Last October, Palestinian grandmother Ayesha Shtayyeh says a man pointed a gun at her head and told her to leave the place she had called home for 50 years.

She told the BBC the armed threat was the culmination of an increasingly violent campaign of harassment and intimidation that began in 2021, after an illegal settler outpost was established close to her home in the occupied West Bank.

The number of these outposts has risen rapidly in recent years, new BBC analysis shows. There are currently at least 196 across the West Bank, and 29 were set up last year – more than in any previous year.

The outposts – which can be farms, clusters of houses, or even groups of caravans – often lack defined boundaries and are illegal under both Israeli and international law.

But the BBC World Service has seen documents showing that organisations with close ties to the Israeli government have provided money and land used to establish new illegal outposts.

The BBC has also analysed open source intelligence to examine their proliferation, and has investigated the settler who Ayesha Shtayyeh says threatened her.

Experts say outposts are able to seize large swathes of land more rapidly than settlements, and are increasingly linked to violence and harassment towards Palestinian communities.

Official figures for the number of outposts do not exist. But BBC Eye reviewed lists of them and their locations gathered by Israeli anti-settlement watchdogs Peace Now and Kerem Navot – as well as the Palestinian Authority, which runs part of the occupied West Bank.

We analysed hundreds of satellite images to verify that outposts had been constructed at these locations and to confirm the year they were set up. The BBC also checked social media posts, Israeli government publications and news sources to corroborate this and to show that outposts were still in use.

Our analysis suggests almost half (89) of the 196 outposts we verified have been built since 2019.

Some of these are linked to growing violence against Palestinian communities in the West Bank. Earlier this year, the British government sanctioned eight extremist settlers for inciting or perpetrating violence against Palestinians. At least six had established, or are living on, illegal outposts.

A former commander of the Israeli army in the West Bank, Avi Mizrahi, says most settlers are law-abiding Israeli citizens, but he does admit the existence of outposts makes violence more likely.

“Whenever you put outposts illegally in the area, it brings tensions with the Palestinians… living in the same area,” he says.

One of the extremist settlers sanctioned by the UK was Moshe Sharvit – the man Ayesha says threatened her at gunpoint. Both he and the outpost he set up less than 800m (0.5miles) from Ayesha’s home, were also sanctioned by the US government in March. His outpost was described as a “base from which he perpetrates violence against Palestinians”.

“He’s made our life hell,” Ayesha says, who must now live with her son in a town close to Nablus.

Outposts lack any official Israeli planning approval – unlike settlements, which are larger, typically urban, Jewish enclaves built throughout the West Bank, legal under Israeli law.

Both are considered illegal under international law, which forbids moving a civilian population into an occupied territory. But many settlers living in the West Bank claim that, as Jews, they have a religious and historical connection to the land.

In July, the UN’s top court, in a landmark opinion, said Israel should stop all new settlement activity and evacuate all settlers from the Occupied Palestinian Territory. Israel rejected the opinion as “fundamentally wrong” and one-sided.

Despite outposts having no legal status, there is little evidence that the Israeli government has been trying to prevent their rapid growth in numbers.

The BBC has seen new evidence showing how two organisations with close ties to the Israeli state have provided money and land used to set up new outposts in the West Bank.

One is the World Zionist Organization (WZO), an international body founded more than a century ago and instrumental in the establishment of the state of Israel. It has a Settlement Division – responsible for managing large areas of the land occupied by Israel since 1967. The division is funded entirely by Israeli public funds and describes itself as an “arm of the Israeli state”.

Contracts obtained by Peace Now, and analysed by the BBC, show the Settlement Division has repeatedly allocated land on which outposts have been built. In the contracts, the WZO forbids the building of any structures and says the land should only be used for grazing or farming – but satellite imagery reveals that, in at least four cases, illegal outposts were built on it.

One of these contracts was signed by Zvi Bar Yosef in 2018. He – like Moshe Sharvit – was sanctioned by the UK and US earlier this year for violence and intimidation against Palestinians.

We contacted the WZO to ask if it was aware that multiple tracts of land it had allocated for grazing and farming were being used for the construction of illegal outposts. It did not respond. We also put questions to Zvi Bar Yosef, but received no reply.

The BBC has also uncovered two documents revealing that another key settler organisation – Amana – loaned hundreds of thousands of shekels to help establish outposts.

In one case, the organisation loaned NIS 1,000,000 ($270,000/£205,000) to a settler to build greenhouses on an outpost considered illegal under Israeli law.

Amana was founded in 1978 and has worked closely with the Israeli government to build settlements throughout the West Bank ever since.

But in recent years, there has been growing evidence that Amana also supports outposts.

In a recording from a meeting of executives in 2021, leaked by an activist, Amana’s CEO Ze’ev Hever can be heard stating that: “In the last three years… one operation we have expanded is the herding farm [outposts].”

