.

“So that would leave us to believe that there are reasonable grounds to believe that a war crime did happen on 5 August. The Arakan Army should be investigated for these crimes and Arakan Army senior commanders should be held accountable.”

This is a precarious moment for the Rohingya community. More than a million of them fled to Bangladesh in 2017, where they continue to be restricted to densely-packed, squalid camps.

More have been arriving in recent months as the war in Rakhine reaches them but, it’s no longer 2017, when Bangladesh opened its borders. This time, the government has said it cannot allow any more Rohingyas into the country.

So survivors who can find the money to pay boatmen and traffickers – the BBC was told it costs 600,000 Burmese kyat ($184; £141) per person – then have to slip past Bangladeshi border guards and chance their luck with locals, or hide in Rohingya camps.

When Fayaz and his family arrived in Bangladesh on the 6 August, the border guards gave them a meal but then put them on a boat and sent them back.

“We spent two days afloat with no food or water,” he says. “I gave my daughters water from the river to drink, and pleaded with some of the others on the boat to give them a few biscuits from the packets they had.”

They got into Bangladesh on their second attempt. But at least two boats have capsized because of overcrowding. One woman, a widow with 10 children, said she had managed to hide her family during the bombing, but five of her children drowned when their boat overturned.

“My children were like pieces of my heart. When I think of them, I want to die,” she says, weeping.

Her grandson, a wide-eyed eight-year-old boy, sits beside her. His parents and younger brother also died.

But what of those who were left behind? Phone and internet networks in Maungdaw have been down for weeks but after repeated attempts, the BBC contacted one man, who wished to remain anonymous for his own safety.

“The Arakan Army has forced us out of our homes and are holding us in schools and mosques,” he said. “I am being kept with six other families in a small house.”

The Arakan Army told the BBC that it rescued 20,000 civilians from the town amid fighting against the military. It said it was providing them with food and medical treatment, and add that “these operations are conducted for the safety and security of these individuals, not as forced relocations”.

The man on the phone rejected their claims. “The Arakan Army has told us they will shoot us if we try to leave. We are running out of food and medicines. I am ill, my mother is ill. A lot of people have diarrhoea and are vomiting.”

He broke down, pleading for help: “Tens of thousands of Rohingya are under threat here. If you can, please save us.”

Across the river in Bangladesh, Nisar looks back at Myanmar. He can see the shore where his family was killed.

“I never want to go back.”

Kamala Harris has been holding rallies across the US as she campaigns against Donald Trump, and will appear in Milwaukee on Tuesday ahead of her headline speech at the Democratic National Convention later in the week.

She has made a series of claims contrasting their records on the economy, healthcare, abortion and immigration.

BBC Verify has been examining them.

CLAIM: “Donald Trump intends to cut Social Security and Medicare.”

VERDICT: This is misleading. In this campaign, Trump has said repeatedly he would not do this, although he has suggested he would in the past.

Social Security provides a source of income when you retire or if you cannot work due to a disability.

Medicare is a US government programme which provides healthcare coverage for millions of Americans who are retired or disabled.

“I will not cut 1 cent from Social Security or Medicare,” Trump said at a rally on 5 August.

And in his 20 point policy platform, one of the pledges is: “Fight for and protect Social Security and Medicare with no cuts.”

However, during his time as president Trump proposed several budgets which would have cut elements of Medicare, such as eliminating the programme advising recipients how to sign up for benefits. None of these budget proposals was enacted.

He also has made comments about cutting Social Security in the past.

In an interview in March this year, on entitlement programs such as Social Security Trump said: “There’s a lot you can do in terms of entitlements, in terms of cutting.”

However, he later clarified the comments, saying: “I will never do anything that will hurt or jeopardise Social Security or Medicare.”

CLAIM: “Inflation is down under 3%.”

VERDICT: That figure is correct but some context is needed here.

Inflation, which is the increase in the price of something over time, is down from a peak of 9.1% under the Biden administration and it is higher than when Mr Trump left office.

When President Biden took office in January 2021, inflation was 1.4% but it rose significantly during the first two years of his administration.

This trend is comparable with many Western countries which saw high inflation in 2021 and 2022, as global supply chain issues as a consequence of Covid and the war in Ukraine contributed to rising prices.

While the Biden administration had limited control over these external factors, some economists say that their 2021 American Rescue Plan, worth $1.9tn (£1.5tn), also contributed to rising prices.

CLAIM: “We have created 16 million new jobs.”

VERDICT: That is roughly correct. 15.8 million jobs have been added under the Biden administration, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics.

However, when the Biden government entered the White House in January 2021, the US was recovering from the Covid pandemic, which crippled the economy and during which more than 20 million jobs were lost.

“Many of the jobs would have come back if Trump had won in 2020 – but the American Rescue Plan played a major role in the speed and aggressiveness of the labour market recovery,” says Professor Mark Strain, an economist at Georgetown University.

Since President Biden came into office, job growth has been strong, surpassing the pre-pandemic levels seen under Trump.

However, weaker than expected job growth in July led to fears of a sudden downturn in the US economy and stock markets were hit as a result, but they have since stabilised.

CLAIM: “He froze in the face of the COVID crisis. He drove our economy into the ground.”

VERDICT: The US economy did take a big hit during the pandemic, like most countries, but it also bounced back under Trump.

You can see from the graph above that there was a dramatic collapse in economic growth in the US during the Covid pandemic.

However following the pandemic, the US economy bounced back under Trump.

He implemented a series of measures to help it recover, including financial assistance for small businesses.

During Trump’s four years in office (Jan 2017- Jan 2021), the average annual growth rate of the US economy was 2.3%.

Under the Biden administration, this figure has been 2.2% – so almost the same.

CLAIM: “We had a chance to pass the toughest bipartisan border security bill in decades but Donald Trump tanked the deal.”

VERDICT: Trump was publicly against the Biden administration’s immigration bill, but voting on it was up to Congress.

The immigration bill aimed to tighten asylum standards, increase spending on Border Patrol, and allow for the automatic closure of the southern border to illegal crossings if a certain daily threshold was reached.

It failed to pass a vote in February with the majority of lawmakers in the US Senate opposing it.

Trump did not have a vote as he was not an elected official at the time, but he did call for his Republican allies to oppose it.

Trump also took credit when the bill failed, saying it was “horrendous” as he thought it was not tough enough on immigration.

At a Fox News event in February 2024, he said he was against the deal as passing it would have “made it much better for the opposing side”.

The bill was blocked in the Senate for a second time in May.

CLAIM: “In more than 20 states, there is a Trump abortion ban, many with no exceptions, even for rape and incest… be sure if he were to win, he would sign a national abortion ban”

VERDICT: Bans were enacted by states after Trump left office but, as president, he appointed three justices to the Supreme Court who voted to overturn Roe v Wade. Trump has said he would not sign a national abortion ban.

Roe v. Wade protected the federal Constitutional right to abortion for nearly 50 years until it was overturned in June 2022.

As a result, 22 states currently ban abortion or restrict the procedure to earlier in pregnancy than was set by Roe v. Wade. In 14 of those states, abortion is banned in almost all circumstances with10 not even making an exception for rape or incest.

During his campaign, he has declined to back a national abortion ban and said he believes the issue should be left to individual states.

What do you want BBC Verify to investigate?

The religious composition of Indians who emigrate differs significantly from those who stay in India, analysis by the US-based Pew Research Center has found.

About 80% of people in India are Hindu, but they form only 41% of emigrants from the country, the survey on the religious composition of the world’s migrants says.

In contrast, about 15% of people living in India are Muslim, compared with 33% of those who were born in India and now live elsewhere.

Christians make up only about 2% of the Indian population, but 16% who have left India are Christian.

“Many more Muslims and Christians have left India than have moved there. People of other, smaller religions, like Sikhs and Jains, are also disproportionately likely to have left India,” Stephanie Kramer, a lead researcher of the analysis, told me.

More than 280 million people, or 3.6% of the world’s population, are international migrants.

As of 2020, Christians comprised 47% of the global migrant population, Muslims 29%, Hindus 5%, Buddhists 4% and Jews 1%, according to Pew Research Center’s analysis of UN data and 270 censuses and surveys.

The religiously unaffiliated, including atheists and agnostics, made up 13% of global migrants who have left their country of birth.

The migrant population in the analysis includes anyone living outside their birthplace, from babies to oldest adults. They could have been born at any time as long as they are still alive.

As far as India is concerned, the analysis found that the religious make-up of the population who have moved to India is much more similar to that of the country’s overall population.

Also, Hindus are starkly under-represented among international migrants (5%) compared with their share of the global population (15%). There are about one billion Hindus around the world.

“This seems to be because Hindus are so concentrated in India and people born in India are very unlikely to leave,” said Ms Kramer.

“More people who were born in India are living elsewhere than from any other country of origin, but these millions of emigrants represent a small fraction of India’s population.”

About 99% of Hindus lived in Asia back in 2010, almost entirely in India and Nepal, and researchers say they wouldn’t expect that share to drop much, if at all.

Since partition, India hasn’t experienced a mass migration event, and many of those who migrated then are no longer alive.

“In contrast, other religious groups are more dispersed globally and face more push factors that drive emigration,” Ms Kramer said.

So are Hindus some sort of a global outlier in this respect?

Researchers say Hindus do stand out in comparison to the other religious groups analysed.

“They’re less likely to leave home than people of other faiths, and their global migration patterns mostly depend on who leaves and arrives in India, rather than a broad collection of countries like other major religions,” says Ms Kramer.

The analysis found that Hindus have the longest average migration distance of 4,988km (3,100 miles), often moving from India to distant places like the US and the UK.

Researchers attribute this to the lack of recent crises forcing Hindus to flee to nearby countries. Instead, most are economic migrants seeking job opportunities, often in distant locations.

India certainly isn’t unique in having an emigrant population with a religious make-up different from those still living in the country.

Hindus are over-represented among emigrants from Bangladesh, according to the survey.

The study estimates that fewer than 10% of residents of Bangladesh are Hindu but 21% of the people who have left Bangladesh are Hindu.

Around 90% of people living in Bangladesh are Muslim, but 67% of emigrants from Bangladesh are Muslim.

Hindus make up only about 2% of Pakistan’s population, and 8% of people who were born in Pakistan and now live elsewhere are Hindu.

Myanmar has a lower percentage of Muslims in its population of residents compared with its emigrant population. Muslims make up about 4% of Myanmar’s resident population and 36% of its emigrant population.

Clearly, Muslims also migrate out of majority-Muslim countries. But religious minorities in those countries often migrate more.

So what does the Pew report broadly reveal about the religious composition of the world’s migrants?

“We find that people often go to places where their religion is common, and that those from minority religious groups within their country of birth are more likely to leave,” says Ms Kramer.

Clutching a toothbrush and toothpaste, Kevin Lik waited for six hours in the main office of penal colony 14, near Arkhangelsk in Russia’s far north-west. It was late in the evening of Sunday 28 July, and the 19-year-old says he had no idea what was about to happen.

“Maybe you’re taking me to be shot,” he said to the governor of the colony.

“Don’t worry, everything will be fine,” came the reply.

Kevin says he was told the same thing by an officer from Russia’s FSB state security agency a year and a half ago, before they locked him up.

“I lost a lot of weight in the colony,” he explains shyly, as we speak on a video call. Kevin is about 6ft 4in tall (1.9m) but weighs only 11 stone (70kg).

Along with American journalist Evan Gershkovich, he is one of 16 people released by Russia on 1 August in a prisoner swap with the US and other Western countries.

The teenager – with dual Russian and German citizenship – was arrested last year while still at school and became the youngest person in modern Russian history to have been convicted of treason.

I ask if he considers himself more Russian or German. “It’s a very complicated question,” he replies.

