Investigators examining the sinking of a luxury yacht off the coast of Sicily have outlined what they know six days on.

Seven people died when the Bayesian, a 56-metre sailing boat, sank to the bottom of the ocean during bad weather early on 19 August.

There were 22 passengers and crew on board, 15 of whom managed to escape onto a lifeboat.

In their first press conference about the tragedy, at a court in Termini Imerese, Sicily, on Saturday, Italian prosecutors confirmed that a manslaughter and negligent shipwreck investigation has begun over the disaster’s seven deaths.

Officials were unable to answer a number of queries from the media, saying they needed time to establish the facts, but they did shine a light on some previously unknown details.

A manslaughter investigation has been opened into the deaths of seven people in the sinking.

British tech businessman Mike Lynch and his 18-year-old daughter Hannah lost their lives, alongside Morgan Stanley International bank chairman Jonathan Bloomer, his wife Judy Bloomer, Clifford Chance lawyer Chris Morvillo and his wife Neda Morvillo, and Canadian-Antiguan national Recaldo Thomas, who was working as a chef on the yacht.

All of their bodies have now been recovered.

Chief prosecutor of Termini Imerese, Ambrogio Cartosio, said his office has opened an initial investigation into manslaughter and negligent shipwreck.

He told reporters they would ascertain whether the captain, crew, individuals in charge of supervision, the ship-builder, or others could bear responsibility.

He added: “We will establish each element’s responsibility – that will be done by the inquiry, so we can’t do that prematurely.

“For me, it is probable that offences were committed – that it could be a case of manslaughter – but we can only establish that if you give us the time to investigate.

“Media timing is completely different from that of a prosecutor. We need a minimum amount of time to come to a proper scientific conclusion.”

The inquiry is currently an Italian investigation with local involvement, but Mr Cartosio said: “I cannot tell you with any certainty that the inquiry will be exclusively Italian.

“There will be developments, I’m sure, on that score.”

Witnesses described seeing a waterspout form during the storm before the sinking of the Bayesian yacht, which is similar to a tornado over a body of water.

However, deputy prosecutor Raffaele Cammarano told the press conference that “from the information we have, it is a downburst we are talking about”.

BBC Weather forecaster Ben Rich said a downburst occurs when air races downward from the base of a cloud. It produces a powerful gust of wind that blows unpredictably outwards in different directions.

He said it can be confused with tornadoes or waterspouts because the damage caused can be similar.

Maritime director of western Sicily, Rear Admiral Raffaele Macauda, said the weather at the time of the yacht’s sinking was abnormal and there was nothing to suggest such an extreme situation would arise.

He told the press conference there was no tornado alert.

Officials said they would be looking at how a downburst could have affected the Bayesian and not other vessels nearby.

The body of Recaldo Thomas, who was working as a chef on the yacht, was found outside of the vessel and was the first to be discovered.

The bodies of the remaining six people were recovered from cabins on the left side of the yacht after it had sunk, the chief of the Palermo fire service said.

Girolamo Bentivoglio said that specialised divers attempting to retrieve the bodies had to deal with “very little visibility due to the weather conditions” and were called in from across the country as part of a search-and-rescue operation which involved “some 70 people” each day.

He added: “The yacht obviously pinned to the right and obviously the [people] tried to go on the other side and then took refuge in their cabins.

“We found four or five bodies in the cabin on the left and there was another one in the third cabin on the left too, and they were in the higher part of the wreck.”

Mr Cammarano suggested that passengers may not have been able to escape from the yacht because they were asleep.

Asked why they were not woken up or alerted, he said: “That is precisely what we are trying to ascertain from the statements made during the interrogation of the survivors – an essential point in the inquiry, obviously.”

He said several of the bodies were found in a single cabin.

He said: “The bodies were found in a cabin which was not theirs, but this doesn’t give us any kind of certainty about what happened.

“We have no idea of the reasons for their all being found in the same cabin.”

Prosecutors were questioned about the captain of the Bayesian and its crew.

Asked whether the crew will remain in Sicily, Mr Cartosio said: “There’s no obligation, but they should be available for the investigation.”

The press conference heard authorities still have questions to ask the captain but that they cannot keep people in the country under Italian law.

Mr Cammarano was asked about the crew undergoing alcohol and drug testing, and he said officials were trying to conduct those tests.

When asked how it was possible that most of the crew managed to survive, he said the incident happened suddenly and the inquiry will look into it.

No information has yet been gleaned from an examination of the seven people who died, prosecutors said.

In response to a question about whether post-mortem examinations have been carried out, Mr Cammarano said: “There are a whole number of preliminary stages to go through before the autopsies.”

An explosion outside a synagogue in southern France is being investigated by authorities as “attempted terrorist murder”.

Police said the explosion was caused by two cars being set alight outside the Beth Yaacov synagogue in the resort town of La Grande-Motte. One of the vehicles contained a hidden gas cannister.

Police sources told French media a man caught on CCTV setting fire to the vehicles was carrying a Palestinian flag and possibly a handgun.

Jewish community leader Yonathan Arfi said the incident was “an attempt to kill Jews,” adding that the attack seemed to have been timed to target Saturday morning worshippers.

One police officer was injured in the explosion, believed to have occurred between 08:00 and 08:30 local time (07:00-07:30 BST). His injuries are not said to be life-threatening.

Five people, including the rabbi, were inside the synagogue at the time, authorities said. President Emmanuel Macron said the incident was “a terrorist act”.

One eyewitness who, who asked to remain anonymous, told the BBC: “Just as we were coming round the last corner, there was a huge explosion, a fireball into the air.

“It was surreal, like a film. We didn’t go any further.”

French Prime Minister Gabriel Attal and Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin are expected to travel to the scene later on Saturday.

They have both condemned the attack, with Mr Attal calling it “an antisemtic act,” while Mr Darmanin said security around Jewish sites would be reinforced.

“I want to assure our Jewish fellow citizens and the municipality of my full support,” the interior minister added.

Both leaders said security forces were tracking down the suspect.

The French Jewish community already live under high security, with many synagogues and Jewish schools under police protection.

A January 2024 report by the Council of Jewish Institutions in France (CRIF) said there had been a nearly threefold increase of antisemitic acts in France between 2022 and 2023.

In May, police shot dead a man after a synagogue in the north-western city of Rouen was set on fire.

In 2015, two days after the attacks on the Charlie Hebdo magazine, four people were murdered in a hostage attack on a kosher supermarket.

The explosion comes amid heightened concerns for Europe’s Jewish community, after the latest survey from the EU’s Fundamental Rights Agency (FRA) published last month found that Jewish people in the bloc continue to face high levels of antisemitism.

More than 8,000 Jews in 13 EU countries, including Germany and France, were interviewed. 96% said they had encountered antisemitism in their daily life.

There has been widespread condemnation of the attempted arson attack across France’s political spectrum. Left-wing politician Jean-Luc Mélenchon called it an “intolerable crime”, while the far-right National Rally’s Jordan Bardella said it was “a criminal and antisemtic act”.

When a shell exploded near Oleksandr Budko, the 26-year-old found himself buried alive and in “terrible pain” from injuries that would lead to the amputation of both his legs.

The Ukrainian soldier was helping to defend the north-eastern Kharkiv region from invading Russian forces in August 2022, when his unit was attacked.

Two years on, he’s the star of a reality TV show in which multiple women battle for his affection.

One advert for the Ukrainian version of hit US series The Bachelor shows a smartly-dressed Oleksandr staring wistfully at a flower. In another, he answers questions in military fatigues before performing a series of pull-ups in a gym.

Speaking to me in a rose garden in Kyiv, the veteran-turned-celebrity is in good spirits despite being tired after a busy week.

Oleksandr says he’s hoping to find love on the show after breaking up with his girlfriend last January – but thinks it will be difficult to choose a partner with “millions of people watching”.

His motivations aren’t just romantic. He also wants to use his appearance on the show to raise awareness of the challenges facing disabled Ukrainians.

“This show is watched by millions of people, and it presents a huge opportunity to positively influence their outlook,” he says.

He wants to show that injured veterans are not “outsiders, but full members of society who are living a good life.

“In my case, my life is now even better than before the war, better than before I got injured.”

Oleksandr is always on the go, telling me he spent the previous night filming a music video.

His life wasn’t always like this. In the years before Russia’s full-scale invasion, he was working as a barista in a Kyiv restaurant while studying graphic design.

He says his dreams were “down to earth”: travelling, discovering the world, and growing professionally. He wanted to start a family.

But Oleksandr’s life was turned upside down two years ago, when he became one of hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian men to join the army.

In August 2022, he was stationed near Izyum, an occupied city on the front lines of the Russian advance. It was invaded in the early days of the war and used by Russia as a key military hub to supply its forces from the east.

The city was liberated by Kyiv just a month after Oleksandr was seriously injured while defending the nearby Ukrainian position.

“I felt the earth shift onto me. I felt a terrible pain in my legs and realised that it would mean the amputation of my legs,” he said.

“I screamed from horrific pain and shouted for people to hear me.”

He says he knew his comrades were alive, and they dug him out of the ground and provided first aid. But that’s when he knew his legs were badly hurt.

“I understood that I had lost my legs at the moment of injury, two or three seconds after I felt the pain.”

Oleksandr survived but much of Izyum was left in ruins. At the time, authorities said they had found more than 400 bodies in graves near the city.

Despite a challenging recovery, Oleksandr was able to walk with prosthetic legs within six months.

“When I didn’t have prostheses, I had to move around in a wheelchair. I discovered how inaccessible and unsuited Kyiv was for wheelchair users, even though it’s the capital city,” he says.

“In the historic old town you can’t go anywhere. You can’t cross the road on your own and you can’t go inside any building because there are stairs everywhere.”

War injuries mean Oleksandr’s experience is becoming increasingly common in Ukraine. While there’s no official data recording the number of people injured during the war, tens of thousands are estimated to have lost limbs.

This has resulted in the creation of a separate reality show, called Legs Off – which Oleksandr presented – capturing the difficulties faced by disabled people as they move around Ukrainian cities.

As well as presenting, the veteran has also written a book, won medals at the Invictus Games, and performed with a ballet troupe in the US – all while recovering from his injuries.

He’s so popular in Ukraine that The Bachelor’s application portal crashed shortly after it was announced Oleksandr would take on the main role in the upcoming season.

Producers of The Bachelor are casting the veteran as a symbol of hope.

“Despite his amputations, Oleksandr rides a bike, drives a car, and climbs mountains. He lives life to the fullest,” says Natalia Franchuk, from STB, the network on which the show will air later this year.

“If television is about filming reality, then who better could be the star of The Bachelor now? Who else would be better suited in a country at war?”

Having a pet crocodile in the backyard sounds like a far-fetched Australian fable – like riding kangaroos to school or the existence of drop bears.

But in the Northern Territory (NT), it’s a reality.

And Trevor Sullivan has 11 of the reptiles sharing his tropical home in Batchelor, about an hour south of Darwin.

Among them is Big Jack, who is named after a Jack in the Box toy due to his alarming propensity for lunging. Despite his antics, the giant predator is adored, having joined Mr Sullivan’s household as a hatchling the same day his daughter was born 22 years ago.

“He’s been part of our family ever since… [my daughter] refers to him as brother.”

Also on the 80-acre property is Cricket, still a tiny critter, and Shah, who – at the complete other end of the scale – is more than a century old and has truly lived a life.

“He’s possibly seen two world wars and maybe federation in Australia [in 1901],” Mr Sullivan says of the 4.7m (15.4ft) beast.

He claims Shah once killed a man, has been used for scientific research, was almost poisoned to death at a bird park, and lost half his bottom jaw in a fight at a Queensland crocodile farm, all before joining Mr Sullivan a few years ago.

The 60-year-old lights up as he tells the BBC about his crocodiles: “There’s nothing like them… crocodiles are the Harley Davidson of pets.”

But as the famously quirky region heads to the polls on Saturday, the right to own a pet croc has turned into a somewhat unlikely – and very Territory – election issue.

The cost of living, housing and crime are the prime concerns for many voters, but Mr Sullivan is one of scores left heartbroken after the governing Labor Party moved to ban crocodiles as pets.

It is one of the last places in the country the practice is allowed, but the government says they’re concerned for the wellbeing of both humans and the reptiles. The Country Liberal Party opposition, however, has pledged its support for the practice and has promised a review of the “rushed” decision if elected.

About 250,000 people call the NT home, but relatively few of them own crocodiles. The environment minister’s office said they could not provide a figure because the government is in election caretaker mode, but previous estimates have put the number of permit holders at around 100.

Many of the captive crocs are raised from hatchlings, others rehomed from farms or after causing trouble in the wild.

Regulations have long dictated strict conditions about where, and under what conditions, the animals can be kept. For example, hatchlings can only live in urban areas until they are 60cm long – usually about a year old – at which point they must be handed over to authorities or moved to a property outside the town limits.

Under those rules, however, owners were not required to have any special training or knowledge to keep the beasts.

Tom Hayes says owning – or “saving” – a crocodile is part of the Territory’s appeal, and one of the factors which drew his young family to the Darwin region, from Queensland, earlier this year.

The 40-year-old grew up taking trips to the NT with his dad, fishing in the Mary River alongside giant crocodiles, instilling a love of predators and, eventually, a dream to have his own one day.

“I’m not just some dude that wants a crocodile [for] when I’m having a barbecue with my mates on the weekend,” the tattooist and self-styled conservationist told the BBC.

“I wanted to have somewhere I could bring these poor old buggers and they could just live their lives out – happy, fed… not having to worry about people shooting them.”

He was in process of adopting a mega croc when the NT government announced it would not be issuing any new permits to keep the reptiles as pets.

It has left Mr Hayes reeling and the crocodile he’d hoped to rescue at risk of being put down.

NT Environment Minister Kate Worden said the decision was made “after public consultation” and “taking into account personal safety and animal welfare concerns”.

Existing permits will remain valid, but transfers of permits will not be allowed.

“Let’s remember they are an apex predator and probably not one that’s best kept for captivity,” Ms Worden told reporters, adding that there were instances of crocodiles attacking their owners in the region.

The new rules bring the NT in in line with every other state and territory in Australia – except, oddly, Victoria, which is well outside of the comfortable climate of a saltwater crocodile.

Animal activists, who had been pushing for the change, say it’s a big win.

While some of the people keeping crocodiles “may have good intentions”, no wild animal can have its needs fully met in captivity, argues Olivia Charlton, from World Animal Protection.

“There is no way to replicate the space and freedom these crocodiles would have in the wild, particularly given they live for up to 70 years,” she said in a statement.

Charles Giliam, from the RSPCA NT, said the dangerous nature of crocodiles also made it extremely hard for authorities to regulate the program and ensure the reptiles had an acceptable standard of living and medical care.

“I only know one vet who’s prepared to work with crocodiles,” he said, as an example.

But croc owners say they had no idea the change was coming and are distressed over what may now happen to their pets.

“I don’t think you spend many nights on the couch watching TV, snuggling with your four-and-a-half-meter crocodile… but there’s still that emotional attachment,” Mr Hayes says.

They accuse the government of hiding the change in a broader Crocodile Management Plan to avoid doing true consultation on the issue.

The opposition environment spokeswoman Jo Hersey said “the [Country Liberal Party] supports the rights of Territorians to own crocs as pets under a permit system” and has promised the party will look at the rules if elected.

Both Mr Hayes and Mr Sullivan said there is broad support for greater training and education requirements for permit holders.

But they say the reptiles are surprisingly easy to care for – and reject arguments that keeping them as pets is harmful.

“In the wild, they have a stretch of territory and they then have to fight to keep it. They’re forever hunting for food, forever chasing off their enemies or trying to keep their girlfriend sorted and life’s pretty tough going,” Mr Sullivan says.

“In captivity, if they got a good enclosure, plenty of water, sunlight, a bit of shade, and food on a regular basis, they just love it.

“I have a river running through my property and I actually have wild crocs always trying to get in and join my mob.”

The decision to end the practice is particularly bad timing for Mr Sullivan. He listed his home and his menagerie for sale last year, so he could join his partner in New Zealand.

“It is a bit like a Willy Wonka story – I want some young kids, of the right nature, to take on a property full of wildlife.”