“Today, the area [they control] is almost twice the size of built settlements.”

This year, the Canadian government included Amana in a round of sanctions against individuals and organisations responsible for “violent and destabilising actions against Palestinian civilians and their property in the West Bank”. The sanctions did not mention outposts.

There is also a trend of the Israeli government retroactively legalising outposts – effectively transforming them into settlements. Last year, for example, the government began the process of legalising at least 10 outposts, and granted at least six others full legal status.

In February, Moshe Sharvit – the settler Ayesha Shtayyeh says evicted her from her home – hosted an open day at his outpost, filmed by a local camera crew. Speaking candidly, he laid out just how effective outposts can be for capturing land.

“The biggest regret when we [settlers] built settlements was that we got stuck within the fences and couldn’t expand,” he told the crowd. “The farm is very important, but the most important thing for us is the surrounding area.”

He claimed he now controls about 7,000 dunams (7 sq km) of land – an area greater than many large, urban settlements in the West Bank with populations in the thousands.

Gaining control over large areas, often at the expense of Palestinian communities, is a key goal for some settlers who set up and live on outposts, says Hagit Ofran of Peace Now.

“Settlers who live on the hilltop [outposts] see themselves as ‘protecting lands’ and their daily job is to kick out Palestinians from the area,” she says.

Ayesha says that Moshe Sharvit began a campaign of harassment and intimidation almost as soon as he set up his outpost in late 2021.

When her husband, Nabil, grazed his goats in pastures he had used for decades, Sharvit would quickly arrive in an all-terrain vehicle and he and young settlers would chase the animals away, he says.

“I responded that we’d leave if the government, or police, or judge tells us to,” Nabil says.

“He told me: ‘I’m the government, and I’m the judge, and I’m the police.’”

Settlements Above The Law

Extremist settlers are receiving money and land from powerful groups with ties to the Israeli government and are using it to build illegal settlement outposts, BBC Eye reveals.

Watch on iPlayer or, if you are outside the UK, watch on YouTube

West Bank: settlers, guns and sanctions

For more than six months, a BBC Eye team has been investigating extremist settlers are establishing a new type of illegal settlement known as a “herding outpost”.

Listen now on BBC Sounds

Through limiting access to grazing land, outpost settlers like Moshe Sharvit are able to put Palestinian farmers in increasingly precarious positions, says Moayad Shaaban, the head of the Palestinian Authority’s Colonization and Wall Resistance Commission.

“It reaches a point where Palestinians don’t have anything anymore. They can’t eat, they can’t graze, can’t get water,” he says.

Following the 7 October Hamas attacks on southern Israel and Israel’s war in Gaza, Moshe Sharvit’s harassment became even more aggressive, says Ariel Moran, who supports Palestinian communities facing settler aggression.

Sharvit had always carried a pistol with him in the fields, but now he began approaching activists and Palestinians with an assault rifle slung over his shoulder and his threats became more menacing, Ariel says.

“I think he saw the chance of taking a shortcut and not waiting for another year or two years of gradually wearing them [Palestinian families] out.

“Just do it overnight. And it worked.”

Many of the families, like Ayesha’s, who say they left their homes following threats from Moshe Sharvit, did so in the weeks immediately following 7 October.

Throughout the West Bank, OCHA – the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs – says settler violence has reached “unprecedented levels”.

In the past 10 months, it has recorded more than 1,100 settler attacks against Palestinians. At least 10 Palestinians have been killed and more than 230 injured by settlers since 7 October, it says.

At least five settlers have been killed and at least 17 injured by Palestinians in the West Bank over the same time frame, OCHA says.

In December 2023, two months after they say they were forced from their home, we filmed Ayesha and Nabil as they returned to collect some of their belongings.

When they arrived at the house, they found it had been ransacked. In the kitchen, the cupboards hung from their hinges. In the living room, someone had taken a knife to the sofas, slashing through the upholstery.

“I didn’t hurt him. I didn’t do anything to him. What have I done to deserve this?” Ayesha said.

As they began to sort through the damage, Moshe Sharvit arrived in a buggy. Before long, the Israeli police and army arrived. They told the couple, and the Israeli peace activists accompanying them, that they had to leave the area.

“He hasn’t left anything for us,” Ayesha told the BBC.

We contacted Moshe Sharvit on multiple occasions to ask for his response to the allegations made against him, but he did not respond.

In July 2023, the BBC approached him in person at his outpost to seek his response to allegations and also to ask if he would allow Palestinians – like Ayesha – to return to the area. He said he didn’t know what we were talking about and denied that he was Moshe Sharvit.

Benjamin Netanyahu has asked for “forgiveness” from Israelis for failing to return six hostages found dead in Gaza on Saturday, as Hamas warned more could be “returned to their families in shrouds” if a ceasefire isn’t reached.