Kevin was born in 2005 in Montabaur, a small town in the west of Germany. His Russian mother, Victoria, had married a German citizen and, although the marriage didn’t last, she and her son stayed.

They visited Russia every couple of years until Victoria decided she wanted to go back permanently – she missed her relatives and hometown of Maykop in the North Caucasus. Kevin was 12 when they made the move there in 2017.

They lived on the outskirts of town, in an apartment with views of mountains and a military base. Kevin says he loved walks in the countryside and collecting plants for his herbarium, and also studying at school.

He enthusiastically shows me certificates from national and local academic competitions that he won.

It was the 2018 Russian presidential election that sparked his interest in politics, he says. His mother – a public sector healthcare worker – would come home and say she and her colleagues had been bussed to polling stations where they were told: “Vote for Putin, or we’ll take away your bonus.”

He was only 12 at the time, but says he understood “there was almost no democracy in Russia”.

Kevin was enraged that almost every classroom in his school had a portrait of Putin.

“They constantly told us that school is not a place for politics. It’s just not right to hang portraits and promote a personality cult like that,” he says.

A year or so later, he caused a scandal when he swapped a school portrait of Putin for one of opposition leader Alexei Navalny.

“One teacher said that during Stalin’s time, I would have been shot,” Kevin recalls – while a sympathetic teacher, he says, advised him to be careful.

His mother was called to the school: “They scolded her, yelled at her,” he says.

The BBC has asked the school for comment, but has not had a response.

As Kevin approached his final school year, his mother decided they should move back to Germany.

By this time, Russia had invaded Ukraine and, in order to leave the country permanently, Kevin’s name had to be removed from the military register.

Victoria was invited to the enlistment office to sort out her son’s paperwork. When she got there on 9 February 2023, the police met her. Kevin says they groundlessly accused her of swearing in public. She was sentenced to 10 days’ detention, which meant they had to delay their plans to leave.

Left alone, Kevin stopped going to school. He ventured out for a few hours one day, and says that when he returned to the apartment “things had been moved around”.

When Victoria was released, they tried to get to Germany by heading south to the city of Sochi, which has an international airport. After checking into a hotel, Kevin says they went out for a snack and he noticed a man in a medical mask and hoodie filming them on his phone. Within seconds, he says a minibus pulled up.

“Eight or nine FSB officers jumped out. One grabbed me by the arm. Another came up, showed his ID, and said: ‘A criminal case has been opened against you under article 275: treason.’

“My eyes were wide with shock.”

The minibus took them to the hotel, where they collected their luggage. On the way back to Maykop they were put in a car without licence plates and taken to a pizzeria.

“They ordered pizza and offered us some. They didn’t handcuff me or restrain me. I was thinking everything over in my head but couldn’t understand how I had committed treason,” says Kevin.

He asked if he would be put in jail. “Don’t worry, everything will be fine,” came the response.

Kevin remembered a former FSB operative, Vadim Krasikov, who was serving a life sentence in Germany for killing a man in Berlin on Kremlin orders. He started wondering if Russia planned to use him – a German citizen – “as a hostage” to get Krasikov back.

They got home in the middle of the night. He shows me the video FSB officers made as they searched the apartment. They found a broken telescope – an old birthday present from his mother.

The authorities suspected he had used it to photograph military vehicles from his window to send to German intelligence. They took his phone and laptop and found pictures of the base.

Kevin freely admits he took the photos but says he had no intention of passing them on to anyone.

At 03:00, Kevin was taken to the local FSB building for interrogation. Because he was only 17, his mother went with him. He was scared.

Kevin says the lawyer assigned to him told him straight away that he should confess to reduce the sentence.

As we speak, he reels off details of Russia’s criminal code and uses legal terms to explain why he was wrongfully accused. But, back then, he had no idea how to handle the situation.

A confession had already been typed and Kevin agreed to sign it, which he later regretted. He says he was afraid if he didn’t sign, things would have “got worse because they could have started pressuring my mum”. The FSB investigator told them he had the power to seize their apartment, says Kevin.

“The testimony was absolute nonsense,” he says. “It’s a chess game, it was clear there was no justice.”

Because he was still a minor, he was taken to a special facility two hours’ drive away in Krasnodar and placed in a solitary cell. He had been up all night but couldn’t sleep.

“They brought me food but I couldn’t eat it. I really wanted to see my mum.”

A few months later, when he turned 18, he was moved to a different prison on the outskirts of Krasnodar where he mixed with other inmates.

Kevin says he was left terrified after a group of inmates beat him up. “They tied my hands, beat me, and even put out a cigarette on me. They hit me so hard in the chest I couldn’t breathe.”

All this time, the authorities continued to investigate him. His class teacher testified against him, claiming that when they had gone to an academic competition in Moscow Kevin had wanted to go to the German embassy to contact intelligence officers. Kevin tells me all he wanted was to get an official German ID, because he had turned 16.

A Ministry of Defence expert analysed the photos Kevin had taken and concluded they didn’t constitute a state secret but, in foreign hands, could have harmed Russia.

The FSB file on him also included details of childhood trips to Russia, including one when he was two years old. Kevin says he also found out his phone had been tapped as early as 2021.

Ten months after Kevin’s arrest, at the end of December 2023, he was found guilty of treason and sentenced to four years in a penal colony.

Apart from his mum, no-one he knew from Maykop contacted him after his arrest, but after the media reported his case, strangers began writing.

“The letters helped me a lot,” he says. “On my birthday, I received 60 cards. I made it my goal to reply to each person.”

The letters and cards were later confiscated.

Kevin’s journey to the penal colony in Arkhangelsk took a month, via several other prisons. He arrived there at the end of June this year. In those following weeks, he says he passed the time by reading and studying.

Suddenly, as he was leaving the bath house on Tuesday 23 July, he was approached by a senior prison officer and told he had 20 minutes to “urgently write a petition” for a presidential pardon, which he did.

Then, on the 28th, a prison officer stopped him and told him to get his toothbrush, toothpaste and slippers.

“Usually, you get this kit when they’re about to put you in the punishment cell,” explains Kevin. But instead, he was locked in an office.

At 01:00 on the morning of Monday 29th, a convoy arrived to take him away.

The thought of being exchanged was at the back of Kevin’s mind, but seemed too good to be true.

He was flown to Moscow, where he was kept in jail until Thursday 1 August, when he was put on a plane with the other prisoners who were being swapped.

It was never spelled out to him that he was being exchanged, he says, but by the time he was in the air bound for Turkey it was clear what was happening.

As Kevin had long-suspected, assassin Vadim Krasikov was among those being returned to Russia.

In Germany, after a hospital check-up, Kevin was finally able to greet his mother, who had got a visa to fly in from Russia.

“She cried. I told her everything was fine, not to worry, that I loved her very much.”

Mother and son are now living in Germany and Kevin is full of enthusiasm to finish school.

“I don’t have a desire for revenge, but I do have a very strong desire to participate in opposition activities,” he tells me.

Kevin still has his prison uniform, stuffed in a bag in the corner of his room.

When I ask what he wanted most of all while he was forced to wear it, he simply replies: “To hug Mum of course.”

Discovering a signature sound is the holy grail of pop music.

There’s no Pink Floyd without David Gilmour’s sweeping guitar lines. Remove Dr Dre’s incendiary production, and NWA’s lyrics lose some of their potency. Billie Eilish’s vocal delivery is so distinctive she can jump between genres without losing her essence.

For Clean Bandit, their signature sound is a simple, but effective, mixture of chamber music and dance beats.

It’s a formula they came up with at university. Cellist Grace Chatto was dating architecture student Jack Patterson, who started splicing samples of her string quartet into his instrumentals.

It wasn’t exactly a new idea. In 1986, Walter Murphy turned Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5 into a thumping disco track; and in 1995, Madonna’s producer William Orbit made an album, Pieces In A Modern Style, that took Ravel, Vivaldi and Handel to an all-night rave.

But Clean Bandit weren’t interested in remixes. They wrote big pop hits like Solo and Rockabye, using their classical chops to give the songs emotional heft.

“It’s a delicate balance,” says Patterson. “If you added a sax solo, for example, it’d be one element too far. You might as well put on a waistcoat and go home.”

But when it works, it works.

Clean Bandit’s trademark sound earned them four UK number one singles, two Ivor Novello songwriting awards and a Grammy.

Then, with grim inevitability, their record label told them to ditch it.

“There was a push for us to stop having strings in our music,” grimaces Chatto.

“We were told to stop making pop music, as well,” says Patterson.

“We were sent dance music playlists on Spotify and told, ‘Your music has to sit on here. Only Harry Styles can make pop music’.”

Part of the concern was that the band are, in their own words, “shy and unassuming people”.

Their songs are fronted by pop titans from Demi Lovato and Ellie Goulding to Charli XCX and Lizzo – but the trio (completed by Jack’s brother Luke) can still catch the Tube without being bothered.

“We were told, ‘You don’t have a face, you need to make club music,’” recalls Patterson.

The demands were so frequent and insistent that the band began to mistrust their instincts. They erased the violins and went for a darker sound, more indebted to house than pop.

It did not go well: Since 2020, none of their records has made the top 10.

“We allowed it to happen because we were like, ‘We’d rather release something than nothing’,” says Chatto.

“But the music didn’t feel like our music. Our fans were feeling it. We were feeling it.

“In the end, we were like, ‘What’s the point in doing anything?’

Eventually, they negotiated an “amicable” exit from Atlantic Records that allowed them to retain the rights to all of their unreleased songs.

“It couldn’t have ended in a better way,” says Chatto.

“We’re still friends with those people… I just think the more success we had, the more pressure they felt. Their jobs were on the line.”

The band jumped over to the Sony Music label B1, whose head honcho is Wolfgang Boss – one of the first people to champion Clean Bandit back in the 2010s.

He encouraged them to release Cry Baby – a collaboration with Anne-Marie and David Guetta that they’d been sitting on for four years after Atlantic rejected it.

From the opening bars, it’s undeniably a Clean Bandit song. Chatto whistles a Spaghetti Western hook over sweeping strings, before Anne-Marie delivers a salty lyric about a cheating boyfriend over a breezy, tropical beat .

“It feels like a comeback,” says Chatto.

It’s not just the music. The band got back into the habit of directing and filming their own videos – something they’d not done for a couple of years.

For Cry Baby, they dreamt up an epic storyline, in which Anne-Marie flees her disloyal partner on a long distance luxury train. But when they brought the storyboards to production companies, they turned it down.

“They said it would cost at least a quarter of a million pounds,” says Chatto, “so I ended up producing it myself, which is a first.”

That meant commissioning and building the sets at their own expense.

Luckily, Chatto’s father is a carpenter, who not only built her first cello, but also happens to work on the London Underground (“It was his idea to put sliding doors on the platform of the Jubilee line,” says Patterson).

And so Ricky Chatto found himself constructing a complete dining car and sleeper carriage inside Clean Bandit’s studio in Finsbury Park.

“He didn’t realise what we were letting him in for,” laughs Chatto. “We tried about a million different varnishes. It was epic.”

Patterson directed and edited the video, which also features a horseback-riding stuntman who dives through a train window; and a near-death experience for David Guetta, after a contraption that was supposed to simulate tears malfunctioned while strapped to his face.

Undeterred, the group are planning an even bigger shoot for their next single, which sees them reunite with Swedish pop star Zara Larsson.

“Zara’s been learning to fly helicopters,” reveals Patterson. “So we’re devising a story where she works for the RAF search and rescue as a helicopter pilot.”

The band seem creatively reinvigorated after a period they politely describe as “pretty challenging”. They have two albums-worth of material ready to go, including unreleased collaborations with Elton John and Raye that may (or may not) see the light of day.

