Germany’s anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD) is celebrating a “historic success”, with the far-right party on course for a big victory in the eastern state of Thuringia.

The AfD is set to win almost a third of the vote, according to a projection for public broadcaster ARD, nine points ahead of the conservative CDU, and far in front of Germany’s three governing parties.

The result would give the far right its first vote win in a state parliament since World War Two, although it has little hope of forming a government in Thuringia.

The AfD came a close second in Sunday’s other big state election, in the more populous neighbouring state of Saxony.

Projections there gave the CDU almost 32% of the vote, a point ahead of the AfD, again far ahead of the three parties running the national government – the Social Democrats, Greens and liberal FDP.

The AfD’s top candidate in Thuringia, Björn Höcke, who is a highly controversial figure in Germany, hailed a “historic victory” and spoke of his great pride. He reportedly failed to win a direct mandate for the state parliament, but could still win a seat because he is top of his party list.

Mr Höcke’s party has been designated as right-wing extremist and he has been fined for using a Nazi slogan, although the former history teacher denies knowingly doing so.

One of Germany’s best-known Holocaust survivors, Charlotte Knobloch, pointed out that the election had taken place 85 years to the day since the outbreak of World War Two. The result had left the country in danger of becoming “more unstable, colder and poorer, less safe and less worth living in”, she said.

With federal elections only a year away, the AfD is second in national opinion polls. Co-leader Alice Weidel said the result was a “requiem” for the three parties running Germany. And it was clear that voters in both eastern states wanted her party in government: “Without us a stable government is no longer possible at all.”

That message was repeated by Björn Höcke, who suggested there were plenty of CDU voters who would be happy if they worked together.

Without the support of other parties, the AfD cannot govern in Thuringia, and the CDU has made clear it will not consider ruling with the far right.

Mathematically, the conservatives will need support from parties on the left to form a majority.

Some five million Germans in the east were eligible to vote on Sunday and, according to a survey for public broadcaster ZDF, 36% of under-30s in Thuringia voted for the AfD, far more than any other party.

The biggest issue for AfD voters on Sunday was immigration, and in particular the issue of refugees and asylum.

“Politicians have promised a lot, particularly concerning migration and foreigners,” AfD voter Michael told the BBC in Thuringia’s state capital, Erfurt.

“But nothing happened. Nothing. Just promises came from these parties. Now I have my party. And I stand with my decision,” he said, standing beside his partner Manuela, who agreed that people wanted change.

The asylum issue was re-ignited nationally little more than a week before the vote, when three people were murdered at a street festival at Solingen in western Germany, and a Syrian man facing deportation was arrested on suspicion of carrying out the attack.

AfD deputy leader Beatrix von Storch told the BBC’s Newshour programme that political opponents had been attacking her party’s asylum policies as extremist for years. “Two days ahead of the election they started to do what we always said had to be done,” she said, referring to a series of government measures aimed at toughening asylum laws.

The AfD also wants to stop weapons supplies to Ukraine, as does a new party heading for third place in both states, left-wing populist leader Sahra Wagenknecht’s BSW.

Although she has similar ideas to the AfD on Ukraine, Ms Wagenknecht has, like the other parties, refused to take part in any coalition with the far right.

If the projections are confirmed, the AfD is on course to win 32 seats in the 88-seat Thuringia state parliament, and the CDU 23 seats, with only one of the three parties in the national government represented.

That would give the AfD more than a third of the seats, handing it a blocking minority on decisions that require a two-thirds majority, including changes to the state constitution or appointing judges.

Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democratic Party (SPD) is set to win just six seats, with none for the Greens and liberal FDP.

In Saxony, the conservatives are on course to win 42 seats, just ahead of the AfD with 40, while Sahra Wagenknecht’s party is in third with 15 seats.

Sunday’s elections have underlined the unpopularity of Germany’s ruling “traffic-light” coalition, so named because of the red, yellow and green of the party colours.

A third eastern state, Brandenburg, is due to vote in three weeks’ time and although the AfD is ahead in the opinion polls, the Social Democrats and conservatives are only a few points behind.

While Björn Höcke hailed his party’s victory with supporters in Erfurt, anti-AfD protesters gathered outside the Thuringia state parliament.

The AfD has been classified as right-wing extremist by domestic intelligence in Thuringia as well as Saxony. In May, a German court ruled that the BfV intelligence agency was justified in placing the AfD under observation for suspected extremism.

Among the protesters was Hannah, a local student, who said she was very worried by the result: “I think there are a lot of people who are aware they have Nazi policies and don’t care. Germany has some kind of responsibility on that matter.”

The rise of Sahra Wagenknecht’s populist party had a direct impact on the Left party, which won the last election in Thuringia but has now slipped into fourth place.

Bodo Ramelow. the Left-party state premier of Thuringia, who had led a coalition with the SPD and Greens, said the election campaign had been characterised by fear and that he was “fighting against the normalisation of fascism”.

It was the image that made the Titanic’s wreck instantly recognisable – the ship’s bow looming out of the darkness of the Atlantic depths.

But a new expedition has revealed the effects of slow decay, with a large section of railing now on the sea floor.

The loss of the railing – immortalised by Jack and Rose in the famous movie scene – was discovered during a series of dives by underwater robots this summer. The images they captured show how the wreck is changing after more than 100 years beneath the waves.

The ship sank in April 1912 after hitting an iceberg, resulting in the loss of 1,500 lives.

“The bow of Titanic is just iconic – you have all these moments in pop culture – and that’s what you think of when you think of the shipwreck. And it doesn’t look like that anymore,” said Tomasina Ray, director of collections at RMS Titanic Inc, the company that carried out the expedition.

“It’s just another reminder of the deterioration that’s happening every day. People ask all the time: ‘How long is Titanic going to be there?’ We just don’t know but we’re watching it in real time.”

The team believes the section of railing, which is about 4.5m (14.7ft) long, fell off at some point in the last two years.

Images and a digital scan from an 2022 expedition carried out by deep-sea mapping company Magellan and documentary makers Atlantic Productions show that the railing was still attached – though it was starting to buckle.

“At some point the metal gave way and it fell away,” said Tomasina Ray.

It is not the only part of the ship, which lies 3,800m down, that is being lost to the sea. The metal structure is being eaten away by microbes, creating stalactites of rust called rusticles.

Previous expeditions have found that parts of the Titanic are collapsing. Dives led by explorer Victor Vescovo in 2019 showed that the starboard side of the officer’s quarters were collapsing, destroying state rooms and obliterating features like the captain’s bath from view.

This summer’s RMS Titanic Inc expedition took place over July and August.

Two remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) captured more than two million images and 24 hours of high definition footage of both the wreck, which split apart as it sank with the bow and stern lying about 800m apart, and the debris field surrounding it.

The company is now carefully reviewing the footage to catalogue the finds and will eventually create a highly detailed digital 3D scan of the entire wreck site.

More images from the dives will be revealed over the coming months.

The team has also announced another discovery of an artefact they were hoping to find even though it was against all the odds.

In 1986 a bronze statue called the Diana of Versailles was spotted and photographed by Robert Ballard, who had found the wreck of the Titanic a year earlier.

But its location was not known and the 60cm-tall figure was not documented again. Now, though, it has been discovered lying face up in the sediment in the debris field.

“It was like finding a needle in a haystack, and to rediscover this year was momentous,” said James Penca, a Titanic researcher and presenter of the Witness Titanic podcast.

The statue was once on display for the Titanic’s first-class passengers.

“The first-class lounge was the most beautiful, and unbelievably detailed, room on the ship. And the centrepiece of that room was the Diana of Versailles,” he said.

“But unfortunately, when Titanic split in two during the sinking, the lounge got ripped open. And in the chaos and the destruction, Diana got ripped off her mantle and she landed in the darkness of the debris field.”

RMS Titanic Inc has the salvage rights to the Titanic, and is the only company legally allowed to remove items from the wreck site.

Over the years, the company has retrieved thousands of items from the debris field, a selection of which are put on display around the world.

They plan to return next year to recover more – and the Diana statue is one of the items they would like to bring back to the surface.

But some believe the wreck is a grave site that should be left untouched.

“This rediscovery of the Diana statue is the perfect argument against leaving Titanic alone,” Mr Penca said in response.

“This was a piece of art that was meant to be viewed and appreciated. And now that beautiful piece of art is on the ocean floor… in pitch black darkness where she has been for 112 years.

“To bring Diana back so people can see her with their own eyes – the value in that, to spark a love of history, of diving, of conservation, of shipwrecks, of sculpture, I could never leave that on the ocean floor.”

A beluga whale suspected of having been trained as a spy by Russia has been found dead off the Norwegian coast.

The body of the animal – nicknamed Hvaldimir – was found floating off the south-western town of Risavika and taken to the nearest port for examination.

The whale was first spotted in Norwegian waters five years ago with a GoPro camera attached to a harness that read “Equipment of St Petersburg”.

This sparked rumours the mammal could be a spy whale – something experts say happened in the past. Moscow never responded to the allegations.

Hvaldimir’s lifeless body was discovered at the weekend by Marine Mind, an organisation that has tracked his movements for years.

Marine Mind founder Sebastian Strand told AFP news agency that the cause of death was unknown and that Hvaldimir’s body had no obvious injuries.

“We’ve managed to retrieve his remains and put him in a cooled area, in preparation for a necropsy by the veterinary institute,” he told AFP news agency.

With an estimated age of about 15, Hvaldimir was not old for a Beluga whale, whose lifespan can reach 60 years.

He first approached Norwegian boats in April 2019 near the island of Ingoya, about 415km (260 miles) from Murmansk where Russia’s Northern Fleet is based.

The sighting attracted attention because belugas are rarely seen this far south of the high Arctic.

• Seeking sanctuary for whale dubbed as spy

The discovery led to an investigation by Norway’s domestic intelligence agency, which later said that the whale was likely to have been trained by the Russian army as he seemed accustomed to humans.

The whale became known locally as Hvaldimir, a pun on the Norwegian word for whale, “hval”, and President Vladimir Putin.

Russia has a history of training marine mammals such as dolphins for military purposes and the Barents Observer website has identified whale pens near naval bases in the north-west area of Murmansk.

Russia has never officially addressed the claim that Hvaldimir may have been trained by the Russian military. It has previously denied the existence of any programmes seeking to train sea mammals as spies.

Donald Trump has signalled that he will vote in favour of legalising marijuana for personal use in his home state of Florida, ahead of a ballot on the issue in November.

The Republican presidential nominee wrote on his Truth Social platform that voters are highly likely to approve the measure “whether people like it or not” and therefore “it should be done correctly”.

The former US president’s stance puts him at odds with other senior Republican figures, including Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who has argued that legalising recreational cannabis use would “be bad for quality of life”.

Medicinal marijuana was made legal in Florida in 2016.

Cannabis for both personal and medical use is legal in 24 US states, according to the Pew Research Centre. A further 14 states have legalised medical marijuana.

Trump said: “Someone should not be a criminal in Florida, when this is legal in so many other states.

“We do not need to ruin lives and waste taxpayer dollars arresting adults with personal amounts of it on them.”

The proposal is one of a number of amendments Florida residents will vote on in November at the same time as the US chooses its new president. Trump is running against incumbent vice-president and Democratic Party nominee Kamala Harris.

On legalising marijuana for personal use, Trump said that there would need to be rules in place to “prohibit the use of it in public spaces, so we do not smell marijuana everywhere we go, like we do in many of the Democrat-run cities”.

Mr DeSantis has claimed that making cannabis legal for recreational use “would turn Florida into San Francisco or Chicago” – both cities in Democrat-run states.

Marijuana was legalised in Illinois 2020 and between January and July this year, cannabis sales reached more that $1bn (£760m), according to state government statistics.

In California, where personal use was legalised in 2016, marijuana sales reached $4.4bn last year.

However, it is not clear how those figures compare to black market sales of cannabis which, according to some, still thrives.

Legalised growers and sellers have to get permits and pay tax, which can prove costly and risk making their cannabis more expensive.

“The black market is very pervasive and it is definitely larger than the legal market,” Bill Jones, the head of enforcement for California’s Department of Cannabis Control, told US broadcaster NPR earlier this year.

Trump has already caused some confusion about a different amendment that will be on Florida’s ballot in November. On Friday he said he would vote against a measure in Florida that would protect abortion rights, after facing backlash from conservative supporters.

Abortion is banned in Florida after six weeks of pregnancy – the amendment proposes expanding that to 24 weeks. Trump had initially signalled support for the proposal.

His campaign later claimed he had not said how he would vote in ballot, simply that he thought that the six week period was “too short”. The following day, Trump, whose Mar-a-Lago estate is in Palm Beach, Florida, said he would be voting “no”.

Tens of thousands of people have rallied across Israel after the bodies of six hostages held by Hamas in the Gaza Strip were recovered by soldiers, causing national outrage.

Protesters – many clad in Israeli flags – descended on Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and other cities, accusing PM Benjamin Netanyahu and his government of not doing enough to reach a deal to secure the release of the remaining hostages taken by Hamas during the 7 October attacks.

Sunday’s protests were largely peaceful – but crowds broke through police lines, blocking a major highway in Tel Aviv.

This comes as a major Israeli labour union, Histadrut, called for a nationwide general strike on Monday, pressing for a hostage deal.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said earlier that the six bodies were found on Saturday in an underground tunnel in the Rafah area of southern Gaza.

The hostages were identified as Carmel Gat, Eden Yerushalmi, Hersh Goldberg-Polin, Alexander Lobanov, Almog Sarusi and Master Sgt Ori Danino.

The IDF said they had been killed shortly before its troops reached them on Saturday.

This triggered Sunday’s protests, with crowds accusing the government and Mr Netanyahu personally of failing to save the remaining hostages.

In Tel Aviv, protesters broke through police lines on to Ayalon Highway late on Sunday.

Some people scaled buses and bins to gain a vantage point over the march, while others surrounded someone wearing a mask of Mr Netanyahu, chanting: “Alive, alive, we want them alive.”

One demonstrator held a sign which read: “You are the head. You are to blame”.

Crowds also chanted slogans including “policemen, policemen who are you protecting” and “shame, shame”.

Some set fires on the road and draped yellow ribbons – a symbol of solidarity with the hostages.

Naama Lazimi, a Labor Party lawmaker, told the BBC she was lightly injured after police let off stun grenades and she fell down.

She described the protests as “significant and important”. but said the “question is what happens tomorrow”.

Among the protesters was Eli Shtivi, whose son Idan is being held hostage in Gaza.

“We hope that those who make the decisions will wake up,” he told the BBC. “We don’t have time any more.”

He said people from all strands of Israeli society took part in Sunday’s rallies, united in wanting the hostages returned.

“I miss my child so much. All the families are kind of hostages too,” Mr Shtivi said.

Noga Burkman, another demonstrator in Tel Aviv, told the BBC she “couldn’t stay at home any more”.

“People understand that now we need to break the rules and do something,” she said, adding that “tonight is just the beginning”.

Elsewhere, in the city itself, the gathering saw a diverse mix of protesters, with one group of young scouts leading chants.

In Jerusalem, a massive crowd of demonstrators gathered outside the prime minister’s office.

One 50-year-old man told the BBC that the demonstrations were far bigger than any previous ones. “It’s a totally different game today,” he said. “A different scale to anything before.”

Among those present at the protests in Tel Aviv was 24-year-old Yotam Peer, whose 21-year-old brother was killed on 7 October in the Hamas attacks. He told the BBC: “After we heard about the six hostages, we couldn’t be silent any more. It’s really important. We don’t have a choice any more.”

Local media reported that opposition leader Yair Lapid was present. The former prime minister, who leads the Yesh Atid party, earlier backed calls for a mass strike to force Mr Netanyahu into a deal over the release of the hostages.

Calling the general strike, union leader Arnon Bar-David said: “We must reach a deal. A deal is more important than anything else.”

He added: “We are getting body bags instead of a deal.”

Families of the hostages have been pushing for a nationwide strike as part of efforts to get a ceasefire agreement between Mr Netanyahu’s government and Hamas for weeks.

The Hostages Families Forum said that the six captives, whose bodies were recovered by Israeli military, were “murdered in the last few days, after surviving almost 11 months of abuse, torture and starvation in Hamas captivity”.

“The delay in signing the deal has led to their deaths and those of many other hostages,” it said.

The prime minister said he was committed to securing a deal that releases the remaining captives and protects the country’s security. But he said: “Whoever murders hostages does not want a deal.”

The far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich was quick to condemn the general strike, claiming that it represented “the interests of Hamas”.

But others have come forward in support. Tel Aviv’s Mayor Ron Huldai announced that the city’s municipal workers were free to join Monday’s strike “as a sign of solidarity with the abductees and their families”.

It is not clear how many hostages remain in Gaza. Hamas kidnapped 251 people and killed 1,200 others during an attack in southern Israel on 7 October 2023.

Israel launched a retaliatory military campaign against Hamas in Gaza. More than 40,530 people have been killed there since 7 October, according to the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry.

A global network has fleeced students out of tens of thousands of pounds for worthless visa documents they hoped would enable them to work in the UK.

A BBC investigation has found middlemen working as recruitment agents preyed on international students who wanted jobs in the care industry.

The students paid up to £17,000 each for sponsorship certificates that should have been free.

When they applied for skilled worker visas, their paperwork was rejected by the Home Office for being invalid.