His comments came as intense street protests over his handling of negotiations entered a second night in Israel.

Pressure also mounted internationally as the UK suspended some arms sales to Israel, citing a risk of equipment being used to violate international law.

But Israel’s prime minister struck a defiant tone, insisting its troops must control Gaza’s Philadelphi Corridor – a strategically important strip of land which is a sticking point in negotiations with Hamas.

Thousands of Israelis took to the streets on Monday in fresh protests called by hostages’ families to express their anger at Mr Netanyahu’s failure to bring home their loved ones after almost 11 months.

The Times of Israel reported that police were using considerable aggression at one protest outside the prime minister’s home in Jerusalem, including violently pushing protesters, throwing some to the ground, and dragging many away.

One member of the police squeezed the throat of a Times of Israel reporter, according to the newspaper.

The latest demonstrations come after hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets in protests across the country on Sunday, with some demonstrators blocking a major highway in Tel Aviv. Many wore Israeli flags and hung yellow ribbons – a symbol of solidarity with the hostages – from a bridge overlooking the Ayalon Highway.

A total of 97 hostages remain unaccounted for after being kidnapped by Hamas on 7 October last year.

Hamas said on Monday that hostages would be returned “inside coffins” if military pressure from Israel continues and added that “new instructions” have been given to militants guarding captives if they are approached by Israeli troops.

“Netanyahu’s insistence to free prisoners through military pressure, instead of sealing a deal means they will be returned to their families in shrouds. Their families must choose whether they want them dead or alive,” a spokesperson for the group said, without elaborating on what new orders had been issued.

Earlier on Monday, Israel’s biggest trade union said hundreds of thousands of people had joined a general strike called to put pressure on the government to agree a Gaza ceasefire and hostage release deal with Hamas.

Despite this, Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion airport reported limited disruption and many restaurants and hospitality services operated as normal. Far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich boasted that Israelis had gone to work “in droves” and proved that they were no longer slaves to “political needs”.

Elsewhere, US President Joe Biden said Mr Netanyahu was not doing enough to secure a hostage deal and ceasefire with Hamas, amid reports suggesting a new proposal would be sent to the Israeli prime minister as “final”.

Many accuse Mr Netanyahu of blocking a deal to prioritise his own political survival – a claim he rejects.

Mr Netanyahu’s far-right allies have threatened to pull out of the coalition government, undermining his chances of staying in power, if he were to accept a deal tied to a permanent ceasefire before Hamas was destroyed.

US, Egyptian and Qatari mediators are trying to broker a ceasefire deal that would see Hamas release the 97 hostages still being held, including 33 who are presumed dead, in exchange for Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails.

UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy said on Monday that the UK had suspended 30 out of 350 arms export licences to Israel, citing a “clear risk” the equipment could be used to commit serious violations of international law.

The affected equipment includes parts for fighter jets, helicopters and drones.

Mr Lammy said the UK continued to support Israel’s right to defend itself, and this did not amount to an arms embargo.

Israel’s Defence Minister Yoav Gallant posted on X, to say he was “deeply disheartened” by the move, while Foreign Minister Israel Katz said it sent a “very problematic message” to Hamas and Iran.

Meanwhile, funeral services for some of the hostages killed on Saturday have been held.

The mother of Hersh Goldberg-Polin – one of the hostages whose body was recovered by Israel on Saturday – spoke at his funeral and said she had been in “such torment and worry” about him for months.

Rachel Goldberg-Polin said it had been a “stunning honour” to be her son’s mother. Around the time of his kidnap, Hersh sent two texts to his family, writing: “I love you guys,” and “I’m sorry”.

Mourners lined the streets in Jerusalem and Israel’s President Isaac Herzog spoke to relatives at the funeral.

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

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

Hong Kong’s flagship airline Cathay Pacific has cancelled dozens of flights after a plane heading from the city to Zurich was forced to turn around due to an “engine component failure”.

The company says it is now inspecting all 48 of its Airbus A350 aircraft and has found that a faulty part in some of the engines needs to be replaced.

Rolls-Royce has told the BBC the plane was powered by its Trent XWB-97 engines.

The UK-based engineering giant’s shares fell by more than 6% in Monday’s trading session in London.

Cathay Pacific said the engine component that caused its plane to return to Hong Kong was “the first of its type to suffer such failure on any A350 aircraft worldwide.”

“Thus far we have identified a number of the same engine components that need to be replaced, spare parts have been secured and repair work is underway,” the airline said in a statement.

“As a result, a number of aircraft will be out of service for several days while this process is being completed and Cathay Pacific’s operating schedules will be affected.”

The airline expects the inspection of its A350 fleet to be completed later on Tuesday.