They’ve also been spreading their wings, collaborating with artists from South America, Jamaica and Africa on a number of spontaneous sessions earlier this year.

Unexpectedly, those sessions were inspired by another teeth-grinding setback the band endured in 2019.

It all started when the band signed a deal with a major beer company, who offered to sponsor the band as they travelled to China, Russia, Nepal, India and Vietnam, making new songs with local artists.

“They approached us and said, ‘You have total creative freedom’,” says Patterson. “As long as you drink a bit of the beer in the studio, we’ll pay for it all and film it.”

“It felt like it was going to be a really creative thing – but we’d been tricked,” adds Chatto.

The penny didn’t drop until their third recording session, when the band were handed a translation of the lyrics by Vietnamese singers JustaTee and Phương Ly.

“I was like, ‘That’s weird. The chorus says “open to more” again’,” recalls Patterson.

It transpired that, although Clean Bandit had been given artistic freedom, the brewery had signed separate contracts with their collaborators, forcing them to use the company’s slogan in their lyrics.

‘We were like, ‘Hang on, that’s the Tuborg strapline. Why are you writing that in the chorus?’” Patterson recalls.

“And they’re like, ‘Oh, we have to. If we don’t do that, we don’t get paid’.”

The whole experience was a “devastating waste of energy”, he says. The songs essentially vanished, unable to be played on radio stations where they’d be considered in breach of advertising guidelines.

But, says Chatto, “it made us realise that if we were doing this on our own terms, it would be a fantastic way to live – just going around the world, making music.”

That’s what they did at the start of 2024, with writing sessions in Miami, Lagos and Jamaica that have produced “two entire records” of material.

Some of those songs have already come out – including the sublime summer jam Mar Azul, written with Colombian pop group Piso 21.

“I hate to keep coming back to it, but our previous label was based in the UK,” says Patterson, “so their priority was always what would work over here.

“If it wasn’t going to be played on Capital [Radio], they weren’t interested.

“Now, if we work with someone in Mumbai, that’s ok. The fact that we don’t have a singer means we can be light on our feet and work anywhere in the world.”

That’s where Clean Bandit see their future: Concentrating on quality, rather than the demands of streaming algorithms, in the hope their fans will follow them.

“That’s the hope,” says Chatto. “Because it’s already been the case that our songs have gone around the world and reached a lot of people.”

In other words: There’s no place they’d rather be.

“I want to go home,” Kenyan Eulita Jerop tells the BBC from Lebanon, where she is employed as a domestic worker.

But the terms of her employment make it difficult for her to leave, despite fears of an all-out war in the country.

She has been terrified by the unfamiliar sounds she has heard overhead on the outskirts of the capital, Beirut.

The 35-year-old has been working there for the past 14 months.

“It was so scary. We were told it wasn’t bombs, but it was [planes breaking] the sound barrier,” she says. “But the sounds were hitting so hard.”

Her panic is shared by many others in her WhastApp group of fellow domestic workers, she adds.

The loud booms in the sky came from fighter planes. There are fears that they could foreshadow a full-on war.

Israel and Lebanon-based group Hezbollah have traded near-daily fire across the border since the 7 October Hamas attack on Israel. It prompted the Israeli invasion of Gaza, with the aim of eliminating Hamas.

Hezbollah, a political movement and Iran-backed militia, said they are attacking Israel in support of the Palestinian people.

The shells have mostly fallen in southern Lebanon and northern Israel, but there are concerns that the rest of Lebanon could get caught up as the conflict transforms into a wider regional struggle.

The US, UK, Australia, France and Canada have all issued official advice for their citizens to leave Lebanon as soon as possible.

But getting out is easier for some than others.

Ms Jerop said it was common for many employers to take their passports on arrival.

Even with a passport, domestic workers still need an exit visa to leave – paperwork which must be approved by their boss.

This is allowed to happen under the country’s “kafala” (sponsorship) system for foreign workers – which employs an estimated 250,000 people.

“Kafala” gives individuals or companies permits to employ foreign workers. This means that their immigration status is entirely dependent on their employer and they have limited rights.

• Foreign maids on ‘hell’ of kafala jobs in Middle East
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• Lebanese hold their breath as mediators scramble to avert all-out war

Employers can take advantage of their position and many women are overworked, underpaid and physically abused – though this is not the case for Ms Jerop.

Despite calls for significant reforms the system continues across several Arab states.

Daniela Rovina, communications officer at the International Organization for Migration, told the BBC that under international law a person must be allowed to leave a country if a conflict occurs.

In Ms Jerop’s case, her employers want her to continue working in Lebanon.

“They are saying the situation has been here in Lebanon for many years, and there is nothing to worry about,” she says. “But for us the tension is high. We are not used to these kinds of [bombing] sounds.”

But even with papers, Ms Jerop and her fellow domestic workers face other challenges to leave.

“Few flights are available and they are very expensive,” she says.

Flights to Kenya cost up to $1,000 (£770).

Banchi Yimer, who founded an organisation supporting the rights of Ethiopian domestic workers, says the average monthly salary used to be $150 but since the cost-of-living crisis, which hit Lebanon hard, “many are not getting paid at all”.

“Every day we receive calls from women panicking… they ask us if we have any [evacuation] plan, if we can do anything about it.”

Chiku, another domestic worker from Kenya, whose name we have changed to protect her safety, cannot pay for the flight.

She has been living in Baabda, in the west of Lebanon, for almost a year.

“I personally would like to go back home. But the tickets are so costly,” she says. “And my mum and dad also can’t afford that money.”

She has been living in fear for the past few weeks, but like Ms Jerop, her employer has told her to stay.

“They say I can’t leave because I haven’t finished my contract,” Chiku says. “But is this contract more important than my life?”

The Lebanese labour ministry has not yet responded to a BBC request for comment.

The Kenyan authorities say that if war does break out it will put an evacuation plan in place.

Roseline Kathure Njogu, in charge of diaspora affairs for the Kenyan government, told the BBC the department can issue emergency travel documents for those without their passports.

She added that the Kenyan government is able to provide emergency flights.

“We have around 26,000 Kenyans in Lebanon, and 1,500 have registered with us for evacuation,” she said.

But many want to leave right now.

Ethiopian government spokesperson Nebiyu Tedla told the BBC they are “preparing contingency plans to evacuate diplomats and citizens from Lebanon if necessary”.

However, Ms Banchi makes the point that even before the Israel-Gaza conflict there were already many Ethiopian women stranded in Lebanon desperate to leave.

A collapse in Lebanon’s economy in 2020 left many Ethiopian domestic workers out of a job.

“Many cannot even afford rent or medical assistance, let alone a flight home,” she says.

While foreign embassies continue to work on evacuation plans, many feel they have been abandoned by their governments to fend for themselves.

Chiku is trying to set aside money to pay for a flight home.

“But what about the others who can’t?” she asks.

Fans of Civilization have been waiting almost a decade for the latest instalment of the cult video game series.

Now it has been revealed that theme of time passing is pretty appropriate: the inspiration at the heart of Civilization VII, to be released in February, is how the capital of the UK has changed from the Roman era to now.

And it all started with a map of Londinium – as London was known to the Romans.

“Londinium looked like pretty much any frontier Roman town with an amphitheatre, baths, and a shaky bridge that crossed to the south side of the Thames,” observed the game’s lead developer Ed Beach, as he showed me the below map – used here courtesy of Encyclopaedia Britannica.

“But I wanted to look at how this evolved, and how this changed as London grew and prospered.”

It is the lessons from those changes that will lie at the heart of the new game.

The Civilization series has sold 70 million copies since it began in 1991 – with the last edition released in 2016.

The question of what direction developers Firaxis would take the next version of the game in has been a hot topic among fans.

I include myself in that group – my brother first introduced me to Civ II on our PlayStation back in the 90s, and I was recently slightly horrified to discover I’ve spent more than 500 hours playing the sixth iteration of the series.

For those that don’t know, Civilization is at times more like a board game than a video game. You move units around a map, placing down cities and developing them, while fighting others to conquer their land for your own.

Previous games in the series have locked players into playing as a particular leader and civilisation combination, such as Teddy Roosevelt and the United States, or Cleopatra and Egypt.

But the developers say this isn’t truly representative of how cities developed, where multiple different ruling groups leave their mark – just as they have with London.

In the new game, a player might start off as the Romans, building their own Londinium in what it calls the antiquity era.

But after progressing to the next stage – the exploration era in the game’s lingo – players might become the Normans and build over what came before.

The game’s developers drew inspiration from Ludgate, the site of the west gate in the former London Wall, and dug up more old maps to see how the area had changed 1,000 years after the Romans left London.

“London changes, and it grows, but you can see that core Roman encampment,” Mr Beach said.

The map, produced by Layers of London, part of the UK’s Institute of Historical Research, shows the River Fleet still flows – but much of the Roman era buildings are no longer there.

“It’s all been built over by the buildings that you would expect in a medieval or renaissance era city,” Mr Beach said.

“We have inns, we have taverns, we still have religious buildings to the east side of the wall, but it’s now St Paul’s Cathedral, the very first version of it, before it got burned in the Fire of London.

“And we see that the river has been rerouted a little bit so that they can have a prison to hold some of those miscreants from the Middle Ages and keep them at bay.”

This difference formed the foundation of the new game – building on top of what came before, to craft distinctly different eras.

Finally, the developers jumped forward in time to the Victorian era, to see how the Ludgate area had changed once more.

This map, reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland, shows another significant set of changes – with the River Fleet now no longer visible after it was rerouted underground to be used for sewage in the mid-1800s.

“Now the prison is totally replaced, the needs of the industrial revolution dictate we need a rail line in there, and Ludgate rail station is exactly on top of where the prison used to be,” Mr Beach said.

“All those buildings that used to support religious activity have pretty much been overtaken, except for St Paul’s Cathedral.”

This third stage of change – which the new game calls the modern era – solidified the concept for the developers.

In London’s example, gamers could play as the Romans, then the Normans, then as Britain – all the while building a growing England that goes beyond just the capital city.

But while the big shift in style may be exciting for some, hardcore fans of the series might be concerned about just how different it is.

It comes amid many other changes which will be meaningful to fans – though they won’t make too much sense to people who haven’t played the game.

The game’s developers tell me civilisations controlled by the computer will behave more intelligently. They list the seemingly endless changes like checking off a list – each civilisation has its own unique set of civics it can discover, units can now travel through rivers, and there are no more builders.

There are expected changes – like a graphical overhaul that makes the game look modern – and unexpected ones too – like shifting the leaders you play as to include important historical figures that didn’t lead their country, like Benjamin Franklin and Confucius.

Meanwhile Hatshepsut, one of Egypt’s historical female leaders, is now playable. The game’s narrator – Game of Thrones and Star Wars actress Gwendoline Christie – adds a layer of gravitas to the visual upgrade.

But not everything was directly taken from a fan’s wishlist.

Roads will still be built automatically by traders, which has long been a sore point for some players. There are some changes to the game’s take on religion, but it still sounds to me like players will be micro-managing missionaries around the map.

And big promises of fixing the AI are well-received, but without seeing the final product it’s hard to be convinced.

Moving between ages seems to be linked to crises – like barbarian invasions, civil wars and plagues – though exactly how this will work is unclear.

Mr Beach said it develops a “cool cycle that you go through three times in the game that we’re releasing here at launch” – a sentence I told him sounded suspiciously like Firaxis might be considering adding further cycles and empires in the future.

He wouldn’t be drawn on it.

But one thing that seems certain is that by having what is effectively a big reset button between eras, no one player can storm ahead and take an unassailable lead at the start of each game, which will be music to fans’ ears.

We’ll find out when the game comes next year.