We have seen documentation that shows one man, Taimoor Raza, sold 141 visa documents – most of which were worthless – for a total of £1.2m.

He denies doing anything wrong and has paid back some of the money to students.

Mr Raza rented offices and hired staff in the West Midlands and promised dozens of students work in care homes and employment sponsorship.

We have been told he began selling legitimate documents and that a handful of students obtained visas and genuine jobs.

But many more lost their entire savings on worthless paperwork.

The BBC has spoken to 17 men and women who have lost thousands trying to obtain work visas.

Three of the students, all women in their 20s, paid out a total of £38,000 to different agents.

They said they had been sold a dream in their native India that they would make their fortunes in England.

Instead, they had ended up penniless and too afraid to tell their families back home.

“I am trapped here [in England],” Nila* told the BBC.

“If I do return, all of my family’s savings would’ve been wasted.”

The UK’s care sector, including care homes and agencies, had a record number of vacancies in 2022 with 165,000 posts unfilled.

The government widened the net for recruitment by allowing international applications, leading to a boom in interest from the likes of India, Nigeria and The Philippines.

Applicants must have an eligible sponsor, such as a registered care home or agency, and jobseekers should not have to pay a penny for their sponsorship or visa.

The sudden opening of this route has been exploited by middlemen taking advantage of students looking to work full time.

Although the students we spoke to had made great attempts to remain in the UK legally, they now face being sent back to their country of origin.

Nadia*, 21 and from India, arrived in the UK in 2021 on a study visa to complete a BA in computer sciences.

After a year, she decided to look for a job instead of paying tuition fees of £22,000 a year.

A friend gave her the number for an agent who told Nadia he could provide the correct documents needed for care work for £10,000.

She said the agent made her feel at ease and even told her she reminded him of his own relatives.

“He told me ‘I won’t charge a lot of money from you because you look like my sisters’,” Nadia, who lives in Wolverhampton, said.

She paid him £8,000 upfront, and waited for six months for a document to arrive that stated she had work at a care home in Walsall.

“I directly called the care home and asked about my visa, but they said they didn’t provide any certificates of sponsorship because they already had full staff,” Nadia said.

The agent blocked Nadia’s calls and she was advised to go to the police but she told the BBC she was too scared.

Nila, who is living in Birmingham, said her family believed investing in a life in the UK would allow her to gain skills and earn more than in India.

“My father-in-law was in the army, he trusted me with all his savings,” she said.

She visited a training agency in Wolverhampton to switch her student visa to a care worker one.

The agents were very polite, she said, and showed emails, letters and copies of visas to prove their legitimacy.

Nila and the other students were totally convinced the men were going to change their lives.

“The way in which they first meet us, its God-like. That’s how much they win over our trust,” she said.

She paid £15,000 for documents that ended up being worthless and rejected by the Home Office, having already spent £15,000 of her family’s money on her studies.

Nila said her life had been destroyed.

“Those scammers are still roaming free today. They have no fear,” she said.

The BBC has learned that Taimoor Raza, a Pakistani national who had been living in Wolverhampton and working in Birmingham, is at the top of one visa network.

He approached recruitment agencies in the West Midlands and said he could arrange work in care homes and organise visa applications for their clients.

The BBC has seen a file full of sponsorship documents that Mr Raza provided one agency for 141 applicants.

Each person paid between £10,000 and £20,000 and the total amounts to £1.2m.

We have verified that Mr Raza was sending these sponsorship documents as PDF files over Whatsapp.

Of them, 86 received worthless paperwork that was rejected by the Home Office as invalid.

A further 55 successfully obtained a visa, but the care homes they had been promised work with said they had no record of the arrangement.

The BBC contacted Taimoor Raza, who has been in Pakistan since December 2023, to put the allegations to him.

He responded to say the students’ claims were “false” and “one-sided” and that he had contacted his lawyers.

He did not respond to our request for an interview.

Student Ajay Thind said he was recruited to work for Mr Raza after he paid him £16,000 for a care worker visa.

He was among six people paid between £500-£700 a week, compiling paperwork and filling in forms for applicants.

Mr Thind said Mr Raza rented offices and even took his team on an all-expenses trip to Dubai.

His suspicions arose in April 2023 when he noticed applications were being rejected by the Home Office. Some included his friends, who had paid a total of £40,000.

“I told Raza and he said to me, ‘your brain isn’t made for stress, let me handle the stress.’

“I didn’t leave as I needed the money,” he said. “I got stuck in such a bad situation.”

Mr Thind said his boss was working with numerous agencies, so the figure of £1.2m is likely to be much higher.

Most victims have not contacted police.

“A lot of people don’t go to the police because they’re terrified of the Home Office and the consequences of reporting,” said Luke Piper, head of immigration at the Work Rights Centre.

Instead, they have sought help from a Sikh temple in the West Midlands – the Gurdwara Baba Sang Ji, in Smethwick.

Members have been leading the fightback against agents who failed to deliver on their promises and have managed to claw money back for some people.

The elders at the temple even managed to summon Mr Raza to a meeting in November 2023, where it is said he agreed to refund money and stop his activities.

The gurdwara’s Sikh Advice Centre, set up to help people during the pandemic, managed to get one young mother, Harmanpreet, her money back by confronting agency staff in person.

She said she had been pushed to the brink of suicide by her ordeal.

“I considered taking my own life. I only restarted my life because of my daughter and the Sikh Advice Centre,” she said.

Monty Singh, from the centre, said hundreds of people had contacted them for help.

He and the team began dealing with cases in 2022 by outing those involved on social media, hoping that naming and shaming them would warn people not to trust them.

More people got in touch after seeing the posts and names were added to the list.

Mr Singh said they began to realise the agents operated like a pyramid scheme.

“There are loads of little team leaders and agents… and some of them might get commission,” he said.

Some of the smaller agents were hairdressers and bus drivers who saw an opportunity to make money, he said.

He said Mr Raza had repaid £258,000 but that the advice centre had now handed the case over to the National Crime Agency.

Other agents had paid money back because of the great shame it had brought on their families.

“Family honour means everything to an individual. We identify, investigate, look at all the evidence that is there,” Monty said.

“Once we’ve got that, we speak to the family and the shame it brings on them, they just want to repay the victim and clear their family name.”

There has been a six-fold increase in applications from students to obtain UK work visas – with over 26,000 between June 2022 to June 2023, up from 3,966 the year before.

In July last year, the Home Office amended rules to prevent international students obtaining work visas before completing their studies.

But the Sikh Advice centre said only tough action by police and immigration officials will stop the illegal trade in visas.

Jas Kaur, who works alongside Monty, said the government must liaise with faith leaders.

“If you’re not talking to the people on the ground, you have no idea what’s really going on,” she said.

A Home Office spokesperson said there were “stringent systems in place to identify and prevent fraudulent visa applications, and any individual being targeted by these fraudsters needs to know that if their sponsorship certificate is not genuine, it will not succeed”.

“We will continue to take tough action as well against any unscrupulous companies and agents who are seeking to abuse, exploit or defraud overseas workers,” they added.

Mr Piper, from the Work Rights Centre, said the government needed to support victims and “create a framework of safe reporting without fear of reprisal from the Home Office simply because they’ve reported their employer to them”.

There are no official figures on the numbers of people who have lost money paying agents for worthless visa paperwork.

“What is clear is that it is happening on quite a significant scale as we’re hearing from people all over the country,” Mr Piper added.

Back in Smethwick, the Sikh Advice Centre hopes to expand the operation to other gurdwaras and have also begun educating people in India of the risks they take when leaving their country for study or work.

“Educating people involves the harsh truth that the success stories of a few doesn’t mean it will happen for everyone,” Mr Singh said.

“It’s also undoing the belief that the only way they can do better is to follow the British or American dream.”

A trained tiger handler has been hospitalised with injuries to her arm after being attacked by one of the animals at an Australian theme park.

Queensland Ambulance Service (QAS) says the woman, who is in her 40s, is in a stable condition after sustaining cuts and scratches while working at Dreamworld in Queensland’s Gold Coast.

“This was an isolated and rare incident, and we will conduct a thorough review accordingly,” the company said in a statement.

The popular theme park – which is visited by almost two million people every year – is home to nine Sumatran and Bengal tigers.

QAS said medics were called to the scene at 09:01 local time on Monday (23:01 GMT on Sunday) “following an incident with a tiger” and that the woman was immediately taken to the Gold Coast University Hospital, where she remains.

“She was quite pale and feeling unwell, but in general well and was able to be transported,” QAS acting district director Justin Payne told ABC News.

“She is one of the experienced and senior handlers there at Dreamworld… it’s good to see that she was able to be looked after by other support staff there,” he added.

Dreamworld’s Tiger Island attraction is one of only a handful of interactive tiger exhibits in the world, according to the theme park.

It opened almost three decades ago and hosts two shows a day in which onlookers are invited to watch the animals “glide underwater” in a splash pool, and eat their daily meals during feeding time.

According to local media reports, there have been a string of incidents in the enclosure over the years – including when a then-nine-year-old male Bengal tiger, Kato, bit two handlers back in 2011.

A Dreamworld spokesperson said that the company’s focus now was to provide the employee involved in Monday’s attack with immediate support.

Russian air strikes have injured at least 41 people in the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv, officials have said.

Regional head Oleh Syniehubov said five children were among those wounded and he accused Moscow of “aiming exclusively at civilian infrastructure” in the city.

Among the buildings damaged are a supermarket and a sports complex in areas residents go to every day, he added.

“Russia is once again terrorizing Kharkiv, striking civilian infrastructure and the city itself,” President Volodymyr Zelensky said in the wake of the attacks.

Mr Zelensky repeated his calls for Western allies to “give Ukraine everything it needs to defend itself”.

Mr Syniehubov said at least 10 separate Russian strikes had been recorded, including the use of ballistic missiles.

People may be buried under the rubble in some areas and rescue operations are continuing, he added.

From several videos shared on social media of the attacks, BBC Verify has located one strike to the northeast of the centre of Kharkiv, along Akademika Pavlova St, and another three miles south which damaged the city’s Palace of Sport buildings.

Images from each attack include the moment of impact and explosion from missiles.

The attack comes after Ukraine launched a wave of overnight drone attacks against targets in Russia, where fire broke out at two energy facilities.

No injuries or deaths have been reported by Russian officials.

According to Russia’s defence ministry, more than 158 Ukrainian drones targeted 15 regions of the country, including the capital Moscow.

The Russian military said the drones were intercepted and destroyed.

But as a result of the attack a fire has broken out at an oil refinery in Moscow in a “separate technical room”, the city’s mayor said.

Sergei Sobyanin reported that at least 11 drones targeted the capital city and the surrounding areas.

Meanwhile, 75 miles (120km) from the Russian capital, in the Tver region, loud blasts were heard close to the Konakovo Power Station.

Russian media are reporting a fire at the facility.

The region’s governor, Igor Rudenya, acknowledged a fire caused by an attack in Konakovsky district had been contained, without providing details of what was hit.

Local officials also said drones attempted to attack the Kashira Power Plant in the Moscow region – but that there were no fires, damage or casualties as a result.

BBC Verify has examined and verified videos posted on social media which show explosions at all three locations. In the footage, fires appear to have subsequently broken out at Konakovo Power Station and the Moscow refinery.

Ukraine has not commented on the claims.

But Ukrainian forces have been stepping up long-range strikes inside Russia over the past few months, launching scores of drones simultaneously at strategic targets several times a week.

BBC News has been told that Western technology and finance are helping them carry out hundreds of long-range strikes inside Russia.

In Ukraine, a 23-year-old lorry driver was killed after a Russian air strike on a grain convoy in the Sumy region overnight, local officials have said.

Prosecutors said four others were injured in the attack after one lorry caught fire and around 20 others were damaged.

Ukraine’s air force also said it had destroyed eight out of 11 drones used by Russia, adding that grain and agriculture facilities had been targeted in the Mykolaiv region as well.

Sumy borders Russia’s Kursk region, where Ukraine has been carrying out a military incursion for nearly a month.

Progress has slowed in recent days, but Ukraine claimed last week it controlled 1,294 sq km (500 sq miles) of territory – including 100 settlements. It also said nearly 600 Russian soldiers had been captured.

Meanwhile, Russian forces are continuing to advance rapidly on a key town in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region – which has been the focus of Moscow’s ground offensive for months.

Pokrovsk plays a crucial role as a logistics hub for Ukrainian forces, as it is home to a key railway station and is located at the intersection of several important roads.

Ukraine’s commander-in-chief Gen Oleksandr Syrskyi described the situation in the area of Russia’s main attack as “difficult”, but added that all necessary decisions are “being made without delay”.

The most recent Ukrainian attacks on Russia’s energy facilities also come a day after a Russian guided bomb strike on a playground in Kharkiv killed a 14-year-old girl.

A similar attack on a residential building in the city in north-eastern Ukraine also killed six other people.

It also follows Russia hitting Ukraine’s energy grid with a massive wave of deadly drone and missile strikes last week – which led to at least nine people being killed over two days.

Russia began targeting Ukraine’s energy system with air strikes shortly after it began its full-scale invasion in February 2022.

Brazil’s Supreme Court will vote on Monday on whether or not to uphold a ruling to ban social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter.

Justice Alexandre Moraes called for the vote after the platform was suspended in the country in the early hours of Saturday.

It came after X failed to appoint a new legal representative in Brazil before a court-imposed deadline.

A feud between Justice Moraes and X’s owner Elon Musk began in April when the the judge ordered the suspension of dozens of accounts for allegedly spreading disinformation.

There are 11 justices in Brazil’s Supreme Court, which is split into two chambers of five members each, excluding the chief justice. The chambers can vote on whether to uphold or reject rulings by any one of its judges.

Justice Moraes is a member of the first chamber that will be reviewing his decision to ban X.

Reacting to the decision to ban X, Mr Musk said: “Free speech is the bedrock of democracy and an unelected pseudo-judge in Brazil is destroying it for political purposes.”

In his ruling, Justice Moraes gave companies, including Apple and Google, a five-day deadline to remove X from its app stores and block its use on iOS and Android devices.

He added that individuals or businesses that are found to still be accessing X by using virtual private networks (VPNs) could be fined R$50,000 ($8,910; £6,780).

X closed its office in Brazil last month, saying its representative had been threatened with arrest if she did not comply with orders it described as “censorship”, which it described as illegal under Brazilian law.

Justice Moraes had ordered that X accounts accused of spreading disinformation – many of which were supporters of the former right-wing president Jair Bolsonaro – must be blocked while they are under investigation.

Brazil is said to be one of the largest markets for Mr Musk’s social media network.

The first full day of a campaign to vaccinate 640,000 children against polio in Gaza has been successful, the UN says.

The rollout relies on a series of localised pauses in fighting between Israeli forces and Hamas fighters, and the first three-day window began on Sunday.

“So far, it’s going well and the turnaround is really good,” Salim Oweis, a spokesman for the UN children’s fund Unicef, told the BBC.

To be effective, the World Health Organization (WHO) says at least 90% of children under 10 must be immunised in a short time frame. The drive follows the first confirmed case of polio in 25 years in Gaza.

On Thursday, the WHO announced an agreement with Israel for limited pauses in the fighting to allow the polio vaccination programme to take place.

Around 1.3 million doses of the vaccine were recently brought in through the Kerem Shalom checkpoint by Unicef. The agency has had to keep them in cold storage in its warehouse at the correct temperature to maintain their potency. Another shipment of 400,000 doses is set to be delivered to Gaza soon.

On Sunday, Palestinians were able to take their children to three health centres in central Gaza in the first phase of the campaign, which will later extend to the north and the south.

Nearly 2,000 children were vaccinated at the Deir el-Balah clinic alone, said UN spokeswoman Louise Wateridge.

Among the parents who rushed their children to receive doses was Ghadir Hajji, a mother of five.

“They absolutely have to be vaccinated,” she told AFP news agency as the family waited in line. “We received text messages from the ministry of health and we showed up right away.”

Each “humanitarian pause” is set to last from 06:00 until 15:00 local time over three days, with the possibility of adding an extra day if needed.

Unicef’s Jonathan Crickx says it is crucial that these temporary truces hold.

“You cannot lead and implement a polio vaccination campaign in an active combat zone. It’s simply impossible,” he says.

• Israel agrees to pauses in fighting for polio vaccine drive
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• WHO ‘extremely worried’ about possible Gaza polio outbreak

“Families need to be feeling safe in bringing their children to get the vaccines. But also, the healthcare workers need to be able to safely reach the communities.”

“This is a huge endeavour,” Mr Crickx adds. “Especially in a place like the Gaza Strip where we know that, for example, roads have been damaged, that access is problematic, that security incidents take place on a daily basis.”

One doctor involved in the operation, Dr Mohammed Salha, told the BBC that one of the main challenges facing the drive was the lack of fuel needed to keep hospitals running and for the cold chain storage of the vaccines.

He said he also worried people would be “scared to move from shelters to hospitals or healthcare centres” even with the agreement of a humanitarian pause in place.

About 90% of all Gazans have been displaced and with health services under huge strain, most children have seen their regular immunisations disrupted leaving them vulnerable to infection, like baby Abdulrahman Abu Judyan.

A video shot a few months ago shows that he was crawling early. But now as he turns one, his mother Niveen – who lives in a crowded tent camp in central Gaza – worries that he will never be able to walk.