Cathay Pacific took delivery of its Airbus A350 aircraft in 2016, which are equipped with fuel-efficient Rolls-Royce engines.

“We are committed to working closely with the airline, aircraft manufacturer and the relevant authorities to support their investigation into this incident,” Rolls-Royce told BBC News.

Earlier this year, Rolls-Royce announced plans to invest in making improvements to its range of engines, including the Trent XWB-97.

In 2023, Tim Clark, the boss of gulf carrier Emirates, voiced concerns about the durability of the engine and the prices Rolls-Royce charged for maintenance.

As African leaders gather in Beijing this week for the triennial China-Africa summit, Chinese President Xi Jinping may have one thing under his belt to boast about – satellite TV.

Almost nine years ago, President Xi promised the heads of state attending the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) in Johannesburg that China would provide over 10,000 remote villages in 23 African countries with digital TV access.

With over 9,600 villages having received satellite infrastructure, the project is now nearing completion.

The ambitious pledge, revealed during a period of warm China-Africa relations and funded by China’s aid budget, was entrusted to StarTimes, a private Chinese company already operating in several African countries.

It was an apparent show of goodwill and an opportunity for China to flex its soft power in a strategically important region.

As China’s economy struggles and Beijing re-calibrates its Africa strategy, the BBC visited four villages in Kenya to find out if this “soft power” initiative had paid off.

In the village of Olasiti, about three hours’ drive west of the capital, Nairobi, Nicholas Nguku gathered his friends and family to watch Kenyan athletes running at the Paris Olympics on television.

“I’m very happy to see the Olympics, which for many years we had not been able to see before we got StarTimes,” he said, speaking of the company’s installation of satellite dishes about four years ago.

He is far from the only beneficiary of StarTimes’ presence across Africa. First introduced to the continent in 2008, StarTimes is now one of the largest private digital TV providers in sub-Saharan Africa, with more than 16 million subscribers.

Analysts say that low pricing initially helped to secure its foothold.

In Kenya, monthly digital TV packages range from 329 shillings ($2.50; £2) to 1,799 shillings ($14; £10.50).

In comparison, a monthly package for DStv, owned by MultiChoice, another major player in the African digital TV market, costs between 700 and 10,500 shillings.

While StarTimes partly relies on subscriptions for its core revenue, the “10,000 Villages Project” is funded by China’s state–run South-South Assistance Fund.

The satellite dishes all feature the StarTimes logo, Kenya’s Ministry of Information emblem, and a red “China Aid” logo. During the installation of these dishes, StarTimes representatives said that this was a “gift” from China, several villagers recalled.

According to Dr Angela Lewis, an academic who has written extensively on StarTimes in Africa, the project had the potential to leave a positive image of China for African audiences.

Villagers under the project ostensibly received everything for free, including the infrastructure, such as a satellite dish, battery, and installation, as well as a subscription to StarTimes’ content.

This was a “game-changer,” according to Dr Lewis, as remote villages in Africa previously mostly had access to choppy and unreliable analogue TV.

For many, this was their first access to satellite dishes, altering the way villagers interacted with the outside world, she said.

For community centres like hospitals and schools in Ainomoi village in western Kenya, subscriptions remain free.

At the local clinic a digital TV in the waiting room helps patients pass the time. And at a primary school, pupils enjoy watching cartoons after school.

“After we finish schoolwork, we’ll all watch cartoons together and it’s a very enjoyable and bonding experience,” said Ruth Chelang’at, an eighth-grade student at the school.

However, several Kenyan households interviewed by the BBC say the free trial unexpectedly lasted only a limited amount of time.

Despite its relatively cheap price, extending subscriptions was considered a significant financial burden for many.

With that, the initial excitement has waned among some of the project’s beneficiaries, putting a dent in China’s push to build up goodwill.

“We were all very happy when we first got the satellite dish, but it was only free for a few months, and after that we had to pay,” said Rose Chepkemoi, from Chemori village in Kericho county. “It was too much so we stopped using it.”

Without a subscription, only certain free-to-air channels, such as the Kenyan Broadcasting Cooperation, are available, according to those who no longer subscribe to StarTimes packages.

During the BBC’s visit to four different villages that received StarTimes dishes from 2018 to 2020, many villagers reported stopping their use of StarTimes after the free trial ended. The chief of Ainamoi village said that many of the original 25 households who received the satellite dishes in his village opted not to subscribe.

The BBC contacted StarTimes for comment on the free trials but did not receive a reply.

China’s influence extends to the content broadcast on StarTimes channels, with mixed results. Even the cheapest packages include channels like Kung Fu and Sino Drama, showcasing predominantly Chinese movies and series.

In 2023, over 1,000 Chinese movies and TV shows were dubbed into local languages, Ma Shaoyong, StarTimes’ head of public relations, told local media. In Kenya’s case, in 2014, the company launched a channel called ST Swahili, dedicated to Swahili content.