A trial has begun in California to decide whether Stanford University can keep the diaries of a top Chinese official, in a case that is being framed as a fight against Chinese government censorship.

The diaries belong to the late Li Rui, a former secretary to Communist China’s founder Mao Zedong.

Following Li’s death in 2019, his widow sued for the documents to be returned to Beijing, claiming they belong to her.

Stanford rejects this. It says Li, who had been a critic of the Chinese government, donated his diaries to the university as he feared they would be destroyed by the Chinese Communist Party.

The diaries, which were written between 1935 and 2018, cover much of the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) rule. In those eight tumultuous decades, China emerged from impoverished isolation to become indispensable to the global economy.

“If [the diaries] return to China they will be banned… China does not have a good record in permitting criticism of party leaders,” Mark Litvack, one of Stanford’s lawyers, told the BBC before the trial began.

The BBC has contacted lawyers representing Zhang Yuzhen, Mr Li’s widow, for comment.

A prominent CCP figure known for his reformist views, Mr Li was both venerated and shunned by the party.

As a young outspoken cadre he caught the eye of Mao who made him one of his personal secretaries in the mid-1950s. But the position was shortlived.

When Li criticised Mao’s views at a political meeting, he was ousted from the party and spent years in prison. He was among hundreds of party officials and public figures, including close allies of Mao, who fell foul of the mercurial leader.

Like some of them, Li returned to prominence after Mao died in 1976. He oversaw the ministry of hydroelectric power and a CCP department that selected officials for key positions. Within the party, he was allied with the more liberal, open-minded faction advocating for reform.

After his retirement, he continued to lobby the party for reform. But his unsparing, sharp-tongued criticism of leaders, including President Xi Jinping – whom he dismissed as “lowly-educated” – needled the government. His writings were censored and his books banned in China.

As a party elder, however, he continued to be treated with respect and enjoyed privileges. When he died he was given a state funeral.

Throughout, as he navigated the echelons of power, he meticulously recorded observations about party politics and key events in his diaries.

These include his account of the Tiananmen Massacre, which he witnessed from a balcony overlooking the square and labelled as “Black Weekend” in English in his diary. It is a highly sensitive issue that is rarely discussed in China.

His daughter, Li Nanyang, began donating his documents, including the diaries, to Stanford’s Hoover Institution in 2014, when he was still alive.

In a 2019 interview with BBC Chinese after his death, she said this fulfilled her father’s wishes.

That year Ms Zhang filed a lawsuit against Li Nanyang – her stepdaughter – in China.

Ms Zhang, who was Li Rui’s second wife, argued that he wanted her to decide which of his documents would be made public and they were wrongfully given to Stanford, according to reports.

The widow said the diaries contained “deeply personal and private affairs” of her life with Li. As the diaries can be accessed by the public at Stanford, she said their display caused her “personal embarrassment and emotional distress”.

A Beijing court ruled in Ms Zhang’s favour and ordered the diaries to be handed over to her.

Stanford has rejected this ruling. Its lawyers have argued that “Chinese courts are not impartial in politically-charged cases such as this” and that the university was not given a chance to defend itself.

The trial that began in California on Monday is over a separate lawsuit launched by the university against Ms Zhang in the US.

Stanford is asking the California court to declare the university as the lawful owner of the diaries.

Its lawyers argue that Li Rui wanted to donate his papers to Stanford because “he understood that the regime would seek to suppress his account of modern Chinese history” and he “feared that the materials would be destroyed”.

Stanford has been allowed to retain copies of the diaries, but it is arguing to keep the original documents as well, to comply with Li’s wishes.

“Li Rui wanted his diaries, including his originals, at Hoover,” Mr Litvack said. “That’s why they are at Hoover and we have fought to keep them at Hoover.”

Disney has withdrawn its claim that a man could not sue it over the death of his wife because of terms he signed up to in a free trial of Disney+.

Jeffrey Piccolo filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Disney and the owners of a restaurant after his wife died in 2023 from a severe allergic reaction following a meal at Disney World, in Florida.

Disney had argued the case should instead go to arbitration because of a clause in the terms and conditions of its Disney+ streaming service, which Mr Piccolo had briefly signed up for in 2019.

But, following a backlash, it has decided the matter can now be heard in court.

“We believe this situation warrants a sensitive approach to expedite a resolution for the family who have experienced such a painful loss,” Disney’s Josh D’Amaro told the BBC in a statement.

“As such, we’ve decided to waive our right to arbitration and have the matter proceed in court.”

Lawyers for Mr Piccolo said: “Attempts by corporations like Disney to avoid jury trials should be looked at with skepticism”, adding that Mr Piccolo will “continue to pursue justice on behalf of his beloved wife at the trial court level”.

“He also hopes these recent events have raised awareness of the millions of people of all ages and walks of life who suffer with food allergies”, his lawyers said.

In arbitration, a dispute is overseen by a neutral third party. It benefits those wanting to avoid a lengthy trial, but means evidence would not be put in front of a jury.

Jamie Cartwright, partner at the law firm Charles Russell Speechlys, suggested Disney’s change of heart was motivated by the “adverse publicity” its initial approach had generated.

“In attempting to push the claim into a confidential setting on what were very tenuous grounds, it succeeded only in creating the very publicity and attention it likely wanted to avoid,” he told the BBC.

Mr Piccolo and his wife, Dr Kanokporn Tangsuan, ate a meal at Raglan Road, an Ireland-themed pub located at the Disney Springs site, in Orlando, but operated by an independent company.

He alleges that the restaurant did not take enough care over his wife’s severe allergies to dairy and nuts, despite being repeatedly told about them.

She died in hospital later that day.

According to the legal filing, her death was confirmed by a medical examiner “as a result of anaphylaxis due to elevated levels of dairy and nut in her system.”

Mr Piccolo is suing Disney for a sum in excess of $50,000 (£38,400), in addition to other damages relating to suffering, loss of income, and medical and legal costs.

Disney has argued it had no control over the management and operation of the restaurant.

Lawyers for Mr Piccolo had said Disney’s argument that the lawsuit should not be heard in court “borders on the surreal.”

It is not known whether Disney would have been successful had a judge ruled on its arbitration claim.

Disney had argued that the legal circumstances surrounding the case were unique.

But legal experts told the BBC they had been “pushing the envelope of contract law”.

“Disney’s argument that accepting their terms and conditions for one product covers all interactions with that company is novel and potentially far-reaching,” Ernest Aduwa, partner at Stokoe Partnership Solicitors, who are not involved in the proceedings, said.

Meanwhile, Jibreel Tramboo, barrister at Church Court Chambers, said the terms in the Disney+ trial were a “weak argument for Disney to rely on”.

Disney says it is in the process of submitting a filing to the court to withdraw its call for arbitration.

A Milwaukee woman has been jailed for 11 years for killing the man that prosecutors said had sex trafficked her as a teenager.

The sentence, issued on Monday, ends a six-year legal battle for Chrystul Kizer, now 24, who had argued she should be immune from prosecution.

Kizer was charged with reckless homicide for shooting Randall Volar, 34, in 2018 when she was 17. She accepted a plea deal earlier this year to avoid a life sentence.

Volar had been filming his sexual abuse of Kizer for more than a year before he was killed.

Kizer said she met Volar when she was 16, and that the man sexually assaulted her while giving her cash and gifts. She said he also made money by selling her to other men for sex.

An investigation by the Washington Post found that authorities had evidence, including video, that Volar was abusing about a dozen girls including Kizer – all of whom appeared to be underage.

Four months before Volar died, police arrested him on charges of sexual assault but released him the same day.

Police said that Kizer travelled from Milwaukee to Volar’s home in Kenosha in June 2018 armed with a gun. She shot him twice in the head, set his house on fire and took his car.

Prosecutors said the killing was pre-meditated, and part of a scheme to steal Kizer’s car. Lawyers for Kizer argued that she acted in self-defence.

Kizer’s case had tested the leniency granted to victims of sex trafficking. Some states have implemented laws – called “affirmative defence” provisions – that protect victims from some charges including prostitution or theft, if those actions were the result of being trafficked.

Kizer had tested whether an “affirmative defence” for trafficking victims could be used for homicide. In 2022, the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled she could.

The ruling allowed Kizer to use evidence to demonstrate her abuse at the time of the crime. The case attracted widespread attention and Kizer received support from activists in the #MeToo movement.

She ultimately chose a plea deal to avoid risking a possible life sentence at trial.

“I get to try to move on,” Kizer told the Washington Post in an interview from jail this year.

She has already served more than a year and half of her sentence. She will face five years of extended supervision after her eventual release.

India’s top court has said the recent rape and murder of a trainee doctor in West Bengal state has “shocked the conscience of the nation” and criticised authorities for their handling of the investigation.

The 31-year-old woman’s body was found earlier this month in the seminar room of a state-run hospital in Kolkata where she worked.

A hospital volunteer worker has been arrested in connection with the crime, and the Central Bureau of Investigation has now taken over the case.

The crime has sparked huge protests in the country.

On Tuesday, Chief Justice of India (CJI) DY Chandrachud, who was hearing the case, ordered the setting up of a National Task Force (NTF) to reccommend safety protocols for healthcare professionals at workplaces.

He listed out a range of problems plaguing medical institutions, including a lack of resting rooms and toilets, functional CCTV cameras, security personnel and adequate screening for arms at entrances.

The court asked the task force, which would include top doctors and government officials, to look into the situation and file an interim report in three weeks and a final report in two months.

During the hearing, the CJI also criticised the West Bengal government and police force and questioned why there was a delay in registering the initial complaint – known as a First Information Report (FIR) – in the case?

He added that he was “deeply concerned” that the name of the victim and her photographs were shared on social media. Indian laws prohibit naming of a rape victim and those guilty can be fined or sentenced to up to two years in prison.

The court also condemned the attack on RG Kar Medical College – the site of the crime – and questioned why adequate security measures hadn’t been put in place to control the violence.

A mob had vandalised the emergency ward of the hospital during last week’s Reclaim the Night protest in which tens of thousands of women had participated.

“The power of the state should not be unleashed on peaceful protesters,” the chief justice said.

The woman’s murder has sparked an outpouring of anger across India, especially in West Bengal state of which Kolkata is the capital.

At the weekend, doctors across hospitals in India observed a nation-wide strike called by the Indian Medical Association (IMA). Elective surgeries and outpatient treatments were suspended with only emergency services available at major hospitals.

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

The case has also sparked a political row with the West Bengal state government, led by Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, accused of mishandling the aftermath of the murder. Leaders of the India’s governing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which is in the opposition in the state, have accused Ms Banerjee’s government of cracking down on peaceful protests.

Last week, the Kolkata High Court criticised the local police for lapses and transferred the case to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) .

The parents of the doctor, who declined compensation offered by the state government, have criticised the management of the medical college for failing to ensure safety at the workplace.

They told local media they had lost trust in the chief minister and accused her of attempting to stifle public outrage.

Ms Banerjee has defended the actions of her government, saying state police had completed 90% of the investigation before it was handed over to the CBI. She has also accused opposition parties of exploiting the incident for political gain.

Ms Banerjee said she wanted the investigation to be completed quickly and called for the culprits to be hanged.

On Saturday, the state government announced a slew of measures for women’s safety at workplaces, including designated retiring rooms and CCTV-monitored “safe zones” at state-run hospitals.

Meanwhile, the Kolkata police have served notices to more than 200 students, activists and political party members for allegedly spreading “false information” about the case and for revealing the victim’s identity.

Gabon’s interim president who seized power in a coup a year ago has barred members of his transitional government from holidaying abroad.

Gen Oligui Nguema has also limited government officials to a maximum of one week of holiday leave.

These new restrictions were announced on state television, after he toured the country to listen to people’s concerns.