“It was very shocking,” Niveen tells the BBC, recalling her son’s recent diagnosis with polio, which has left him partly paralysed in one leg.

“I wasn’t expecting this. Now he may not be able to crawl or walk and the child was left without proper medical care.”

On 7 October – the day of a shocking Hamas-led attack on southern Israel which killed 1,200 people – newborn Abdulrahman was supposed to receive routine vaccinations but never did.

During the war that followed, the Abu Judyan family from the very north of Gaza, have moved five times – first to Gaza City, then to different locations in the centre, to Rafah in the far south and back to Deir al-Balah.

“I feel a lot of guilt that he didn’t get the vaccination. But I couldn’t give it to him because of our circumstances,” Niveen says as she rocks her baby in a car seat. She desperately hopes that her son can be taken outside Gaza for treatment. “He wants to live and walk like other children,” she says.

The mother struggles to find clean drinking water for her nine children. Close to the makeshift tent where they live, raw sewage flows through the street.

Conditions are ideal for the spread of diseases – especially polio which is highly infectious.

Since discovering the virus in wastewater samples taken in June, UN agencies have been racing to set up an emergency mass vaccination programme.

More than 2,000 workers – mostly locals – are involved in the immunisation effort. Palestinian health officials say there will be more than 400 fixed vaccination sites – which include healthcare centres, hospitals, clinics, and field hospitals – and about 230 so-called outreach sites, community gathering places, where vaccines will be distributed.

Each child must receive two drops of oral polio vaccine in two rounds, the second to be administered four weeks after the first. It is essential that the programme is carried out quickly to prevent mutation of the virus and break transmission.

The polio variant that triggered this latest outbreak is itself a mutated virus from an oral polio vaccine. This is because the vaccine contains a weakened live virus which in very rare cases is shed by those who receive it and can then evolve into a new form that can start new epidemics.

With doctors in Gaza on high alert for potential polio infections in children, tests are being carried out at a WHO-approved laboratory in Jordan.

“There could be more cases of paralytic polio until this outbreak is stopped and this virus will paralyse more children,” Dr Hamid Jafari, WHO director of polio eradication for the eastern Mediterranean, tells me from Amman.

He says the stakes are high for the whole region. “The risk of course, is not only just for Gaza, given the high force of transmission in Gaza, there is a risk of this spilling over into Israel, into the West Bank and surrounding countries.”

For now, though the focus remains on Gaza – where children make up nearly half of the 2.3 million population.

The past year has deprived many of their loved ones, their homes and health. With no end in sight to the war, the hope is that at least one new source of suffering can be eliminated.

The man who walked out into the rain in Dhaka hadn’t seen the sun in more than five years.

Even on a cloudy day, his eyes struggled to adjust after half a decade locked in a dimly lit room, where his days had been spent listening to the whirr of industrial fans and the screams of the tortured.

Standing on the street, he struggled to remember his sister’s telephone number.

More than 200km away, that same sister was reading about the men emerging from a reported detention facility in Bangladesh’s infamous military intelligence headquarters, known as Aynaghor, or “House of Mirrors”.

They were men who had allegedly been “disappeared” under the increasingly autocratic rule of Sheikh Hasina – largely critics of the government who were there one day, and gone the next.

But Sheikh Hasina had now fled the country, unseated by student-led protests, and these men were being released.

In a remote corner of Bangladesh, the young woman staring at her computer wondered if her brother – whose funeral they had held just two years ago, after every avenue to uncover his whereabouts proved fruitless – might be among them?

The day Michael Chakma was forcefully bundled into a car and blindfolded by a group of burly men in April 2019 in Dhaka, he thought it was the end.

He had come to authorities’ attention after years of campaigning for the rights of the people of Bangladesh’s south-eastern Chittagong Hill region – a Buddhist group which makes up just 2% of Bangladesh’s 170m-strong, mostly Muslim population.

He had, according to rights group Amnesty International, been staunchly vocal against abuses committed by the military in the Chittagong Hill Tracts and has campaigned for an end to military rule in the region.

A day after he was abducted, he was thrown into a cell inside the House of Mirrors, a building hidden inside the compound the Directorate General of Forces Intelligence (DGFI) used in the capital Dhaka.

It was here they gathered local and foreign intelligence, but it would become known as somewhere far more sinister.

The small cell he was kept in, he said, had no windows and no sunlight, only two roaring exhaust fans.

After a while “you lose the sense of time and day”, he recalls.

“I used to hear the cries of other prisoners, though I could not see them, their howling was terrifying.”

The cries, as he would come to know himself, came from his fellow inmates – many of whom were also being interrogated.

“They would tie me to a chair and rotate it very fast. Often, they threatened to electrocute me. They asked why I was criticising Ms Hasina,” Mr Chakma says.

Outside the detention facility, for Minti Chakma the shock of her brother’s disappearance was being replaced with panic.

“We went to several police stations to enquire, but they said they had no information on him and he was not in their custody,” she recalls. “Months passed and we started getting panicky. My father was also getting unwell.”

A massive campaign was launched to find Michael, and Minti filed a writ petition in the High Court in 2020.

Nothing brought any answers.

“The whole family went through a lot of trauma and agony. It was terrible not knowing the whereabouts of my brother,” she says.

Then in August 2020, Michael’s father died during Covid. Some 18 months later, the family decided that Michael must have died as well.

“We gave up hope,” Minti says, simply. “So as per our Buddhist tradition we decided to do hold his funeral so that the soul can be freed from his body. With a heavy heart we did that. We all cried a lot.”

Rights groups in Bangladesh say they have documented about 600 cases of alleged enforced disappearances since 2009, the year Sheikh Hasina was elected.

In the years that followed, Sheikh Hasina’s government would be accused of targeting their critics and dissenters in an attempt to stifle any dissent which posed a threat to their rule – an accusation she and the government always denied.

Some of the so-called disappeared were eventually released or produced in court, others were found dead. Human Rights Watch says nearly 100 people remain missing.

Rumours of secret prisons run by various Bangladeshi security agencies circulated among families and friends. Minti watched videos detailing the disappearances, praying her brother was in custody somewhere.

But the existence of such a facility in the capital was only revealed following an investigation by Netra News in May 2022.

The report found it was inside the Dhaka military encampment, right in the heart of the city. It also managed to get hold of first-hand accounts from inside the building – many of which tally with Michael’s description of being held in a cell without sunlight.

The descriptions also echo those of Maroof Zaman, a former Bangladeshi ambassador to Qatar and Vietnam, who was first detained in the House of Mirrors in December 2017.

His interview with the BBC is one of the few times he has spoken of his 15-month ordeal: as part of his release, he agreed with officials not to speak publicly.

Like others who have spoken of what happened behind the complex’s walls, he was fearful of what might happen if he did. The detainee who spoke openly to Netra News in 2022 only did so because he was no longer in Bangladesh.

Maroof Zaman has only felt safe to speak out since Sheikh Hasina fled – and her government collapsed – on 5 August.

He describes how he too was held in a room without sunlight, while two noisy exhaust fans drowned out any sound coming from outside.

The focus of his interrogations were on the articles he had written alleging corruption at the heart of government. Why, the men wanted to know, was he writing articles alleging “unequal agreements” signed with India by Ms Hasina, that favoured Delhi.

“For the first four-and-a-half months, it was like a death zone,” he says. “I was constantly beaten, kicked and threatened at gunpoint. It was unbearable, I thought only death will free me from this torture.”

But unlike Michael, he was moved to a different building.

“For the first time in months I heard the sound of the birds. Oh, it was so good, I cannot describe that feeling,” Maroof recounted.

He was eventually released following a campaign by his daughters and supporters in late March 2019 – a month before Michael found himself thrown into a cell.

Few believe that enforced disappearances and extra-judicial killings could have been carried out without the knowledge of the top leadership.

But while people like Mr Chakma were languishing in secret jails for years, Ms Hasina, her ministers and her international affairs advisor Gowher Rizvi were flatly rejecting allegations of abductions.

Ms Hasina’s son, Sajeed Wazed Joy, has continued to reject the allegations, instead turning the blame on “some of our law enforcement leadership [who] acted beyond the law”.

“I absolutely agree that it’s completely illegal. I believe that those orders did not come from the top. I had no knowledge of this. I am shocked to hear it myself,” he told the BBC.

There are those who raise their eyebrows at the denial.

Alongside Michael, far higher profile people emerged from the House of Mirrors – retired brigadier Abdullahi Aman Azmi and barrister Ahmed Bin Quasem. Both had spent about eight years in secret incarceration.

What is clear is that the re-emergence of people like the politicians, and Michael, shows “the urgency for the new authorities in Bangladesh to order and ensure that the security forces to disclose all places of detention and account for those who have been missing”, according to Ravina Shamdasani, a spokesperson for the UN Human Rights office in Geneva.

Bangladesh’s interim government agreed: earlier this week, it established a five-member commission to investigate cases of enforced disappearances by security agencies during Ms Hasina’s rule since 2009.

And those who have survived the ordeal want justice.

“We want the perpetrators to be punished. All the victims and their families should be compensated,” Maroof Zaman said.

Back on the street outside the House of Mirrors – just two days after Sheikh Hasina fled to India – Michael was struggling to decide what to do. He had only been told about his release 15 minutes before. It was a lot to take in.

“I forgot the last two digits of my sister’s phone number,” he says. “I struggled a lot to remember that, but I couldn’t. Then I called a relative who informed them.”

But Minti already knew: she had seen the news on Facebook.

“I was ecstatic,” she recalls through tears two weeks later. “Next day, he called me, I saw him on that video phone call after five years. We were all crying. I couldn’t recognise him.”

Last week, she saw him in person for the first time in five years: weaker, traumatised – but alive.

“His voice sounds different,” she says.

Michael, meanwhile, is dealing with the long term health implications of being held in the dark for so long.

“I cannot look at contacts or phone numbers properly, it’s a blurred vision. I am getting treatment, and the doctor is giving me spectacles.”

More than that, there is coming to terms with what he has missed. He was told of his father’s death a few days after his release.

And yet, amid the pain, he is hopeful – even happy.

“It’s more than a new lease of life, a resurrection. It feels like I was dead and have come back to life again. I cannot describe this feeling.”

Kike España gazes across Málaga’s Plaza de la Merced.

It’s late morning and it’s still a peaceful spot at this time of day – jacaranda trees fill the square, an obelisk monument sits at its centre and on the far side is the house where Pablo Picasso was born.

But it’s the city’s tourists, many of whom are already gathering in the host of nearby cafés, who concern Kike.

“The situation is so saturated that Málaga has really reached a turning point at which people feel that the city is collapsing,” he says.

“It’s the same feeling you have when you enter a theme park,” he adds. “There is a stream of people that are consuming the city and not really inhabiting it.”

Kike is an urban planner and a local activist with the Málaga Tenants’ Union, which has been campaigning for a change in how the southern Spanish city manages tourism.

The organisation led a protest in late June in which thousands of local people took to the streets to voice their concern at the negative impact that tourism is having on their city, including pushing up housing costs, gentrification and crowds.

And it’s not just Málaga. Spaniards have been protesting throughout the summer for the same reasons in other major tourist destinations, including Barcelona, Alicante and the Canary and Balearic Islands.

In April, a group of activists on Tenerife staged a three-week hunger strike against the building of new tourist megaprojects. In Barcelona, demonstrators fired at foreign visitors with water pistols and among the slogans daubed on their banners were: “Tourism kills the city” and “Tourists go home.”

Spain first established itself as a tourist hub more than half a century ago, as northern Europeans started to flock to its coastline and islands.

Today, the industry represents about 13% of Spanish GDP and, having bounced back from the Covid-19 pandemic, it is surpassing records in terms of both revenue and arrivals.

In 2023, the country received 85 million foreign visitors and more than 90 million are expected this year, putting it close behind France, the world’s most popular tourist destination.

José Luis Zoreda, president of the Exceltur, a tourism industry association, prefers to talk about the amount of revenue the industry generates – €200bn (£171bn) in direct and indirect activity this year, he estimates – rather than the number of visitors.

He also highlights how tourism has ensured that the Spanish economy has outperformed most of its European neighbours in the wake of Covid-19.

“We have been responsible in the last few years for the most important percentage of growth of our economy,” he says. “In 2023, we were responsible for 80% of the whole GDP growth of Spain.”

So the sheer size of the tourism sector and its strong growth have driven the overall expansion of the Spanish economy.

But there is a growing belief that the cost of such success is too high and the wave of recent protests has created the sense of a tipping point. Many Spaniards are now convinced that the towns and cities they inhabit are catering more for visitors than for residents.

“Tourism was perceived as a positive economic activity that is a huge part of our GDP, but the numbers have become so huge in terms of international arrivals that we are now seeing the negative impacts, especially in cities,” says Paco Femenia-Serra, lecturer in tourism and geography at Madrid’s Complutense University.

“Tourism is competing for space and the number of people out on the streets is unbearable for many residents.”

Besides making these places less pleasant, locals say tourism has also pushed many smaller businesses out of the centre of cities. In their place have come franchise restaurants, bars and shops – and prices have risen.

But the most-cited problem is that of housing.

Spain’s biggest tourist destinations have large numbers of short-term rental properties aimed at tourists.

A recent study by El País newspaper found that several areas of Málaga had the highest proportion of Airbnb properties in Spain. A quarter of all apartments in the area around the Plaza de la Merced are dedicated to tourist rental.

Owners of apartments are able to charge more for short-term rentals than they would charge longer-term tenants and this has the effect of pushing up prices across the board. Locals say it is difficult to find an apartment for less than €1,200-1,300 per month in the centre of Málaga. With the average salary in the surrounding Andalusia region at just €1,600 per month, they are being priced out of their city.

“If the people of Málaga don’t have somewhere to live, who will provide services for the tourists?” asked Isabel Rodríguez, housing minister for Spain’s governing Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE).

Speaking at a housing forum in the city in July, she continued: “Where will the waiters who serve us a glass of wine and a plate of sardines live?”

As Ms Rodríguez’s comments suggest, Spain’s political class is now starting to grapple with the tourism conundrum.

Catalonia and the Balearic Islands have already introduced a “tourist tax”, charging a sliding sum of up to €4 per person per day, depending on the type of accommodation used.

Palma de Mallorca has sought to limit numbers of arrivals by sea, with no more than three cruise liners allowed to dock at the city per day, only one of them carrying more than 5,000 passengers.

Measures are also being taken to tackle the tourist accommodation issue. This year, the regional government in Andalusia has handed town and city halls the power to introduce their own controls on short-term rentals.

In the north-east, Barcelona has already announced its intention to revoke all of the 10,000 or so tourist accommodation licences currently in circulation in 2028.

Mr Femenia-Serra describes the reining in of Spanish tourism as “a very tricky problem” given the economic weight of the industry but he believes restrictions are needed.

“If we want to talk about sustainable tourism or a lower number of tourists we should discuss limits on activity and higher restrictions and more regulation of the sector, which until now has been kind of free to act,” he says. He suggests introducing limits on the number of flights to certain destinations as a possible measure.

In Málaga, Kike España wants to see caps on rental prices and efforts to provide more housing for locals as immediate measures to counter the tourism crisis.

While he insists that he and his fellow activists are not opposed to tourism, just the way it is being managed in Spain, he says he also hopes the protests will continue.

“We are against city models that only focus on tourism,” he says. “We cannot lose all the energy and complexity and heterogeneity of our cities.”

A new show in the Indian capital Delhi showcases a rich collection of early photographs of monuments in the country.

The photographs from the 1850s and 1860s capture a period of experimentation when new technology met uncharted territory.

British India was the first country outside Europe to establish professional photographic studios, and many of these early photographers were celebrated internationally. (Photography was launched in 1839.)

They blended and transformed pictorial conventions, introduced new artistic traditions, and shaped the visual tastes of diverse audiences, ranging from scholars to tourists.

While the works of leading British photographers often reflect a colonial perspective, those by their Indian contemporaries reveal overlooked interactions with this narrative.

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The pictures at the show called Histories in the Making have been gathered from the archives of DAG, a leading art firm. They highlight photography’s crucial role in shaping an understanding of India’s history.

They also contributed to the development of field sciences, fostered networks of knowledge, and connected the histories of politics, fieldwork, and academic disciplines like archaeology.

“These images capture a moment in history when the British Empire was consolidating its power in India, and the documentation of the subcontinent’s monuments served both as a means of asserting control and as a way to showcase the empire’s achievements to audiences back in Europe,” says Ashish Anand, CEO of DAG.

This is a a picture of Caves of Elephanta taken by William Johnson and William Henderson.

The Caves, a UNESCO World Heritage site, are a group of temples primarily dedicated to the Hindu god Shiva in the state of Maharashtra.

William Johnson began his photographic career in Bombay (now Mumbai) around 1852, initially working as a daguerreotypist – the daguerreotype was an early photographic process that produced a single image on a metal plate.

In the mid-1850s, Johnson partnered with William Henderson, a commercial studio owner in Bombay, to establish the firm Johnson & Henderson.

Together, they produced The Indian Amateur’s Photographic Album, a monthly series published from 1856 to 1858.

Linnaeus Tripe arrived in India in 1839 at the age of 17, joining the Madras regiment of the East India Company.

He began practicing photography and in December 1854, captured images in the towns of Halebidu, Belur, and Shravanabelagola.