Among villagers who have watched Chinese shows, many said they found the programming outdated, portraying Chinese characters in a one-dimensional way, with shows often centred around stereotypical themes.

A quick flick through the guide shows a plethora of dating or romance-centric shows, including a popular reality show called Hello, Mr. Right, where contestants seek to find their perfect match. The format was modelled on a similar show in China called If You Are the One.

For some at least, that content is a reason to continue the subscription. Ariana Nation Ngotiek, a 21-year-old from Olasiti village, is “obsessed” with certain shows, like the Chinese series Eternal Love, which is dubbed into English. “I won’t go to sleep without watching it,” she said.

But football remains the ultimate attraction for African audiences. In 2023, for example, the Africa Cup of Nations (Afcon) had a record number of nearly two billion viewers globally, according to the Confederation of African Football.

Aware of this business opportunity, StarTimes has heavily invested in securing broadcasting rights for football matches, including Afcon, Spain’s La Liga and Germany’s Bundesliga.

“Sports broadcasting is where StarTimes made its name,” explained Dr Lewis.

Competition is fierce, however, and SuperSport, a subsidiary of MultiChoice, reportedly pays over $200m (£152m) annually for rights to broadcast the coveted English Premier League.

After French football megastar Kylian Mbappé announced he was joining Spain’s Real Madrid, StarTimes seized the opportunity and erected huge billboards in Nairobi that read “Feel the full thrill of La Liga”, followed by the StarTimes logo.

However, this does not work for everyone.

One football fan told the BBC he would “rather enjoy the thrill of Premier League.”

“The majority of Kenyans are not into La Liga, it’s the English Premier League that draws the audience,” explained Levi Obonyo, a professor at Nairobi’s Daystar University.

While China’s international-facing state broadcaster CGTN, is included in its cheapest package, unlike the BBC and CNN, it does not draw in the viewers.

“Yes, we also have Chinese news, but I don’t watch it,” said Lily Ruto, a retired teacher in Kericho county. “What’s it called again? C something N? T something N?” she laughed as she shrugged her shoulders.

Dr Dani Madrid-Morales, a lecturer at the University of Sheffield, echoes that StarTimes has not revolutionised the [African] news environment.

Most villagers say they prefer local news channels. StarTimes understands that. In fact, with over 95% of its 5,000-strong African staff being local, according to a company spokesperson, it aims to present itself as prioritising African voices.

One consultant to Chinese media companies in Africa said that StarTimes was trying to avoid a repeat of what has happened to the likes of TikTok or Huawei, whose overt Chinese-ness have attracted a high level of scrutiny in the West.

Dr Lewis’ study of news stories from 2015 to 2019 reinforces this, noting that most news stories mentioning StarTimes did not reference China or China-Africa relations. The company appears careful not to overtly showcase its Chinese roots.

StarTimes as a private company has seen substantial success over the years, and the “10,000 Villages Project” has pushed the company to a new level of fame.

However, as Beijing hosts yet another FOCAC, the image-building effect of the project that China had hoped for has failed to materialise.

“There was an attempt for the government to rebalance the information flow that would put China under a positive light, but that has not materialised,” said Dr Madrid-Morales. “The amount of money that has gone into this hasn’t really benefitted the Chinese government all that much.”

Many villagers the BBC spoke to were mostly concerned about content and costs. As rusty as several of the satellite dishes themselves, the project, once the talk of the town, has seemingly been relegated to a footnote in China’s soft-power outreach.

“Yes, we know it comes from China, but it makes no difference if no-one is using it,” said Ms Chepkemoi, who has cancelled her StarTimes subscription.

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Last Saturday, a Telegram message popped up on Heejin’s phone from an anonymous sender. “Your pictures and personal information have been leaked. Let’s discuss.”

As the university student entered the chatroom to read the message, she received a photo of herself taken a few years ago while she was still at school. It was followed by a second image using the same photo, only this one was sexually explicit, and fake.

Terrified, Heejin, which is not her real name, did not respond, but the images kept coming. In all of them, her face had been attached to a body engaged in a sex act, using sophisticated deepfake technology.

Deepfakes, the majority of which combine a real person’s face with a fake, sexually explicit body, are increasingly being generated using artificial intelligence.

“I was petrified, I felt so alone,” Heejin told the BBC.

But she was not alone.

Two days earlier, South Korean journalist Ko Narin had published what would turn into the biggest scoop of her career. It had recently emerged that police were investigating deepfake porn rings at two of the county’s major universities, and Ms Ko was convinced there must be more.

She started searching social media and uncovered dozens of chat groups on the messaging app Telegram where users were sharing photos of women they knew and using AI software to convert them into fake pornographic images within seconds.