There is speculation that Gen Nguema may be softening the ground to run for president in next year’s election – the first since he seized power in the Central African state.

He overthrew his cousin Ali Bongo, who became president in 2009 following the death of his father, Omar Bongo Ondimba, who had ruled for 41 years.

Since Gen Nguema took power, he has sought to reassure the public that his military government is acting in their best interest.

However, he has not publicly commented on whether or not he will run for the country’s top job in polls that are planned for 2025.

News of the holiday restrictions comes days before the first anniversary of the coup – when the junta’s record will inevitably be scrutinised.

Gen Nguema may be hoping to draw favourable comparisons with the man he overthrew, Mr Bongo, who was known to travel overseas regularly and whose family owned multiple properties in France and the UK.

Yet Gen Nguema is himself said to own multiple properties in the US, and when asked about these in recent years he has said that his private life should be respected.

Nonetheless it is thought the new holiday restrictions will apply to Gen Nguema too.

But he will no doubt be entitled to go abroad for official purposes.

Details of the new holiday rules were read out on state television, with viewers told that the goal was to “immerse” government officials “in the realities and expectations of their compatriots”.

A spokesman for the interim government explained that “this measure aims to encourage a return to the roots and increased proximity with local populations”, stipulating that exceptions will only be made in cases of “force majeure” – a legal term meaning extraordinary events that are out of parties’ control – or on health grounds.

Gabonese officials need not despair, given the array of attractions in their home country – including stunning white sand beaches and some of the world’s best gorilla safaris in Loango National Park.

• Malawi president bans himself and cabinet from foreign travel
• Gabon junta announces democratic elections for 2025
• Gabon partially suspended from Commonwealth after coup
• French couple lose case over Gabon mask sold for millions
• A quick guide to Gabon

Eight police officers in Kenya have been suspended on suspicion of helping a suspected serial killer escape from custody, police have said.

In July police said Collins Jumaisi Khalusha had confessed to the murders of 42 women, including his wife, since 2022.

Mr Khalusha’s lawyer denied the claim, saying his client had been tortured to confess.

He had been held at a police station since being arrested in July, but on Tuesday police said that Mr Khalusha and 12 others escaped after being “aided by insiders”.

An incident report from the station says police discovered the detainees were missing at 05:00 local time (03:00 GMT) when officers were serving breakfast.

The 13 individuals escaped by cutting through a wire mesh roof and scaling a perimeter wall, the report added.

• Kenya’s ‘serial killer’ mystery – five key questions
• A woman’s murder exposes Kenya’s toxic online misogyny

The 12 individuals who fled alongside Mr Khalusha were Eritrean nationals detained for entering the country illegally, police said.

Eight officers on duty at the time have been suspended, while investigations continued, police added.

Mr Khalusha, 33, was detained following the discovery of nine mutilated bodies at an abandoned quarry in the capital, Nairobi.

The victims were aged between 18 and 30 and were all killed in the same way, according to the police.

Their murders sparked shock and outrage. Many questioned how officers failed to detect that bodies were being left in a quarry around 100m (109 yards) from a police station.

They also wondered how 42 people could be murdered in the space of two years without police noticing – and how, after not suspecting anything for so long, officers made an arrest in less than three days after the bodies were discovered in the quarry.

Kenya’s police watchdog also expressed some scepticism. The Independent Police Oversight Authority launched an investigation to establish whether the police themselves were linked to the killings, following “widespread allegations of police involvement in unlawful arrests [and] abductions”.

It has not yet released its findings.

Police in Kenya have been accused of scores of human rights abuses in the past – and the force is currently under investigation over deaths and abductions following recent anti-government protests.

At the time of Mr Khalusha’s arrest, Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) chief Mohamed Amin said: “It is crystallising that we are dealing with a serial killer, a psychopathic serial killer who has no respect for human life, who has no respect and dignity.”

Mr Khalusha’s lawyer, John Maina Ndegwa, told the BBC in July: “He says he was strangled to confess. You could tell he was in distress, terrified and in anguish.”

The suspect appeared in a court in Nairobi on Friday, when the magistrate ordered him to be held for a further 30 days so that police could complete their investigations, news agency AFP reported.

The discovery of the dismembered bodies came as the country was still shaken from the so-called Shakahola forest massacre, where more than 400 bodies were found in mass graves near the Indian Ocean coast.

Cult leader Paul Mackenzie had allegedly encouraged his followers to starve themselves in order to “go see Jesus”.

He has pleaded not guilty to manslaughter.

• Kenya starvation cult: The unbearable stench of mass graves
• Me-ow! Kenyan feline lovers fret over cat-tax plan
• Kenyan president’s humbling shows power of African youth

Hollywood stars Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck are divorcing after two years of marriage.

Lopez filed for divorce on Tuesday in the Los Angeles County Superior Court, according to court documents seen by the BBC.

The pair – dubbed Bennifer by tabloids – formally tied the knot in Las Vegas in July 2022 and held a larger wedding ceremony in Georgia the following month.

Their romance began after they met while working on the set of the 2003 crime caper Gigli. They had originally planned to marry that year, but called off their relationship early in 2004.

Almost two decades later they rekindled their relationship.

“Love is beautiful. Love is kind. And it turns out love is patient. Twenty years patient,” Lopez said in 2022 after announcing the Las Vegas wedding.

The BBC has contacted their representatives for comment.

A court filing in the case says Lopez or her attorney has to notify Affleck with a copy of her petition to dissolve their marriage.

Media reports indicate Lopez, who had legally changed her last name to Affleck, did not list any details of a prenuptial agreement in her petition for divorce.

A document filed in LA’s Superior Court in the case says both Lopez, 55, and Affleck, 52, must share financial information, including their current income, expenses, properties and debts.

The document says both are mandated to divulge any changes to their finances “until there is a final agreement about all financial issues in your case”.

The court gave Lopez 60 days to file a financial disclosure and Affleck will have another 60 days after she submits her information to do likewise.

The filing says if either fails to report or update financial information, it could result in a court-imposed sanction.

There has been months of speculation over their relationship. They reportedly put their Beverly Hills mansion up for sale at $65m (£50m) and were pictured out separately not wearing their wedding rings.

Affleck, a two-time Oscar winner, was previously married to the actress Jennifer Garner, who he met on the set of 2001 romance Pearl Harbor. They split in 2015 after a decade of marriage and have three children together.

Lopez has been married four times, first to Cuban-born waiter Ojani Noa from 1997-98; then her former back-up dancer Cris Judd from 2001-03; and to singer Marc Anthony, with whom she had twins, from 2004-14.

The singer and actress, known as J.Lo, was also once engaged to New York Yankees star Alex Rodriguez.

Specialist divers continue to search for six people who were onboard a luxury superyacht which capsized off the coast of Sicily on Monday morning – but questions have been asked about why the vessel sank.

According to vessel tracking app Vesselfinder, the boat left the Sicilian port of Milazzo on 14 August and was last tracked east of Palermo on Sunday evening, with a navigation status of “at anchor”.

It is believed the ship was struck by a tornado over the water – otherwise known as a waterspout – causing Bayesian to capsize.

There are separate reports the boat’s mast snapped during the freak storm and other factors in the boat’s sinking include water entering through hatches and doors which had been left open because of warm weather off the Italian coast.

Witnesses have described seeing a waterspout form during the storm before the sinking of the Bayesian.

Most are familiar with what tornadoes look like – they are rotating columns of destructive winds, protruding from the base of clouds down to the ground.

According to BBC Weather, waterspouts are just that too, but are over water rather than land.

Instead of dust and debris swirling around the core of strong winds, it is water mist whipped up from the surface.

Like tornadoes, most are only short-lived, narrow columns and are not easily picked out on weather radars, so many will go unreported.

However, they are not as rare as you may think.

According to the International Centre for Waterspout Research there were 18 confirmed waterspouts off the coast of Italy on 19 August alone.

In the northern hemisphere, waterspouts are most common in late summer and through the autumn, when sea temperatures are at their highest, fuelling the storm clouds.

However, with sea temperatures rising due to climate change there is a concern that they could become more common.

In the last week, the Mediterranean has registered its highest sea surface temperature on record, which has helped to energise this recent storm outbreak.

The Bayesian was built by Italian shipbuilder Perini in 2008 and was last refitted in 2020.

According to Perini’s website Bayesian has a 75m (246ft) mast which it claims is the tallest aluminium mast in the world.

Karsten Borner, the captain of another yacht anchored nearby at the time of the storm, said there was a “very strong hurricane gust” and he had to battle to keep his vessel steady.

He saw the Bayesian’s mast “bend and then snap”, according to Italy’s Corriere della Sera daily newspaper.

But, providing an update on the rescue mission, Marco Tilotta, from the Palermo fire service divers’ unit, told AFP the ship was lying on its side in one piece.

Matthew Schanck, chair of the Maritime Search and Rescue Council, explained it is difficult to say whether the mast broke.

“I think, and this is pure guess work, but the evidence that we are getting from the divers is the vessel is basically intact, lying on its side reportedly,” he told the BBC.

“If the mast was broken, that would be a significant thing that would be reported.”

Mr Schanck added he believed what happened to Bayesian was “a freak event”.

“Vessels aren’t designed to be out sailing in that weather – 65 to 85mph that’s the top of what a vessel would be out in and that’s with its sails down,” he said.

“They aren’t designed to sail through tornadoes or water spouts.”

Since mid-June the sea surrounding Sicily – the western Mediterranean Basin – has been experiencing a severe heatwave.

The European Union’s climate change service, Copernicus, has been reporting sea surface temperatures in the region have repeatedly breached 30°C (86F) – four degrees higher than the 20-year average for this time of the year.

Spanish researchers at the Institut de Ciencies del Mar in Barcelona confirmed last Thursday the maximum sea surface temperature record had been broken in the Mediterranean Sea.

• How sinking of luxury yacht off Sicily unfolded
• ‘For two seconds I lost my baby in the sea’ – yacht survivor
• Who is British tech tycoon Mike Lynch, feared lost at sea?

In both 2023 and 2024, the record was broken for the highest average temperature recorded around the world on one day.

Scientists put the rapidly rising temperatures down to climate change – oceans have taken the brunt of rising temperatures absorbing around 90% of the excess heat.

Following last year’s record ocean temperatures, Prof Mike Meredith from the British Antarctic Survey told the BBC: “The fact that all this heat is going into the ocean, and in fact, it’s warming in some respects even more rapidly than we thought it would, is a cause for great concern.”

One sailing expert says hatches and doors left open overnight on the Bayesian may have caused it to sink.

Weather records show temperatures reached about 33C the day before the sinking

Sam Jefferson, editor of magazine Sailing Today, believe this may have led to the Bayesian’s occupants wanting air to flow through while they slept.

“I would have said that the boat got hit very hard by the wind, it was pinned over on its side,” Mr Jefferson said.

“I imagine all the doors were open because it was hot, so there were enough hatches and doors open that it filled with water very quickly and sank like that.

“The reason it got pinned over so hard was because the mast is huge. It acted almost like a sail. [It] pushed the boat hard over on its side.

“[The boat] filled with water before it could right. This is all speculation, but that’s the only logical explanation.”

When the owner of 7-Eleven announced this week that it had received a buyout offer from a Canadian rival it triggered shockwaves in Japan.

A Japanese company of this size has never been bought by a foreign firm.

Historically, companies from Japan were more likely to buy overseas businesses.

7-Eleven is the world’s biggest convenience store chain, with 85,000 outlets across 20 countries and territories.

And it’s been especially successful at selling itself as an option for a quick and cheap yet tasty meal, and in places where there is already an abundance of that, such as Japan and Thailand.

“We have more stores than McDonald’s or Starbucks,” the chief executive of Seven & i Holdings, Ryuichi Isaka, told BBC News before the firm received the buyout offer.