Sixty-eight of these photographs, primarily of temples, were exhibited in 1855 at an exhibition in Madras (now a major city called Chennai), earning him a first-class medal for the “best series of photographic views on paper”.

In 1857, Tripe became the photographer for the Madras Presidency – a former province of British India – and photographed sites at Srirangam, Tiruchirapalli, Madurai, Pudukkottai, and Thanjavur.

Over 50 of these photographs were displayed at the Photographic Society of Madras exhibition the following year, where they were widely praised as the best exhibits.

John Murray, a surgeon in the Bengal Indian Medical Service, began photographing in India in the late 1840s.

Appointed civil surgeon in the city of Agra in 1848, he spent the next 20 years producing a series of studies on Mughal architecture in Agra and the neighbouring cities of Sikandra, and Delhi.

In 1864, he created a comprehensive set of pictures documenting the iconic Taj Mahal.

Throughout his career, Murray used paper negatives and the calotype process – a technique of creating “positive” prints from one negative – to produce his images.

Thomas Biggs arrived in India in 1842 and joined the Bombay Artillery as a captain in the British East India Company.

He soon took up photography and became a founding member of the Photographic Society of Bombay in 1854.

After exhibiting his work at the Society’s first exhibition in January 1855, he was appointed as the government photographer for the Bombay Presidency, tasked with documenting architectural and archaeological sites.

He photographed Bijapur, Badami, Aihole, Pattadakal, Dharwad, and Mysore before being recalled to military service in December 1855.

Biggs experimented with the calotype process, producing “positive” prints from one negative.

Felice Beato, one of the most renowned war and travel photographers of the 19th Century, arrived in India in 1858 to document the aftermath of the 1857 mutiny.

Indian soldiers, known as sepoys, had set off a rebellion against the British rule, often referred to as the first war of independence.

Although the mutiny was nearly over when Beato arrived, he photographed its aftermath with a focus on capturing the immediacy of events.

He extensively documented cities deeply affected by the uprising, including Lucknow, Delhi, and Kanpur, with notable images of Sikandar Bagh, Kashmiri Gate, and the barracks of Kanpur. His chilling photograph of the hanging of sepoys, stands out for its stark depiction.

As a commercial photographer, Beato aimed to sell his work widely, spending over two years in India photographing iconic sites. In 1860, Beato left India for China to photograph the Second Opium War.

Andrew Neill, a Scottish doctor in the Indian Medical Service in Madras, was also a photographer who documented ancient monuments for the Bombay Presidency.

His calotypes were featured in the 1855 exhibition of the Photographic Society of Madras and in March 1857, and 20 of his architectural views of Mysore and Bellary were shown by the Photographic Society of Bengal.

Neill also documented Lucknow after the 1857 revolt.

Edmund Lyon, who served in the British Army from 1845 to 1854 and briefly as governor of Dublin District Military Prison, arrived in India in 1865 and established a photographic studio in the southern city of Ooty.

Working as a commercial photographer until 1869, Lyon gained significant recognition, particularly for his photographs of the Nilgiris mountain range, which were showcased at the 1867 Paris Exposition.

Accompanied by his wife, Anne Grace, Lyon also captured southern India’s archaeological sites and architectural antiquities.

His work resulted in a remarkable collection of 300 photographs documenting sites in Trichinopoly, Madurai, Tanjore, Halebid, Bellary, and Vijayanagara

Samuel Bourne’s stunning images of India, especially from his Himalayan expeditions between 1863 and 1866, stand among the finest examples of 19th-Century travel photography. A former bank clerk, Bourne left his job in 1857 to pursue photography full-time.

Arriving in Calcutta (now Kolkata) in 1863, he soon moved to Shimla, where he partnered with William Howard to establish the Howard & Bourne studio.

Later that year, Charles Shepherd joined them, forming ‘Howard, Bourne & Shepherd’. When Howard left, the studio became ‘Bourne & Shepherd,’ a name that would become iconic.

Bourne embarked on three major Himalayan expeditions, covering vast regions including Kashmir and the challenging terrain of Spiti. His 1866 photographs of the Manirung Pass, at over 18,600ft (5,669m), gained international acclaim.

In 1870, Bourne returned to England, selling his shares, though Bourne & Shepherd continued to operate in Calcutta and Simla. The studio, which later documented the spectacular Delhi Durbar – the ‘Court of India’ of 1911, an event that saw 20,000 soldiers marching or riding past the silk-robed Emperor and Empress – had a remarkable 176-year legacy before closing in 2016.

The notion that artificial intelligence could one day take our jobs is a message many of us will have heard in recent years.

But, for Paul Skye Lehrman, that warning has been particularly personal, chilling and unexpected: he heard his own voice deliver it.

In June 2023, Paul and his partner Linnea Sage were driving near their home in New York City, listening to a podcast about the ongoing strikes in Hollywood and how artificial intelligence (AI) could affect the industry.

The episode was of interest because the couple are voice-over performers and – like many other creatives – fear that human-sounding voice generators could soon be used to replace them.

This particular podcast had a unique hook – they interviewed an AI-powered chat bot, equipped with text-to-speech software, to ask how it thought the use of AI would affect jobs in Hollywood.

But, when it spoke, it sounded just like Mr Lehrman.

“We needed to pull the car over,” he said.

“The irony that AI is coming for the entertainment industry, and here is my voice talking about the potential destruction of the industry, was really quite shocking.”

That night they spent hours online, searching for clues until they came across the site of text-to-speech platform Lovo. Once there, Ms Sage said she found a copy of her voice as well.

“I was stunned,” she said. “I couldn’t believe it.”

“A tech company stole our voices, made AI clones of them, and sold them possibly hundreds of thousands of times.”

They have now filed a lawsuit against Lovo. The firm has not yet responded to that or the BBC’s requests for comment.

But how was Lovo able to recreate their voices? The couple alleges it was done under false pretences.

Lovo co-founder Tom Lee has previously said its voice-cloning software only needs a user to read about 50 sentences to create a faithful clone.

“We can capture the tone, the character, the style, the phonemes, and even if you have an accent, we can capture that as well,” he told the Future Visionaries podcast in 2021.

In their lawsuit, the couple set out how they say Lovo obtained just such a recording from them.

They allege anonymous Lovo employees contacted them to record audio assets on Fiverr, the popular freelance talent website, where they were selling their services to provide audio for television, radio, video games, and other media.

First, in 2019, Ms Sage says a user reached out asking for her to record dozens of generic sounding test radio scripts.

Test recordings are often used in film and television for focus groups, internal meetings, or as placeholders for works in progress. Because they won’t be shared broadly, these recordings cost much less than audio meant for broadcast.

Ms Sage says she completed the job, delivered the files, and was paid $400 (£303).

About six months later, Mr Lehrman says he got a similar request to record dozens of generic sounding radio ads.

In messages the couple have shared with the BBC, the anonymous Fiverr user says the audio will be used for research into “speech synthesis”.

After asking the user to guarantee that the scripts will not be used outside their specific research project, Mr Lehrman asks what the goal of the project is.

“The scripts will not be used for anything else,” the user says, “and I can’t yet tell you the goal, as it’s a confidential work in process sorry haha”.

Mr Lehrman asked if the finished files would be repurposed or used in a different order. The user says the files will be used for research purposes only. Mr Lehrman says he delivered the files and was paid $1200.

The link between the anonymous user and Lovo came, they say, from Lovo itself.

They shared the evidence they had found of their voices being cloned with Lovo – who replied they had done nothing wrong, pointing to the communications between them the anonymous user as evidence they engaged with the couple legally.

“In our careers, we’ve delivered over 100,000 audio assets,” Mr Lehrman said, of their work on Fiverr over the better part of a decade.

“We were able to find this needle in a haystack – they gave us this needle in a haystack.”

In both cases, both Mr Lehrman and Ms Sage say they did not have a written contract, just these conversations. The BBC has not been able to verify the entirety of their conversations. The couple say the user they spoke with also appears to have deleted some messages.

The BBC contacted Lovo on several occasions to request an interview with Mr Lee and to seek a response to the couple’s claims. They did not respond to any of our messages.

The lawsuit the couple filed in May alleges that Lovo used recordings of their voices to create copies that illegally compete with Ms Sage and Mr Lehrman’s real voices.

The couple say the company did so without permission or proper compensation.

It is a class action lawsuit – meaning they are hoping other claimants will join it, though none have so far.

Professor Kristelia Garcia, an expert in intellectual property law at Georgetown University in Washington DC says the case is likely to centre on an area of US law called rights of publicity.

Sometimes referred to as personality rights, violations of one’s publicity often come from misuse or misrepresentation of someone’s image or voice.

She also says there could likely be a breach of contract regarding the licences Ms Sage and Mr Lehrman granted the user who commissioned the recordings.

“Licences are permission for a very specific and narrow use. I might give you a licence to use my swimming pool one afternoon, but that doesn’t mean you can come whenever you want and have a party in my swimming pool,” she told the BBC.

“That would exceed the terms of the licence.”

Whatever the outcome of the case, it is another in a long list of lawsuits brought by artists, authors, illustrators, and musicians who don’t want to lose control of their work and livelihood.

And they are likely to just be the tip of the iceberg. This week the financial firm Klarna said it planned to use AI to halve its workforce.

Some experts predict 40% of all jobs will eventually be impacted by AI

For Mr Lehrman and Ms Sage though that worrying future is playing out now.

“This whole experience has felt so surreal,” Ms Sage said.

“When we thought about artificial intelligence, we were thinking of AI folding our laundry and making us dinner, not pursuing human being’s creative endeavours.”

When fans saw rapper Macklemore had cancelled an upcoming gig, some of them assumed it was in solidarity with Gaza.

But it wasn’t. The gig was in Dubai and he had cancelled over the war in Sudan, which has already killed tens of thousands of people, left millions more hungry and triggered a humanitarian disaster.

The glamorous Gulf city of Dubai is the biggest in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) – which has been widely accused of funding the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), one of the warring sides in Sudan.

“The crisis in Sudan is catastrophic,” Macklemore said in an Instagram post on Monday. Some food security specialists estimate up to 2.5 million people could die of starvation and illness by October.

“I have to ask myself what is my intention as an artist?” continued the rapper, who rose to fame with 2012 classic Thrift Shop.

“If I take the money,” Macklemore said, “while knowing it doesn’t sit right with my spirit, how am I any different from the politicians I’ve been actively protesting against?”

His moral stand has thrust the brutal conflict – which has garnered far less global attention than Ukraine or Gaza – into popular culture, and activists hope other artists will follow suit.

“It was huge,” says an activist in London who has been campaigning for a ceasefire. “In the comments there were a lot of people saying, ‘oh, my God, what’s happening in Sudan?’

“I think it opened people’s eyes.”

The RSF is battling the Sudanese army for control of the country and has been accused of sexual violence, looting and ethnic cleansing in areas it controls.

A Human Rights Watch report suggests the RSF may have committed genocide against non-Arabs in a city where 15,000 people are feared to have been killed, something the group denies.

The RSF traces its roots to a militia, known as the Janjaweed, which were also accused of genocide 20 years ago in Sudan – an estimated 300,000 people died back then.

Evidence tying the UAE to the RSF has been mounting.

During the war it emerged that the RSF had used drones which a weapons expert from Amnesty International described as the “same drones” the UAE had supplied to its allies in other conflicts, including in Ethiopia and Yemen.

Experts have also seen civilian aircraft allegedly transporting weapons from the UAE to the RSF, according to a UN report presented to the Security Council earlier this year.

The allegation is that the UAE is trying to gain an economic foothold in the Red Sea and profit from Sudan’s resources.

The RSF controls some of Sudan’s most lucrative gold mines, located in the Darfur region.

A Swiss aid organisation alleges the Emiratis are importing billions of dollars worth of the precious metal that are smuggled out of Africa, including Sudan.

And before widespread fighting broke out in the country last year, the UAE signed a deal worth $6 billion to build and operate a port, airport and economic zone on the country’s Red Sea coast.

The UAE government has described the allegations over its involvement in the Sudan conflict as “baseless and unfounded”, and meant “to divert attention from the ongoing fighting and humanitarian catastrophe”.

“UAE reiterates its call for an immediate ceasefire in the ongoing conflict. The warring parties must stop fighting and work towards finding a peaceful solution to the conflict through dialogue,” it said in a statement to the UN.

Macklemore said on Instagram that several groups had been reaching out to him over the Sudan crisis for months.

A representative of Madaniya, an organisation for Sudanese people living in the UK, told BBC News: “A boycott by a major artist is obviously going to bring more attention to the Sudanese cause, which is great.

“What would be a wonderful secondary consequence is if more people were to look into the UAE’s involvement in Sudan.”

Over the next few weeks, Calvin Harris is due to give a performance in Dubai’s harbour and Sophie Ellis-Bextor has a date at the opera house.

Neither replied to a request for comment.

Prof Alex de Waal, an expert on Sudan based at Tufts University in Massachusetts, thinks a cultural and sporting boycott could be an effective way of targeting the regional powers accused of fuelling the war.

He says the UAE and Saudi Arabia are competing for influence in Africa and are backing opposing sides in Sudan. The Emirati and Saudi embassies in London have not responded to a BBC request for comment.

Prof de Waal is convinced that the Arab rivals are so economically powerful that no-one is likely to sanction them – and says that any such measures would be difficult to implement.

It wouldn’t be a priority for many Western countries, he adds, which are pre-occupied with the Israel-Gaza war and tensions with Iran.

But he also suggests the UAE and Saudi Arabia care greatly about their reputation on the international stage.

“Cultural figures and sports figures saying ‘we’re not going there’ counts for much, much more than a threat of trade sanctions or financial penalties.

“I think, interestingly, the [threat to them] of soft power is much stronger, and has much greater potential, than hard power.”

Dr Crystal Murphy, a specialist on East African finance based at Chapman University in California, points towards protests against apartheid in South Africa which ultimately “rewrote political science and international relations”.

She explains: “The boycotts came as a result of tonnes of public and celebrity [organising] and raising awareness of the issue, where enough people were pushing their governments.

“So it can happen,” she adds. “What’s the difference between Macklemore and the South Africa boycotts?”

Campaigners are a long way from achieving boycotts of that scale, but are hopeful that momentum will gather after Macklemore’s move.

The representative of Madaniya describes warring generals as trying to destroy the fabric of Sudanese society. But that doesn’t deter activists. “There’s always a hope for the Sudanese people.”

Already, some people may be following in Macklemore’s footsteps.

One commenter on his post said they’d been invited to speak at a convention in the UAE, but now said: “Your post encouraged me to research a bit more and I decided to decline the offer.”

BBC Radio 4 – What’s happening in Sudan?

The first sign that the sibling warfare between Noel and Liam Gallagher was beginning to calm came during an interview last month.

Reflecting on the band’s sound, Noel told journalist John Robb: “It’s difficult to explain – when I would sing a song it would sound good, when [Liam] would sing it, it would sound great.”

Hearing Noel compliment his brother publicly after 16 years of insults certainly turned a few heads. But few people expected that just days later, the band – who broke up on the same week in 2009 – would dramatically reform.

A blizzard of headlines and a social media frenzy followed, cutting through the national psyche like the band’s two era-defining nights at Knebworth in 1996.

And now, we have a reunion. Tickets for the Oasis comeback tour went on sale on Friday for the pre-sale, and Saturday for the general sale, with fans racing to beat each other the booking queue.

But why reunite now?

There are several reasons – but the financial incentive is surely on the list.

“A deal would’ve been struck early by promoters, and I’ve heard numbers bandied around of the Gallagher brothers earning £50m each,” says Jonathan Dean of the Sunday Times, who first reported the reunion tour. That £50m estimate was made by Birmingham City University about the initial 14 dates.

“I think that is probably true, ticket prices are higher than they used to be.”

But, he notes, figures are difficult to estimate until the full extent of the live shows is known.

“This is being called a world tour, but currently it’s not going further than England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland,” he notes. “It doesn’t go to the rest of Europe, to America, so I think any earnings are completely up in the air until we know how far this tour is going to spread.”

Birmingham City University estimated that the initial dates could, potentially, bring in roughly £400m in ticket sales and other add-ons.

For comparison, Take That’s Progress Live tour in 2011 brought in an estimated $185m (£140m).

The Spice Girls – minus Victoria Beckham – caused Ticketmaster to crash for their 13-date tour in 2019, which earned an estimated $78m (£60m).

Abba were able to launch a hugely successful comeback without even performing live themselves, with the digital avatars used in Abba: Voyage said to be making $2m (£1.5m) in London per week.

But bands – including Oasis – are also presumably attracted to the idea of building their legacy as well as their bank balances.

When Blur played two nights at Wembley last year, critics’ reviews were breathless in their praise.

To some, the Gallaghers’ sudden claims of a truce after years of ferocious barbs might cynically echo the Sex Pistols’ 1996 reunion. Frontman John Lydon admitted at the time that although the band still hated each other they had “found a common cause, and that’s your money”.

But although “money is king here”, says Robin Murray, music editor of Clash magazine, the timing is also arguably “quite natural”.

He notes both Gallagher brothers have just completed their most recent solo musical commitments. “There’s definitely an element of truth to this simply being two people, with a particular bond, being in the right place at the right time.”

Dean notes the Gallaghers are “very rich men anyway”, so there will have been other motivations.

“I think the family thing is key, I just think they’re older, and their ages has made them come together,” he says.