“Every minute people were uploading photos of girls they knew and asking them to be turned into deepfakes,” Ms Ko told us.

Ms Ko discovered these groups were not just targeting university students. There were rooms dedicated to specific high schools and even middle schools. If a lot of content was created using images of a particular student, she might even be given her own room. Broadly labelled “humiliation rooms” or “friend of friend rooms”, they often come with strict entry terms.

Ms Ko’s report in the Hankyoreh newspaper has shocked South Korea. On Monday, police announced they were considering opening an investigation into Telegram, following the lead of authorities in France, who recently charged Telegram’s Russian founder for crimes relating to the app. The government has vowed to bring in stricter punishments for those involved, and the president has called for young men to be better educated.

The BBC has reached out to Telegram for comment and while it is yet to reply on this particular case, it has previously told the BBC that it proactively searches for illegal activity, including child sexual abuse, on its site. It said undisclosed action was taken against 45,000 groups worldwide, in August alone.

The BBC has viewed the descriptions of a number of these chatrooms. One calls for members to post more than four photos of someone along with their name, age and the area they live in.

“I was shocked at how systematic and organised the process was,” said Ms Ko. “The most horrific thing I discovered was a group for underage pupils at one school that had more than 2,000 members.”

In the days after Ms Ko’s article was published, women’s rights activists started to scour Telegram too, and follow leads.

By the end of that week, more than 500 schools and universities had been identified as targets. The actual number impacted is still to be established, but many are believed to be aged under 16, which is South Korea’s age of consent. A large proportion of the suspected perpetrators are teenagers themselves.

Heejin said learning about the scale of the crisis had made her anxiety worse, as she now worried how many people might have viewed her deepfakes. Initially she blamed herself. “I couldn’t stop thinking did this happen because I uploaded my photos to social media, should I have been more careful?”

Scores of women and teenagers across the country have since removed their photos from social media or deactivated their accounts altogether, frightened they could be exploited next.

“We are frustrated and angry that we are having to censor our behaviour and our use of social media when we have done nothing wrong,” said one university student, Ah-eun, whose peers have been targeted.

Ah-eun said one victim at her university was told by police not to bother pursuing her case as it would be too difficult to catch the perpetrator, and it was “not really a crime” as “the photos were fake”.

At the heart of this scandal is the messaging app Telegram. Unlike public websites, which the authorities can access easily, and then request for images be removed, Telegram is a private, encrypted messaging app.

Users are often anonymous, rooms can be set to “secret” mode, and their contents quickly deleted without a trace. This has made it a prime space for criminal behaviour to flourish.

Last week, politicians and the police responded forcefully, promising to investigate these crimes and bring the perpetrators to justice.

On Monday, Seoul National Police Agency announced it would look to investigate Telegram over its role in enabling fake pornographic images of children to be distributed.

• South Korea faces deepfake porn ’emergency’
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The app’s founder, Pavel Durov, was charged in France last week with being complicit in a number of crimes related to the app, including enabling the sharing of child pornography.

But women’s rights activists accuse the authorities in South Korea of allowing sexual abuse on Telegram to simmer unchecked for too long, because Korea has faced this crisis before. In 2019, it emerged that a sex ring was using Telegram to coerce women and children into creating and sharing sexually explicit images of themselves.

Police at the time asked Telegram for help with their investigation, but the app ignored all seven of their requests. Although the ringleader was eventually sentenced to more than 40 years in jail, no action was taken against the platform, because of fears around censorship.

“They sentenced the main actors but otherwise neglected the situation, and I think this has exacerbated the situation,” said Ms Ko.

Park Jihyun, who, as a young student journalist, uncovered the Nth room sex-ring back in 2019, has since become a political advocate for victims of digital sex crimes. She said that since the deepfake scandal broke, pupils and parents had been calling her several times a day crying.

“They have seen their school on the list shared on social media and are terrified.”

Ms Park has been leading calls for the government to regulate or even ban the app in South Korea. “If these tech companies will not cooperate with law enforcement agencies, then the state must regulate them to protect its citizens,” she said.

Before this latest crisis exploded, South Korea’s Advocacy Centre for Online Sexual Abuse victims (ACOSAV) was already noticing a sharp uptick in the number of underage victims of deepfake pornography.

In 2023 they counselled 86 teenage victims. That jumped to 238 in just the first eight months of this year. In the past week alone, another 64 teen victims have come forward.

One of the centre’s leaders, Park Seonghye, said over the past week her staff had been inundated with calls and were working around the clock. “It’s been a full scale emergency for us, like a wartime situation,” she said.

“With the latest deepfake technology there is now so much more footage than there used to be, and we’re worried it’s only going to increase.”

As well as counselling victims, the centre tracks down harmful content and works with online platforms to have it taken down. Ms Park said there had been some instances where Telegram had removed content at their request. “So it’s not impossible,” she noted.