But that’s left him with a quandary that belongs in a maths textbook: If you have 80 acres and 11 crocodiles on the market, but zero permits available to transfer, what’s the answer?

There is “not a chance” he’ll euthanise his crocs, he says. “I’ll have to stay on the property until I die, or until something else changes.”

His hope is resting on the election of a CLP government on Saturday, adding he thinks it is an issue which will galvanise voters.

But Mr Hayes, on the other hand, hopes it isn’t. There are greater issues at play which should decide votes, he explains, and he is optimistic that both parties will come to see sense anyway.

“Whoever’s in needs to really look at it… It’s an attack on the Territory way of life.”

Italian authorities investigating the deaths of seven people in the sinking of a luxury yacht in Sicily say they are looking into potential crimes of “shipwreck and manslaughter”.

They stressed, however, that the investigation was in its initial stages and they were not currently looking at anyone specifically.

UK tech entrepreneur Mike Lynch and his 18-year-old daughter Hannah were among those who died when the Bayesian went down off the coast of Porticello during a storm in the early hours of Monday morning.

It was previously believed the vessel may have sunk because of a waterspout, but the authorities now say the most likely cause was a localised, powerful wind known as a downburst.

The bodies of Jonathan Bloomer, a Morgan Stanley International bank chairman, his wife Judy Bloomer, Clifford Chance lawyer Chris Morvillo, and his wife Neda Morvillo were also recovered from the wreckage some 50m (164 ft) down, after days of deep dive searches with little visibility.

The body of Canadian-Antiguan national Recaldo Thomas, who was working as a chef on the superyacht, was recovered at the scene on Monday.

Post-mortems are set to be conducted.

The remaining 15 people who were on board the luxury yacht were rescued.

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In a press conference on Saturday morning, Ambrogio Cartosio, chief prosecutor of the nearby town of Termini Imerese, said the coastguard had been called at 04:38 local time on Monday but the yacht had already sunk by the time crews had arrived.

Mr Cartosio told journalists he thought it was “probable that offences were committed” surrounding the sinking of the yacht.

He said they will ascertain whether the captain, crew, individuals in charge of supervision, the ship-builder, or others could bear responsibility.

“We will establish each element’s responsibility – that will be done by the inquiry, so we can’t do that prematurely,” he said.

“For me, it is probable that offences were committed – that it could be a case of manslaughter – but we can only establish that if you give us the time to investigate.”

Deputy Prosecutor Raffaele Cammarano told journalists the Italian Air Force had confirmed the sinking was most likely caused by a downburst.

A downburst is a localised, powerful wind that descends from a thunderstorm, spreading out rapidly upon hitting the ground.

The chief of Palermo’s fire brigade said the Bayesian sank stern-first and then rolled onto its right side. He explained that as a result, the victims then sought refuge on the boat’s left side, where the last air pockets remained as it sank.

Local officials said they are looking into why some people on board were able to flee the vessel and others were not.

Speaking on behalf of the divers, a Palermo fire brigade commander said about 70 people were involved in an “intense” search operation each day, with more than 120 dives undertaken in total.

“We were operating at 50 metres depth and that there was very little visibility due to the weather conditions,” he said.

One of the divers involved in the operation told the media it was “difficult” getting into the yacht’s cabins and it required “very lengthy periods to remove obstacles” through them.

Raffaele Macauda, deputy commander of the Palermo coastguard, said the coastguard is conducting in-depth environmental monitoring.

He adds that the owner of the Bayesian has expressed an interest in recovering the vessel from the sea floor, but the timing of this was uncertain.

Some experts have estimated it could take eight weeks to recover the yacht.

An official said the Italian authorities did not have the “exact information” about the yacht’s black box – a device that can record data including a ship’s position, speed, radar information, and sometimes audio.

Passengers on board the yacht were understood to have been celebrating Mr Lynch’s acquittal in a US fraud case.

The businessman, who founded software giant Autonomy in 1996, was cleared in June of carrying out fraud relating to its $11bn (£8.64bn) sale to US company Hewlett Packard.

Andrew Kanter, a close friend to Mr Lynch, said he was the “most brilliant” and “carrying person I have ever known”.

Meanwhile, friends of his daughter, Hannah, have described the 18-year-old as a “warm and beautiful soul”, while teachers have praised her “sky-high intellectual ability”.

In a statement, the Bloomer family described Jonathan and Judy Bloomer as “incredible people and an inspiration to many”.

“Our only comfort is that they are still together now,” the statement said.

The month since Kamala Harris launched her presidential campaign has been a largely unprecedented spell in American politics: never has a modern general election campaign gone from a standstill to a full sprint so quickly.

In that time Democrats pulled together a well-scripted national convention with slickly produced promotional videos, political set-pieces and musical interludes, all done to boost the new nominee. It was a remarkable test of skill by party operatives under extreme pressure.

Over the course of four days in Chicago – and in the packed campaign rallies Ms Harris has held over the past few weeks – the outlines of her campaign strategy have begun to take shape.

And it’s not exactly what one would expect from a sitting vice-president who has occupied an office in the White House for three-and-a-half-years.

Ms Harris is pushing hard to be viewed as the candidate of change in this race. One who, as she said in her convention speech on Thursday, can “chart a new way forward”.

This strategy is in part born out of necessity. Across the globe democracies have been roiled by voter unrest. As economies struggle to recover from the Covid pandemic, regional conflicts churn and tensions over immigration flare up, political incumbents have faced deeply unhappy electorates in Canada, the UK, Germany and India among others.

Polling indicated that President Joe Biden, before he abandoned his re-election campaign last month, was set to confront similar challenges.

The vice-president has turned this situation on its head.

Her background and personal story is a sharp contrast with both the current president and her Republican opponent.

It also helps that Ms Harris is running against a former president who, while also styling himself as a change candidate, has his own sometimes controversial, sometimes unpopular White House record to defend.

“This election, I do strongly believe, is about two very different visions for the future,” Ms Harris said at a rally in North Carolina last week.

“Ours focused on the future, and the other focused on the past.”

For the most part, Ms Harris has shied away from describing in detail what her presidency would look like.

There’s talk of unity and a way beyond America’s divisive partisanship; a focus on strengthening the economy and reducing consumer prices; and a heavy emphasis on reproductive rights and abortion – an area of particular strength for Democrats.

But it is vague. And this vagueness may suit the Harris campaign just fine.

By largely being an empty policy vessel, Ms Harris has allowed various constituencies within the Democratic Party to project their hopes and priorities onto her.

If she can keep all those pieces together for the next few months, she might just win.

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Labour leaders expressed optimism that she would focus on union protections and bread-and-butter economic issues.

Climate activists touted the Biden administration’s clean energy legislation and expected the candidate to expand that effort.

Civil rights leaders predicted the first woman of colour to win a major party nomination would advance racial equality.

“The fundamental question people ask is, are you fighting for me, or are you fighting for someone else?” said Tom Perez, who served as secretary of labour in the Obama administration and has been an adviser to the Biden White House.

“I think people have a pretty clear sense that she’s a fighter for everyone, not just certain people in certain zip codes or certain tax brackets, not just people of certain races or ethnicities, but everyone.”

In other words, the vice-president’s policy vagueness has allowed her to cast as broad an appeal as possible in what is shaping up to be an election where every undecided voter counts.

It has been labelled by some as a “vibe” campaign – based at least in part on feeling and general impressions.

On Wednesday, former television host, author and international celebrity Oprah Winfrey, who identified herself as a political independent, said Ms Harris and her running mate Tim Walz were the candidates who would deliver “decency and respect”.

“I’m calling on all you independents and all you undecideds,” she said. “Values and character matter most of all, in leadership and in life.”

Throughout the week, a parade of Republicans – including former officeholders and Donald Trump supporters – also took the stage at the convention to pitch Harris as the best option in November.

“Harris will want to be centre-left, not far-left,” said Chris Shays, a former Republican congressman from Connecticut who attended the Democratic Convention this year.

According to Mr Shays, the vice-president will be pulled to the American political middle because that is where the nation is.

Ms Harris’s strategy is not without risk, however.

Just as Democratic groups are projecting their ideas onto the vice-president’s campaign, so are her Republican opponents. And they are using Ms Harris’s past, more liberal – and sometimes controversial – positions and statements as evidence that the lack of specificity is merely a cover for a left-wing agenda.

“Her speech was the perfect example of what happens when you have no solutions to offer for the problems you’ve delivered to Americans’ doorsteps, so you gaslight and deflect,” the Trump campaign said in a statement responding to the vice-president’s convention address.

Ms Harris has also avoided sweeping press conferences and more pointed interviews with mainstream media outlets so far – interviews that could hold her to account for past positions and press her for further policy details.

Her speech last week addressing the economy was one of the few instances where the vice-president unveiled concrete new proposals.

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But over the past four days some nuggets of how she would govern have emerged.

She has proposed a $25,000 tax credit for first-time homebuyers. She pledged to use the power of government to reduce the cost of prescription drugs and punish price-gouging for groceries. She backed bipartisan immigration legislation that was blocked in the Senate earlier this year.

Ms Harris also pledged to push for a federal law that would guarantee a basic right to abortion across the entire US, pre-empting conservative state bans.

For some Democrats the details so far aren’t enough.

“We need to hear some actual policy things,” said Lewanna Tucker, chair of the Democratic Party in Fulton County, Georgia. “She needs to be letting us a little bit more behind the curtain and talk about structural things that are going to be done.”

Perhaps more concrete policy details aren’t necessary. At a time when American politics is viewed by much of the American public as divisive and toxic, there may be benefit to building a political campaign not around policy specifics, but rather one that appeals to emotion.

In 2008, Barack Obama successfully campaigned on hope and change – which is not exactly the makings of a four-point plan.

“It’s a return to a level of hope that I don’t think that we have collectively experienced since 2008,” said Yasmin Radjy, who runs the liberal grassroots organising group Swing Left.

She said there had been an exhaustion among volunteers on the left for the past eight years, but the switch to Ms Harris was “like a weight had lifted off their shoulders”.

The willingness by Democrats to savage the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 – a sometimes controversial blueprint for a new Republican administration that Trump and his campaign have repeatedly disavowed – also shows the risks of being even tangentially associated with the nuts and bolts of governing.

In her Thursday night address, Ms Harris pledged to move beyond partisan divisions and find shared common ground.

“I promise to be a president for all Americans,” she said. “You can always trust me to put country above party and self.”

Those promises aren’t unfamiliar in American politics, of course. Similar assurances have been made over the last few decades. But something has been different about this Democratic nominee and Democratic convention.

The wattage of star power this week – with appearances by Pink, Stevie Wonder and Lil Jon, among others – and the campaign’s heavy reliance on pop culture connections, like Charlie XCX, suggest it is trying to position itself as a cultural movement rather than a political one.

It remains to be seen whether this will be an effective strategy.

But at least for now, it has pulled the Democratic Party out of the doldrums and despair of early July and into a dead heat with Trump and the Republicans heading into the crucial final months of this campaign.

A landmark report into problems faced by women in the Malayalam-language film industry has revealed the deep rot in one of India’s most popular film hubs.

The findings of the three-member panel are pretty damning.

The 290-page report – parts of which have been redacted to hide identities of survivors and those accused of wrongdoing – says the industry is dominated by “a mafia of powerful men” and that “sexual harassment of women is rampant”.

Headed by a former judge of the Kerala High Court and set up by the state government in 2017, the Hema committee details the abysmal working conditions on sets – including a lack of toilets and changing rooms for junior artists, no food and water for them, poor pay and no accommodation or transport facilities.

“There are no toilets, so women have to go in the bushes or behind thick trees. During their periods, not being able to change their sanitary napkins for long hours and holding urine for long causes physical discomfort and makes them sick, in some cases needing hospitalisation,” it says.

The report, which was submitted to the government in December 2019, was made public only this week after nearly five years of delay and multiple legal challenges by members of the film industry.

The panel was set up in the aftermath of the horrific sexual assault on a leading actress in the film industry. Bhavana Menon, who has worked in more than 80 films in southern Indian languages and won a number of prestigious awards, was assaulted by a group of men while travelling from Thrissur to Kochi in February 2017.

Her assault made headlines, especially after Dileep, one of the Malayalam-language film industry’s biggest actors and Menon’s co-star in half a dozen films, was named as an accused and charged with criminal conspiracy. He denied the charges, but was arrested and held in custody for three months before being released on bail. The case continues to be heard in court.

Indian law bars identification of survivors of sexual assault, but it was known from the start that it was Ms Menon who had been assaulted. In 2022, she waived her anonymity in a post on Instagram and in an interview to the BBC.

A few months after the attack on Ms Menon, Women in Cinema Collective (WCC) – a group formed by some of her colleagues in a film industry known for its variety of successful mainstream and critically acclaimed films – petitioned the government, seeking swift action in the case and also to address the problems faced by women in cinema.

In the report, retired Justice K Hema says the WCC told her that “women are being silenced as the prestige of the film industry needs to be upheld”.

The panel interviewed several dozen men and women, including artists, producers, directors, scriptwriters, cinematographers, hairstylists, makeup artists and costume designers, and “gathered evidence including video and audio clips and WhatsApp messages”.

Describing sexual harassment as the “worst evil” women in cinema face, the report said the panellists saw evidence that “sexual harassment remains shockingly rampant” and that “it goes on unchecked and uncontrolled”.

The industry “is controlled by a group of male actors, producers, distributors, exhibitors and directors who have gained enormous fame and wealth” and they were among the perpetrators, it added.

“Men in industry make open demands for sex without any qualms as if it’s their birthright. Women are left with very little options but to oblige – or reject at the cost of their long awaited dream of pursuing cinema as their profession.

“The experiences of many women are really shocking and of such gravity that they have not disclosed the details even to their close family members.”

Many of the people the panel approached were initially reluctant to speak because “they were afraid they would lose their jobs”.

“In the beginning, we found their fear strange but as our study progressed we realised it was well-founded. We are concerned about their and their close relatives’ safety.”

The report, the WCC says, has vindicated its stand. “For years, we have been saying that there is a systemic problem in the industry. Sexual harassment is just one of them. This report proves it,” Beena Paul, an award-winning editor and one of the founding members of the WCC, told the BBC.

“We were always told that we were troublemakers [for raising such issues]. This report proves that it [the condition] is far worse than what even we thought,” she said.

Members of the WCC say they have faced difficulty in getting work since they began demanding better working conditions on film sets. “People don’t like the fact that we are asking questions. So, quite a few members have faced difficult situations,” Ms Paul says.

The Association of Malayalam Movie Artists (AMMA), a top industry body which counts superstars like Mohanlal and Mamooty among its members, denied the accusations. Its general secretary Siddique disagreed that there was a small, powerful group that controlled the industry.

He also denied that sexual harassment was rampant in the industry and said that most of the complaints they received were about the delay or a lack of payment for workers. He said conditions for women had improved on film sets in the past five years and all facilities were now available to them.

In the week since its release, the report has created ripples in the state, with activists and prominent opposition leaders demanding action against those accused of wrongdoing.

Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan said if any woman who testified before the committee came forward to file a complaint, the government would take action. “No matter how big they are, they will be brought before the law,” he said.

On Thursday, a public interest petition was filed in the Kerala High Court, seeking initiation of criminal proceedings against those accused in the report.

The court ordered the government to submit a copy of the report and the judges said they would decide if criminal action needed to be taken once they had read it.

Allegations of harassment and abuse in films are not new in India – in 2018, the #MeToo movement hit the country’s most popular film industry Bollywood after actress Tanushree Dutta accused veteran actor Nana Patekar of behaving inappropriately towards her on a film set in 2008. Patekar denied the allegations.

Ms Dutta, who has since claimed that she has been denied work, described the Hema committee report as “useless”, adding that earlier reports about making workplaces safer for women had not helped.

Parvathy Thiruvothu, an award-winning actress and a key member of the WCC, however, told Asianet news channel that she considered the release of the report “a victory”.

“It’s opened up a door for big changes within the industry,” she said.

Jeo Baby, director of The Great Indian Kitchen, a critically-acclaimed film that examines the patriarchal structure within the family, told the BBC that while gender issues remain a concern, change is under way in the industry. “This is the right time to correct this. The film industry has to fight this together.”