Around a quarter of those 85,000 shops are in Japan, while there are roughly 10,000 in the US.

In comparison, Quebec-based Alimentation Couche-Tard, which operates the Circle K chain, has almost 17,000 stores in 31 countries and territories. More than half of its outlets are in North America.

The approach valued Seven & i at more than $30bn (£23bn) before news of the preliminary offer emerged.

7-Eleven’s shares jumped by over 20% on Monday, before giving up some of those gains the following day.

Analysts point to the Japanese yen’s weakness against the US dollar and other major currencies for helping to make Seven & i affordable.

Along with the weakness of the yen, efforts by the Japanese government to promote mergers and acquisitions appear to be working, said Manoj Jain from Hong Kong-based hedge fund Maso Capital.

However, the proposal is still at the preliminary stage and given the potential size of any deal it could face scrutiny from competition authorities.

7-Eleven has been keen to capitalise on the popularity of the food it sells – a wide range, including rice balls, sandwiches, cooked pasta, fried chicken and dumplings.

While in much of the world convenience stores are where people grab a bar of chocolate or a bag of crisps in an emergency, in Japan, shops like 7-Eleven are popular with visitors searching for culinary delights.

These 7-Eleven dishes have turned the chain into a social media sensation in Asia.

Dropping into a 7-Eleven store has even been touted as one of the top things to do in Thailand, where its ham and cheese toastie has become a TikTok hit.

British singer Ed Sheeran is among the celebrities who have helped raise 7-Eleven’s profile – a video of him trying snacks from a store in Thailand went viral.

Mr Isaka has been aiming to repeat that success in the US and European markets as the company came under pressure from investors to sell some of its businesses and focus on the 7-Eleven brand.

The firm has been updating its strategy so more stores could follow the approach of its Japanese shops.

“What we found is that stores which sell fresh food are attracting many more shoppers,” Mr Isaka said.

“We want to grow with high quality – not just increase the quantity. We want to make sure customers are happy, and increase sales of each store whilst increasing the number of stores,” he added.

Seven & i has also been on a shopping spree. In January, it bought more than 200 stores in the US from petrol station chain Sunoco for around $1bn (£770m).

In April, it bought back more than 750 stores from a franchisee in Australia.

For most of its almost century-long history 7-Eleven was an American brand.

Starting out in 1927 selling blocks of ice that were used to keep fridges cool, it later stocked essential items like eggs, milk and bread.

At the time, the stores were open between 07:00 and 23:00 – hence the name.

As the business grew, 7-Eleven began offering franchises outside the US.

In 1974, Japanese retail firm Ito-Yokado struck a deal to open the country’s first 7-Eleven. In 1991, it bought a 70% stake in the chain’s US parent company.

The founder of Ito-Yokado, Masatoshi Ito, who died in 2023 at the age of 98, is often credited with transforming 7-Eleven into a global empire.

Ito-Yokado was renamed Seven & i Holdings in 2005 with the “i” in its name being a nod to Ito-Yokado and Mr Ito, who was by then the company’s honorary chairman.

Now, as the company decides whether it will remain under Japanese ownership or return to its North American roots, experts are wondering whether more of Japan’s big firms could become takeover targets.

There is now a “greater willingness of Japanese boards and management teams to accept offshore capital and be receptive to foreign approaches,” Mr Jain said.

More foreign investors may now be encouraged to pursue their interest in Japanese companies, he added.

A body recovered near the luxury yacht which sank off the coast of Sicily is believed to be that of chef Recaldo Thomas.

The Canadian-Antiguan national was one of 22 people aboard the Bayesian when it sank during a violent storm on Monday.

His friend Gareth Williams described him as well-loved and kind, with “the deepest, most sultry voice in the world, and a smile that lit up the room”.

Divers are struggling to reach the cabins of the sunken vessel as they search for six missing passengers including the British tech entrepreneur Mike Lynch and the Morgan Stanley International bank chairman Jonathan Bloomer.

British investigators arrived in Italy on Tuesday to assess what happened during the extreme weather that hit the yacht.

The Bayesian capsized around 700m (2,300ft) from Porticello, just east of Sicily’s capital Palermo, early on Monday morning. It now lies on the seabed at the depth of 50m.

Of the 22 people on board, 15 survived – including a British mother who described holding her baby girl above the surface of the sea to save her from drowning.

Dr Fabio Genco was part of the local emergency medical service that treated the survivors.

He told the BBC’s Newsnight programme that the word all of them “kept repeating was the ‘darkness’ during the shipwreck.”

“They spoke of about five minutes, from three to five minutes, from the moment the boat was lifted, raised by the waves of the sea until it sank.”

Dr Genco added that all the survivors had been discharged from hospital.

So far only one body, that of Recaldo Thomas, has been found.

Mr Williams said he had known the chef for 30 years as they had grown up together in Antigua, where Thomas lived during yachting’s off-season.

“He told me just the other day that he needed to work two more seasons to fix up his late parents’ house. He loved yachting, but he was tired,” Mr Williams told the BBC’s Insaf Abbas.

Another friend, Eli Fuller, said he first met the chef 25 years ago and that he was a role model to young people.

“Personality was very important in his job. The world’s richest people want to hang out with someone social. He was sought after,” Mr Fuller said.

“The kids would see all these white people working on yachts. For them to see an Antiguan man travelling all over the world – it was important for our community,” he added.

It is believed the Bayesian was struck by a tornado over the water – otherwise known as a waterspout – which caused the vessel to capsize and sink to the seabed.

There are also reports that the boat’s mast snapped, while other factors include water entering through hatches which may have been open due to hot temperatures.

The Italian coastguard said on Tuesday afternoon that their search was continuing and that divers were working out how to safely enter the wreckage.

Earlier a member of the diving team, Marco Tilotta, said accessing it had been difficult because the hull of the Bayesian is titled at a 90 degree angle on the seafloor.

He told Reuters news agency that there was a “a world of objects” obstructing the narrow stairs leading into the cabins.

“We are not stopping,” he added. “We have resources, manpower and means. Our goal is to find all the people who are missing, so that is our job.”

Divers are only able to spend around 12 minutes under water, meaning that by the time they reach the wreckage, they only have about 10 minutes to search it.

As well as several teams of divers, the coastguard said they had five patrol boats, at least two helicopters and a remotely operated underwater vehicle.

Specialist divers trained to operate in small spaces have been flown in from Rome and Sardinia.

The sailing vessel, which was 56m (183ft) long and flying a British flag, was carrying 10 crew and 12 passengers when it sank.

Among the missing are Mike Lynch and his 18-year-old daughter Hannah, as well as Jonathan Bloomer and his wife Judy.

• Who are the missing and rescued?
• Survivor: ‘For two seconds I lost my baby in the sea’

Neda Morvillo, an American jewellery designer, and her husband Chris are also missing. The news was confirmed by his law firm Clifford Chance.

Mr Lynch was acquitted in June of multiple fraud charges relating to the $11bn (£8.6bn) sale of his company Autonomy to the US computing giant Hewlett-Packard in 2011.

A relative of one of the survivors said lawyers who had represented Mr Lynch in the legal proceedings – where Mr Bloomer had been a defence witness – had been invited on board the Bayesian to celebrate.

Ayla Ronald, a senior associate at Clifford Chance, and her husband were among the people rescued from the yacht when it sank.

Separately, it was confirmed on Tuesday that Mr Lynch’s co-defendant Stephen Chamberlain, 52, died after being hit by a car while out running in Cambridgeshire on Saturday.

His family described him as a “much-loved husband, father, son, brother and friend”.

Pakistan’s parliament has a problem – and it is nothing to do with the politicians.

No, the problem besieging the building – terrifying new starters and turning its offices into overnight “marathon” tracks – is rats. Big ones.

The scale of the problem came to light after an official committee asked to see the records of meetings from 2008. When the records were collected, it was found most had been badly gnawed by rats.

“The rats on this floor are so huge that even cats might be afraid of them,” National Assembly spokesman Zafar Sultan admitted to the BBC.

The infestation is now so widespread that an annual budget of 1.2m rupees ($4,300; £3,300) has been dedicated to making Pakistan’s halls of power rat-free.

It seems most of the rats are located on the first floor – an area which not only houses the office of the senate opposition leader, but also hosts most of the political party meetings and standing committees.

It is also, perhaps crucially, the location of a food hall.

But the rats generally keep themselves out of sight – until, that is, people have departed for the day.

“When there are usually no people here in the evening, the rats run around in there like it’s a marathon,” a National Assembly official said.

“The staff posted there are now used to this, but if someone comes here for the first time, they get scared.”

Advertisements have now gone out in several Pakistan newspapers, in order to find a pest control company which can help officials deal with the rats.

So far, just two have shown any interest.

A senior US administration official has pushed back at reported comments by Benjamin Netanyahu, accusing the Israeli prime minister of making “maximalist statements” that are “not constructive to getting a ceasefire deal across the finish line”.

It comes in the midst of an intense round of regional diplomacy by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, as Washington tries to drive forward progress on a ceasefire and hostage release deal.

On Monday, Mr Blinken had talks lasting three hours with the Israeli leader in Jerusalem.

He later said Mr Netanyahu had accepted Washington’s so-called “bridging proposal” aimed at trying to solve sticking points and bring Israel and Hamas closer to a deal.

According to an Israeli media report, Mr Netanyahu later told a meeting of hostage families that he “convinced” Mr Blinken that the deal must see Israeli troops remaining in areas of Gaza he described as “strategic military and political assets”, including along the southern border with Egypt.

The reported comments appear to have irritated the US administration.

“We saw the prime minister’s comments, specifically on some of these items,” said the senior official who spoke on condition of anonymity.

“We’re certainly not going to negotiate in public but what I can say is that the only thing Secretary Blinken and the United States are convinced of is the need for getting a ceasefire proposal across the finish line.”

“We fully expect that… if Hamas were also to also accept this bridging proposal, discussions will continue on some of the more technical… details.

“I would also just add that maximalist statements like this are not constructive to getting a ceasefire deal across the finish line and they certainly risk the ability of implementing level, working level and technical talks to be able to move forward when both parties agree to a bridging proposal.”

The senior official’s remarks followed Tuesday’s round of talks between Mr Blinken and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi in the coastal city of El-Alamein.

Egyptian officials are said to be strongly opposed to the idea of Israeli troops remaining along Egypt’s border in Gaza.

Following his stop in Egypt, Mr Blinken travelled on to Qatar for further talks in Doha – the last stop on his Middle East tour.

The BBC has been travelling with the secretary of state and asked him about the conversation shortly before he left Doha.

He revealed for the first time that the American bridging proposal included a “detailed plan” about Israeli withdrawal from Gaza.

“The agreement is very clear on the schedule and locations of IDF [Israel Defense Forces] withdrawals from Gaza and Israel has agreed to that,” said Mr Blinken.

Asked by the BBC whether Mr Netanyahu’s reported claim that the Israeli leader had “convinced” Mr Blinken to keep troops in Gaza, he said: “I can’t speak to what he’s quoted as saying, I can just speak to what I heard from him directly yesterday [Monday] when we spent three hours together,” he said.

“[That included] Israel’s endorsement of the bridging proposal and thus the detailed plan. And that plan among other things includes a very clear schedule and locations for withdrawals.”

Asked whether the proposal was for a “full withdrawal”, Mr Blinken said he would not comment on the details of the plan.

Hamas said the latest ceasefire proposals constituted “a coup” against what had been agreed upon in earlier negotiations, and reiterated its wish that a ceasefire plan for Gaza be based on where talks were in July rather than any new rounds of negotiations.

Former President Barack Obama will return to the Democratic National Convention stage in his hometown of Chicago to deliver the keynote address on Tuesday, 20 years after his convention debut thrust him into the national spotlight.