While women’s rights organisations accept that new AI technology is making it easier to exploit victims, they argue this is just the latest form of misogyny to play out online in South Korea.

First women were subjected to waves of verbal abuse online. Then came the spy cam epidemic, where they were secretly filmed using public toilets and changing rooms.

“The root cause of this is structural sexism and the solution is gender equality,” read a statement signed by 84 women’s groups.

This is a direct criticism of the country’s President Yoon Suk Yeol, who has denied the existence of structural sexism, cut funding to victim support groups and is abolishing the government’s gender equality ministry.

Lee Myung-hwa, who treats young sex offenders, agreed that although the outbreak of deepfake abuse might seem sudden, it had long been lurking under the surface. “For teenagers, deepfakes have become part of their culture, they’re seen as a game or a prank,” said the counsellor, who runs the Aha Seoul Youth Cultural Centre.

Ms Lee said it was paramount to educate young men, citing research that shows when you tell offenders exactly what they have done wrong, they become more aware of what counts as sexual abuse, which stops them from reoffending.

Meanwhile, the government has said it will increase the criminal sentences of those who create and share deepfake images, and will also punish those who view the pornography.

It follows criticism that not enough perpetrators were being punished. One of the issues is that the majority of offenders are teenagers, who are typically tried in youth courts, where they receive more lenient sentences.

Since the chatrooms were exposed, many have been closed down, but new ones will almost certainly take their place. A humiliation room has already been created to target the journalists covering this story. Ms Ko, who broke the news, said this had given her sleepless nights. “I keep checking the room to see if my photo has been uploaded,” she said.

Such anxiety has spread to almost every teenage girl and young woman in South Korea. Ah-eun, the university student, said it had made her suspicious of her male acquaintances.

“I now can’t be certain people won’t commit these crimes behind my back, without me knowing,” she said. “I’ve become hyper-vigilant in all my interactions with people, which can’t be good.”

On Monday evening, protestors carried empty coffins past Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s house – the burden he carries is much heavier, they say.

Since six Israeli hostages were found dead in a Gaza tunnel last weekend, the weight of the war there has hung heavier on Israel’s leader.

“I think the fact that they were alive and murdered right before they could have been saved – that broke it,” said Anna Rubin, who joined a protest in Tel Aviv.

“That’s a breaking point for a lot of people – [they] are on the edge of their seat, and they realise that sitting at home is not going to do anything.”

Tens of thousands of people took to the streets again on Monday, after mass demonstrations flooded Tel Aviv last night. Many want to see this moment as a turning point, but Prime Minister Netanyahu has been here before.

He’s lived through months of these street protests – and years of similar ones. Protected by a parliamentary majority, his strategy has largely been to ignore their demands.

But then, if Mr Netanyahu isn’t listening, many people in Israel are not protesting.

A one-day general strike, called by the country’s labour union, was very patchily observed – even in Tel Aviv, the country’s beach-side liberal heartland.

Shops and restaurants in the city centre were mostly open, after briefly closing in solidarity with the protest on Sunday night.

“I don’t agree with the decision,” one of the staff at local cafe told me. “We should have closed.”

Tamara was picking up a street scooter, in large shades and perfect lipstick. “I don’t agree with the strike,” she said. “We want the hostages back – but we can’t stop everything; we need to live.”

Twenty-three-year-old Niva said she was surprised to see so many places open. “The country is in a very confrontational mood now,” she said.

But the most striking confrontation isn’t happening in the streets.

In a live press conference on Monday night, Mr Netanyahu defied anyone to demand more concessions from Israel in its negotiations over a hostage and ceasefire deal, brokered by the US.

“These murderers executed six of our hostages; they shot them in the back of the head,” he said. “And now, after this, we’re asked to show seriousness? We’re asked to make concessions?”

The message that would send to Hamas, he said, would be: “kill more hostages [and] you’ll get more concessions.”

He said no-one who was serious about achieving peace and freeing the hostages – including US President Joe Biden – would ask him to make more concessions.

A short while earlier, Mr Biden, when asked by reporters, said he didn’t think Israel’s prime minister was doing enough to secure a ceasefire deal.

A key demand of Hamas is that Israel withdraws all its forces from a strip of land along Gaza’s border with Egypt, known as the Philadelphi Corridor.

Israel’s security chiefs, including the defence minister, Yoav Gallant, have been widely reported in local media as supporting alternatives to keeping troops on the ground.

Mr Gallant has publicly pressed the cabinet to back a proposed compromise.

The most dangerous moment of Israel’s previous mass protests, sparked by Mr Netanyahu’s judicial reform plans, was when he tried to sack Mr Gallant – and was then forced to reinstate him.

If he tried that again, says political analyst Tamar Hermann of Israel’s Democracy Institute, that could be the real turning point for protests here.