The report, which has made several recommendations to make the industry a safe place for women, says their inquiry and recommendations are not to find fault with any individual, but “an earnest attempt to ennoble a profession so that it becomes a viable career option for aspiring artists and technicians, both male and female”.

“Hopefully filmmaking will become so safe that parents can send their daughters and sons to the profession with the same confidence and sense of security as they send their children to an engineering firm or a college,” it adds.

Read more:

• India arrests after actress says she was abducted and raped
• Bhavana Menon breaks silence on sexual assault
• #MeToo: Why sexual harassment is a reality in Bollywood
• Sex harassment claims shake top India dance academy

A court in Taipei has jailed eight Taiwanese soldiers for spying on behalf of China in exchange for money.

Retired military officers bribed active duty soldiers with as much as 700,000 Taiwan dollars ($21,900; £16,700) to join a spy network, the court found.

One of the men, who was believed to be key to recruiting soldiers, got a 13-year sentence, the longest in the group.

One of the recruits, a lieutenant-colonel, was handed nine years for planning to defect to China by flying a helicopter, while another shot an instructional video about surrendering to China in the event of war.

China sees self-ruled Taiwan as a breakaway province that will eventually be under its control, and has not ruled out the use of force to take the island.

The two sides have been spying on each other since the end of the Chinese civil war in 1949.

Ten people in total were indicted for spying last year, and eight were sentenced on Thursday. The court acquitted one, while another – a retired officer – remains at large.

“They were seduced by money,” the court said.

“Their actions violated their official duties of being loyal to the country, defending the country and the people… to seriously endanger national security and the well-being of the people of Taiwan.”

Taiwan recently flagged Beijing’s growing espionage efforts, with the sentencing on Thursday the latest in a string of cases.

Last month, a sergeant who worked at a navy training centre was indicted for allegedly photographing and leaking confidential defence data to China.

Taipei has also raised concern over the growing frequency of Chinese fighter jet flights around the island.

On Friday, Taiwan’s President William Lai said the island’s people “must unite as one” and “defend national sovereignty and safeguard democracy”.

He was speaking at an event to commemorate the 66th anniversary of China’s assault on Taiwan’s Kinmen islands.

A TikTok star from a small city in Tennessee has made it his mission to show the world British food is not all that bad.

Food reviewer Kalani Smith, who goes by Kalani Ghost Hunter (KGH) online, racks up millions of views posting his reviews on social media – from Welsh cakes to Greggs.

After initially building up a following investigating the paranormal, a pivot to reviewing British culinary staples has seen Mr Smith’s follower count balloon to more than three million on TikTok alone.

Having recently toured south Wales, Mr Smith boldly declared Cardiff Market’s food beats London’s Camden Market’s “10 times out of 10”.

“The most interesting thing about this journey… is that the perception around the world, especially in the US, is that the food in the UK is bland, it’s bad,” said Mr Smith.

“I think my whole objective up until this point has been is to document that this is not the case.

“There’s obviously things that are not good in every country, but there’s also some things that are absolutely incredible.”

“A lot of people come to the UK and they visit London, and that’s their extent of visiting the UK,” said Mr Smith, who hails from Mount Juliet in Tennessee.

“Whereas I’ve been to so many cities in the UK that I’ve got a pretty good perception and understanding of the majority of food… I’ve had so many of the regional dishes.”

Mr Smith’s social media career as a ghost hunter took an unexpected turn when, on a trip to the UK earlier this year, he decided to review arguably the most British meal of them all – a roast dinner.

“Things really took a change for me after that point,” said Mr Smith, who has been a food reviewer ever since.

Throughout his travels in the UK, the almost-exclusive setting for his reviews, he found one cuisine particularly stood out.

“The UK’s curry scene is untouchable,” he said.

“You can go to so many different parts of the UK and get a really good curry.”

However, Mr Smith does not have such kind words for all of the UK’s traditional dishes, saying pie, mash and liquor was the worst thing he had.

“That’s a London thing… but that liquor sauce is just not something that I would ever want to eat again.”

On a recent whistle-stop tour of south Wales, Mr Smith visited Newport, Cardiff, Port Talbot and Swansea.

“One of the highlights of the trip definitely had to be the Welsh cake… absolutely incredible,” said Mr Smith, after visiting Cardiff Bakestones in the city’s market.

“My first trip here, I had a horrible Welsh cake from Morrisons out of a package, and everyone told me, you have to get a fresh one.

“We went to the Cardiff market and had some incredible food, Welsh cake being one of those.”

Another highlight of Welsh cuisine was our famed traditional Welsh… tacos?

“Some of the best tacos I’ve had in the UK can be found in Cardiff Market,” he said of the market’s The Bearded Taco.

In Swansea, he said he had a “really good experience” with cockles and laverbread and Welsh rarebit.

“I had to get laverbread from Wales. I had this cockles and laverbread concoction that actually was really good.

“Laverbread by itself, without cooking. It was not a good idea.”

He did, however, tempt the wrath of Swansea natives with a less than perfect, but still positive, review of Joe’s Ice Cream.

“Joe’s Ice Cream in Swansea is one that I’ve had commented hundreds and hundreds of times, and everyone from Swansea talks about Joe’s Ice Cream.

“Joe’s Ice Cream is good, but it doesn’t rank in the top 10 for best ice cream I’ve ever had.

“It’s not something that I would drive or stand in line for.”

Mr Smith said balancing the skill of balancing locals’ passion for their signature dishes with giving an honest review was an important part of the job.

“The key is – you have to be respectful, right? – If you watch any video that I do, even if it is negative, most of the time, I try my best to be respectful.

“Each city in each region has a dish that they kind of cling to and and they’re proud of this dish.

“If I don’t think something tastes good, I’m not going to say [it does] to, you know, save someone’s feelings.

“Just because it’s not my taste and it’s not something I enjoy doesn’t mean that someone else out there doesn’t… I will always be honest with people.”

At least 14 people have died after a bus carrying passengers from India fell into a river in Nepal, officials have said.

There were around 40 people on the bus, which was travelling to Nepal’s capital Kathmandu from Pokhara, according to reports.

Rescue operations are underway at the accident site on the bank of the Marsyangdi river in Tanahun district.

The cause of the accident and the identities of the victims have not been confirmed yet.

“The bus bearing number plate UP FT 7623 plunged into the river and is lying on the bank of the river,” news agency ANI quoted Deepkumar Raya, a senior police official from Tanahun, as saying. The vehicle is registered in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh.

Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis of the western state of Maharashtra said that some of the victims were from the state.

“We are in touch with the Uttar Pradesh government to bring the bodies of the deceased to Maharashtra in coordination with the Nepal government,” he posted on X (formerly Twitter).

Videos from the accident site show the mangled remains of the bus lying at the bottom of a hilly slope, next to a gushing river. Rescue personnel can be seen looking for survivors among the wreckage.

A Nepal army helicopter carrying a medical team has been despatched to the accident site.

The bus route from Pokhara to Kathmandu is very popular among Indian tourists and pilgrims.

Accidents are often reported in Nepal, due to factors including poor maintenance of roads and vehicles and narrow paths in mountainous areas.

In July, dozens of people went missing after a landslide swept two passenger buses into the Trishuli river.

Russia and Ukraine exchanged 230 prisoners of war on Saturday, weeks after Ukraine launched a cross-border attack into the Kursk region of Russia.

The Russians released on Saturday were captured in Kursk, Russian state news agencies reported, citing the country’s defence ministry.

The ministry said 115 soldiers were returned “from territories controlled by the Kiev regime,” while Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said “another 115 of our defenders have returned home today”.

It is the first such swap since Ukraine first began its incursion into Russia on 6 August.

Kyiv has said one of the goals of the Kursk offensive is to capture Russian soldiers to trade for Ukrainian prisoners of war. Ukraine claims to control over 1,000 sqkm of the Kursk region.

The United Arab Emirates reportedly mediated the swap.

Separately, on Saturday Ukraine said it had carried out an attack on a Russian ammunition depot in the southern Russian region of Voronezh. Kyiv also reported that five people had been killed in a Russian strike on the eastern town of Kostyantynivka.

President Zelensky said the returned Ukrainian soldiers were members of the National Guard, the Armed Forces, the Navy, and the Border Guard.

“We remember each and every one. We are searching for and making every effort to bring everyone back,” he said.

“This brings closer the release of our military, our civilians from Russian captivity. Thanks to our team and partners, the UAE for our people returning home,” he said.

Mr Zelensky said that in addition to capturing Russian soldiers, the Kursk operation had other goals he could not disclose.

The Ukrainian president said the operation was a preventative strike to deter Russian attacks towards Sumy, a city in Ukraine.

He added Ukraine would do everything to force Russian President Vladimir Putin to end the war through diplomacy.

Independent White House candidate Robert F Kennedy Jr has joined the Republican nominee, Donald Trump, on stage at a rally in Arizona after dropping out of the race and endorsing the former US president.

Mr Kennedy, 70, a Democrat for most of his life and the scion of the Kennedy dynasty, said the principles that had led him to leave the party had now compelled him “to throw my support to President Trump”.

He said in a press conference in Phoenix, Arizona, on Friday that he would seek to remove his name from the ballot in 10 battleground states.

Before welcoming RFK Jr to the stage on Friday, Trump promised, if elected, to release all remaining documents relating to the 1963 assassination of President John F Kennedy.

Trump praised Mr Kennedy as “phenomenal” and “brilliant” at the rally later in Glendale. Democratic rival Kamala Harris said she would try to “earn” the support of Kennedy voters.

With November’s election looming, Mr Kennedy’s polling has slumped from a high of double figures as funds and national coverage dried up.

The son of US Senator Robert F Kennedy and nephew of President John F Kennedy, he is from the most famed family in Democratic politics.

Mr Kennedy’s decision to back a Republican for the White House has outraged his relatives, who previously condemned his invocation of the family name in a Super Bowl ad back in February.

Kerry Kennedy, his sister, said his support for Trump was a “betrayal of the values that our father and our family hold most dear. It is a sad ending to a sad story.”

“This decision is agonising for me because of the difficulties it causes my wife and my children and my friends,” Mr Kennedy said on Friday.

“But I have the certainty that this is what I’m meant to do. And that certainty gives me internal peace, even in storms.”

He is married to Cheryl Hines, the star of HBO comedy Curb Your Enthusiasm. She posted on X, formerly Twitter, that she deeply respected her husband’s decision to suspend his campaign. She did not comment on his endorsement of Trump.

Mr Kennedy told reporters on Friday that Trump’s insistence he could end the war in Ukraine by negotiating with Russia “alone would justify my support for his campaign”.

“There are still many issues and approaches on which we continue to have very serious differences. But we are aligned on other key issues.”

He said he would remove his name from 10 states where his presence would be a “spoiler” to Trump’s effort. He has already withdrawn from the battleground states of Arizona and Pennsylvania.

But it is too late for him to pull out from the swing states of Michigan, Nevada and Wisconsin, election officials told AP news agency.

Mr Kennedy said he had launched his campaign in April 2023 “as a Democrat, the party of my father, my uncle… the champions of the Constitution”.

But he left because “it had become the party of war, censorship, corruption, big pharma, big tech, big money”.

He blamed his decision to suspend his campaign on “media control” and his former party’s efforts to thwart his run, adding: “In my heart I no longer believe I have a realistic path to victory in the face of relentless and systematic censorship.”

Mr Kennedy hovered around 14% – 16% in polls at his most popular. However, his ratings have slumped to single digits since Ms Harris became the Democratic nominee.

He said in his press conference that he had offered to work with Ms Harris and her bid for the White House.

Democrats sounded unfazed by his announcement.

“Donald Trump isn’t earning an endorsement that’s going to help build support, he’s inheriting the baggage of a failed fringe candidate. Good riddance,” Democratic National Committee senior adviser Mary Beth Cahill said in a statement.

Mr Kennedy’s campaign became synonymous with the anti-vaccine movement as he frequently touted his leadership of the Children’s Health Defense organisation, formerly known as the World Mercury Project.

In recent weeks, Mr Kennedy recounted how he dumped a dead bear cub that had been hit by a car in New York’s Central Park in 2014 as a joke.

Earlier in his campaign, it was revealed that he had suffered from a brain parasite over a decade ago which caused severe memory loss and brain fog.

His announcement capped days of rumour that Mr Kennedy offered to endorse Trump to secure a role in his next administration.

Trump told CNN earlier this week he would “certainly be open” to Mr Kennedy playing a role, while Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr, said he would be suited to “blow up” a federal department.

Merrill Matthews, a resident scholar with the conservative Institute for Policy Innovation, told the BBC that Mr Kennedy’s decision highlighted the two-party system in the US and “how difficult it is to get new ideas and fresh people into the process”.

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Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is in Ukraine to hold talks with President Volodymyr Zelensky. The trip comes just weeks after he met Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow.

The visit is significant because Kyiv and some Western capitals had reacted sharply to Mr Modi’s visit to the Russian capital in July.

Mr Zelensky was particularly critical, saying he was “disappointed to see the leader of the world’s largest democracy hug the world’s most bloody criminal in Moscow”.

So, is Mr Modi visiting Kyiv to placate Mr Zelensky and other Western leaders?

Not entirely.

It’s not surprising to see India balance its relations between two competing nations or blocs. The country’s famed non-alignment approach to geopolitics has served it well for decades.

Friday’s visit – the first by an Indian prime minister to Ukraine – is more about signalling that while India will continue to have strong relations with Russia, it will still work closely with the West.

Michael Kugelman, director of the South Asia Institute at the Wilson Centre think-tank in Washington, says the trip will further reassert India’s strategic autonomy.

“India isn’t in the business of placating Western powers, or anyone for that matter. It’s a trip meant to advance Indian interests, by reasserting friendship with Kyiv and conveying its concerns about the continuing war,” he says.

However, the timing of the visit does reflect that Indian diplomats have taken onboard the sharp reactions from the US to Mr Modi’s Moscow visit.

India has refrained from directly criticising Russia over the war, much to the annoyance of Western powers.

• Modi’s balancing act as he meets Putin in Moscow

Delhi, however, has often spoken about the importance of respecting territorial integrity and sovereignty of nations. It has continuously pushed for diplomacy and dialogue to end the war.

Mr Modi’s Moscow visit in July came hours after Russian bombing killed at least 41 people in Ukraine, including at a children’s hospital in Kyiv, sparking a global outcry.

The Indian PM said the death of children was painful and terrifying but stopped short of blaming Russia.

Mr Modi is not likely to deviate from this stance during his visit to Kyiv. The US and other Western nations have grown to accept Delhi’s stand, given India’s time-tested relationship with Moscow and its reliance on Russian military equipment.

India, the world’s largest importer of arms, has diversified its defence import portfolio and also grown domestic manufacturing in recent years but it still buys more than 50% of its defence equipment from Russia.

India has also increased its oil imports from Russia, taking advantage of cheaper prices offered by Moscow – Russia was the top oil supplier to India last year.

The US and its allies have often implored India to take a clearer stand on the war but they have also refrained from applying harsh sanctions or pressure.

The West also sees India as a counterbalance to China and doesn’t want to upset that dynamic. India, now the fifth largest economy in the world, is also a growing market for business.

Mr Kugelman says the West will welcome the visit and see it as Delhi’s willingness to engage with all sides.

“Mr Modi has a strong incentive to signal that it’s not leaning so close to Moscow that there’s nothing to salvage with Kyiv,” he says.

This is important because India wants to keep growing its relations with the West, particularly with the US, and wouldn’t want to upset the momentum. Eric Garcetti, the US ambassador to India, recently said the relationship should not be “taken for granted”.

India also needs the West as China, its Asian rival, and Russia have forged close ties in recent years.

While Delhi has long viewed Moscow as a power that can put pressure on an assertive China when needed, it can’t be taken for granted.

Meanwhile, many media commentators have spoken about the possibility of Mr Modi positioning himself as a peacemaker, given India’s close relations with both Moscow and the West.

But it’s unlikely that he will turn up with a peace plan.

“Is India really up to it, and are the conditions right? India doesn’t like other countries trying to mediate in its own issues, chief among them Kashmir. And I don’t think Mr Modi would formally offer mediation unless both Russia and Ukraine want it. And at this point, I don’t think they do,” Mr Kugelman adds.