It’s a tricky moment for one of the party’s most popular figures.

He will use his speech to touch on the historic nature of Kamala Harris’s candidacy – the first female of colour to lead the ticket – as a continuation of his legacy. But he must also pay tribute to his own vice-president and the man responsible for her rise – President Joe Biden.

Mr Obama, 63, and Ms Harris, 59, have moved in overlapping political orbits as early as his days as an Illinois state senator running for the US Senate. The two, both on the rise in their nascent political careers, met at a California fundraiser in 2004.

As an early supporter, Ms Harris would later volunteer for his presidential campaign and help power his first victory in 2008. Buoyed by party enthusiasm for Ms Harris’s campaign, Mr Obama – and his popular wife Michelle Obama – will try to return the favour and help propel her to the Oval Office.

“I think he can excite people about her and about the stakes [of the election] and I think that’s what he intends to do today,” David Plouffe, Mr Obama’s 2008 campaign manager and a now Harris campaign adviser, told Axios.

Here’s a look at key moments in their two-decade relationship.

Ms Harris, then a San Francisco district attorney, was in the crowd of more than 15,000 people as then-junior senator announced his longshot bid for the White House on the steps of the Old State Capitol in the Illinois capital city of Springfield in February 2007. She would go on to knock on doors and raise money for Mr Obama ahead of the Iowa caucuses in 2008, later serving as his California campaign co-chair.

Mr Obama lent her some of his national star power two years later when she mounted a statewide bid for attorney general against Republican Steve Cooley, a popular Los Angeles district attorney. She had been affectionately referred to as “the female Barack Obama” by longtime PBS News anchor Gwen Ifill, but remained locked in a tight contest.

Mr Obama, who would endure widespread congressional losses in that election year, made time to appear at a Los Angeles rally in October 2010 in which he referred to Ms Harris as “dear, dear friend of mine”.

“I want everybody to do right by her,” he told the crowd. Ms Harris eked out a victory by less than a percentage point, setting her on a path toward higher office.

Mr Obama gave Ms Harris a coveted speaking role at the 2012 Democratic National Convention for his re-election.

She had already made a name for herself in California in barrier-breaking roles as the first person of colour or woman to serve as San Francisco’s district attorney. She was also the first African American and South Asian American elected as the state’s top lawyer.

But as attorney general, she had made headlines for standing firm in negotiations on a financial settlement between state attorneys general and the banks responsible for the foreclosure crisis, securing more than $25 billion on behalf of homeowners.

She spoke of her accomplishment, weaving in her personal story, praising Mr Obama for standing up for Americans during the housing crisis and attacking his Republican challenger Mitt Romney as an ally of Wall Street.

“We need to move forward.” she said in her speech, a phrase she has reprised in her 2024 campaign. “President Obama will fight for working families. He will fight to level the economic playing field and fight to give every American the same fair shot my family had.”

Her high-profile remarks came just before former President Bill Clinton, landing a spot that was guaranteed to catch the attention of national Democrats, powerbrokers and key donors.

Though Mr Obama quietly supported Ms Harris as she rose through California politics, he raised eyebrows in 2013 when he referred to her as “the best looking attorney general in the country”.

“You have to be careful to, first of all, say she is brilliant and she is dedicated and she is tough, and she is exactly what you’d want in anybody who is administering the law, and making sure that everybody is getting a fair shake,” the president said at a San Francisco fundraiser. “She also happens to be, by far, the best looking attorney general in the country.”

He phoned Ms Harris hours later to apologise for the comment.

“They are old friends and good friends and he did not want in any way to diminish” her accomplishments, White House spokesman Jay Carney later told reporters.

At the height of his Democratic power in 2016, finishing his second term as president, Mr Obama waded into the contentious California Senate race to endorse Ms Harris, who launched a bid to replace retiring Senator Barbara Boxer.

In July of that year, he and Vice-President Joe Biden formally announced their support for Ms Harris, who was running against fellow Democrat and US Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez. In California’s primary system, the two top vote-getters advance to the general election, regardless of party.

“Kamala is a lifelong courtroom prosecutor with only one client: the people of the State of California. That’s the approach she’ll take to the United States Senate,” Mr Obama said in a statement released by the Harris campaign.

Mr Biden said he had known her through his son Beau Biden, who forged a friendship with Ms Harris as Delaware’s attorney general during their mortgage settlement negotiations.

Ms Harris handily won the election, and became only the second black female to serve in the US Senate.

Ms Harris’ 2020 presidential primary bid began as a spectacle, launched in her hometown of Oakland, California, before a crowd of 20,000 people in 2019. Like others in the crowded field of candidates vying for the Democratic nomination, she met with Mr Obama to lay out her case for her candidacy.

But Mr Obama, whose own vice-president was mounting an election bid, wanted to stay out of the political fray and wait until the party selected its nominee before offering his coveted endorsement.

Ms Harris’s campaign collapsed in less than a year, and Joe Biden would offer her a political reprieve as his running mate. Mr Obama reportedly supported Mr Biden’s selection of Ms Harris, despite their early debate clash over the former vice-president’s record on school desegregation.

Mr Obama said his former vice-president “nailed this decision” in selecting Ms Harris.

“Choosing a vice-president is the first important decision a president makes. When you’re in the Oval Office, weighing the toughest issues, and the choice you make will affect the lives and livelihoods of the entire country — you need someone with you who’s got the judgement and the character to make the right call,” Mr Obama said in a statement at the time.

Since 2020, Mr Obama has been in regular touch with Ms Harris, providing counsel and serving as a sounding board whenever she’s asked.

The Obamas waited several days to endorse Ms Harris until it was clear that there were no challengers and she was the party’s choice. The couple released a video of them calling her to formally announce their support for her campaign.

“We’ve known each other for 20 years. I’ve watched how you have excelled in every position you’ve been in,” Mr Obama told her in the phone call. “Just to see all that hard work be recognised is something that we couldn’t be more thrilled about. And so the main thing we wanted to do was just let you know and let Doug [Emhoff] know, our soon-to-be first gentleman, that we are gonna do everything we can to help propel you into the presidency.”

Over the last few months, the two have been in close contact as Mr Obama has sought to offer support for her campaign, including policy or strategic advice, fundraising and get-out-the-vote efforts.

Ms Harris has also relied on many of Mr Obama’s old hands to help run her campaign. Eric Holder, who served as Mr Obama’s attorney general, led efforts to vet Ms Harris’s shortlist for vice-president, while Mr Plouffe is now serving as one of her most senior advisers.

The Harris campaign has also enlisted other Obama aides including Jennifer O’Malley Dillion, her campaign chairwoman, and senior adviser Stephanie Cutter. Former Obama communications director Jennifer Palmieri is also helping Ms Harris’s husband, Doug Emhoff.

In January 2015, Abdullah, the 90-year-old king of Saudi Arabia, was dying in hospital. His half-brother, Salman, was about to become king – and Salman’s favourite son, Mohammed bin Salman, was preparing for power.

The prince, known simply by his initials MBS and then just 29 years old, had big plans for his kingdom, the biggest plans in its history; but he feared that plotters within his own Saudi royal family could eventually move against him. So at midnight one evening that month, he summoned a senior security official to the palace, determined to win his loyalty.

The official, Saad al-Jabri, was told to leave his mobile phone on a table outside. MBS did the same. The two men were now alone. The young prince was so fearful of palace spies that he pulled the socket out of the wall, disconnecting the only landline telephone.

According to Jabri, MBS then talked about how he would wake his kingdom up from its deep slumber, allowing it to take its rightful place on the global stage. By selling a stake in the state oil producer Aramco, the world’s most profitable company, he would begin to wean his economy off its dependency on oil. He would invest billions in Silicon Valley tech startups including the taxi firm, Uber. Then, by giving Saudi women the freedom to join the workforce, he would create six million new jobs.

Astonished, Jabri asked the prince about the extent of his ambition. “Have you heard of Alexander the Great?” came the simple reply.

MBS ended the conversation there. A midnight meeting that was scheduled to last half-an-hour had gone on for three. Jabri left the room to find several missed calls on his mobile from government colleagues worried about his long disappearance.

The Kingdom: The World’s Most Powerful Prince

The story of the extraordinary rise to power of the man who runs Saudi Arabia and whose control of oil affects everyone, starting with how he outwitted hundreds of rivals to become crown prince.

Watch on BBC iPlayer

For the past year, our documentary team has been talking to both Saudi friends and opponents of MBS, as well as senior Western spies and diplomats. The Saudi government was given the opportunity to respond to the claims made in the BBC’s films and in this article. They chose not to do so.

Saad al-Jabri was so high up in the Saudi security apparatus that he was friends with the heads of the CIA and MI6. While the Saudi government has called Jabri a discredited former official, he’s also the most well-informed Saudi dissident to have dared speak about how the crown prince rules Saudi Arabia – and the rare interview he has given us is astonishing in its detail.

By gaining access to many who know the prince personally, we shed new light on the events that have made MBS notorious – including the 2018 murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi and the launch of a devastating war in Yemen.

With his father increasingly frail, the 38-year-old MBS is now de facto in charge of the birthplace of Islam and the world’s biggest exporter of oil. He’s begun to carry out many of the groundbreaking plans he described to Saad al-Jabri – while also being accused of human rights violations including the suppression of free speech, widespread use of the death penalty and jailing of women’s rights activists.

The first king of Saudi Arabia fathered at least 42 sons, including MBS’s father, Salman. The crown has traditionally been passed down between these sons. It was when two of them suddenly died in 2011 and 2012 that Salman was elevated into the line of succession.

Western spy agencies make it their business to study the Saudi equivalent of Kremlinology – working out who will be the next king. At this stage, MBS was so young and unknown that he wasn’t even on their radar.

“He grew up in relative obscurity,” says Sir John Sawers, chief of MI6 until 2014. “He wasn’t earmarked to rise to power.”

The crown prince also grew up in a palace in which bad behaviour had few, if any, consequences; and that may help explain his notorious habit of not thinking through the impact of his decisions until he had already made them.

MBS first achieved notoriety in Riyadh in his late teens, when he was nicknamed “Abu Rasasa” or “Father of the Bullet”, after allegedly sending a bullet in the post to a judge who had overruled him in a property dispute.

“He has had a certain ruthlessness,” observes Sir John Sawers. “He doesn’t like to be crossed. But that also means he’s been able to drive through changes that no other Saudi leader has been able to do.”

Among the most welcome changes, the former MI6 chief says, has been cutting off Saudi funding to overseas mosques and religious schools that became breeding grounds for Islamist jihadism – at huge benefit to the safety of the West.

MBS’s mother, Fahda, is a Bedouin tribeswoman and seen as the favourite of his father’s four wives. Western diplomats believe the king has suffered for many years from a slow-onset form of vascular dementia; and MBS was the son he turned to for help.

Several diplomats recalled for us their meetings with MBS and his father. The prince would write notes on an iPad, then send them to his father’s iPad, as a way of prompting what he would say next.

“Inevitably I wondered whether MBS was typing out his lines for him,” recalls Lord Kim Darroch, National Security Adviser to David Cameron when he was British prime minister.

The prince was apparently so impatient for his father to become king that in 2014, he reportedly suggested killing the then-monarch – Abdullah, his uncle – with a poisoned ring, obtained from Russia.

“I don’t know for sure if he was just bragging, but we took it seriously,” says Jabri. The former senior security official says he has seen a secretly recorded surveillance video of MBS talking about the idea. “He was banned from court, from shaking hands with the king, for a considerable amount of time.”

In the event, the king died of natural causes, allowing his brother, Salman, to assume the throne in 2015. MBS was appointed Defence Minister and lost no time in going to war.