And their long rivalry, with its familial ties and shared legacy, has equally helped bring the band back together, suggests music psychotherapist Katerina Georgiou.

Both Gallaghers have had solo career success. But it’s Liam’s star that has risen the most in recent years. “The brothers spark off each other marvellously and there’s always been that edge of competition,” says Dr Georgiou.

“Of course seeing Liam sell out Knebworth and carry a Definitely Maybe tour on his own will have risen the stakes for Noel and vice versa, as Noel’s movement away from Liam pushed Liam to prove himself to his brother.”

The pair will no doubt benefit from changes to the wider industry landscape. Streaming wasn’t around during Oasis’s heyday, but it has helped them reach new audiences in the intervening years.

Carl Smith, editor at the Official Charts Company, says “the timelessness of Oasis’s material transcends generations and holds up so well in the streaming era”.

It’s echoed by Dean, from the Sunday Times, who says their music is accessible. “What Oasis do is simple, and I don’t mean that in a bad way, it’s songs of escapism and going off and doing your own thing and being free of the drudgery of daily life and work, but done in a simple, slightly raucous, singalong way.”

Before the reunion had even been announced, Spotify said Oasis streams increased by more than 160% globally just on the strength of the rumours.

Another surge following the announcement led to three of the band’s albums going back into the top five on Friday’s official chart, with their greatest hits album increasing by 332%.

Many new Oasis fans are young women – capturing younger fans is crucial for future-proofing the band financially.

Liam’s popularity, in particular, is helping to carry the band’s music for a new generation. Just last week, aged 51, he headlined Reading Festival, a favourite of GCSE and A-Level students.

For all the heady temptations reunions bring artists, they can easily go wrong.

Jennifer Lopez this summer cancelled her greatest hits tour midway through its run over poor ticket sales. Music journalist Michael Cragg, author of 90s and noughties pop book Reach for the Stars, says she had already “flooded the market” with several Netflix projects, making her music feel like “almost like the last thought”.

And the unexpected return of Oasis’s iconic Mancunian contemporaries The Stone Roses in 2011, after a 20-year absence, highlighted the danger of overpromising and underdelivering. Their initial comeback dates were rapturously received, but new singles fell flat and a new album never materialised.

Oasis’s return has, so far, avoided this pitfall, says the Independent’s music editor Roisin O’Connor.

For now, the band haven’t promised the world – they’re gauging reaction to the tour first, a tour which itself was a surprise.

“There’s no indication that they plan on releasing any new music, meaning there isn’t that risk of fans feeling let down if the material didn’t match those earlier albums,” O’Connor says.

But this doesn’t mean the tour isn’t without risk.

There’s a potential threat to Oasis’s working-class credentials, for example. If this tour becomes financially and logistically inaccessible, it could undermine this image.

Standing tickets for the Oasis tour are priced around £150, but premium packages cost up to £506. Some unofficial re-sale tickets are going for £6,000, though the band has warned these could be cancelled.

During Saturday’s sale, “dynamic pricing” on Ticketmaster, where prices rise in line with demand, set some remaining tickets to around £355 plus fees – up from £135 when the sale began.

Tickets to see the band at Knebworth in 1996 cost about £22 – but that doesn’t account for inflation and the new era of tiered pricing.

The pricing concern and clamour for tickets has also led to discussions around gatekeeping.

Some older fans feel they shouldn’t be in competition for tickets with fans who weren’t even alive the first time around. But many counter that music does not belong to anyone, it’s there for all to enjoy.

The cultural impact of the 2025 shows is likely to be huge, suggesting Oasis “have already stamped their foot over next summer”, Dean says.

The fact the band have ruled out playing Glastonbury next year is likely to boost demand of their own tour: fans have been told the only way to see them live is to buy a ticket.

The appeal of the Oasis live shows is further underlined by the prospect of it being the last chance for fans to see them.

“I think this will be viewed as the latest – possibly final – chapter in the Oasis story,” says the Independent’s O’Connor.

“A moment of catharsis for fans who wanted that closure or a chance to see the band for a final time, and hopefully a mending of fences for Noel and Liam after all these years.

“After that, who knows.”

It has been described as the “most invasive species” to ever hit Thailand – one which risks enormous damage to the environment, according to officials.

Attempts to control it have seen crowds wading out into lakes, and genetic modification.

And yet the blackchin tilapia continues to spread through Thailand’s waterways, so far impacting 17 provinces.

An investigation in parliament has aimed to uncover the cause and its proponent, with Bangkok MP Nattacha Boonchaiinsawat declaring: “We will not pass a devastated ecosystem to the next generation.”

So can Thai authorities win the battle – and how exactly did this West African fish end up causing havoc half a world away?

Thailand had experienced outbreaks of blackchin tilapia in the past, but none has been as widespread as this most recent episode.

Mr Nattacha estimates that this particular outbreak is going to cost Thai economy at least 10 billion baht ($293m; £223m).

The core problem is that the blackchin tilapia prey on small fish, shrimp, and snail larvae, which are among Thailand’s important aquaculture products.

So for months now, the government has encouraged people to catch blackchin tilapia, which have found their way in rivers and swamps. The fish thrive in brackish water, but can also survive in fresh and salt water.

The Thai government has also doubled the amount that it will pay people who catch the fish, to 15 baht ($0.42; £0.33) per kilogram. The result? In Bangkok’s suburbs, crowds have waded in knee-deep waters hoping to catch blackchin tilapia with their plastic basins.

Authorities have also released the blackchin tilapia’s predators – Asian seabass and long-whiskered catfish – to hunt them down.

However, they are battling a species which reproduces at speed: females are able to produce 500 fingerlings at a time.

And so authorities have also gone to the extent of developing genetically-modified blackchin tilapia that would produce sterile offspring, planning to release them as early as the end of this year, in the hopes of stopping their population from exploding further.

But Mr Nattacha told BBC Thai the government needed to do even more.

“Who will win?” he wondered. “We need the people to follow the case closely, otherwise this matter will be quiet, and we will pass on this kind of environment to the next generation.”

So how exactly did this fish – easily identifiable thanks to the black spots on their chins and cheeks – come to be in Thailand?

One theory that parliament has looked into is that an experiment by food behemoth Charoen Pokphand Food (CPF) 14 years ago had caused the spread.

The company, which produces animal feed and runs shrimp and livestock farms, imported 2,000 from Ghana in late 2010. It said all the fish died and were buried properly.

Two years later, outbreaks of blackchin tilapia were reported in Thailand, including the area of a CPF laboratory, according to local broadcaster Thai PBS.

But CPF – the agribusiness arm of one of Thailand’s largest conglomerate, Charoen Pokphand Group (CP Group) – has rejected the allegations. It has also threatened to sue those spreading what it calls “misinformation” on the matter.

It is co-operating with state agencies fighting the spread of the alien species.

“Although the company is confident that it is not the cause of the outbreak, it is not indifferent and is ready to cooperate with the government to alleviate the suffering of the people,” said Premsak Wanuchsoontorn, CPF’s aquaculture and research development officer.

However, CPF officials have attended parliament hearings in person only once. They have previously given their explanation to lawmakers in writing.

The director-general of Thailand’s Department of Fisheries, Bancha Sukkaew, notes only one private company had sought permission to import blackchin tilapia.

He told the BBC that there was a possibility that some escaped from the laboratory.

However, he is also not discounting the possibility that the invasive fish species could have been smuggled into Thailand.

In the end, though, how they came to be in Thai waterways is the past – the problem is the future, and getting the outbreak under control. But is it possible?

Experts told BBC Thai that the battle against the blackchin tilapia could be a losing one.

“I don’t see the possibility of eradicating it,” said Dr Suwit Wuthisuthimethavee, an expert in aquatic animal genetics at Walailak University.

“Because we cannot limit its range. When it is in nature, it reproduces continuously, has a fast reproductive cycle,” Dr Suwit added.

Nonn Panitvong, an expert in freshwater ecosystems, agreed.

“The problem with alien species is that once they are established, they are very difficult to eradicate,” he said.

Air travellers who hoped the era of “tiny toiletries” was nearly over are facing fresh disappointment, as European airports re-introduce strict cabin bag rules.

Some EU destinations had scrapped the 100ml limit for liquids being carried in hand luggage.

But from Sunday, they must all bring it back due to a “temporary technical issue” with new security scanners. It follows a similar move by the UK earlier this summer.

It means if you have been on holiday, you cannot buy a large bottle of suncream, perfume or a local tipple before you get to the airport and expect to carry it home in your hand luggage.

But why has it happened? And will the relaxed rules that had started in some locations ever return?

Airline passengers around the world had grown used to strict 100ml restrictions on liquids, pastes and gels, which had to be put in a clear plastic bag.

But new scanning machines which use CT X-ray technology should in theory enable larger volumes of liquids to go through, and laptops to stay in bags.

Some EU airports, for example in Rome and Amsterdam, had already put them in place and eased their rules. Most had not yet. Some others have been trialling the new technology.

The Europe branch of the Airports Council International (ACI) estimates around 350 of these scanners are now in use across 13 EU countries such as Germany, Ireland, Italy, Lithuania, Malta, the Netherlands, and Sweden.

However, the EU has reinstated the 100ml limit so a technical issue with the new equipment can be addressed, although it has not said what this issue is.

Reports have suggested that the scanners were not accurate for some liquid containers being carried in bags.

In July, ACI Europe criticised the restriction as a “setback for the passenger experience and a blow to major investments made by airports”.

Its director general, Olivier Jankovec, said security was the top priority, but added that those “which have been early adopters of this new technology are being heavily penalised both operationally and financially”.

He also argued that restricting their use “questions the trust and confidence the industry can place in the current EU certification system for aviation security equipment”.

Predictions that all the UK’s airports would scrap their hand luggage liquid limits this year did not come to pass.

The previous Conservative government had required state-of-the-art scanning equipment to be installed in security lanes by June 2024.

It hasn’t proved that straightforward.

Some smaller airports, which have fewer lanes to update, did meet a deadline of June 2024.

London City, Teesside, Newcastle, Leeds-Bradford, Aberdeen and Southend had complied on time and dropped the old liquids rules.

However, the likes of Heathrow, Gatwick and Manchester didn’t. Reasons varied from the need for construction work, to supply chain problems. They were given more time to get the new kit in place.

But in mid-June, the Department for Transport suddenly announced 100ml liquids limits must be re-introduced where they had been dropped.

Those airports that had scrapped the rule needed to swiftly change their processes and airport bosses were angry at the sudden U-turn.

The European Commission announced in late July that the maximum size allowed for individual liquid containers would revert back to 100ml.

There is no date for when the rules will be relaxed again.

The Commission said this wasn’t “in response to any new threat but addresses a temporary technical issue” with the new generation of scanners.

It said it was taking the action “in alignment with the EU’s international partners”, and that “swift technical solutions” would be developed.

The UK government previously said the systems needed improving after new information came to light.

However it has also given no end date for the 100ml limit, so it’s unclear how long the situation will last.

The Department for Transport said it was “working with manufacturers, airports and international partners to lift restrictions when possible.”

So for the foreseeable future it’s best for passengers to assume the old 100ml restrictions apply, and check the rules at both departure and return airports before travelling.

Vice-President Kamala Harris is criticising former president Donald Trump over a recent controversy involving his campaign at Arlington National Cemetery, saying the military burial site is “not a place for politics”.

Ms Harris took aim at Trump on Saturday in a post on social media, writing that he “disrespected sacred ground, all for the sake of a political stunt”.

The US Army said a Trump staffer “abruptly pushed aside” a cemetery employee who was trying to warn his team about rules against filming in the cemetery.

The Trump campaign has disputed the cemetery’s version of events and said it received permission from the families of the fallen soldiers to film.

The incident happened on Monday, when Trump was at an event honouring 13 US military service members who were killed during the country’s withdrawal from Afghanistan three years ago.

Saturday’s post marks the first time Ms Harris, the Democratic nominee for president, has commented on the controversy.

She wrote that she has visited Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia several times during her tenure as vice-president, and she would never use the site for political gain.

“If there is one thing on which we as Americans can all agree, it is that our veterans, military families, and service members should be honored, never disparaged, and treated with nothing less than our highest respect and gratitude,” Ms Harris said.

“And it is my belief that someone who cannot meet this simple, sacred duty should never again stand behind the seal of the President of the United States of America.”

At a campaign rally in Michigan on Thursday, Trump hit back at those who had criticised him over the incident.

He said he had been asked to pose for a photo at the site after the memorial by family members of the soldiers who had died.

“I go there, they ask me to have a picture and they say I was campaigning,” Trump said. “The one thing I get plenty of is publicity. I don’t need that. I don’t need the publicity.”

On Sunday, the Trump campaign released a statement from the Gold Star military families that invited him to the event, saying the former president was there to honour the sacrifice of their relatives who were killed.

They also took aim at Ms Harris in the statement, saying she has “disgracefully twisted this sacred moment into a political ploy”.

Meanwhile, Trump’s running mate JD Vance used the controversy to attack the Biden administration over its handling of the 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan, saying that Ms Harris “can go to hell”.

“Three years ago, 13 brave, innocent Americans died, and they died because Kamala Harris refused to do her job,” Mr Vance said in response to questions from BBC’s US partner, CBS News.

NPR reported earlier that two members of Trump’s campaign staff verbally abused and pushed the cemetery worker aside when she tried to intervene.

Federal law prevents use of the cemetery for political campaigning and the US Army said participants were warned of the rules in advance.

A US Army spokesperson said that “the incident was unfortunate, and it is also unfortunate that the ANC employee and her professionalism has been unfairly attacked.”

The Trump campaign has denied that a physical altercation took place at the cemetery, adding “we are prepared to release footage if such defamatory claims are made”.

House Democrats have since asked the US Army for a report into the incident, asking for a “full account” of what happened.

China and the Philippines have accused each other of ramming coast guard vessels in a disputed area of the South China Sea.

The Philippines has claimed a Chinese ship “directly and intentionally rammed” into its vessel, while Beijing has accused the Philippines of “deliberately” crashing into a Chinese ship.

Saturday’s collision near the Sabina Shoal is the latest in a long-running – and escalating – row between the two countries over various islands and zones in the South China Sea.

Within the past two weeks, there have been at least three other incidents in the same area involving ships belonging to the two countries.

The Sabina Shoal, claimed by China as Xianbin Jiao and as Escoda Shoal by the Philippines, is located some 75 nautical miles from the Philippines’ west coast and 630 nautical miles from China.

The South China Sea is a major shipping route through which $3 trillion worth of trade passes through a year. Beijing claims almost all of the South China Sea, including parts claimed by the Philippines, Brunei, Malaysia, Taiwan and Vietnam.

Following the latest clash, China’s coast guard called on the Philippines to withdraw from the Sabina Shoal while pledging to “resolutely thwart all acts of provocation, nuisance and infringement”.

The Philippines coast guard said it would not move its vessel – the Teresa Magbanua – “despite the harassment, the bullying activities and escalatory action of the Chinese coast guard”.

There were no casualties following the crash but Philippines Coast Guard Commodore Jay Tarriela said that the 97-meter (318-feet) Teresa Magbanua had sustained some damage after being hit “several times” by the Chinese ship.

The US ambassador to the Phillipines, MaryKay L Carlson, criticised what she called China’s dangerous actions in the region.

“The US condemns the multiple dangerous violations of international law by the [People’s Republic of China], including today’s intentional ramming of the BRP Teresa Magbanua while it was conducting lawful operations within the[Philippines] EEZ.” she wrote in a post to X.

“We stand with the Philippines in upholding international law.”

China has repeatedly blamed the Philippines and its ally the US for the escalating tensions. Last week, a defence ministry spokesperson said Washington was “emboldening” Manila to make “reckless provocations”.

Observers worry the dispute could eventually spark a larger confrontation in the South China Sea.

A previous attempt by the Philippines to get the United Nations to arbitrate ended with the decision that China had no lawful claims within its so-called nine dash line, the boundary it uses to claim a large swathe of the South China Sea. Beijing has refused to recognise the ruling.

But in recent weeks both countries have made an attempt to de-escalate the immediate conflicts out at sea.

Last month they agreed to allow the Philippines to restock the outpost in the Second Thomas Shoal with food, supplies and personnel. Since then this has taken place with no reported clashes.

Princess Märtha Louise of Norway has married American self-styled shaman Durek Verrett in a wedding that has divided the country.

The couple tied the knot at a private ceremony at a hotel in Geiranger, Western Norway on Saturday following two days of celebrations.

Unlike other royal weddings where the public throngs the streets, there were only a handful of people present to watch – views of the happy couple prior to or during the wedding were obscured by a tent or white sheets after they sold the exclusive rights to Hello! Magazine.

A documentary crew from Netflix was also in tow. The presence of the two major media companies caused some controversy, with local outlets largely excluded.

The princess’s parents, King Harald and Queen Sonja, attended the nuptials along with other members of Norway’s royal family, as well as princes and princesses from Sweden and the Netherlands.

Princess Märtha Louise’s three daughters from her first marriage, to the late Norwegian writer Ari Behn, were also at the ceremony.

Around 350 guests attended Saturday’s gathering, though there was no evidence that Mr Verrett’s purported A-list American chums were among them.

The 49-year old Californian counts actress and wellness entrepreneur Gwyneth Paltrow as a friend – Mr Verrett calls her his “soul sister”.