Ukraine, however, will still welcome Mr Modi’s visit and see it as an opportunity to engage with a close ally of Moscow, something it hasn’t done much since the war began.

Mr Zelensky, though, is unlikely to hold back his criticism of Mr Putin in front of the Indian PM. Mr Modi can live with that as he has faced such situations many times in other Western capitals.

Moscow is not likely to react to the visit as it has also been making concessions for Delhi’s multilateral approach to geopolitics.

But beyond reasserting its non-alignment policy, Delhi also has bigger goals from this visit.

India has been ramping up engagement with Europe in the past decade, particularly with the underserved regions in Central and Eastern Europe.

Delhi wants to keep consolidating its relations with the big four – the UK, Italy, Germany and France – but also wants to boost engagement with other countries in Europe.

Mr Modi is also visiting Poland on this trip – the first Indian PM to visit the country in 45 years. He also became the first Indian prime minister to visit Austria in 41 years in July.

Analysts say that this signals India’s growing understanding that Central European nations will play a bigger role in geopolitics in the future and strong relations with them will serve Delhi well.

The Indian government has also revived trade deal negotiations with Europe. It has signed a trade and investment deal with the European Free Trade Association, which is the intergovernmental organisation of Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland.

So, while there will be a lot of focus on the war during his visit, Indian diplomats are likely to stay focused on the bigger goal.

“Central and Eastern Europe now have greater agency in writing their own destiny and reshaping regional geopolitics. Mr Modi’s visit to Warsaw and Kyiv is about recognising that momentous change at the heart of Europe and deepening bilateral political, economic and security ties with the Central European states,” foreign policy analyst C Raja Mohan wrote in the Indian Express newspaper, summing up Mr Modi’s wider goal.

Having a pet crocodile in the backyard sounds like a far-fetched Australian fable – like riding kangaroos to school or the existence of drop bears.

But in the Northern Territory (NT), it’s a reality.

And Trevor Sullivan has 11 of the reptiles sharing his tropical home in Batchelor, about an hour south of Darwin.

Among them is Big Jack, who is named after a Jack in the Box toy due to his alarming propensity for lunging. Despite his antics, the giant predator is adored, having joined Mr Sullivan’s household as a hatchling the same day his daughter was born 22 years ago.

“He’s been part of our family ever since… [my daughter] refers to him as brother.”

Also on the 80-acre property is Cricket, still a tiny critter, and Shah, who – at the complete other end of the scale – is more than a century old and has truly lived a life.

“He’s possibly seen two world wars and maybe federation in Australia [in 1901],” Mr Sullivan says of the 4.7m (15.4ft) beast.

He claims Shah once killed a man, has been used for scientific research, was almost poisoned to death at a bird park, and lost half his bottom jaw in a fight at a Queensland crocodile farm, all before joining Mr Sullivan a few years ago.

The 60-year-old lights up as he tells the BBC about his crocodiles: “There’s nothing like them… crocodiles are the Harley Davidson of pets.”

But as the famously quirky region heads to the polls on Saturday, the right to own a pet croc has turned into a somewhat unlikely – and very Territory – election issue.

The cost of living, housing and crime are the prime concerns for many voters, but Mr Sullivan is one of scores left heartbroken after the governing Labor Party moved to ban crocodiles as pets.

It is one of the last places in the country the practice is allowed, but the government says they’re concerned for the wellbeing of both humans and the reptiles. The Country Liberal Party opposition, however, has pledged its support for the practice and has promised a review of the “rushed” decision if elected.

About 250,000 people call the NT home, but relatively few of them own crocodiles. The environment minister’s office said they could not provide a figure because the government is in election caretaker mode, but previous estimates have put the number of permit holders at around 100.

Many of the captive crocs are raised from hatchlings, others rehomed from farms or after causing trouble in the wild.

Regulations have long dictated strict conditions about where, and under what conditions, the animals can be kept. For example, hatchlings can only live in urban areas until they are 60cm long – usually about a year old – at which point they must be handed over to authorities or moved to a property outside the town limits.

Under those rules, however, owners were not required to have any special training or knowledge to keep the beasts.

Tom Hayes says owning – or “saving” – a crocodile is part of the Territory’s appeal, and one of the factors which drew his young family to the Darwin region, from Queensland, earlier this year.

The 40-year-old grew up taking trips to the NT with his dad, fishing in the Mary River alongside giant crocodiles, instilling a love of predators and, eventually, a dream to have his own one day.

“I’m not just some dude that wants a crocodile [for] when I’m having a barbecue with my mates on the weekend,” the tattooist and self-styled conservationist told the BBC.

“I wanted to have somewhere I could bring these poor old buggers and they could just live their lives out – happy, fed… not having to worry about people shooting them.”

He was in process of adopting a mega croc when the NT government announced it would not be issuing any new permits to keep the reptiles as pets.

It has left Mr Hayes reeling and the crocodile he’d hoped to rescue at risk of being put down.

NT Environment Minister Kate Worden said the decision was made “after public consultation” and “taking into account personal safety and animal welfare concerns”.

Existing permits will remain valid, but transfers of permits will not be allowed.

“Let’s remember they are an apex predator and probably not one that’s best kept for captivity,” Ms Worden told reporters, adding that there were instances of crocodiles attacking their owners in the region.

The new rules bring the NT in in line with every other state and territory in Australia – except, oddly, Victoria, which is well outside of the comfortable climate of a saltwater crocodile.

Animal activists, who had been pushing for the change, say it’s a big win.

While some of the people keeping crocodiles “may have good intentions”, no wild animal can have its needs fully met in captivity, argues Olivia Charlton, from World Animal Protection.

“There is no way to replicate the space and freedom these crocodiles would have in the wild, particularly given they live for up to 70 years,” she said in a statement.

Charles Giliam, from the RSPCA NT, said the dangerous nature of crocodiles also made it extremely hard for authorities to regulate the program and ensure the reptiles had an acceptable standard of living and medical care.

“I only know one vet who’s prepared to work with crocodiles,” he said, as an example.

But croc owners say they had no idea the change was coming and are distressed over what may now happen to their pets.

“I don’t think you spend many nights on the couch watching TV, snuggling with your four-and-a-half-meter crocodile… but there’s still that emotional attachment,” Mr Hayes says.

They accuse the government of hiding the change in a broader Crocodile Management Plan to avoid doing true consultation on the issue.

The opposition environment spokeswoman Jo Hersey said “the [Country Liberal Party] supports the rights of Territorians to own crocs as pets under a permit system” and has promised the party will look at the rules if elected.

Both Mr Hayes and Mr Sullivan said there is broad support for greater training and education requirements for permit holders.

But they say the reptiles are surprisingly easy to care for – and reject arguments that keeping them as pets is harmful.

“In the wild, they have a stretch of territory and they then have to fight to keep it. They’re forever hunting for food, forever chasing off their enemies or trying to keep their girlfriend sorted and life’s pretty tough going,” Mr Sullivan says.

“In captivity, if they got a good enclosure, plenty of water, sunlight, a bit of shade, and food on a regular basis, they just love it.

“I have a river running through my property and I actually have wild crocs always trying to get in and join my mob.”

The decision to end the practice is particularly bad timing for Mr Sullivan. He listed his home and his menagerie for sale last year, so he could join his partner in New Zealand.

“It is a bit like a Willy Wonka story – I want some young kids, of the right nature, to take on a property full of wildlife.”

But that’s left him with a quandary that belongs in a maths textbook: If you have 80 acres and 11 crocodiles on the market, but zero permits available to transfer, what’s the answer?

There is “not a chance” he’ll euthanise his crocs, he says. “I’ll have to stay on the property until I die, or until something else changes.”

His hope is resting on the election of a CLP government on Saturday, adding he thinks it is an issue which will galvanise voters.

But Mr Hayes, on the other hand, hopes it isn’t. There are greater issues at play which should decide votes, he explains, and he is optimistic that both parties will come to see sense anyway.

“Whoever’s in needs to really look at it… It’s an attack on the Territory way of life.”

A landmark report into problems faced by women in the Malayalam-language film industry has revealed the deep rot in one of India’s most popular film hubs.

The findings of the three-member panel are pretty damning.

The 290-page report – parts of which have been redacted to hide identities of survivors and those accused of wrongdoing – says the industry is dominated by “a mafia of powerful men” and that “sexual harassment of women is rampant”.

Headed by a former judge of the Kerala High Court and set up by the state government in 2017, the Hema committee details the abysmal working conditions on sets – including a lack of toilets and changing rooms for junior artists, no food and water for them, poor pay and no accommodation or transport facilities.

“There are no toilets, so women have to go in the bushes or behind thick trees. During their periods, not being able to change their sanitary napkins for long hours and holding urine for long causes physical discomfort and makes them sick, in some cases needing hospitalisation,” it says.

The report, which was submitted to the government in December 2019, was made public only this week after nearly five years of delay and multiple legal challenges by members of the film industry.

The panel was set up in the aftermath of the horrific sexual assault on a leading actress in the film industry. Bhavana Menon, who has worked in more than 80 films in southern Indian languages and won a number of prestigious awards, was assaulted by a group of men while travelling from Thrissur to Kochi in February 2017.

Her assault made headlines, especially after Dileep, one of the Malayalam-language film industry’s biggest actors and Menon’s co-star in half a dozen films, was named as an accused and charged with criminal conspiracy. He denied the charges, but was arrested and held in custody for three months before being released on bail. The case continues to be heard in court.

Indian law bars identification of survivors of sexual assault, but it was known from the start that it was Ms Menon who had been assaulted. In 2022, she waived her anonymity in a post on Instagram and in an interview to the BBC.

A few months after the attack on Ms Menon, Women in Cinema Collective (WCC) – a group formed by some of her colleagues in a film industry known for its variety of successful mainstream and critically acclaimed films – petitioned the government, seeking swift action in the case and also to address the problems faced by women in cinema.

In the report, retired Justice K Hema says the WCC told her that “women are being silenced as the prestige of the film industry needs to be upheld”.

The panel interviewed several dozen men and women, including artists, producers, directors, scriptwriters, cinematographers, hairstylists, makeup artists and costume designers, and “gathered evidence including video and audio clips and WhatsApp messages”.

Describing sexual harassment as the “worst evil” women in cinema face, the report said the panellists saw evidence that “sexual harassment remains shockingly rampant” and that “it goes on unchecked and uncontrolled”.

The industry “is controlled by a group of male actors, producers, distributors, exhibitors and directors who have gained enormous fame and wealth” and they were among the perpetrators, it added.

“Men in industry make open demands for sex without any qualms as if it’s their birthright. Women are left with very little options but to oblige – or reject at the cost of their long awaited dream of pursuing cinema as their profession.

“The experiences of many women are really shocking and of such gravity that they have not disclosed the details even to their close family members.”

Many of the people the panel approached were initially reluctant to speak because “they were afraid they would lose their jobs”.

“In the beginning, we found their fear strange but as our study progressed we realised it was well-founded. We are concerned about their and their close relatives’ safety.”

The report, the WCC says, has vindicated its stand. “For years, we have been saying that there is a systemic problem in the industry. Sexual harassment is just one of them. This report proves it,” Beena Paul, an award-winning editor and one of the founding members of the WCC, told the BBC.

“We were always told that we were troublemakers [for raising such issues]. This report proves that it [the condition] is far worse than what even we thought,” she said.

Members of the WCC say they have faced difficulty in getting work since they began demanding better working conditions on film sets. “People don’t like the fact that we are asking questions. So, quite a few members have faced difficult situations,” Ms Paul says.

The Association of Malayalam Movie Artists (AMMA), a top industry body which counts superstars like Mohanlal and Mamooty among its members, denied the accusations. Its general secretary Siddique disagreed that there was a small, powerful group that controlled the industry.

He also denied that sexual harassment was rampant in the industry and said that most of the complaints they received were about the delay or a lack of payment for workers. He said conditions for women had improved on film sets in the past five years and all facilities were now available to them.

In the week since its release, the report has created ripples in the state, with activists and prominent opposition leaders demanding action against those accused of wrongdoing.

Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan said if any woman who testified before the committee came forward to file a complaint, the government would take action. “No matter how big they are, they will be brought before the law,” he said.

On Thursday, a public interest petition was filed in the Kerala High Court, seeking initiation of criminal proceedings against those accused in the report.

The court ordered the government to submit a copy of the report and the judges said they would decide if criminal action needed to be taken once they had read it.

Allegations of harassment and abuse in films are not new in India – in 2018, the #MeToo movement hit the country’s most popular film industry Bollywood after actress Tanushree Dutta accused veteran actor Nana Patekar of behaving inappropriately towards her on a film set in 2008. Patekar denied the allegations.

Ms Dutta, who has since claimed that she has been denied work, described the Hema committee report as “useless”, adding that earlier reports about making workplaces safer for women had not helped.

Parvathy Thiruvothu, an award-winning actress and a key member of the WCC, however, told Asianet news channel that she considered the release of the report “a victory”.

“It’s opened up a door for big changes within the industry,” she said.

Jeo Baby, director of The Great Indian Kitchen, a critically-acclaimed film that examines the patriarchal structure within the family, told the BBC that while gender issues remain a concern, change is under way in the industry. “This is the right time to correct this. The film industry has to fight this together.”

The report, which has made several recommendations to make the industry a safe place for women, says their inquiry and recommendations are not to find fault with any individual, but “an earnest attempt to ennoble a profession so that it becomes a viable career option for aspiring artists and technicians, both male and female”.

“Hopefully filmmaking will become so safe that parents can send their daughters and sons to the profession with the same confidence and sense of security as they send their children to an engineering firm or a college,” it adds.

Read more:

• India arrests after actress says she was abducted and raped
• Bhavana Menon breaks silence on sexual assault
• #MeToo: Why sexual harassment is a reality in Bollywood
• Sex harassment claims shake top India dance academy

During each day of the Notting Hill Carnival since 2017, the loud music coming from the sound systems is briefly turned off.

People are encouraged to respect a short 72-second silence – one for each of the lives lost in the Grenfell Tower fire over seven years ago.

At many points along the west London parade route, Grenfell Tower is clearly visible.

The Grenfell tragedy on 14 June 2017 has had a great impact on the local community involved with the carnival ever since. Many of them have strong connections.

In just a few weeks the Grenfell Tower Inquiry’s final report into what led to the fire – and who was accountable for what was described in the public inquiry as an “avoidable tragedy” – will be published.

For families who lost their loved ones and have been fighting for justice for them ever since it happened, the report’s publication will be a significant milestone.

Raymond Bernard, whose nickname was Moses, lived on the top floor of Grenfell Tower for more than 30 years. He came to London in 1968 from the Caribbean island of Trinidad.

After leaving school in Ladbroke Grove he trained as an electrical engineer and for many years worked in the Houses of Parliament.

His younger sister Bernadette Bernard, who calls him Ray, says music was always his first love.

“He always had music playing from the moment he woke, mostly reggae,” she says.

As a young man Raymond was a DJ and was involved in the Gemini Sound System.

They would play at parties and clubs in London, particularly the Embassy Club in Shepherd’s Bush.

According to family friend Jackie Leger, the annual Notting Hill Carnival over the August Bank Holiday was a highlight.

“He would always go to carnival. It allowed him to reconnect with his roots, reconnect with being born in Trinidad listening to Soca music and then coming to the UK and understanding more of the reggae music,” she explains.

Jackie says she regarded Ray as a brother and calls him a “well-loved” member of the local community in Grenfell Tower.

“He was such a kind person. He would share his last with anybody and he didn’t have very much himself,” she says.

“He was very kind, gracious, he was just lovely and a lovely human being to other human beings.”

In his later years, Raymond sometimes walked with a stick and had severe arthritis.

He was inseparable from his beloved dog Marley, a small spaniel named after Reggae icon Bob Marley.

In evidence given to the inquiry Ray was praised as a hero – a modern day Moses.

On the night of the fire he sheltered a number of people in his one-bedroom flat on the 23rd floor.

Some had dialled 999 and were told to stay in the tower and wait to be rescued.

The transcripts of those desperate calls were submitted to the inquiry and make horrific reading.