Two months later, the prince led a Gulf coalition into war against the Houthi movement, which had seized control of much of western Yemen and which he saw as a proxy of Saudi Arabia’s regional rival Iran. It triggered a humanitarian disaster, with millions on the brink of famine.

“It wasn’t a clever decision,” says Sir John Jenkins, who was British ambassador just before the war began. “One senior American military commander told me they had been given 12 hours’ notice of the campaign, which is unheard of.”

The military campaign helped turn a little-known prince into a Saudi national hero. However, it was also the first of what even his friends believe have been several major mistakes.

A recurring pattern of behaviour was emerging: MBS’s tendency to jettison the traditionally slow and collegiate system of Saudi decision-making, preferring to act unpredictably or upon impulse; and refusing to kowtow to the US, or be treated as head of a backward client state.

Jabri goes much further, accusing MBS of forging his father the king’s signature on a royal decree committing ground troops.

Jabri says he discussed the Yemen war in the White House before it started; and that Susan Rice, President Obama’s National Security Advisor, warned him that the US would only support an air campaign.

However, Jabri claims MBS was so determined to press ahead in Yemen that he ignored the Americans.

“We were surprised that there was a royal decree to allow the ground interventions,” Jabri says. “He forged the signature of his dad for that royal decree. The king’s mental capacity was deteriorating.”

Jabri says his source for this allegation was “credible, reliable” and linked to the Ministry of Interior where he was chief of staff.

Jabri recalls the CIA station chief in Riyadh telling him how angry he was that MBS had ignored the Americans, adding that the invasion of Yemen should never have happened.

The former MI6 chief Sir John Sawers says that while he doesn’t know if MBS forged the documents, “it is clear that this was MBS’s decision to intervene militarily in Yemen. It wasn’t his father’s decision, although his father was carried along with it.”

We’ve discovered that MBS saw himself as an outsider from the very beginning – a young man with much to prove and a refusal to obey anybody’s rules other than his own.

Kirsten Fontenrose, who served on President Donald Trump’s National Security Council, says that when she read the CIA’s in-house psychological profile of the prince, she felt it missed the point.

“There were no prototypes to base him on,” she says. “He has had unlimited resources. He has never been told ‘no’. He is the first young leader to reflect a generation that, frankly, most of us in government are too old to understand.”

MBS’s purchase of a famous painting in 2017 tells us much about how he thinks, and his willingness to be a risk-taker, unafraid to be out of step with the religiously conservative society that he governs. And above all, determined to outplay the West in conspicuous displays of power.

In 2017, a Saudi prince reportedly acting for MBS spent $450m (£350m) on the Salvator Mundi, which remains the world’s most expensive work of art ever sold. The portrait, reputed to have been painted by Leonardo da Vinci, depicts Jesus Christ as master of heaven and Earth, the saviour of the world. For almost seven years, ever since the auction, it has completely disappeared.

Bernard Haykel, a friend of the crown prince and Professor of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University, says that despite rumours that it hangs in the prince’s yacht or palace, the painting is actually in storage in Geneva and that MBS intends to hang it in a museum in the Saudi capital that has not yet been built.

“I want to build a very large museum in Riyadh,” Haykel quotes MBS as saying. “And I want an anchor object that will attract people, just like the Mona Lisa does.”

Similarly, his plans for sport reflect someone who is both hugely ambitious and unafraid to disrupt the status quo.

Saudi Arabia’s incredible spending spree on world-class sport – it is the sole bidder to host the FIFA World Cup in 2034, and has made multimillion-dollar investments in staging tournaments for tennis and golf – has been called “sportswashing”. But what we found is a leader who cares less about what the West thinks of him than he does about demonstrating the opposite: that he will do whatever he wants in the name of making himself and Saudi Arabia great.

“MBS is interested in building his own power as a leader,” says Sir John Sawers, the former Chief of MI6, who has met him. “And the only way he can do that is by building his country’s power. That’s what’s driving him.”

Jabri’s 40-year career as a Saudi official did not survive MBS’s consolidation of power. Chief of staff for the former Crown Prince Muhammed bin Nayef, he fled the kingdom as MBS was taking over, after being tipped off by a foreign intelligence service that he could be in danger. But Jabri says MBS texted him out of the blue, offering him his old job back.

“It was bait – and I didn’t bite,” Jabri says, convinced he would have been tortured, imprisoned or killed if he returned. As it was, his teenage children, Omar and Sarah, were detained and later jailed for money laundering and for trying to escape – charges that they deny. The United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention has called for their release.

“He planned for my assassination,” Jabri says. “He will not rest until he sees me dead, I have no doubt about that.”

Saudi officials have issued Interpol notices for Jabri’s extradition from Canada, without success. They claim he is wanted for corruption involving billions of dollars during his time at the interior ministry. However, he was given the rank of major-general and credited by the CIA and MI6 with helping to prevent al-Qaeda terrorist attacks.

The killing of Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in 2018 implicates MBS in ways that are very hard to refute. The 15-strong hit squad was travelling on diplomatic passports and included several of MBS’s own bodyguards. Khashoggi’s body has never been found and is believed to have been hacked into pieces with a bone saw.

Professor Haykel exchanged WhatsApp messages with MBS not long after the murder. “I was asking, ‘how could this happen?’,” Haykel recalls. “I think he was in deep shock. He didn’t realise the reaction to this was going to be as deep.”

Dennis Ross met MBS shortly afterwards. “He said he didn’t do it and that it was a colossal blunder,” says Ross. “I certainly wanted to believe him, because I couldn’t believe that he could authorise something [like] that.”

MBS has always denied knowledge of the plot, although in 2019 he said he took “responsibility” because the crime happened on his watch. A declassified US intelligence report released in February 2021 asserted that he was complicit in the killing of Khashoggi.

I asked those who know MBS personally whether he had learned from his mistakes; or whether having survived the Khashoggi affair, it had in fact emboldened him.

“He’s learned lessons the hard way,” says Professor Haykel, who says MBS resents the case being used as cudgel against him and his country, but that a killing like Khashoggi’s would not happen again.

Sir John Sawers cautiously agrees that the murder was a turning point. “I think he has learned some lessons. The personality, though, remains the same.”

His father, King Salman, is now aged 88. When he dies, MBS could rule Saudi Arabia for the next 50 years.

However, he has recently admitted he fears being assassinated, possibly as a consequence of his attempts to normalise Saudi-Israeli ties.

“I think there are lots of people who want to kill him,” says Professor Haykel, “and he knows it.”

Eternal vigilance is what keeps a man like MBS safe. It was what Saad al-Jabri observed at the beginning of the prince’s rise to power, when he pulled the telephone socket out of the wall before speaking to him in his palace.

MBS is still a man on a mission to modernise his country, in ways his predecessors would never have dared. But he’s also not the first autocrat who runs the risk of being so ruthless that nobody around him dares prevent him from making more mistakes.

Robert F Kennedy Jr’s running mate says the independent presidential candidate is considering joining forces with Donald Trump’s campaign or staying in and forming a third party.

On a podcast, Nicole Shanahan said they were considering the two options to avoid the “risk” of a Kamala Harris presidency.

She also accused the Democrats of “sabotage”, including planting insiders in their campaign.

Mr Kennedy has faced a number of hurdles in his longshot third-party campaign, from legal challenges over getting his name on state ballots to funding his run.

“There’s two options that we’re looking at and one is staying in, forming that new party, but we run the risk of a Kamala Harris and [Tim] Walz presidency because we draw votes from Trump, or we draw somehow more votes from Trump,” Ms Shanahan, 38, said on the Impact Theory with Tom Bilyeu podcast released on Tuesday.

“Or we walk away right now and join forces with Donald Trump and you know, we walk away from that and we explain to our base why we’re making this decision.”

She said it was “not an easy decision”.

BBC News has reached out to the Kennedy campaign for clarity on Ms Shanahan’s comments.

In a post on X, formerly Twitter, on Tuesday, Mr Kennedy said: “As always, I am willing to talk with leaders of any political party to further the goals I have served for 40 years in my career and in this campaign.”

Mr Kennedy’s running mate said she trusts the future of the country more under the leadership of Trump, a Republican, than under the Democratic nominee, Vice-President Kamala Harris.

Ms Shanahan rejected recent reports that the Kennedy campaign had been in talks with the Harris team about a potential endorsement or cabinet position.

“That said, we have offered to talk to everybody about what your policies are, who’s going to be in your cabinet, do you want to hear any of our takes on policy and what might work,” she said.

She noted that former President Trump has taken a keen interest in some of their campaign’s policies around chronic disease.

“For that reason, it behooves us to sit and see if we can actually make some real change and if that is a unity party, I think that it is something that we absolutely owe to the American public to explore,” said Ms Shanahan.

She also accused the Democratic party of “sabotage”, arguing that “had we had a fair shot we would have won”.

Ms Shanahan said the Democrats “have banned us, shadow-banned us, kept us off stage, manipulated polls, sued us in every possible state,” and “planted insiders into our campaign to disrupt it”.

The BBC has contacted the Democratic party for comment.

Media reports over the last few months have indicated that Mr Kennedy, 70, has offered to endorse the former president in exchange for a role in his next administration.

A leaked phone call in July between the two candidates had Trump saying he would “love” Mr Kennedy “to do something” to support him.

Ukrainian authorities have ordered the evacuation of a key city in the Donbas region as Russian forces continue to make gains in the east of the country, despite Ukraine’s ongoing offensive into Russia’s Kursk region.

Officials said families with children living in Pokrovsk and surrounding villages would be forced to leave.

The head of the city’s military government, Serhii Dobriak, said residents had at most two weeks to flee the Russian advance.

The strategically important city is one of Ukraine’s main defensive strongholds and a key logistical hub for Kyiv’s troops on the eastern front.

Donetsk region head Vadym Filashkin said over 53,000 people, including almost 4,000 children, remained in the city.

He said authorities had taken the decision to forcibly evacuate children and their parents or guardians.

“When our cities are within range of virtually any enemy weapon, the decision to evacuate is necessary and inevitable.”

Mr Dobriak said the rate of evacuations from the city had risen to about 500 to 600 people a day. He said that while basic services continued to operate, they would likely soon cease to function as the Russian army closes in.

The evacuation order came even as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said his forces were continuing to make gains during their incursion of Russia’s Kursk region.

On Monday, President Zelensky said Ukraine had gained control of over 1,250 sq km of Kursk’s territory and 92 settlements.

“The Russian border area opposite our Sumy region has been mostly cleared of Russian military presence,” he said on X.

“A few months ago, many people around the world would have said this was impossible and crossed Russia’s strictest ‘red line’,” he added.

One of the aims of the incursion is reportedly to divert Russia’s troops away from the Donbas region, relieving pressure on beleaguered Ukrainian troops there.

On Monday, Russian military bloggers claimed Ukraine had blown up a third bridge over the River Seym in the Kursk region. Kyiv did not claim responsibility but the destruction of the bridge would likely further hinder Russian military logistics and help Ukraine consolidate its control over the territory it has seized from Moscow.

But BBC Verify has identified new pontoon bridges – temporary, floating crossings, quickly constructed and used in the absence of permanent structures – over the river, apparently constructed by Russian forces.

In these satellite images taken on Saturday, the two recently built crossings, near Glushkovo, can be seen.

The Institute for the Study of War (ISW) think tank said that while Russia appeared committed to a strategy of “gradual creeping advances” in the east, Ukraine’s surprise advance into Kursk showed that seizing the initiative had allowed Kyiv to make significant gains rather than slowly losing a “war of attrition”.

The ISW said it had assessed Ukraine to be present across 800 sq km of Russian territory, though it added that presence did not necessarily equate to control. By contrast, the think tank estimates that Russia gained about 1,175 sq km between January and July.