But it was reported that Cynthia Bailey, reality TV star of the Real Housewives of Atlanta, was in attendance.

Princess Märtha Louise, 52, and Mr Verrett, who will not become a prince following the wedding, announced their engagement in 2022. While their relationship has divided Norway, King Harald has previously told Norwegian reporters that Mr Verrett was “a great guy” and that the two of them “laughed a lot, even in this difficult time”.

In 2022, the Norwegian palace announced Märtha Louise would “relinquish her patronage role” as she and Mr Verrett sought to “distinguish more clearly between their activities and the Royal House of Norway” and to “prevent misunderstandings regarding the Royal House”.

Since then, the pair have been criticised by the palace and members of Norway’s parliament for linking commercial activities to the princess’s royal status.

Kristi Marie Skrede, royal correspondent for Norway’s NRK TV, said their relationship it has caused a conflict within the royal family, as well as public controversy.

“Many Norwegians are disturbed that she uses her royal connections to earn money,” said Ms Skrede, adding that some believe it is a sign of “disrespect” to King Harald.

Last year, Märtha Louise told the BBC’s Katty Kay that there had been so much “turmoil” concerning her decision to take a different path than that of a “traditional royal”.

“There’s been a lot of criticism over the years, especially with me being spiritual – and in Norway, that’s taboo,” she said.

But others admire the couple for their honesty, said Ms Skrede. In particular, both been open about their spiritual beliefs.

Princess Märtha Louise has claimed in the past she is clairvoyant, and until 2018, ran a school which she said taught students to “create miracles” and talk to angels. Mr Verrett has said he is the latest in six generations of shamans and once said he died for four minutes and 25 seconds.

“I got all the information from the other side. I came back,” he told the New York Times.

The first families have begun to trickle out of Jenin camp, sealed off for almost four days by an Israeli military operation.

There was fierce fighting inside the camp on Saturday, with battles reportedly taking place in the central Damaj neighbourhood, where armed groups have a strong presence, as well as near the camp entrances.

Out of the gunfire, under the constant buzzing of military drones, the figures of several women and children threaded past Israeli army vehicles. Alone on the deserted road, among the military trucks, they looked small and out of place.

Oruba Shalabi, scared, distressed, and carrying her two-month-old daughter, told us what they had experienced inside the camp.

“They were firing at us and throwing hand-grenades at homes,” she said. “Half our home was blown up. We were hiding in the kitchen and shouting to tell them that we have a baby.”

Oruba says she went to the doorstep to tell them that the children in the house were afraid and struggling to breathe from the smoke.

“They told us we had two minutes to go out,” she said. “They checked our phones and IDs, made us stand in the sun for half an hour, then told us to walk straight ahead.”

Oruba left on foot, just as she was, with her mother, aunt, sister and niece. It’s the first time they have been able to leave their home since Tuesday night.

“There was no electricity or water [in the camp],” she said. “They were shooting at anyone coming close to the windows. All our neighbours were forced out and we were all put in one room. They got the young men to sit on the floor and tied them up.”

The fighting in Jenin intensified on Saturday. The Palestinian Red Crescent has said there are at least two bodies inside the camp they have been unable to retrieve. The Palestinian health ministry has said one of them is an elderly man.

There are also unconfirmed reports of Israeli army casualties. A statement from one of the armed groups – al-Aqsa Martyr’s Brigade – claimed its fighters had engaged soldiers in an ambush in Damaj.

Israel’s operation this week began with incursions into several cities and refugee camps in the north of the occupied West Bank. Over the past three days, the focus of that operation has narrowed to Jenin, as troops have pulled out of Tulkarem and Tubas.

Early on Friday morning, the Israeli army confronted and killed the man it says headed Hamas in Jenin, Wissam Khazem, along with two other men it said were wanted for shooting attacks.

But this operation is still ongoing, with reports that Israeli forces are moving deep inside the camp to search house-to-house for other wanted men.

Israel says it has killed 20 armed fighters in the operation and recovered weapons including M16 rifles and explosive devices.

The Palestinian health ministry in Ramallah says that 20 people have been killed across the West Bank. The head of the UN agency dealing with Palestinian refugees, Philippe Lazzarini, says children are among them.

One of those killed is an 82-year-old man whose body was found with nine bullet wounds on Friday, a paramedic told the BBC.

Israel says this is a counter-terrorism operation to dismantle armed Palestinian groups, which it believes are backed by Iran.

An attempted bomb attack in Tel Aviv earlier this month has also sparked alarm in Israel that the threat of suicide attacks in Israeli cities will resurface.

Overnight, Israel’s army said there were two attempted attacks on settlements in the southern part of the West Bank. Its chief of staff, Herzi Halevi, said the ongoing operation in Jenin was aimed at preventing exactly these kinds of attacks.

Tensions over the Gaza War – and repeated military incursions into the West Bank – are changing attitudes and tactics here on both sides. The risk is that they will push the conflict here into a new and more dangerous phase.

US rapper Fatman Scoop has died aged 53 after collapsing at his concert on Friday in Connecticut, his representative has told the BBC.

He was halfway through his set at the Town Center Park in the city of Hamden when he collapsed on stage.

Mayor Lauren Garrett said in a post to Facebook that the rapper was taken to a local hospital by ambulance.

But his booking agency, MN2S, confirmed his death in a statement to the BBC, saying the New York native’s “legacy will live on through his timeless music”.

“Scoop was a beloved figure in the music world, whose work was loved by countless fans across the globe,” an agency spokesperson.

“His iconic voice, infectious energy, and great personality made an indelible mark on the industry.”

In a tribute on social media, Scoop’s family said he was “a radiant soul, a beacon of light on the stage and in life.”

“FatMan Scoop was not just a world class performer, he was a father, brother, uncle and a friend,” his family said.

“He was the laughter in our lives, a constant source of support, unwavering strength and courage.”

Scoop, whose legal name is Isaac Freeman III, has been credited as an influential figure in New York City’s hip hop scene in the 1990s.

He has featured on popular songs including Grammy award-winning Lose Control by Missy Elliott and It’s Like That by Mariah Carey.

Scoop is also known for his sleeper hit Be Faithful, which was originally released in 1999 but garnered international success in 2003, topping the charts in Ireland and the UK.

In 2004, the rapper was featured in the UK TV series Chancers on Channel 4, which featured musicians mentoring aspiring UK artists looking to achieve success in the US.

Fatman Scoop was also a contestant on Celebrity Big Brother 16: UK vs USA, which was housed in the UK and aired in 2015. He was the third housemate to be evicted.

His tour manager, DJ Pure Cold, wrote in a post on Instagram that he was “lost for words” at the news of his friend’s death.

“You took me all over the world and had me performing alongside you on some of the biggest and greatest stages on this planet,” he wrote.

“The things you taught me have truly made me the man I am today.”

Fatman Scoop was due to perform at the UK’s Reminisce Festival on 7 September. In a post on Instagram, the festival called the news of his death “devastating”.

“He was not just one of our most popular performers, he was a cherished member of the Reminisce family,” the festival said.

“His energy, talent and infectious spirit will be missed more than words can express.”

Major book publishers have sued the US state of Florida over a law that allows schools to ban certain books from their student libraries.

The lawsuit, filed on Thursday by publishers including Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster, argues that Florida’s law violates First Amendment rights to free speech.

The suit names several books that have been removed from school libraries under the law, including works by renowned authors Maya Angelou and Ernest Hemingway.

Florida officials responded to the lawsuit by calling it a “stunt,” and have denied that the state has banned books.

“There are no books banned in Florida,” said Florida Department of Education spokesperson Sydney Booker. “Sexually explicit material and instruction are not suitable for schools.”

At the heart of the lawsuit is a bill passed in Florida last year that requires schools to develop a mechanism where parents could object to certain books found in libraries or classrooms.

It defines books subject to removal as any that “depict or describe sexual conduct” or that are “inappropriate for the grade level and age group” of students in the school.

According to a report released in April by Pen America, a non-profit advocating for free speech, Florida had 3,135 book bans recorded from July 2021 to December 2023 – the highest in the country.

Pen America has said that the majority of books removed are ones that “talk about LGBTQ+ identities, that includes characters of colour, that talk about race and racism, that include depictions of sexual experiences in the broadest interpretation of that understanding”.

Among the books removed are Ernest Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls, Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, and Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina.

Bestselling authors including John Green and Jodi Picoult, as well as parents opposed to Florida’s law, have also joined the publishers’ lawsuit.

It argues that the state law allows schools to automatically prohibit books without consulting “trained professionals, such as teachers or media specialists, to determine which books are appropriate”.

It adds that some schools have banned books that include the phrase “made love”, for example, without considering the context of the book as a whole.

These restrictions “apply to all grades, kindergarten through twelfth grade”, the lawsuit states, arguing that the law has created a “regime of strict censorship” in schools.

In an interview with BBC’s US partner, CBS News, Judi Hayes, a Florida mother who joined the lawsuit, said the law has hurt her son’s ability to learn.

“We’re not talking about Playboy magazine, you know, we’re talking about Anna Karenina and War and Peace,” Ms Hayes said.

The lawsuit is seeking for the law to be amended.

The defendants named in the lawsuit include Ben Gibson, chair of the Florida State Board of Education, as well as other school board members.

It does not name Florida governor Ron DeSantis, who had previously championed the law.

In April, Mr DeSantis signed a bill that restricts objections to books in Florida schools, saying he is trying to “prevent abuse from activists” who have used the law to challenge books like The Giver and the Bible.

“I think what’s happened is you have some people who are taking the curriculum transparency, and they’re trying to weaponize that for political purposes,” he said at a news conference that month.

Under the new rules, Florida residents without children can object to only one book per month. Those with children will continue to have an unlimited number of challenges.

Germany’s anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD) is celebrating a “historic success”, with the far-right party on course for a big victory in the eastern state of Thuringia.

The AfD is set to win almost a third of the vote, according to a projection for public broadcaster ARD, nine points ahead of the conservative CDU, and far in front of Germany’s three governing parties.

The result would give the far right its first vote win in a state parliament since World War Two, although it has little hope of forming a government in Thuringia.

The AfD came a close second in Sunday’s other big state election, in the more populous neighbouring state of Saxony.

Projections there gave the CDU almost 32% of the vote, a point ahead of the AfD, again far ahead of the three parties running the national government – the Social Democrats, Greens and liberal FDP.

The AfD’s top candidate in Thuringia, Björn Höcke, who is a highly controversial figure in Germany, hailed a “historic victory” and spoke of his great pride. He reportedly failed to win a direct mandate for the state parliament, but could still win a seat because he is top of his party list.

Mr Höcke’s party has been designated as right-wing extremist and he has been fined for using a Nazi slogan, although the former history teacher denies knowingly doing so.

One of Germany’s best-known Holocaust survivors, Charlotte Knobloch, pointed out that the election had taken place 85 years to the day since the outbreak of World War Two. The result had left the country in danger of becoming “more unstable, colder and poorer, less safe and less worth living in”, she said.

With federal elections only a year away, the AfD is second in national opinion polls. Co-leader Alice Weidel said the result was a “requiem” for the three parties running Germany. And it was clear that voters in both eastern states wanted her party in government: “Without us a stable government is no longer possible at all.”

That message was repeated by Björn Höcke, who suggested there were plenty of CDU voters who would be happy if they worked together.

Without the support of other parties, the AfD cannot govern in Thuringia, and the CDU has made clear it will not consider ruling with the far right.

Mathematically, the conservatives will need support from parties on the left to form a majority.

Some five million Germans in the east were eligible to vote on Sunday and, according to a survey for public broadcaster ZDF, 36% of under-30s in Thuringia voted for the AfD, far more than any other party.

The biggest issue for AfD voters on Sunday was immigration, and in particular the issue of refugees and asylum.

“Politicians have promised a lot, particularly concerning migration and foreigners,” AfD voter Michael told the BBC in Thuringia’s state capital, Erfurt.

“But nothing happened. Nothing. Just promises came from these parties. Now I have my party. And I stand with my decision,” he said, standing beside his partner Manuela, who agreed that people wanted change.

The asylum issue was re-ignited nationally little more than a week before the vote, when three people were murdered at a street festival at Solingen in western Germany, and a Syrian man facing deportation was arrested on suspicion of carrying out the attack.

AfD deputy leader Beatrix von Storch told the BBC’s Newshour programme that political opponents had been attacking her party’s asylum policies as extremist for years. “Two days ahead of the election they started to do what we always said had to be done,” she said, referring to a series of government measures aimed at toughening asylum laws.

The AfD also wants to stop weapons supplies to Ukraine, as does a new party heading for third place in both states, left-wing populist leader Sahra Wagenknecht’s BSW.

Although she has similar ideas to the AfD on Ukraine, Ms Wagenknecht has, like the other parties, refused to take part in any coalition with the far right.

If the projections are confirmed, the AfD is on course to win 32 seats in the 88-seat Thuringia state parliament, and the CDU 23 seats, with only one of the three parties in the national government represented.

That would give the AfD more than a third of the seats, handing it a blocking minority on decisions that require a two-thirds majority, including changes to the state constitution or appointing judges.

Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democratic Party (SPD) is set to win just six seats, with none for the Greens and liberal FDP.

In Saxony, the conservatives are on course to win 42 seats, just ahead of the AfD with 40, while Sahra Wagenknecht’s party is in third with 15 seats.

Sunday’s elections have underlined the unpopularity of Germany’s ruling “traffic-light” coalition, so named because of the red, yellow and green of the party colours.

A third eastern state, Brandenburg, is due to vote in three weeks’ time and although the AfD is ahead in the opinion polls, the Social Democrats and conservatives are only a few points behind.

While Björn Höcke hailed his party’s victory with supporters in Erfurt, anti-AfD protesters gathered outside the Thuringia state parliament.

The AfD has been classified as right-wing extremist by domestic intelligence in Thuringia as well as Saxony. In May, a German court ruled that the BfV intelligence agency was justified in placing the AfD under observation for suspected extremism.

Among the protesters was Hannah, a local student, who said she was very worried by the result: “I think there are a lot of people who are aware they have Nazi policies and don’t care. Germany has some kind of responsibility on that matter.”

The rise of Sahra Wagenknecht’s populist party had a direct impact on the Left party, which won the last election in Thuringia but has now slipped into fourth place.

Bodo Ramelow. the Left-party state premier of Thuringia, who had led a coalition with the SPD and Greens, said the election campaign had been characterised by fear and that he was “fighting against the normalisation of fascism”.

When fans saw rapper Macklemore had cancelled an upcoming gig, some of them assumed it was in solidarity with Gaza.

But it wasn’t. The gig was in Dubai and he had cancelled over the war in Sudan, which has already killed tens of thousands of people, left millions more hungry and triggered a humanitarian disaster.

The glamorous Gulf city of Dubai is the biggest in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) – which has been widely accused of funding the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), one of the warring sides in Sudan.

“The crisis in Sudan is catastrophic,” Macklemore said in an Instagram post on Monday. Some food security specialists estimate up to 2.5 million people could die of starvation and illness by October.

“I have to ask myself what is my intention as an artist?” continued the rapper, who rose to fame with 2012 classic Thrift Shop.

“If I take the money,” Macklemore said, “while knowing it doesn’t sit right with my spirit, how am I any different from the politicians I’ve been actively protesting against?”

His moral stand has thrust the brutal conflict – which has garnered far less global attention than Ukraine or Gaza – into popular culture, and activists hope other artists will follow suit.

“It was huge,” says an activist in London who has been campaigning for a ceasefire. “In the comments there were a lot of people saying, ‘oh, my God, what’s happening in Sudan?’

“I think it opened people’s eyes.”

The RSF is battling the Sudanese army for control of the country and has been accused of sexual violence, looting and ethnic cleansing in areas it controls.

A Human Rights Watch report suggests the RSF may have committed genocide against non-Arabs in a city where 15,000 people are feared to have been killed, something the group denies.

The RSF traces its roots to a militia, known as the Janjaweed, which were also accused of genocide 20 years ago in Sudan – an estimated 300,000 people died back then.

Evidence tying the UAE to the RSF has been mounting.

During the war it emerged that the RSF had used drones which a weapons expert from Amnesty International described as the “same drones” the UAE had supplied to its allies in other conflicts, including in Ethiopia and Yemen.

Experts have also seen civilian aircraft allegedly transporting weapons from the UAE to the RSF, according to a UN report presented to the Security Council earlier this year.

The allegation is that the UAE is trying to gain an economic foothold in the Red Sea and profit from Sudan’s resources.

The RSF controls some of Sudan’s most lucrative gold mines, located in the Darfur region.

A Swiss aid organisation alleges the Emiratis are importing billions of dollars worth of the precious metal that are smuggled out of Africa, including Sudan.

And before widespread fighting broke out in the country last year, the UAE signed a deal worth $6 billion to build and operate a port, airport and economic zone on the country’s Red Sea coast.

The UAE government has described the allegations over its involvement in the Sudan conflict as “baseless and unfounded”, and meant “to divert attention from the ongoing fighting and humanitarian catastrophe”.

“UAE reiterates its call for an immediate ceasefire in the ongoing conflict. The warring parties must stop fighting and work towards finding a peaceful solution to the conflict through dialogue,” it said in a statement to the UN.

Macklemore said on Instagram that several groups had been reaching out to him over the Sudan crisis for months.