Many were found to have collapsed from the toxic fumes or suffocated with the excessive smoke.

Forensic experts concluded many of Ray’s neighbours died huddled on his bed. Ray was found on the floor. He was 63 years old.

“He was very well known in Grenfell Tower, everybody knew who Moses was,” says Jackie.

“He was a counsellor, a good friend and he was a great neighbour and that was the testament to him on the night of the fire. People who were in his apartment at the time of their demise – he looked after them. He was a great person,” she adds.

His sister Bernadette has installed a memorial bench as a tribute to Ray on Powis Square, close to The Tabarnacle in Notting Hill.

It’s a key location for the carnival celebrations and somewhere Ray in his younger years would often go.

On it, the words are inscribed: “In loving memory of Raymond AKA Moses Bernard. A leader, a protector, who protected like no other. Moses is his name.”

“If Moses were still with us, he would be round by the sound systems listening to the music chatting to his friends, he would be enjoying it the same way everyone else enjoys carnival,” says Jackie.

Speaking about the silences observed to remember Grenfell victims during carnival that happen at 15:00 BST each day, Bernadette says: “It’s important for us.

“It not only shows respect for the victims and their families, it’s a way of remembering what actually happened at Grenfell and the impact it’s had on the bereaved survivors and the community as a whole.”

Jackie agrees with her, saying it reminds carnival-goers not to “forget about what happened seven years ago.

“Always keep those victims in your thoughts, in your minds and in your hearts.”

After years of waiting, the final report from the inquiry will be made public in a few weeks. It’s hoped it will be a significant step in the fight for justice.

Like many other families, survivors and local residents in North Kensington, the two women are anxiously waiting for its findings.

“No one would have thought seven years on, we’d just be finishing phase two of the report,” says Jackie.

“No one thought it would take this long, we know it will take even longer,” she adds.

The Bernard family have given testimony at the inquiry and attended many of the hearings.

They also sat through the cross examination of some of those who worked for companies and organisations who are part of what was described in the inquiry as being part of the “web of blame”.

“None of the defendants are taking responsibility for their actions,” says Bernadette.

“They are all trying to pass the buck so that no one says yes I made this decision knowing that should a fire occur it would be one of complete devastation.”

All the organisations and companies have submitted evidence to the Grenfell Tower Public Inquiry, with the final report due to be published on 4 September.

When Jimmy Reid goes looking for incredible wildlife to photograph, he doesn’t have to stray very far from home.

He looks under drain covers, beneath rocks and even inside the dilapidated shed in his garden in Loanhead, Midlothian.

To some, the wasps, moths, ants and spiders that emerge may be considered mundane, or even a pest.

To Jimmy, a professional photographer, they are the subject of striking close-up shots revealing fascinating detail.

“I look in the strangest places and I usually get lucky,” he told BBC Scotland News.

“My shed seems to be a gold mine because it’s falling apart.

“It’s incredible that I’ve been doing this for 10 years but I still find creatures that I’ve never seen before.”

The 39-year-old father also travels to nearby woods and country parks to find new species that he hasn’t yet photographed.

“It’s so exciting that I’m tempted to go out most evenings in the summer hunting for new subjects whether it be birds or bugs,” he said.

“When I’m taking pictures of bees and wasps I try to do this at night when they are sleeping as they are less likely to move – but they are hard to find.”

A major player on South Africa’s political landscape for more than a decade, the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) has been shaken to the core following the defection of its deputy leader Floyd Shivambu to former President Jacob Zuma’s fledgling party – uMhkonto weSizwe (MK), or Spear of the Nation.

Mr Shivambu was seen as the EFF’s ideological guru, while party leader Julius Malema assumed the mantle of commander-in-chief – or “screamer-in-chief”, as his critics dubbed him – with his fiery rhetoric demanding the nationalisation of white-owned land and mines, and the “decolonisation” of education.

The duo seemed to be a winning team, with the EFF gaining the support of South Africa’s burgeoning youth population frustrated with the slow pace of political and economic reforms since the end of the racist system of apartheid in 1994.

But the EFF suffered a major setback in the May general election when, instead of achieving its goal of rising from the country’s third biggest party to second, it dropped to fourth.

MK proved to be its political nemesis – just as it was for the governing African National Congress (ANC) – by gaining votes from both parties to snatch third place in the first election it contested.

“MK cannibalised the ANC and took votes from the EFF. It changed the course of South African politics, making the ANC lose its parliamentary majority for the first time since 1994,” William Gumede, an academic with Wits University’s School of Governance in Johannesburg, told the BBC.

Mr Shivambu read the political tea leaves and defected to the MK last week, causing the biggest rupture in the EFF since its launch 11 years ago.

For Mr Malema, it was a personal blow because the two, as young men oozing with political energy, had jointly launched the EFF after the ANC – ironically then led by Mr Zuma – expelled them.

They had challenged the authority of a president who was steeped in traditional values of respect for elders, and were kicked out after accusations of being divisive and bringing the party into disrepute.

“The EFF took with it almost the entire youth wing of the ANC, and also came to dominate student politics at campuses across South Africa, such was the party’s appeal amongst young people,” said Paddy Harper, a journalist with South Africa’s Mail & Guardian newspaper.

“Malema had the charisma to get support, and Shivambu the brains to give it ideological direction,” he told the BBC.

“With their break-up, the EFF will enter a period of turmoil. This will be felt across South Africa, from campuses to parliament as the EFF tries to prevent losing more support to MK.”

However, political analyst Moeletsi Mbeki said the break-up would actually “strengthen” Mr Malema’s position in the EFF as he no longer faced a “potential threat” to his power.

“The EFF is considered as more of a cult, run by Malema. In such a system, the leader is the leader. Full stop. Anyone who appears to be close to the leader eventually becomes a casualty,” he told the BBC.

The first public sign of the relationship running into trouble came last year, when Mr Malema paid a glowing tribute to Mr Shivambu, describing him as a thinker, before warning him not to plot against him.

“I’m ruthless against people who do such things to me, so never try that with me,” Mr Malema was quoted as saying at a gala dinner.

With Mr Malema set to run for re-election as party leader at the EFF’s conference in October, Mr Shivambu, 41, appeared to have decided that it was time to move on.

MK has made him its national organiser – a demotion from his role in the EFF but still a senior post with the responsibility of growing the party.

But, Mr Harper said, it was unclear how he would get along with Mr Zuma, given their previous fall-out and the fact that the former president was also a cult-like figure in MK who repeatedly appoints and sacks officials. In less than a year the party has had three secretary generals.

“But there is also the view that the party is still finding its feet, and will stabilise with its core leadership including Zuma, John Hlophe, the impeached judge who has been made his deputy, and Shivambu,” Mr Harper said.

Another reason which could have pushed Mr Shivambu to defect is that he and Mr Malema – despite their public personae of being socialists and African nationalists – were at the centre of a major corruption scandal, he added.

They have been accused of receiving about 16m rand ($9m; £7m) in “gratification” – bribes, in simple language – from the boss of a now-liquidated bank after meeting him at a penthouse in an upmarket suburb of Johannesburg in 2017.

The allegation was made in a recently leaked witness statement by the bank’s disgraced boss, Tshifhiwa Matodzi, after he pleaded guilty to 33 counts of corruption, theft, fraud, money laundering and racketeering for being involved in what investigators described as a “bank heist”.

Both Mr Shivambu and Mr Malema have denied any wrongdoing, but with a police investigation under way – and their political rivals likely to keep up the pressure – the scandal will not go away anytime soon.

“It is the biggest corruption scandal to hit the EFF, and if the party had to turn anyone into a sacrificial lamb it would have been Shivambu – certainly not Malema,” Mr Harper said.

“So, his move to MK makes sense as it offers him more protection. It is a bigger party full of people accused of corruption – including Mr Zuma himself.” The former president has denied any wrongdoing.

MK was also a natural political home for Mr Shivambu as its economic policy is similar to the EFF’s – both advocating the expropriation of white-owned land and the state ownership of mines and banks – policies that were adopted by many African states after their independence but which were abandoned around the time of the collapse of the Soviet Union more than 20 years ago.

“MK and EFF represent the old nationalist politics of Africa. They are totally out of touch,” Mr Mbeki said.

“State-owned companies in South Africa are huge, but they are collapsing because of mismanagement. For the working class, it means a loss of jobs,” he added.

Expressing a similar view, Prof Gumede said the EFF had failed to gain a foothold in South Africa’s trade union movement despite being in existence for more than 10 years.

“Whether working class or middle class, older voters see the EFF as standing for chaos and confrontation. They want parties to co-operate to solve South Africa’s problems because we have an electricity and water crisis, and high unemployment and crime,” Prof Gumede said.

This was the clear message from the election, he added, but both the EFF and MK had made a “strategic mistake” by failing to join the government of national unity that President Cyril Ramaphosa formed after the election.

Mr Harper said that since the general election, MK had done badly in by-elections held in Mr Zuma’s political backyard of KwaZulu-Natal.

“It is not in government, and all it has been doing is oppose the coalition government in the province. That is not what voters want. They want delivery of basic services,” he said.

“As for the EFF, the ANC is currently in the process of dumping it as its coalition partner in cities such as Johannesburg. So it, too, is out in the cold.

“Logically, the EFF and MP should be strengthening relations to offer voters a viable alternative, rather than competing against each other for members and voters,” Mr Harper added.

• The impeached judge itching to take on South Africa’s president
• Behind the ‘Zuma tsunami’ in South Africa
• A landmark moment in South Africa for a humbled ANC

Malaysian authorities are trying to rescue a woman who fell into an eight-metre deep sinkhole that opened on a busy road in Kuala Lumpur.

The 48-year-old Indian national was sitting on a roadside bench in Jalan India Masjid when the ground beneath her suddenly caved in, according to local police.

Videos on social media show crowds of people watching rescue workers trying to make their way into the sinkhole. Some have ladders, while others are using hammers and diggers to try and clear the way.

There does not appear to be any sign of the woman.

The Kuala Lumpur Fire and Rescue Department said it received a distress call at 08:22 local time (00:22 GMT) and dispatched 15 firemen to the scene.

Operation commander Mohd Riduan Akhbar told local media that a search and rescue operation was being conducted.

“The Special Tactical Operation and Rescue Team of Malaysia (STORM) and the K9 unit are at the location,” he said.

Ninety personnel from various other agencies have also joined in the operation, according to local police chief Assistant Commissioner Sulizmie Affendy Sulaiman.

“We will look at CCTV footage and take statements from witnesses to get a clearer picture of what occurred,” he said.

The BBC has reached out to the Kuala Lumpur Fire and Rescue Department for comment.

Sinkholes generally form when underground water dissolves the rock on the surface, causing a hole to form.

Although there is no precise data globally, geologists say they are reasonably common. Human injuries, however, are very rare.

One of the worst recent sinkholes disasters in terms of casualties occurred in Canada in 2010, when a family of four died after their entire house was swallowed by a gaping sinkhole near Montreal.

The world’s largest sinkhole is Xiaoxhai Tiankeng in south-western China. With a depth measuring 660 metres, researchers believe it was formed more than 128,000 years ago.

A 10-month-old baby has been partially paralysed after contracting polio in Gaza, United Nations officials have said.

According to the UN, Gaza, now in its 11th month of war, has not registered a polio case for 25 years, although type 2 poliovirus was detected in samples collected from the territory’s wastewater in June.

The head of the World Health Organization (WHO), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said he is “gravely concerned” and confirmed that efforts are under way to roll out a vaccination programme in the coming weeks.

The 10-month-old, who was unvaccinated, is said to be in a stable condition after developing paralysis in one leg.

Poliovirus, most often spread through sewage and contaminated water, is highly infectious.

It can cause disfigurement and paralysis, and is potentially fatal. It mainly affects children under the age of five.

Humanitarian groups have blamed the re-emergence of polio in Gaza on disruption to child vaccination programmes and massive damage to water and sanitation systems caused by the war.

In order to try to contain the spread, the UN has been pressing for a week-long pause in fighting to carry out a polio vaccination campaign for more than 640,000 children under the age of 10.

UN Secretary General António Guterres said “hundreds of thousands of children in Gaza [are] at risk”.

He said that for the campaign to be successful, transport of vaccines and required equipment would need to be facilitated, as well as the entry of polio experts into Gaza.

Adequate fuel, increased flow of cash, reliable communications and the ensured safety of both health workers and people reaching health facilities were also needed, he said.

WHO has approved the release of 1.6 million doses of vaccine, UNICEF is coordinating their delivery along with cold storage units and UNRWA’s medical teams will administer the vaccines once they arrive in Gaza.

UNICEF’s Executive Director Catherine Russel said that the re-emergence of the virus in the strip after 25 years is “another sobering reminder of how chaotic, desperate and dangerous the situation has become”.

On 18 August, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said since the beginning of the war, 282,126 vials of the polio vaccine, sufficient for 2,821,260 doses, have been sent to Gaza.

It said in the coming weeks, an additional 60,000 vaccines will be delivered to vaccinate over one million children.

According to the IDF, entry to the Gaza Strip for vaccines and epidemic prevention is being facilitated by the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT),

“This includes the entry of medical teams and vaccines against the polio virus,” the IDF said.

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

More than 40,265 people have been killed in Gaza since then, according to the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry, which does not give details of civilian and combatant deaths. The UN human rights office says most of those killed were women and children.

Icelandic supermarkets have been left in a pickle, after a viral TikTok trend saw an unprecedented surge in demand for cucumbers – leaving suppliers racing to keep up.

It comes after social media influencers in the small Nordic country began sharing a salad recipe of grated cucumbers, sesame oil, garlic, rice vinegar and chilli oil.

The recipe has been such a hit that farmers in the country have been unable to keep up with spiralling demand, Iceland’s farmers association – the Horticulturists’ Sales Company (SFG) – told BBC News.

While one supermarket chain – Hagkaup – questioned the link between demand and the trend, it conceded that purchases of cucumber had more than doubled.

SFG’s marketing director said that as things stand farmers in Iceland are not managing to keep up with surging consumer demand, but said she hopes supply will be back to normal “in a week or so”.

Kristín Linda Sveinsdóttir said the recipe had proven to be “really popular” and other ingredients in the recipe were selling out as well.

The viral trend has its roots in Canada – where TikToker Logan Moffitt, dubbed “cucumber guy”, has been sharing novel recipes using the variety.

“Sometimes, you just need to eat a whole cucumber,” is the influencer’s go-to phrase at the start of his many recipe videos.

The content creator has more than 5.5 million followers and has been sharing cucumber recipes almost everyday since July.

The one that appears to have gripped users in Iceland uses sesame oil and rice vinegar, but sometimes Logan mixes in cream cheese, avocado, and even smoked salmon.

Despite the influencer’s enduring online popularity, experts in Iceland have been keen to play-down his association with the ongoing shortages.

Hagkaup told the BBC it is common to experience shortages in Icelandic cucumber at this time of year.

While the company’s food product manager, Vignir Þór Birgisson, said sales of ingredients like sesame oil and some spices have “doubled” in his stores, he said the current shortage is not solely due to the TikTok trend.

Ms Sveinsdóttir from the SFG also expressed some scepticism, suggesting other factors were at play. Some cucumber farmers replace their cucumber plants at this time of year, which are not yet producing large amounts, she said.

In addition to this, schools are returning from the summer holidays, which puts additional pressure on supplies.

“Everything is happening at the same time,” Ms Sveinsdóttir observed, but said the social media trend remained one of the main contributing factors.

“This is the first time we have experienced something like this,” Ms Sveinsdóttir said, adding that had the TikTok trend become popular earlier in the summer, “when the [cucumber] production was in full blast” and the shortage would not have been noticeable.

Farmers in Iceland – which has a population of 393,600 – produce about six million cucumbers, Ms Sveinsdóttir told the BBC.

They pride themselves on the volume of fresh goods the country can produce, despite the often extreme weather conditions.

A seaside hotel and former bank offices on the Isle of Man have been used by scammers conning victims in China out of millions of dollars, a BBC World Service investigation has found.

The dining room and lounge at the Seaview Hotel in Douglas were packed with dozens of Chinese workers, we have been told, on computers hooked up to fast broadband. A specialist wok hob had also been delivered to the hotel’s kitchen.