A representative of Madaniya, an organisation for Sudanese people living in the UK, told BBC News: “A boycott by a major artist is obviously going to bring more attention to the Sudanese cause, which is great.

“What would be a wonderful secondary consequence is if more people were to look into the UAE’s involvement in Sudan.”

Over the next few weeks, Calvin Harris is due to give a performance in Dubai’s harbour and Sophie Ellis-Bextor has a date at the opera house.

Neither replied to a request for comment.

Prof Alex de Waal, an expert on Sudan based at Tufts University in Massachusetts, thinks a cultural and sporting boycott could be an effective way of targeting the regional powers accused of fuelling the war.

He says the UAE and Saudi Arabia are competing for influence in Africa and are backing opposing sides in Sudan. The Emirati and Saudi embassies in London have not responded to a BBC request for comment.

Prof de Waal is convinced that the Arab rivals are so economically powerful that no-one is likely to sanction them – and says that any such measures would be difficult to implement.

It wouldn’t be a priority for many Western countries, he adds, which are pre-occupied with the Israel-Gaza war and tensions with Iran.

But he also suggests the UAE and Saudi Arabia care greatly about their reputation on the international stage.

“Cultural figures and sports figures saying ‘we’re not going there’ counts for much, much more than a threat of trade sanctions or financial penalties.

“I think, interestingly, the [threat to them] of soft power is much stronger, and has much greater potential, than hard power.”

Dr Crystal Murphy, a specialist on East African finance based at Chapman University in California, points towards protests against apartheid in South Africa which ultimately “rewrote political science and international relations”.

She explains: “The boycotts came as a result of tonnes of public and celebrity [organising] and raising awareness of the issue, where enough people were pushing their governments.

“So it can happen,” she adds. “What’s the difference between Macklemore and the South Africa boycotts?”

Campaigners are a long way from achieving boycotts of that scale, but are hopeful that momentum will gather after Macklemore’s move.

The representative of Madaniya describes warring generals as trying to destroy the fabric of Sudanese society. But that doesn’t deter activists. “There’s always a hope for the Sudanese people.”

Already, some people may be following in Macklemore’s footsteps.

One commenter on his post said they’d been invited to speak at a convention in the UAE, but now said: “Your post encouraged me to research a bit more and I decided to decline the offer.”

BBC Radio 4 – What’s happening in Sudan?

It was the image that made the Titanic’s wreck instantly recognisable – the ship’s bow looming out of the darkness of the Atlantic depths.

But a new expedition has revealed the effects of slow decay, with a large section of railing now on the sea floor.

The loss of the railing – immortalised by Jack and Rose in the famous movie scene – was discovered during a series of dives by underwater robots this summer. The images they captured show how the wreck is changing after more than 100 years beneath the waves.

The ship sank in April 1912 after hitting an iceberg, resulting in the loss of 1,500 lives.

“The bow of Titanic is just iconic – you have all these moments in pop culture – and that’s what you think of when you think of the shipwreck. And it doesn’t look like that anymore,” said Tomasina Ray, director of collections at RMS Titanic Inc, the company that carried out the expedition.

“It’s just another reminder of the deterioration that’s happening every day. People ask all the time: ‘How long is Titanic going to be there?’ We just don’t know but we’re watching it in real time.”

The team believes the section of railing, which is about 4.5m (14.7ft) long, fell off at some point in the last two years.

Images and a digital scan from an 2022 expedition carried out by deep-sea mapping company Magellan and documentary makers Atlantic Productions show that the railing was still attached – though it was starting to buckle.

“At some point the metal gave way and it fell away,” said Tomasina Ray.

It is not the only part of the ship, which lies 3,800m down, that is being lost to the sea. The metal structure is being eaten away by microbes, creating stalactites of rust called rusticles.

Previous expeditions have found that parts of the Titanic are collapsing. Dives led by explorer Victor Vescovo in 2019 showed that the starboard side of the officer’s quarters were collapsing, destroying state rooms and obliterating features like the captain’s bath from view.

This summer’s RMS Titanic Inc expedition took place over July and August.

Two remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) captured more than two million images and 24 hours of high definition footage of both the wreck, which split apart as it sank with the bow and stern lying about 800m apart, and the debris field surrounding it.

The company is now carefully reviewing the footage to catalogue the finds and will eventually create a highly detailed digital 3D scan of the entire wreck site.

More images from the dives will be revealed over the coming months.

The team has also announced another discovery of an artefact they were hoping to find even though it was against all the odds.

In 1986 a bronze statue called the Diana of Versailles was spotted and photographed by Robert Ballard, who had found the wreck of the Titanic a year earlier.

But its location was not known and the 60cm-tall figure was not documented again. Now, though, it has been discovered lying face up in the sediment in the debris field.

“It was like finding a needle in a haystack, and to rediscover this year was momentous,” said James Penca, a Titanic researcher and presenter of the Witness Titanic podcast.

The statue was once on display for the Titanic’s first-class passengers.

“The first-class lounge was the most beautiful, and unbelievably detailed, room on the ship. And the centrepiece of that room was the Diana of Versailles,” he said.

“But unfortunately, when Titanic split in two during the sinking, the lounge got ripped open. And in the chaos and the destruction, Diana got ripped off her mantle and she landed in the darkness of the debris field.”

RMS Titanic Inc has the salvage rights to the Titanic, and is the only company legally allowed to remove items from the wreck site.

Over the years, the company has retrieved thousands of items from the debris field, a selection of which are put on display around the world.

They plan to return next year to recover more – and the Diana statue is one of the items they would like to bring back to the surface.

But some believe the wreck is a grave site that should be left untouched.

“This rediscovery of the Diana statue is the perfect argument against leaving Titanic alone,” Mr Penca said in response.

“This was a piece of art that was meant to be viewed and appreciated. And now that beautiful piece of art is on the ocean floor… in pitch black darkness where she has been for 112 years.

“To bring Diana back so people can see her with their own eyes – the value in that, to spark a love of history, of diving, of conservation, of shipwrecks, of sculpture, I could never leave that on the ocean floor.”

A beluga whale suspected of having been trained as a spy by Russia has been found dead off the Norwegian coast.

The body of the animal – nicknamed Hvaldimir – was found floating off the south-western town of Risavika and taken to the nearest port for examination.

The whale was first spotted in Norwegian waters five years ago with a GoPro camera attached to a harness that read “Equipment of St Petersburg”.

This sparked rumours the mammal could be a spy whale – something experts say happened in the past. Moscow never responded to the allegations.

Hvaldimir’s lifeless body was discovered at the weekend by Marine Mind, an organisation that has tracked his movements for years.

Marine Mind founder Sebastian Strand told AFP news agency that the cause of death was unknown and that Hvaldimir’s body had no obvious injuries.

“We’ve managed to retrieve his remains and put him in a cooled area, in preparation for a necropsy by the veterinary institute,” he told AFP news agency.

With an estimated age of about 15, Hvaldimir was not old for a Beluga whale, whose lifespan can reach 60 years.

He first approached Norwegian boats in April 2019 near the island of Ingoya, about 415km (260 miles) from Murmansk where Russia’s Northern Fleet is based.

The sighting attracted attention because belugas are rarely seen this far south of the high Arctic.

• Seeking sanctuary for whale dubbed as spy

The discovery led to an investigation by Norway’s domestic intelligence agency, which later said that the whale was likely to have been trained by the Russian army as he seemed accustomed to humans.

The whale became known locally as Hvaldimir, a pun on the Norwegian word for whale, “hval”, and President Vladimir Putin.

Russia has a history of training marine mammals such as dolphins for military purposes and the Barents Observer website has identified whale pens near naval bases in the north-west area of Murmansk.

Russia has never officially addressed the claim that Hvaldimir may have been trained by the Russian military. It has previously denied the existence of any programmes seeking to train sea mammals as spies.

A global network has fleeced students out of tens of thousands of pounds for worthless visa documents they hoped would enable them to work in the UK.

A BBC investigation has found middlemen working as recruitment agents preyed on international students who wanted jobs in the care industry.

The students paid up to £17,000 each for sponsorship certificates that should have been free.

When they applied for skilled worker visas, their paperwork was rejected by the Home Office for being invalid.

We have seen documentation that shows one man, Taimoor Raza, sold 141 visa documents – most of which were worthless – for a total of £1.2m.

He denies doing anything wrong and has paid back some of the money to students.

Mr Raza rented offices and hired staff in the West Midlands and promised dozens of students work in care homes and employment sponsorship.

We have been told he began selling legitimate documents and that a handful of students obtained visas and genuine jobs.

But many more lost their entire savings on worthless paperwork.

The BBC has spoken to 17 men and women who have lost thousands trying to obtain work visas.

Three of the students, all women in their 20s, paid out a total of £38,000 to different agents.

They said they had been sold a dream in their native India that they would make their fortunes in England.

Instead, they had ended up penniless and too afraid to tell their families back home.

“I am trapped here [in England],” Nila* told the BBC.

“If I do return, all of my family’s savings would’ve been wasted.”

The UK’s care sector, including care homes and agencies, had a record number of vacancies in 2022 with 165,000 posts unfilled.

The government widened the net for recruitment by allowing international applications, leading to a boom in interest from the likes of India, Nigeria and The Philippines.

Applicants must have an eligible sponsor, such as a registered care home or agency, and jobseekers should not have to pay a penny for their sponsorship or visa.

The sudden opening of this route has been exploited by middlemen taking advantage of students looking to work full time.

Although the students we spoke to had made great attempts to remain in the UK legally, they now face being sent back to their country of origin.

Nadia*, 21 and from India, arrived in the UK in 2021 on a study visa to complete a BA in computer sciences.

After a year, she decided to look for a job instead of paying tuition fees of £22,000 a year.

A friend gave her the number for an agent who told Nadia he could provide the correct documents needed for care work for £10,000.

She said the agent made her feel at ease and even told her she reminded him of his own relatives.

“He told me ‘I won’t charge a lot of money from you because you look like my sisters’,” Nadia, who lives in Wolverhampton, said.

She paid him £8,000 upfront, and waited for six months for a document to arrive that stated she had work at a care home in Walsall.

“I directly called the care home and asked about my visa, but they said they didn’t provide any certificates of sponsorship because they already had full staff,” Nadia said.

The agent blocked Nadia’s calls and she was advised to go to the police but she told the BBC she was too scared.

Nila, who is living in Birmingham, said her family believed investing in a life in the UK would allow her to gain skills and earn more than in India.

“My father-in-law was in the army, he trusted me with all his savings,” she said.

She visited a training agency in Wolverhampton to switch her student visa to a care worker one.

The agents were very polite, she said, and showed emails, letters and copies of visas to prove their legitimacy.

Nila and the other students were totally convinced the men were going to change their lives.

“The way in which they first meet us, its God-like. That’s how much they win over our trust,” she said.

She paid £15,000 for documents that ended up being worthless and rejected by the Home Office, having already spent £15,000 of her family’s money on her studies.

Nila said her life had been destroyed.

“Those scammers are still roaming free today. They have no fear,” she said.

The BBC has learned that Taimoor Raza, a Pakistani national who had been living in Wolverhampton and working in Birmingham, is at the top of one visa network.

He approached recruitment agencies in the West Midlands and said he could arrange work in care homes and organise visa applications for their clients.

The BBC has seen a file full of sponsorship documents that Mr Raza provided one agency for 141 applicants.

Each person paid between £10,000 and £20,000 and the total amounts to £1.2m.

We have verified that Mr Raza was sending these sponsorship documents as PDF files over Whatsapp.

Of them, 86 received worthless paperwork that was rejected by the Home Office as invalid.

A further 55 successfully obtained a visa, but the care homes they had been promised work with said they had no record of the arrangement.

The BBC contacted Taimoor Raza, who has been in Pakistan since December 2023, to put the allegations to him.

He responded to say the students’ claims were “false” and “one-sided” and that he had contacted his lawyers.

He did not respond to our request for an interview.

Student Ajay Thind said he was recruited to work for Mr Raza after he paid him £16,000 for a care worker visa.

He was among six people paid between £500-£700 a week, compiling paperwork and filling in forms for applicants.

Mr Thind said Mr Raza rented offices and even took his team on an all-expenses trip to Dubai.

His suspicions arose in April 2023 when he noticed applications were being rejected by the Home Office. Some included his friends, who had paid a total of £40,000.

“I told Raza and he said to me, ‘your brain isn’t made for stress, let me handle the stress.’

“I didn’t leave as I needed the money,” he said. “I got stuck in such a bad situation.”

Mr Thind said his boss was working with numerous agencies, so the figure of £1.2m is likely to be much higher.

Most victims have not contacted police.

“A lot of people don’t go to the police because they’re terrified of the Home Office and the consequences of reporting,” said Luke Piper, head of immigration at the Work Rights Centre.

Instead, they have sought help from a Sikh temple in the West Midlands – the Gurdwara Baba Sang Ji, in Smethwick.

Members have been leading the fightback against agents who failed to deliver on their promises and have managed to claw money back for some people.

The elders at the temple even managed to summon Mr Raza to a meeting in November 2023, where it is said he agreed to refund money and stop his activities.

The gurdwara’s Sikh Advice Centre, set up to help people during the pandemic, managed to get one young mother, Harmanpreet, her money back by confronting agency staff in person.

She said she had been pushed to the brink of suicide by her ordeal.

“I considered taking my own life. I only restarted my life because of my daughter and the Sikh Advice Centre,” she said.

Monty Singh, from the centre, said hundreds of people had contacted them for help.

He and the team began dealing with cases in 2022 by outing those involved on social media, hoping that naming and shaming them would warn people not to trust them.

More people got in touch after seeing the posts and names were added to the list.

Mr Singh said they began to realise the agents operated like a pyramid scheme.

“There are loads of little team leaders and agents… and some of them might get commission,” he said.

Some of the smaller agents were hairdressers and bus drivers who saw an opportunity to make money, he said.

He said Mr Raza had repaid £258,000 but that the advice centre had now handed the case over to the National Crime Agency.

Other agents had paid money back because of the great shame it had brought on their families.

“Family honour means everything to an individual. We identify, investigate, look at all the evidence that is there,” Monty said.

“Once we’ve got that, we speak to the family and the shame it brings on them, they just want to repay the victim and clear their family name.”

There has been a six-fold increase in applications from students to obtain UK work visas – with over 26,000 between June 2022 to June 2023, up from 3,966 the year before.

In July last year, the Home Office amended rules to prevent international students obtaining work visas before completing their studies.

But the Sikh Advice centre said only tough action by police and immigration officials will stop the illegal trade in visas.

Jas Kaur, who works alongside Monty, said the government must liaise with faith leaders.

“If you’re not talking to the people on the ground, you have no idea what’s really going on,” she said.

A Home Office spokesperson said there were “stringent systems in place to identify and prevent fraudulent visa applications, and any individual being targeted by these fraudsters needs to know that if their sponsorship certificate is not genuine, it will not succeed”.

“We will continue to take tough action as well against any unscrupulous companies and agents who are seeking to abuse, exploit or defraud overseas workers,” they added.

Mr Piper, from the Work Rights Centre, said the government needed to support victims and “create a framework of safe reporting without fear of reprisal from the Home Office simply because they’ve reported their employer to them”.

There are no official figures on the numbers of people who have lost money paying agents for worthless visa paperwork.

“What is clear is that it is happening on quite a significant scale as we’re hearing from people all over the country,” Mr Piper added.

Back in Smethwick, the Sikh Advice Centre hopes to expand the operation to other gurdwaras and have also begun educating people in India of the risks they take when leaving their country for study or work.

“Educating people involves the harsh truth that the success stories of a few doesn’t mean it will happen for everyone,” Mr Singh said.

“It’s also undoing the belief that the only way they can do better is to follow the British or American dream.”

Tens of thousands of people have rallied across Israel after the bodies of six hostages held by Hamas in the Gaza Strip were recovered by soldiers, causing national outrage.

Protesters – many clad in Israeli flags – descended on Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and other cities, accusing PM Benjamin Netanyahu and his government of not doing enough to reach a deal to secure the release of the remaining hostages taken by Hamas during the 7 October attacks.

Sunday’s protests were largely peaceful – but crowds broke through police lines, blocking a major highway in Tel Aviv.

This comes as a major Israeli labour union, Histadrut, called for a nationwide general strike on Monday, pressing for a hostage deal.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said earlier that the six bodies were found on Saturday in an underground tunnel in the Rafah area of southern Gaza.

The hostages were identified as Carmel Gat, Eden Yerushalmi, Hersh Goldberg-Polin, Alexander Lobanov, Almog Sarusi and Master Sgt Ori Danino.

The IDF said they had been killed shortly before its troops reached them on Saturday.

This triggered Sunday’s protests, with crowds accusing the government and Mr Netanyahu personally of failing to save the remaining hostages.

In Tel Aviv, protesters broke through police lines on to Ayalon Highway late on Sunday.

Some people scaled buses and bins to gain a vantage point over the march, while others surrounded someone wearing a mask of Mr Netanyahu, chanting: “Alive, alive, we want them alive.”

One demonstrator held a sign which read: “You are the head. You are to blame”.

Crowds also chanted slogans including “policemen, policemen who are you protecting” and “shame, shame”.

Some set fires on the road and draped yellow ribbons – a symbol of solidarity with the hostages.

Naama Lazimi, a Labor Party lawmaker, told the BBC she was lightly injured after police let off stun grenades and she fell down.