The deception, which happened between January 2022 and January 2023 according to Chinese court documents, used a method known as “pig-butchering”. It is so-called because the process of “fattening the pig” – gaining the victim’s trust – is vital to its success.

The BBC spent nearly a year establishing how the investment scam was carried out from the island, which is a British Crown dependency with an independent government.

We also uncovered other details, such as how bosses had big ambitions to build a state-of-the-art office complex overlooking the Irish Sea.

As well as obtaining court papers, we have accessed leaked documents and spoken to company insiders.

One former member of staff, Jordan [not his real name], told us he had no idea of the murky world he was entering when he arrived on the Isle of Man. He says he was relieved to have found what he thought was a stable administrative job.

He did notice, however, that his new employer seemed quite secretive – for example, he and his colleagues were forbidden from taking photos at company social events. What he says he didn’t realise was that many of his Chinese colleagues were actually scam artists.

In late 2021, nearly 100 people had been transferred to the Isle of Man to work for a company which Chinese court documents refer to as “MIC”. They had come from the Philippines where they had worked for another scamming firm. The BBC has discovered that MIC stands for Manx Internet Commerce.

On the Isle of Man, MIC was part of a group of associated companies – all with the same owner.

An online casino, run by King Gaming Ltd, was the most prominent. In mainland China, gambling is illegal. Setting up halfway around the world meant the group’s founders could target Chinese customers, but also take advantage of the Isle of Man’s low gambling taxes.

A few months after being based at the Seaview Hotel in Douglas, the MIC workers were moved to former bank offices on the east side of town.

And this is where Jordan says he would hear sporadic cheering from his new colleagues – who worked in groups of four. He now believes they were celebrating moments when they had successfully scammed another victim, some 5,000 miles away.

Six people who worked for MIC in Douglas have now been convicted – upon their return home to China – of carrying out investment scams against Chinese citizens.

The cases, heard in late 2023, detail the illicit money stream. Victims were lured by the defendants and their accomplices from bases on the Isle of Man and in the Philippines, according to the Chinese court papers.

They say the defendants would work in teams to pull Chinese investors into chat groups on QQ – a popular Chinese instant messaging service similar to WhatsApp. One scammer would play the role of an investment “teacher”, and others would pretend to be fellow investors.

The BBC has seen evidence – including in the court papers – that many of those who arrived in Douglas from the Philippines were engaged in the scams. All used the same computer equipment, depended on QQ for their work and, with the exception of a few managers, all held the same job title.

The fake investors would build an atmosphere of hype and excitement around the money-making skills of the “teacher”, who would then tell the victim to put money into a particular investment platform, the Chinese court found.

Dazzled by the hype, the victim would comply, only for their funds to be syphoned off by the scammers, who actually controlled these platforms and could manipulate them from behind the scenes.

The Chinese court said it was difficult to verify the victims’ total losses – but it said 38.87m renminbi (£4.17m/$5.3m) had been taken from at least 12 victims.

Relying on evidence including the defendants’ own confessions, as well as travel and financial records and chat logs, the court found the six defendants guilty.

This was not only a profitable but also a sophisticated scam, say the court documents, requiring front line teams to deploy the “pig-butchering” techniques with persuasiveness and skill.

The BBC has discovered the identity of the companies’ sole beneficiary. His name was hidden behind layers of administrative paperwork.

MIC and its affiliate companies were all held by a trust set up by an individual named “Bill Morgan” who, documents show, was also known as Liang Lingfei. Employees called him “Boss Liang”, says Jordan.

The Chinese court papers refer to a man called Liang Lingfei being the co-founder of MIC on the Isle of Man – which it described as “a fairly stable criminal organisation established in order to carry out scam activities”. Mr Liang was not one of those prosecuted or represented at the hearings.

The court stated that Mr Liang was also co-founder of the scamming organisation in the Philippines. The BBC has seen evidence that many MIC employees worked there before being transferred to the Isle of Man.

Our investigation has also found that Mr Liang obtained an Isle of Man investment visa and attended multiple company events on the island. His wife also owns a home in the town of Ballasalla, near the island’s airport.

The group of companies on the Isle of Man was ambitious, having signed a planning agreement late last year for a glitzy “parkland campus” headquarters on the site of a former naval training base. A spokesperson for the developers described it as the “largest single private investment in the Isle of Man”.

Architects’ images show office buildings set on a hill above the seafront in Douglas. Inside would have been penthouse apartments, a spa, multiple bars and a karaoke lounge.

The campus was to be used by MIC staff and those working for MIC’s “affiliate” companies, including those involved in online gambling, planning documents state.

Conservative estimates put the global annual revenues of the “pig-butchering” industry at more than $60bn (£46.5bn).

“This is the first such case we’ve seen of one of these [pig-butchering] scam operations setting up in a Western country,” says Masood Karimipour, South East Asia representative at the UN Office on Drugs and Crime.

Trying to stop the scams is like a “game of whack-a-mole”, he says, and it is a battle that “organised crime is currently winning” as criminals engage in what he calls “jurisdiction shopping” where they perceive there to be legal loopholes and little oversight.

Any ambitions the group of companies may have had on the Isle of Man – legitimate or otherwise – appear to have come to an end.

In April, police raided the former bank offices. They also targeted an address next to the island’s Courts of Justice building – using a ladder to enter through a first-floor window in the early hours of the morning.

In a statement released shortly afterwards, police said the raids had been in connection with a wider fraud and money laundering investigation in relation to King Gaming Ltd IOM. Seven people had been arrested and released on bail, they added.

Since then, a further three people are known to have been arrested.

Receivers were appointed earlier this month for companies in the group – including MIC and King Gaming Ltd IOM – at the request of the Isle of Man’s attorney general.

The island’s gambling regulator has stripped MIC’s gambling affiliate companies of their licences.

The parkland campus site was cleared of trees and signage went up – but the redevelopment is now on hold indefinitely.

The BBC has made repeated attempts, via several methods of communication, to contact the companies involved – as well as Bill Morgan/Liang Langfei and company directors – but has received no replies.

We have also attempted to contact the Seaview Hotel, but have received no response, though there is no suggestion that anyone there was aware of any illegal activities taking place on the premises.

You can reach the Global China Unit directly and securely through encrypted messaging app Signal on: +447769939386 or by email at wsinvestigations@bbc.co.uk

A transgender woman from Australia has won a discrimination case against a women-only social media app, after she was denied access on the basis of being male.

The Federal Court found that although Roxanne Tickle had not been directly discriminated against, she was a victim of indirect discrimination – which refers to when a decision disadvantages a person with a particular attribute – and ordered the app to pay her A$10,000 ($6,700; £5,100) plus costs.

It’s a landmark ruling when it comes to gender identity, and at the very heart of the case was the ever more contentious question: what is a woman?

In 2021, Tickle downloaded “Giggle for Girls”, an app marketed as an online refuge where women could share their experiences in a safe space, and where men were not allowed.

In order to gain access, she had to upload a selfie to prove she was a woman, which was assessed by gender recognition software designed to screen out men.

However, seven months later – after successfully joining the platform – her membership was revoked.

As someone who identifies as a woman, Tickle claimed she was legally entitled to use services meant for women, and that she was discriminated against based on her gender identity.

She sued the social media platform, as well as its CEO Sall Grover, and sought damages amounting to A$200,000, claiming that “persistent misgendering” by Grover had prompted “constant anxiety and occasional suicidal thoughts”.

“Grover’s public statements about me and this case have been distressing, demoralising, embarrassing, draining and hurtful. This has led to individuals posting hateful comments towards me online and indirectly inciting others to do the same,” Tickle said in an affidavit.

Giggle’s legal team argued throughout the case that sex is a biological concept.

They freely concede that Tickle was discriminated against – but on the grounds of sex, rather than gender identity. Refusing to allow Tickle to use the app constituted lawful sex discrimination, they say. The app is designed to exclude men, and because its founder perceives Tickle to be male – she argues that denying her access to the app was lawful.

But Justice Robert Bromwich said in his decision on Friday that case law has consistently found sex is “changeable and not necessarily binary”, ultimately dismissing Giggle’s argument.

Tickle said the ruling “shows that all women are protected from discrimination” and that she hoped the case would be “healing for trans and gender diverse people”.

“Unfortunately, we got the judgement we anticipated. The fight for women’s rights continues,” Grover wrote on X, responding to the decision.

Known as “Tickle vs Giggle”, the case is the first time alleged gender identity discrimination has been heard by the federal court in Australia.

It encapsulates how one of the most acrimonious ideological debates – trans inclusion versus sex-based rights – can play out in court.

Tickle was born male, but changed her gender and has been living as a woman since 2017.

When giving evidence to the court, she said: “Up until this instance, everybody has treated me as a woman.”

“I do from time to time get frowns and stares and questioning looks which is quite disconcerting…but they’ll let me go about my business.”

But Grover believes no human being has or can change sex – which is the pillar of gender-critical ideology.

When Tickle’s lawyer Georgina Costello KC cross examined Grover, she said:

“Even where a person who was assigned male at birth transitions to a woman by having surgery, hormones, gets rid of facial hair, undergoes facial reconstruction, grows their hair long, wears make up, wears female clothes, describes themselves as a woman, introduces themselves as a woman, uses female changing rooms, changes their birth certificate – you don’t accept that is a woman?”

“No”, Grover replied.

She also said she would refuse to address Tickle as “Ms,” and that “Tickle is a biological male.”

Grover is a self-declared Terf, which stands for “trans-exclusionary radical feminist”. Typically used as a derogatory term for those considered hostile to transgender people, it has also been claimed by some to describe their own gender-critical beliefs.

“I’m being taken to federal court by a man who claims to be a woman because he wants to use a woman-only space I created,” she posted on X.

“There isn’t a woman in the world who’d have to take me to court to use this woman only space. It takes a man for this case to exist.”

She says she created her app “Giggle for Girls” in 2020 after receiving a lot of social media abuse by men while she worked in Hollywood as a screenwriter.

“I wanted to create a safe, women-only space in the palm of your hand,” she said.

“It is a legal fiction that Tickle is a woman. His birth certificate has been altered from male to female, but he is a biological man, and always will be.”

“We are taking a stand for the safety of all women’s only spaces, but also for basic reality and truth, which the law should reflect.”

Grover has previously said that she would appeal against the court’s decision and will fight the case all the way to the High Court of Australia.

The outcome of this case could set a legal precedent for the resolution of conflicts between gender identity rights and sex-based rights in other countries.

Crucial to understanding this is the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). This is an international treaty adopted in 1979 by the UN – effectively an international bill of rights for women.

Giggle’s defence argued that Australia’s ratification of CEDAW obliges the State to protect women’s rights, including single-sex spaces.

So today’s ruling in favour of Tickle will be significant for all the 189 countries where CEDAW has been ratified – from Brazil to India to South Africa.

When it comes to interpreting international treaties, national courts often look at how other countries have done it.

Australia’s interpretation of the law in a case that got this level of media attention is likely to have global repercussions.

If over time a growing number of courts rule in favour of gender identity claims – it is more likely that other countries will follow suit.

Investigators examining the sinking of a luxury yacht off the coast of Sicily have outlined what they know six days on.

Seven people died when the Bayesian, a 56-metre sailing boat, sank to the bottom of the ocean during bad weather early on 19 August.

There were 22 passengers and crew on board, 15 of whom managed to escape onto a lifeboat.

In their first press conference about the tragedy, at a court in Termini Imerese, Sicily, on Saturday, Italian prosecutors confirmed that a manslaughter and negligent shipwreck investigation has begun over the disaster’s seven deaths.

Officials were unable to answer a number of queries from the media, saying they needed time to establish the facts, but they did shine a light on some previously unknown details.

A manslaughter investigation has been opened into the deaths of seven people in the sinking.

British tech businessman Mike Lynch and his 18-year-old daughter Hannah lost their lives, alongside Morgan Stanley International bank chairman Jonathan Bloomer, his wife Judy Bloomer, Clifford Chance lawyer Chris Morvillo and his wife Neda Morvillo, and Canadian-Antiguan national Recaldo Thomas, who was working as a chef on the yacht.

All of their bodies have now been recovered.

Chief prosecutor of Termini Imerese, Ambrogio Cartosio, said his office has opened an initial investigation into manslaughter and negligent shipwreck.

He told reporters they would ascertain whether the captain, crew, individuals in charge of supervision, the ship-builder, or others could bear responsibility.

He added: “We will establish each element’s responsibility – that will be done by the inquiry, so we can’t do that prematurely.

“For me, it is probable that offences were committed – that it could be a case of manslaughter – but we can only establish that if you give us the time to investigate.

“Media timing is completely different from that of a prosecutor. We need a minimum amount of time to come to a proper scientific conclusion.”

The inquiry is currently an Italian investigation with local involvement, but Mr Cartosio said: “I cannot tell you with any certainty that the inquiry will be exclusively Italian.

“There will be developments, I’m sure, on that score.”

Witnesses described seeing a waterspout form during the storm before the sinking of the Bayesian yacht, which is similar to a tornado over a body of water.

However, deputy prosecutor Raffaele Cammarano told the press conference that “from the information we have, it is a downburst we are talking about”.

BBC Weather forecaster Ben Rich said a downburst occurs when air races downward from the base of a cloud. It produces a powerful gust of wind that blows unpredictably outwards in different directions.

He said it can be confused with tornadoes or waterspouts because the damage caused can be similar.

Maritime director of western Sicily, Rear Admiral Raffaele Macauda, said the weather at the time of the yacht’s sinking was abnormal and there was nothing to suggest such an extreme situation would arise.

He told the press conference there was no tornado alert.

Officials said they would be looking at how a downburst could have affected the Bayesian and not other vessels nearby.

The body of Recaldo Thomas, who was working as a chef on the yacht, was found outside of the vessel and was the first to be discovered.

The bodies of the remaining six people were recovered from cabins on the left side of the yacht after it had sunk, the chief of the Palermo fire service said.

Girolamo Bentivoglio said that specialised divers attempting to retrieve the bodies had to deal with “very little visibility due to the weather conditions” and were called in from across the country as part of a search-and-rescue operation which involved “some 70 people” each day.

He added: “The yacht obviously pinned to the right and obviously the [people] tried to go on the other side and then took refuge in their cabins.

“We found four or five bodies in the cabin on the left and there was another one in the third cabin on the left too, and they were in the higher part of the wreck.”

Mr Cammarano suggested that passengers may not have been able to escape from the yacht because they were asleep.

Asked why they were not woken up or alerted, he said: “That is precisely what we are trying to ascertain from the statements made during the interrogation of the survivors – an essential point in the inquiry, obviously.”

He said several of the bodies were found in a single cabin.

He said: “The bodies were found in a cabin which was not theirs, but this doesn’t give us any kind of certainty about what happened.

“We have no idea of the reasons for their all being found in the same cabin.”

Prosecutors were questioned about the captain of the Bayesian and its crew.

Asked whether the crew will remain in Sicily, Mr Cartosio said: “There’s no obligation, but they should be available for the investigation.”

The press conference heard authorities still have questions to ask the captain but that they cannot keep people in the country under Italian law.

Mr Cammarano was asked about the crew undergoing alcohol and drug testing, and he said officials were trying to conduct those tests.

When asked how it was possible that most of the crew managed to survive, he said the incident happened suddenly and the inquiry will look into it.

No information has yet been gleaned from an examination of the seven people who died, prosecutors said.

In response to a question about whether post-mortem examinations have been carried out, Mr Cammarano said: “There are a whole number of preliminary stages to go through before the autopsies.”

Italian authorities investigating the deaths of seven people in the sinking of a luxury yacht in Sicily say they are looking into potential crimes of “shipwreck and manslaughter”.

They stressed, however, that the investigation was in its initial stages and they were not currently looking at anyone specifically.

UK tech entrepreneur Mike Lynch and his 18-year-old daughter Hannah were among those who died when the Bayesian went down off the coast of Porticello during a storm in the early hours of Monday morning.

It was previously believed the vessel may have sunk because of a waterspout, but the authorities now say the most likely cause was a localised, powerful wind known as a downburst.

The bodies of Jonathan Bloomer, a Morgan Stanley International bank chairman, his wife Judy Bloomer, Clifford Chance lawyer Chris Morvillo, and his wife Neda Morvillo were also recovered from the wreckage some 50m (164 ft) down, after days of deep dive searches with little visibility.

The body of Canadian-Antiguan national Recaldo Thomas, who was working as a chef on the superyacht, was recovered at the scene on Monday.

Post-mortems are set to be conducted.

The remaining 15 people who were on board the luxury yacht were rescued.

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In a press conference on Saturday morning, Ambrogio Cartosio, chief prosecutor of the nearby town of Termini Imerese, said the coastguard had been called at 04:38 local time on Monday but the yacht had already sunk by the time crews had arrived.

Mr Cartosio told journalists he thought it was “probable that offences were committed” surrounding the sinking of the yacht.

He said they will ascertain whether the captain, crew, individuals in charge of supervision, the ship-builder, or others could bear responsibility.

“We will establish each element’s responsibility – that will be done by the inquiry, so we can’t do that prematurely,” he said.

“For me, it is probable that offences were committed – that it could be a case of manslaughter – but we can only establish that if you give us the time to investigate.”

Deputy Prosecutor Raffaele Cammarano told journalists the Italian Air Force had confirmed the sinking was most likely caused by a downburst.

A downburst is a localised, powerful wind that descends from a thunderstorm, spreading out rapidly upon hitting the ground.

The chief of Palermo’s fire brigade said the Bayesian sank stern-first and then rolled onto its right side. He explained that as a result, the victims then sought refuge on the boat’s left side, where the last air pockets remained as it sank.

Local officials said they are looking into why some people on board were able to flee the vessel and others were not.

Speaking on behalf of the divers, a Palermo fire brigade commander said about 70 people were involved in an “intense” search operation each day, with more than 120 dives undertaken in total.

“We were operating at 50 metres depth and that there was very little visibility due to the weather conditions,” he said.

One of the divers involved in the operation told the media it was “difficult” getting into the yacht’s cabins and it required “very lengthy periods to remove obstacles” through them.

Raffaele Macauda, deputy commander of the Palermo coastguard, said the coastguard is conducting in-depth environmental monitoring.

He adds that the owner of the Bayesian has expressed an interest in recovering the vessel from the sea floor, but the timing of this was uncertain.

Some experts have estimated it could take eight weeks to recover the yacht.

An official said the Italian authorities did not have the “exact information” about the yacht’s black box – a device that can record data including a ship’s position, speed, radar information, and sometimes audio.

Passengers on board the yacht were understood to have been celebrating Mr Lynch’s acquittal in a US fraud case.

The businessman, who founded software giant Autonomy in 1996, was cleared in June of carrying out fraud relating to its $11bn (£8.64bn) sale to US company Hewlett Packard.

Andrew Kanter, a close friend to Mr Lynch, said he was the “most brilliant” and “carrying person I have ever known”.

Meanwhile, friends of his daughter, Hannah, have described the 18-year-old as a “warm and beautiful soul”, while teachers have praised her “sky-high intellectual ability”.

In a statement, the Bloomer family described Jonathan and Judy Bloomer as “incredible people and an inspiration to many”.

“Our only comfort is that they are still together now,” the statement said.

When a shell exploded near Oleksandr Budko, the 26-year-old found himself buried alive and in “terrible pain” from injuries that would lead to the amputation of both his legs.

The Ukrainian soldier was helping to defend the north-eastern Kharkiv region from invading Russian forces in August 2022, when his unit was attacked.

Two years on, he’s the star of a reality TV show in which multiple women battle for his affection.

One advert for the Ukrainian version of hit US series The Bachelor shows a smartly-dressed Oleksandr staring wistfully at a flower. In another, he answers questions in military fatigues before performing a series of pull-ups in a gym.

Speaking to me in a rose garden in Kyiv, the veteran-turned-celebrity is in good spirits despite being tired after a busy week.

Oleksandr says he’s hoping to find love on the show after breaking up with his girlfriend last January – but thinks it will be difficult to choose a partner with “millions of people watching”.

His motivations aren’t just romantic. He also wants to use his appearance on the show to raise awareness of the challenges facing disabled Ukrainians.

“This show is watched by millions of people, and it presents a huge opportunity to positively influence their outlook,” he says.

He wants to show that injured veterans are not “outsiders, but full members of society who are living a good life.

“In my case, my life is now even better than before the war, better than before I got injured.”

Oleksandr is always on the go, telling me he spent the previous night filming a music video.

His life wasn’t always like this. In the years before Russia’s full-scale invasion, he was working as a barista in a Kyiv restaurant while studying graphic design.

He says his dreams were “down to earth”: travelling, discovering the world, and growing professionally. He wanted to start a family.

But Oleksandr’s life was turned upside down two years ago, when he became one of hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian men to join the army.

In August 2022, he was stationed near Izyum, an occupied city on the front lines of the Russian advance. It was invaded in the early days of the war and used by Russia as a key military hub to supply its forces from the east.

The city was liberated by Kyiv just a month after Oleksandr was seriously injured while defending the nearby Ukrainian position.

“I felt the earth shift onto me. I felt a terrible pain in my legs and realised that it would mean the amputation of my legs,” he said.

“I screamed from horrific pain and shouted for people to hear me.”

He says he knew his comrades were alive, and they dug him out of the ground and provided first aid. But that’s when he knew his legs were badly hurt.

“I understood that I had lost my legs at the moment of injury, two or three seconds after I felt the pain.”

Oleksandr survived but much of Izyum was left in ruins. At the time, authorities said they had found more than 400 bodies in graves near the city.

Despite a challenging recovery, Oleksandr was able to walk with prosthetic legs within six months.

“When I didn’t have prostheses, I had to move around in a wheelchair. I discovered how inaccessible and unsuited Kyiv was for wheelchair users, even though it’s the capital city,” he says.

“In the historic old town you can’t go anywhere. You can’t cross the road on your own and you can’t go inside any building because there are stairs everywhere.”

War injuries mean Oleksandr’s experience is becoming increasingly common in Ukraine. While there’s no official data recording the number of people injured during the war, tens of thousands are estimated to have lost limbs.

This has resulted in the creation of a separate reality show, called Legs Off – which Oleksandr presented – capturing the difficulties faced by disabled people as they move around Ukrainian cities.

As well as presenting, the veteran has also written a book, won medals at the Invictus Games, and performed with a ballet troupe in the US – all while recovering from his injuries.

He’s so popular in Ukraine that The Bachelor’s application portal crashed shortly after it was announced Oleksandr would take on the main role in the upcoming season.

Producers of The Bachelor are casting the veteran as a symbol of hope.

“Despite his amputations, Oleksandr rides a bike, drives a car, and climbs mountains. He lives life to the fullest,” says Natalia Franchuk, from STB, the network on which the show will air later this year.

“If television is about filming reality, then who better could be the star of The Bachelor now? Who else would be better suited in a country at war?”

The month since Kamala Harris launched her presidential campaign has been a largely unprecedented spell in American politics: never has a modern general election campaign gone from a standstill to a full sprint so quickly.

In that time Democrats pulled together a well-scripted national convention with slickly produced promotional videos, political set-pieces and musical interludes, all done to boost the new nominee. It was a remarkable test of skill by party operatives under extreme pressure.

Over the course of four days in Chicago – and in the packed campaign rallies Ms Harris has held over the past few weeks – the outlines of her campaign strategy have begun to take shape.

And it’s not exactly what one would expect from a sitting vice-president who has occupied an office in the White House for three-and-a-half-years.

Ms Harris is pushing hard to be viewed as the candidate of change in this race. One who, as she said in her convention speech on Thursday, can “chart a new way forward”.

This strategy is in part born out of necessity. Across the globe democracies have been roiled by voter unrest. As economies struggle to recover from the Covid pandemic, regional conflicts churn and tensions over immigration flare up, political incumbents have faced deeply unhappy electorates in Canada, the UK, Germany and India among others.

Polling indicated that President Joe Biden, before he abandoned his re-election campaign last month, was set to confront similar challenges.

The vice-president has turned this situation on its head.

Her background and personal story is a sharp contrast with both the current president and her Republican opponent.

It also helps that Ms Harris is running against a former president who, while also styling himself as a change candidate, has his own sometimes controversial, sometimes unpopular White House record to defend.

“This election, I do strongly believe, is about two very different visions for the future,” Ms Harris said at a rally in North Carolina last week.

“Ours focused on the future, and the other focused on the past.”

For the most part, Ms Harris has shied away from describing in detail what her presidency would look like.

There’s talk of unity and a way beyond America’s divisive partisanship; a focus on strengthening the economy and reducing consumer prices; and a heavy emphasis on reproductive rights and abortion – an area of particular strength for Democrats.

But it is vague. And this vagueness may suit the Harris campaign just fine.

By largely being an empty policy vessel, Ms Harris has allowed various constituencies within the Democratic Party to project their hopes and priorities onto her.

If she can keep all those pieces together for the next few months, she might just win.

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Labour leaders expressed optimism that she would focus on union protections and bread-and-butter economic issues.

Climate activists touted the Biden administration’s clean energy legislation and expected the candidate to expand that effort.

Civil rights leaders predicted the first woman of colour to win a major party nomination would advance racial equality.

“The fundamental question people ask is, are you fighting for me, or are you fighting for someone else?” said Tom Perez, who served as secretary of labour in the Obama administration and has been an adviser to the Biden White House.

“I think people have a pretty clear sense that she’s a fighter for everyone, not just certain people in certain zip codes or certain tax brackets, not just people of certain races or ethnicities, but everyone.”

In other words, the vice-president’s policy vagueness has allowed her to cast as broad an appeal as possible in what is shaping up to be an election where every undecided voter counts.

It has been labelled by some as a “vibe” campaign – based at least in part on feeling and general impressions.

On Wednesday, former television host, author and international celebrity Oprah Winfrey, who identified herself as a political independent, said Ms Harris and her running mate Tim Walz were the candidates who would deliver “decency and respect”.

“I’m calling on all you independents and all you undecideds,” she said. “Values and character matter most of all, in leadership and in life.”

Throughout the week, a parade of Republicans – including former officeholders and Donald Trump supporters – also took the stage at the convention to pitch Harris as the best option in November.

“Harris will want to be centre-left, not far-left,” said Chris Shays, a former Republican congressman from Connecticut who attended the Democratic Convention this year.

According to Mr Shays, the vice-president will be pulled to the American political middle because that is where the nation is.

Ms Harris’s strategy is not without risk, however.

Just as Democratic groups are projecting their ideas onto the vice-president’s campaign, so are her Republican opponents. And they are using Ms Harris’s past, more liberal – and sometimes controversial – positions and statements as evidence that the lack of specificity is merely a cover for a left-wing agenda.

“Her speech was the perfect example of what happens when you have no solutions to offer for the problems you’ve delivered to Americans’ doorsteps, so you gaslight and deflect,” the Trump campaign said in a statement responding to the vice-president’s convention address.

Ms Harris has also avoided sweeping press conferences and more pointed interviews with mainstream media outlets so far – interviews that could hold her to account for past positions and press her for further policy details.

Her speech last week addressing the economy was one of the few instances where the vice-president unveiled concrete new proposals.

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But over the past four days some nuggets of how she would govern have emerged.

She has proposed a $25,000 tax credit for first-time homebuyers. She pledged to use the power of government to reduce the cost of prescription drugs and punish price-gouging for groceries. She backed bipartisan immigration legislation that was blocked in the Senate earlier this year.

Ms Harris also pledged to push for a federal law that would guarantee a basic right to abortion across the entire US, pre-empting conservative state bans.

For some Democrats the details so far aren’t enough.

“We need to hear some actual policy things,” said Lewanna Tucker, chair of the Democratic Party in Fulton County, Georgia. “She needs to be letting us a little bit more behind the curtain and talk about structural things that are going to be done.”

Perhaps more concrete policy details aren’t necessary. At a time when American politics is viewed by much of the American public as divisive and toxic, there may be benefit to building a political campaign not around policy specifics, but rather one that appeals to emotion.

In 2008, Barack Obama successfully campaigned on hope and change – which is not exactly the makings of a four-point plan.

“It’s a return to a level of hope that I don’t think that we have collectively experienced since 2008,” said Yasmin Radjy, who runs the liberal grassroots organising group Swing Left.

She said there had been an exhaustion among volunteers on the left for the past eight years, but the switch to Ms Harris was “like a weight had lifted off their shoulders”.

The willingness by Democrats to savage the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 – a sometimes controversial blueprint for a new Republican administration that Trump and his campaign have repeatedly disavowed – also shows the risks of being even tangentially associated with the nuts and bolts of governing.

In her Thursday night address, Ms Harris pledged to move beyond partisan divisions and find shared common ground.

“I promise to be a president for all Americans,” she said. “You can always trust me to put country above party and self.”

Those promises aren’t unfamiliar in American politics, of course. Similar assurances have been made over the last few decades. But something has been different about this Democratic nominee and Democratic convention.

The wattage of star power this week – with appearances by Pink, Stevie Wonder and Lil Jon, among others – and the campaign’s heavy reliance on pop culture connections, like Charlie XCX, suggest it is trying to position itself as a cultural movement rather than a political one.

It remains to be seen whether this will be an effective strategy.

But at least for now, it has pulled the Democratic Party out of the doldrums and despair of early July and into a dead heat with Trump and the Republicans heading into the crucial final months of this campaign.

Russia and Ukraine exchanged 230 prisoners of war on Saturday, weeks after Ukraine launched a cross-border attack into the Kursk region of Russia.

The Russians released on Saturday were captured in Kursk, Russian state news agencies reported, citing the country’s defence ministry.

The ministry said 115 soldiers were returned “from territories controlled by the Kiev regime,” while Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said “another 115 of our defenders have returned home today”.

It is the first such swap since Ukraine first began its incursion into Russia on 6 August.

Kyiv has said one of the goals of the Kursk offensive is to capture Russian soldiers to trade for Ukrainian prisoners of war. Ukraine claims to control over 1,000 sqkm of the Kursk region.

The United Arab Emirates reportedly mediated the swap.

Separately, on Saturday Ukraine said it had carried out an attack on a Russian ammunition depot in the southern Russian region of Voronezh. Kyiv also reported that five people had been killed in a Russian strike on the eastern town of Kostyantynivka.

President Zelensky said the returned Ukrainian soldiers were members of the National Guard, the Armed Forces, the Navy, and the Border Guard.

“We remember each and every one. We are searching for and making every effort to bring everyone back,” he said.

“This brings closer the release of our military, our civilians from Russian captivity. Thanks to our team and partners, the UAE for our people returning home,” he said.

Mr Zelensky said that in addition to capturing Russian soldiers, the Kursk operation had other goals he could not disclose.

The Ukrainian president said the operation was a preventative strike to deter Russian attacks towards Sumy, a city in Ukraine.

He added Ukraine would do everything to force Russian President Vladimir Putin to end the war through diplomacy.

A landmark report into problems faced by women in the Malayalam-language film industry has revealed the deep rot in one of India’s most popular film hubs.

The findings of the three-member panel are pretty damning.

The 290-page report – parts of which have been redacted to hide identities of survivors and those accused of wrongdoing – says the industry is dominated by “a mafia of powerful men” and that “sexual harassment of women is rampant”.

Headed by a former judge of the Kerala High Court and set up by the state government in 2017, the Hema committee details the abysmal working conditions on sets – including a lack of toilets and changing rooms for junior artists, no food and water for them, poor pay and no accommodation or transport facilities.

“There are no toilets, so women have to go in the bushes or behind thick trees. During their periods, not being able to change their sanitary napkins for long hours and holding urine for long causes physical discomfort and makes them sick, in some cases needing hospitalisation,” it says.

The report, which was submitted to the government in December 2019, was made public only this week after nearly five years of delay and multiple legal challenges by members of the film industry.

The panel was set up in the aftermath of the horrific sexual assault on a leading actress in the film industry. Bhavana Menon, who has worked in more than 80 films in southern Indian languages and won a number of prestigious awards, was assaulted by a group of men while travelling from Thrissur to Kochi in February 2017.