She described the protests as “significant and important”. but said the “question is what happens tomorrow”.

Among the protesters was Eli Shtivi, whose son Idan is being held hostage in Gaza.

“We hope that those who make the decisions will wake up,” he told the BBC. “We don’t have time any more.”

He said people from all strands of Israeli society took part in Sunday’s rallies, united in wanting the hostages returned.

“I miss my child so much. All the families are kind of hostages too,” Mr Shtivi said.

Noga Burkman, another demonstrator in Tel Aviv, told the BBC she “couldn’t stay at home any more”.

“People understand that now we need to break the rules and do something,” she said, adding that “tonight is just the beginning”.

Elsewhere, in the city itself, the gathering saw a diverse mix of protesters, with one group of young scouts leading chants.

In Jerusalem, a massive crowd of demonstrators gathered outside the prime minister’s office.

One 50-year-old man told the BBC that the demonstrations were far bigger than any previous ones. “It’s a totally different game today,” he said. “A different scale to anything before.”

Among those present at the protests in Tel Aviv was 24-year-old Yotam Peer, whose 21-year-old brother was killed on 7 October in the Hamas attacks. He told the BBC: “After we heard about the six hostages, we couldn’t be silent any more. It’s really important. We don’t have a choice any more.”

Local media reported that opposition leader Yair Lapid was present. The former prime minister, who leads the Yesh Atid party, earlier backed calls for a mass strike to force Mr Netanyahu into a deal over the release of the hostages.

Calling the general strike, union leader Arnon Bar-David said: “We must reach a deal. A deal is more important than anything else.”

He added: “We are getting body bags instead of a deal.”

Families of the hostages have been pushing for a nationwide strike as part of efforts to get a ceasefire agreement between Mr Netanyahu’s government and Hamas for weeks.

The Hostages Families Forum said that the six captives, whose bodies were recovered by Israeli military, were “murdered in the last few days, after surviving almost 11 months of abuse, torture and starvation in Hamas captivity”.

“The delay in signing the deal has led to their deaths and those of many other hostages,” it said.

The prime minister said he was committed to securing a deal that releases the remaining captives and protects the country’s security. But he said: “Whoever murders hostages does not want a deal.”

The far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich was quick to condemn the general strike, claiming that it represented “the interests of Hamas”.

But others have come forward in support. Tel Aviv’s Mayor Ron Huldai announced that the city’s municipal workers were free to join Monday’s strike “as a sign of solidarity with the abductees and their families”.

It is not clear how many hostages remain in Gaza. Hamas kidnapped 251 people and killed 1,200 others during an attack in southern Israel on 7 October 2023.

Israel launched a retaliatory military campaign against Hamas in Gaza. More than 40,530 people have been killed there since 7 October, according to the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry.

Kike España gazes across Málaga’s Plaza de la Merced.

It’s late morning and it’s still a peaceful spot at this time of day – jacaranda trees fill the square, an obelisk monument sits at its centre and on the far side is the house where Pablo Picasso was born.

But it’s the city’s tourists, many of whom are already gathering in the host of nearby cafés, who concern Kike.

“The situation is so saturated that Málaga has really reached a turning point at which people feel that the city is collapsing,” he says.

“It’s the same feeling you have when you enter a theme park,” he adds. “There is a stream of people that are consuming the city and not really inhabiting it.”

Kike is an urban planner and a local activist with the Málaga Tenants’ Union, which has been campaigning for a change in how the southern Spanish city manages tourism.

The organisation led a protest in late June in which thousands of local people took to the streets to voice their concern at the negative impact that tourism is having on their city, including pushing up housing costs, gentrification and crowds.

And it’s not just Málaga. Spaniards have been protesting throughout the summer for the same reasons in other major tourist destinations, including Barcelona, Alicante and the Canary and Balearic Islands.

In April, a group of activists on Tenerife staged a three-week hunger strike against the building of new tourist megaprojects. In Barcelona, demonstrators fired at foreign visitors with water pistols and among the slogans daubed on their banners were: “Tourism kills the city” and “Tourists go home.”

Spain first established itself as a tourist hub more than half a century ago, as northern Europeans started to flock to its coastline and islands.

Today, the industry represents about 13% of Spanish GDP and, having bounced back from the Covid-19 pandemic, it is surpassing records in terms of both revenue and arrivals.

In 2023, the country received 85 million foreign visitors and more than 90 million are expected this year, putting it close behind France, the world’s most popular tourist destination.

José Luis Zoreda, president of the Exceltur, a tourism industry association, prefers to talk about the amount of revenue the industry generates – €200bn (£171bn) in direct and indirect activity this year, he estimates – rather than the number of visitors.

He also highlights how tourism has ensured that the Spanish economy has outperformed most of its European neighbours in the wake of Covid-19.

“We have been responsible in the last few years for the most important percentage of growth of our economy,” he says. “In 2023, we were responsible for 80% of the whole GDP growth of Spain.”

So the sheer size of the tourism sector and its strong growth have driven the overall expansion of the Spanish economy.

But there is a growing belief that the cost of such success is too high and the wave of recent protests has created the sense of a tipping point. Many Spaniards are now convinced that the towns and cities they inhabit are catering more for visitors than for residents.

“Tourism was perceived as a positive economic activity that is a huge part of our GDP, but the numbers have become so huge in terms of international arrivals that we are now seeing the negative impacts, especially in cities,” says Paco Femenia-Serra, lecturer in tourism and geography at Madrid’s Complutense University.

“Tourism is competing for space and the number of people out on the streets is unbearable for many residents.”

Besides making these places less pleasant, locals say tourism has also pushed many smaller businesses out of the centre of cities. In their place have come franchise restaurants, bars and shops – and prices have risen.

But the most-cited problem is that of housing.

Spain’s biggest tourist destinations have large numbers of short-term rental properties aimed at tourists.

A recent study by El País newspaper found that several areas of Málaga had the highest proportion of Airbnb properties in Spain. A quarter of all apartments in the area around the Plaza de la Merced are dedicated to tourist rental.

Owners of apartments are able to charge more for short-term rentals than they would charge longer-term tenants and this has the effect of pushing up prices across the board. Locals say it is difficult to find an apartment for less than €1,200-1,300 per month in the centre of Málaga. With the average salary in the surrounding Andalusia region at just €1,600 per month, they are being priced out of their city.

“If the people of Málaga don’t have somewhere to live, who will provide services for the tourists?” asked Isabel Rodríguez, housing minister for Spain’s governing Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE).

Speaking at a housing forum in the city in July, she continued: “Where will the waiters who serve us a glass of wine and a plate of sardines live?”

As Ms Rodríguez’s comments suggest, Spain’s political class is now starting to grapple with the tourism conundrum.

Catalonia and the Balearic Islands have already introduced a “tourist tax”, charging a sliding sum of up to €4 per person per day, depending on the type of accommodation used.

Palma de Mallorca has sought to limit numbers of arrivals by sea, with no more than three cruise liners allowed to dock at the city per day, only one of them carrying more than 5,000 passengers.

Measures are also being taken to tackle the tourist accommodation issue. This year, the regional government in Andalusia has handed town and city halls the power to introduce their own controls on short-term rentals.

In the north-east, Barcelona has already announced its intention to revoke all of the 10,000 or so tourist accommodation licences currently in circulation in 2028.

Mr Femenia-Serra describes the reining in of Spanish tourism as “a very tricky problem” given the economic weight of the industry but he believes restrictions are needed.

“If we want to talk about sustainable tourism or a lower number of tourists we should discuss limits on activity and higher restrictions and more regulation of the sector, which until now has been kind of free to act,” he says. He suggests introducing limits on the number of flights to certain destinations as a possible measure.

In Málaga, Kike España wants to see caps on rental prices and efforts to provide more housing for locals as immediate measures to counter the tourism crisis.

While he insists that he and his fellow activists are not opposed to tourism, just the way it is being managed in Spain, he says he also hopes the protests will continue.

“We are against city models that only focus on tourism,” he says. “We cannot lose all the energy and complexity and heterogeneity of our cities.”

It has been described as the “most invasive species” to ever hit Thailand – one which risks enormous damage to the environment, according to officials.

Attempts to control it have seen crowds wading out into lakes, and genetic modification.

And yet the blackchin tilapia continues to spread through Thailand’s waterways, so far impacting 17 provinces.

An investigation in parliament has aimed to uncover the cause and its proponent, with Bangkok MP Nattacha Boonchaiinsawat declaring: “We will not pass a devastated ecosystem to the next generation.”

So can Thai authorities win the battle – and how exactly did this West African fish end up causing havoc half a world away?

Thailand had experienced outbreaks of blackchin tilapia in the past, but none has been as widespread as this most recent episode.

Mr Nattacha estimates that this particular outbreak is going to cost Thai economy at least 10 billion baht ($293m; £223m).

The core problem is that the blackchin tilapia prey on small fish, shrimp, and snail larvae, which are among Thailand’s important aquaculture products.

So for months now, the government has encouraged people to catch blackchin tilapia, which have found their way in rivers and swamps. The fish thrive in brackish water, but can also survive in fresh and salt water.

The Thai government has also doubled the amount that it will pay people who catch the fish, to 15 baht ($0.42; £0.33) per kilogram. The result? In Bangkok’s suburbs, crowds have waded in knee-deep waters hoping to catch blackchin tilapia with their plastic basins.

Authorities have also released the blackchin tilapia’s predators – Asian seabass and long-whiskered catfish – to hunt them down.

However, they are battling a species which reproduces at speed: females are able to produce 500 fingerlings at a time.

And so authorities have also gone to the extent of developing genetically-modified blackchin tilapia that would produce sterile offspring, planning to release them as early as the end of this year, in the hopes of stopping their population from exploding further.

But Mr Nattacha told BBC Thai the government needed to do even more.

“Who will win?” he wondered. “We need the people to follow the case closely, otherwise this matter will be quiet, and we will pass on this kind of environment to the next generation.”

So how exactly did this fish – easily identifiable thanks to the black spots on their chins and cheeks – come to be in Thailand?

One theory that parliament has looked into is that an experiment by food behemoth Charoen Pokphand Food (CPF) 14 years ago had caused the spread.

The company, which produces animal feed and runs shrimp and livestock farms, imported 2,000 from Ghana in late 2010. It said all the fish died and were buried properly.

Two years later, outbreaks of blackchin tilapia were reported in Thailand, including the area of a CPF laboratory, according to local broadcaster Thai PBS.

But CPF – the agribusiness arm of one of Thailand’s largest conglomerate, Charoen Pokphand Group (CP Group) – has rejected the allegations. It has also threatened to sue those spreading what it calls “misinformation” on the matter.

It is co-operating with state agencies fighting the spread of the alien species.

“Although the company is confident that it is not the cause of the outbreak, it is not indifferent and is ready to cooperate with the government to alleviate the suffering of the people,” said Premsak Wanuchsoontorn, CPF’s aquaculture and research development officer.

However, CPF officials have attended parliament hearings in person only once. They have previously given their explanation to lawmakers in writing.

The director-general of Thailand’s Department of Fisheries, Bancha Sukkaew, notes only one private company had sought permission to import blackchin tilapia.

He told the BBC that there was a possibility that some escaped from the laboratory.

However, he is also not discounting the possibility that the invasive fish species could have been smuggled into Thailand.

In the end, though, how they came to be in Thai waterways is the past – the problem is the future, and getting the outbreak under control. But is it possible?

Experts told BBC Thai that the battle against the blackchin tilapia could be a losing one.

“I don’t see the possibility of eradicating it,” said Dr Suwit Wuthisuthimethavee, an expert in aquatic animal genetics at Walailak University.

“Because we cannot limit its range. When it is in nature, it reproduces continuously, has a fast reproductive cycle,” Dr Suwit added.

Nonn Panitvong, an expert in freshwater ecosystems, agreed.

“The problem with alien species is that once they are established, they are very difficult to eradicate,” he said.

Brazil’s Supreme Court will vote on Monday on whether or not to uphold a ruling to ban social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter.

Justice Alexandre Moraes called for the vote after the platform was suspended in the country in the early hours of Saturday.

It came after X failed to appoint a new legal representative in Brazil before a court-imposed deadline.

A feud between Justice Moraes and X’s owner Elon Musk began in April when the the judge ordered the suspension of dozens of accounts for allegedly spreading disinformation.

There are 11 justices in Brazil’s Supreme Court, which is split into two chambers of five members each, excluding the chief justice. The chambers can vote on whether to uphold or reject rulings by any one of its judges.

Justice Moraes is a member of the first chamber that will be reviewing his decision to ban X.

Reacting to the decision to ban X, Mr Musk said: “Free speech is the bedrock of democracy and an unelected pseudo-judge in Brazil is destroying it for political purposes.”

In his ruling, Justice Moraes gave companies, including Apple and Google, a five-day deadline to remove X from its app stores and block its use on iOS and Android devices.

He added that individuals or businesses that are found to still be accessing X by using virtual private networks (VPNs) could be fined R$50,000 ($8,910; £6,780).

X closed its office in Brazil last month, saying its representative had been threatened with arrest if she did not comply with orders it described as “censorship”, which it described as illegal under Brazilian law.

Justice Moraes had ordered that X accounts accused of spreading disinformation – many of which were supporters of the former right-wing president Jair Bolsonaro – must be blocked while they are under investigation.

Brazil is said to be one of the largest markets for Mr Musk’s social media network.

Russian air strikes have injured at least 41 people in the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv, officials have said.

Regional head Oleh Syniehubov said five children were among those wounded and he accused Moscow of “aiming exclusively at civilian infrastructure” in the city.

Among the buildings damaged are a supermarket and a sports complex in areas residents go to every day, he added.

“Russia is once again terrorizing Kharkiv, striking civilian infrastructure and the city itself,” President Volodymyr Zelensky said in the wake of the attacks.

Mr Zelensky repeated his calls for Western allies to “give Ukraine everything it needs to defend itself”.

Mr Syniehubov said at least 10 separate Russian strikes had been recorded, including the use of ballistic missiles.

People may be buried under the rubble in some areas and rescue operations are continuing, he added.

From several videos shared on social media of the attacks, BBC Verify has located one strike to the northeast of the centre of Kharkiv, along Akademika Pavlova St, and another three miles south which damaged the city’s Palace of Sport buildings.

Images from each attack include the moment of impact and explosion from missiles.

The attack comes after Ukraine launched a wave of overnight drone attacks against targets in Russia, where fire broke out at two energy facilities.

No injuries or deaths have been reported by Russian officials.

According to Russia’s defence ministry, more than 158 Ukrainian drones targeted 15 regions of the country, including the capital Moscow.

The Russian military said the drones were intercepted and destroyed.

But as a result of the attack a fire has broken out at an oil refinery in Moscow in a “separate technical room”, the city’s mayor said.

Sergei Sobyanin reported that at least 11 drones targeted the capital city and the surrounding areas.

Meanwhile, 75 miles (120km) from the Russian capital, in the Tver region, loud blasts were heard close to the Konakovo Power Station.

Russian media are reporting a fire at the facility.

The region’s governor, Igor Rudenya, acknowledged a fire caused by an attack in Konakovsky district had been contained, without providing details of what was hit.

Local officials also said drones attempted to attack the Kashira Power Plant in the Moscow region – but that there were no fires, damage or casualties as a result.

BBC Verify has examined and verified videos posted on social media which show explosions at all three locations. In the footage, fires appear to have subsequently broken out at Konakovo Power Station and the Moscow refinery.

Ukraine has not commented on the claims.

But Ukrainian forces have been stepping up long-range strikes inside Russia over the past few months, launching scores of drones simultaneously at strategic targets several times a week.

BBC News has been told that Western technology and finance are helping them carry out hundreds of long-range strikes inside Russia.

In Ukraine, a 23-year-old lorry driver was killed after a Russian air strike on a grain convoy in the Sumy region overnight, local officials have said.

Prosecutors said four others were injured in the attack after one lorry caught fire and around 20 others were damaged.

Ukraine’s air force also said it had destroyed eight out of 11 drones used by Russia, adding that grain and agriculture facilities had been targeted in the Mykolaiv region as well.

Sumy borders Russia’s Kursk region, where Ukraine has been carrying out a military incursion for nearly a month.

Progress has slowed in recent days, but Ukraine claimed last week it controlled 1,294 sq km (500 sq miles) of territory – including 100 settlements. It also said nearly 600 Russian soldiers had been captured.

Meanwhile, Russian forces are continuing to advance rapidly on a key town in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region – which has been the focus of Moscow’s ground offensive for months.

Pokrovsk plays a crucial role as a logistics hub for Ukrainian forces, as it is home to a key railway station and is located at the intersection of several important roads.

Ukraine’s commander-in-chief Gen Oleksandr Syrskyi described the situation in the area of Russia’s main attack as “difficult”, but added that all necessary decisions are “being made without delay”.

The most recent Ukrainian attacks on Russia’s energy facilities also come a day after a Russian guided bomb strike on a playground in Kharkiv killed a 14-year-old girl.

A similar attack on a residential building in the city in north-eastern Ukraine also killed six other people.

It also follows Russia hitting Ukraine’s energy grid with a massive wave of deadly drone and missile strikes last week – which led to at least nine people being killed over two days.

Russia began targeting Ukraine’s energy system with air strikes shortly after it began its full-scale invasion in February 2022.