Her assault made headlines, especially after Dileep, one of the Malayalam-language film industry’s biggest actors and Menon’s co-star in half a dozen films, was named as an accused and charged with criminal conspiracy. He denied the charges, but was arrested and held in custody for three months before being released on bail. The case continues to be heard in court.

Indian law bars identification of survivors of sexual assault, but it was known from the start that it was Ms Menon who had been assaulted. In 2022, she waived her anonymity in a post on Instagram and in an interview to the BBC.

A few months after the attack on Ms Menon, Women in Cinema Collective (WCC) – a group formed by some of her colleagues in a film industry known for its variety of successful mainstream and critically acclaimed films – petitioned the government, seeking swift action in the case and also to address the problems faced by women in cinema.

In the report, retired Justice K Hema says the WCC told her that “women are being silenced as the prestige of the film industry needs to be upheld”.

The panel interviewed several dozen men and women, including artists, producers, directors, scriptwriters, cinematographers, hairstylists, makeup artists and costume designers, and “gathered evidence including video and audio clips and WhatsApp messages”.

Describing sexual harassment as the “worst evil” women in cinema face, the report said the panellists saw evidence that “sexual harassment remains shockingly rampant” and that “it goes on unchecked and uncontrolled”.

The industry “is controlled by a group of male actors, producers, distributors, exhibitors and directors who have gained enormous fame and wealth” and they were among the perpetrators, it added.

“Men in industry make open demands for sex without any qualms as if it’s their birthright. Women are left with very little options but to oblige – or reject at the cost of their long awaited dream of pursuing cinema as their profession.

“The experiences of many women are really shocking and of such gravity that they have not disclosed the details even to their close family members.”

Many of the people the panel approached were initially reluctant to speak because “they were afraid they would lose their jobs”.

“In the beginning, we found their fear strange but as our study progressed we realised it was well-founded. We are concerned about their and their close relatives’ safety.”

The report, the WCC says, has vindicated its stand. “For years, we have been saying that there is a systemic problem in the industry. Sexual harassment is just one of them. This report proves it,” Beena Paul, an award-winning editor and one of the founding members of the WCC, told the BBC.

“We were always told that we were troublemakers [for raising such issues]. This report proves that it [the condition] is far worse than what even we thought,” she said.

Members of the WCC say they have faced difficulty in getting work since they began demanding better working conditions on film sets. “People don’t like the fact that we are asking questions. So, quite a few members have faced difficult situations,” Ms Paul says.

The Association of Malayalam Movie Artists (AMMA), a top industry body which counts superstars like Mohanlal and Mamooty among its members, denied the accusations. Its general secretary Siddique disagreed that there was a small, powerful group that controlled the industry.

He also denied that sexual harassment was rampant in the industry and said that most of the complaints they received were about the delay or a lack of payment for workers. He said conditions for women had improved on film sets in the past five years and all facilities were now available to them.

In the week since its release, the report has created ripples in the state, with activists and prominent opposition leaders demanding action against those accused of wrongdoing.

Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan said if any woman who testified before the committee came forward to file a complaint, the government would take action. “No matter how big they are, they will be brought before the law,” he said.

On Thursday, a public interest petition was filed in the Kerala High Court, seeking initiation of criminal proceedings against those accused in the report.

The court ordered the government to submit a copy of the report and the judges said they would decide if criminal action needed to be taken once they had read it.

Allegations of harassment and abuse in films are not new in India – in 2018, the #MeToo movement hit the country’s most popular film industry Bollywood after actress Tanushree Dutta accused veteran actor Nana Patekar of behaving inappropriately towards her on a film set in 2008. Patekar denied the allegations.

Ms Dutta, who has since claimed that she has been denied work, described the Hema committee report as “useless”, adding that earlier reports about making workplaces safer for women had not helped.

Parvathy Thiruvothu, an award-winning actress and a key member of the WCC, however, told Asianet news channel that she considered the release of the report “a victory”.

“It’s opened up a door for big changes within the industry,” she said.

Jeo Baby, director of The Great Indian Kitchen, a critically-acclaimed film that examines the patriarchal structure within the family, told the BBC that while gender issues remain a concern, change is under way in the industry. “This is the right time to correct this. The film industry has to fight this together.”

The report, which has made several recommendations to make the industry a safe place for women, says their inquiry and recommendations are not to find fault with any individual, but “an earnest attempt to ennoble a profession so that it becomes a viable career option for aspiring artists and technicians, both male and female”.

“Hopefully filmmaking will become so safe that parents can send their daughters and sons to the profession with the same confidence and sense of security as they send their children to an engineering firm or a college,” it adds.

Read more:

• India arrests after actress says she was abducted and raped
• Bhavana Menon breaks silence on sexual assault
• #MeToo: Why sexual harassment is a reality in Bollywood
• Sex harassment claims shake top India dance academy

An explosion outside a synagogue in southern France is being investigated by authorities as “attempted terrorist murder”.

Police said the explosion was caused by two cars being set alight outside the Beth Yaacov synagogue in the resort town of La Grande-Motte. One of the vehicles contained a hidden gas cannister.

Police sources told French media a man caught on CCTV setting fire to the vehicles was carrying a Palestinian flag and possibly a handgun.

Jewish community leader Yonathan Arfi said the incident was “an attempt to kill Jews,” adding that the attack seemed to have been timed to target Saturday morning worshippers.

One police officer was injured in the explosion, believed to have occurred between 08:00 and 08:30 local time (07:00-07:30 BST). His injuries are not said to be life-threatening.

Five people, including the rabbi, were inside the synagogue at the time, authorities said. President Emmanuel Macron said the incident was “a terrorist act”.

One eyewitness who, who asked to remain anonymous, told the BBC: “Just as we were coming round the last corner, there was a huge explosion, a fireball into the air.

“It was surreal, like a film. We didn’t go any further.”

French Prime Minister Gabriel Attal and Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin are expected to travel to the scene later on Saturday.

They have both condemned the attack, with Mr Attal calling it “an antisemtic act,” while Mr Darmanin said security around Jewish sites would be reinforced.

“I want to assure our Jewish fellow citizens and the municipality of my full support,” the interior minister added.

Both leaders said security forces were tracking down the suspect.

The French Jewish community already live under high security, with many synagogues and Jewish schools under police protection.

A January 2024 report by the Council of Jewish Institutions in France (CRIF) said there had been a nearly threefold increase of antisemitic acts in France between 2022 and 2023.

In May, police shot dead a man after a synagogue in the north-western city of Rouen was set on fire.

In 2015, two days after the attacks on the Charlie Hebdo magazine, four people were murdered in a hostage attack on a kosher supermarket.

The explosion comes amid heightened concerns for Europe’s Jewish community, after the latest survey from the EU’s Fundamental Rights Agency (FRA) published last month found that Jewish people in the bloc continue to face high levels of antisemitism.

More than 8,000 Jews in 13 EU countries, including Germany and France, were interviewed. 96% said they had encountered antisemitism in their daily life.

There has been widespread condemnation of the attempted arson attack across France’s political spectrum. Left-wing politician Jean-Luc Mélenchon called it an “intolerable crime”, while the far-right National Rally’s Jordan Bardella said it was “a criminal and antisemtic act”.

Jermaine Jenas has told the Sun newspaper he is “ashamed” and has “let everybody down” after being sacked as a BBC presenter.

He told the paper he sent “inappropriate messages” to two colleagues on the One Show, but insisted he “did nothing illegal” and said they were sent to “two consenting adults”.

The former Match of the Day and One Show host had his contract terminated this week for allegedly sending inappropriate messages to a female colleague.

The BBC has not disclosed further details about the allegations against him.

He told the Sun the texts were a “huge error of judgement” for which he was “deeply sorry”, adding that he was “not a sex pest”.

Jenas, who is married with four children, told the paper he is receiving therapy and accepted he “fell below [the] standards” of the BBC.

The 41-year-old continued: “I feel so ashamed. I’ve let everybody down – my colleagues, my friends and, most importantly, I’ve let my family down.”

The issue was brought to the BBC’s attention a few weeks ago. The corporation announced his departure on Thursday.

A BBC spokesperson said: “We can confirm Jermaine Jenas is no longer part of our presenting line-up.”

The BBC has not commented since Jenas spoke to the Sun.

Jenas said he was sacked during a video call on Monday while on a family holiday, five days after being told of the allegations against him by the BBC.

In a lengthy and at times tearful interview on camera with the Sun, Jenas said “nothing physical ever happened” but said he considered what he did “cheating”.

He continued: “I was given an incredible opportunity and I know it’s on me that right now I feel I have lost everything.

“I feel like people are judging me and that I am the number one target right now in the country.”

Jenas said he owed “everyone an apology, especially the women” he was messaging, and added: “I am sorry for what I have put them through.”

He denied sending any explicit pictures or video, the Sun reported.

Jenas was presenting on talkSport Drive when the news of his BBC dismissal broke on Thursday.

Asked about the allegations on air, he repeatedly refused to be drawn on why he had been sacked and said he was “speaking to lawyers”.

On the same day, his profile was removed from his agent’s website.

In a statement, talkSport said: “There are no plans for Jermaine to broadcast as a presenter on talkSport in the immediate future.”

Jenas earned between £190,000 and £194,999 at the BBC in the last financial year for his work on coverage of football including the FA Cup, Match of the Day and the World Cup.

His salary for his work on The One Show has not been made public because it is paid by BBC Studios, the BBC’s commercial production company, which doesn’t reveal how much it pays presenters.

Jenas made his footballing debut at 17, and played for his boyhood team Nottingham Forest, followed by Newcastle United and Tottenham Hotspur.

He made 21 appearances for England and retired in 2016 before beginning a career in the media.

The ex-Premier League footballer also works for TNT Sports as a pundit and co-commentator, and fronts their Formula E racing coverage.

A Formula E spokesperson said Jenas was part of the Formula E presenting team for season 10, which ended in July, and the presenting line-up for the next season will be announced “in due course”.

They continued: “This decision will be carefully considered, taking into account the high standards we expect to be upheld at Formula E.”

TNT has not commented about his future with the broadcaster.

Jenas’s agency, MC Saatchi, no longer represents him and his profile on the site now displays a “page not found” notice.

Independent White House candidate Robert F Kennedy Jr has joined the Republican nominee, Donald Trump, on stage at a rally in Arizona after dropping out of the race and endorsing the former US president.

Mr Kennedy, 70, a Democrat for most of his life and the scion of the Kennedy dynasty, said the principles that had led him to leave the party had now compelled him “to throw my support to President Trump”.

He said in a press conference in Phoenix, Arizona, on Friday that he would seek to remove his name from the ballot in 10 battleground states.

Before welcoming RFK Jr to the stage on Friday, Trump promised, if elected, to release all remaining documents relating to the 1963 assassination of President John F Kennedy.

Trump praised Mr Kennedy as “phenomenal” and “brilliant” at the rally later in Glendale. Democratic rival Kamala Harris said she would try to “earn” the support of Kennedy voters.

With November’s election looming, Mr Kennedy’s polling has slumped from a high of double figures as funds and national coverage dried up.

The son of US Senator Robert F Kennedy and nephew of President John F Kennedy, he is from the most famed family in Democratic politics.

Mr Kennedy’s decision to back a Republican for the White House has outraged his relatives, who previously condemned his invocation of the family name in a Super Bowl ad back in February.

Kerry Kennedy, his sister, said his support for Trump was a “betrayal of the values that our father and our family hold most dear. It is a sad ending to a sad story.”

“This decision is agonising for me because of the difficulties it causes my wife and my children and my friends,” Mr Kennedy said on Friday.

“But I have the certainty that this is what I’m meant to do. And that certainty gives me internal peace, even in storms.”

He is married to Cheryl Hines, the star of HBO comedy Curb Your Enthusiasm. She posted on X, formerly Twitter, that she deeply respected her husband’s decision to suspend his campaign. She did not comment on his endorsement of Trump.

Mr Kennedy told reporters on Friday that Trump’s insistence he could end the war in Ukraine by negotiating with Russia “alone would justify my support for his campaign”.

“There are still many issues and approaches on which we continue to have very serious differences. But we are aligned on other key issues.”

He said he would remove his name from 10 states where his presence would be a “spoiler” to Trump’s effort. He has already withdrawn from the battleground states of Arizona and Pennsylvania.

But it is too late for him to pull out from the swing states of Michigan, Nevada and Wisconsin, election officials told AP news agency.

Mr Kennedy said he had launched his campaign in April 2023 “as a Democrat, the party of my father, my uncle… the champions of the Constitution”.

But he left because “it had become the party of war, censorship, corruption, big pharma, big tech, big money”.

He blamed his decision to suspend his campaign on “media control” and his former party’s efforts to thwart his run, adding: “In my heart I no longer believe I have a realistic path to victory in the face of relentless and systematic censorship.”

Mr Kennedy hovered around 14% – 16% in polls at his most popular. However, his ratings have slumped to single digits since Ms Harris became the Democratic nominee.

He said in his press conference that he had offered to work with Ms Harris and her bid for the White House.

Democrats sounded unfazed by his announcement.

“Donald Trump isn’t earning an endorsement that’s going to help build support, he’s inheriting the baggage of a failed fringe candidate. Good riddance,” Democratic National Committee senior adviser Mary Beth Cahill said in a statement.

Mr Kennedy’s campaign became synonymous with the anti-vaccine movement as he frequently touted his leadership of the Children’s Health Defense organisation, formerly known as the World Mercury Project.

In recent weeks, Mr Kennedy recounted how he dumped a dead bear cub that had been hit by a car in New York’s Central Park in 2014 as a joke.

Earlier in his campaign, it was revealed that he had suffered from a brain parasite over a decade ago which caused severe memory loss and brain fog.

His announcement capped days of rumour that Mr Kennedy offered to endorse Trump to secure a role in his next administration.

Trump told CNN earlier this week he would “certainly be open” to Mr Kennedy playing a role, while Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr, said he would be suited to “blow up” a federal department.

Merrill Matthews, a resident scholar with the conservative Institute for Policy Innovation, told the BBC that Mr Kennedy’s decision highlighted the two-party system in the US and “how difficult it is to get new ideas and fresh people into the process”.

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Sir Keir Starmer has told China’s President Xi Jinping he hopes they can have “open, frank and honest” talks about areas of disagreement, in the first official call between the two.

The call was also the first between Mr Xi and a British prime minister since he spoke to Boris Johnson in March 2022.

The two leaders discussed potential areas of co-operation, including on trade, the economy and education, a No 10 spokesperson said.

“As permanent members of the UN Security Council, the leaders agreed on the importance of close working in areas, such as climate change and global security,” they added.

“The leaders also agreed on the need for a stable and consistent UK-China relationship, including dialogue between their respective foreign and domestic ministers.”

China’s embassy in the UK said President Xi congratulated Sir Keir on taking office, and said the two countries needed to “view their relations from a long-term and strategic perspective”.

In a statement, it added: “China is committed to building a great country and achieving national rejuvenation on all fronts through a Chinese path to modernisation, and follows a path of peaceful development.

“It is hoped that the UK will view China in an objective and rational manner.”

Foreign Secretary David Lammy met Chinese counterpart Wang Yi on the sidelines of an Association of Southeast Asian Nations gathering in Laos last month.

He urged China to stop its companies supporting Russia’s war effort, and stressed the UK’s “ironclad” commitment to backing Ukraine.

Sir Keir’s conversation with Mr Xi comes amid a period of strained relations between London and Beijing over espionage allegations and China’s tightening control over former UK colony Hong Kong.

However, the two countries remain major trading partners as well as permanent members of the UN Security Council.

China was Britain’s fifth largest trading partner in 2023, according to UK statistics, but diplomatic relations were icy under former PM Rishi Sunak.

Soon after taking office in October 2022, Mr Sunak declared an end to the so-called “golden era” of UK-China relations trumpeted by former Prime Minister David Cameron.

He also described China as a “systemic challenge” to UK values.

In 2021, China imposed sanctions on nine UK citizens, including five Conservative MPs.

In 2023, the UK Parliament banned TikTok, the Chinese-owned social media app, from being accessed on its wi-fi over security concerns. TikTok has denied claims it passes on users’ data to the Chinese government.

In April, UK police charged two men under the Official Secrets Act with spying for China.