The threat to him from demonstrators now, she says, is “zero”.

Most are left-leaning critics whose opposition to the prime minister runs far deeper than the hostage crisis in Gaza.

“Netanyahu knows better than I do,” she said, “the best thing is to let it play as a safety valve – let people say, ‘we hate you, you are a murderer’.”

Prime Minister Netanyahu, protected by his parliamentary majority, seems to believe he can ride out the demands for a deal being made from the street, at least for now.

But the demands from his own defence minister, from the US president, could prove harder to ignore.

Pope Francis has embarked on the longest and farthest trip of his tenure, which will see him fly nearly 33,000km (20,500 miles) to Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, Timor-Leste and Singapore.

It’s a particularly challenging journey for a man who turns 88 in December and has been battling a spate of health issues.

Francis is expected to highlight environmental concerns and the importance of interfaith dialogue during his 12-day trip. Timor-Leste is the only one of the four countries that is predominantly Catholic.

He is expected to arrive in Jakarta at around 11:30 local time (04:30 GMT) on Tuesday, where he will visit the Indonesian capital’s main mosque.

Parts of Francis’s trip, which was originally scheduled in 2020 but postponed due to the pandemic, will retrace the steps of St John Paul II, who also visited the four nations during his 27-year pontificate.

“Today I begin an Apostolic Journey to several countries in Asia and Oceania,” Francis wrote on X on Monday. “Please pray that this journey may bear fruit.”

Since his election in 2013, Francis has urged the Catholic Church to bring God’s comfort “toward the periphery” – referring to communities who are marginalised or far away.

He is only the third pope to visit Indonesia, which has the largest population of Muslims globally.

During his four days there, he will meet with outgoing president Joko Widodo and hold a mass for some 70,000 people, according to the Vatican News.

Nasaruddin Umar, the grand imam at the Jakarta mosque Francis will be visiting, told the AP he hopes the visit will offer opportunities to “discuss the common ground between religious communities and emphasise the commonalities between religions, ethnicities, and beliefs”.

In Papua New Guinea, Francis will travel to the remote, poverty-wracked city of Vanimo to meet with missionaries from his native Argentina who have been reaching out to tribal communities.

Miguel de la Calle, an Argentine missionary in Papua New Guinea’s north-westernmost city, said he hoped the Pope’s visit would “significantly boost” ongoing evangelisation efforts in the territory.

People have been travelling from all Papua New Guinea and even across the border from Indonesia to see the Pope, he told Vatican News.

“Some have been walking for days due to the scarcity of transportation,” Father Miguel said.

In Timor-Leste, Francis will officiate mass in the capital Dili, on the same seaside esplanade where John Paul II spoke in 1989 to comfort local Catholics who suffered under Indonesia’s occupation of the territory. Timor-Leste gained independence in 2002.

The sheen of Francis’s visit to the country has dimmed in recent days, however, following revelations that hundreds of homes in the area were bulldozed. Nearly 90 residents were told to find somewhere new to live before he arrives.

Francis will wrap up his trip in Singapore, where three-quarters of the population are ethnically Chinese and Mandarin is one of four official languages. This visit is widely seen as an attempt to improve ties with China.

No pope has been able to visit China to date, as relations between the Vatican and the Chinese Communist Party have been strained by disputes over who can appoint bishops in the country.

Both sides are believed to have reached a deal on this in 2018, which gives the Vatican a say on such appointments.

During his trip, Francis will be accompanied by a doctor and two nurses. Concerns have been raised over the impact of such an ambitious itinerary on his ailing health.

Francis, who has had part of one lung removed in his younger days, had been struggling with respiratory and mobility problems of late – some of which have led him to miss his weekly Sunday blessings.

In November last year, he cancelled his trip to Dubai for the annual United Nations climate meeting because of a lung inflammation.

It’s been nearly a month since former Bangladesh prime minister Sheikh Hasina hurriedly landed at a military base near Delhi after a chaotic exit from her country.

Ms Hasina’s dramatic ouster on 5 August followed weeks of student-led protests which spiralled into deadly, nationwide unrest. She was initially expected to stay in India for just a short period, but reports say her attempts to seek asylum in the UK, the US and the UAE have not been successful so far.

Her continued presence in India has generated challenges for Delhi in developing a strong relationship with the new interim government in Dhaka. 

For India, Bangladesh is not just any neighbouring country. It’s a strategic partner and a close ally crucial to India’s border security, particularly in the north-eastern states. 

The two countries share a porous border 4,096km (2,545 miles) long which makes it relatively easy for armed insurgent groups from India’s north-eastern states to cross into Bangladesh for a safe haven. 

• Sheikh Hasina: The pro-democracy icon who became an autocrat

After Ms Hasina’s Awami League party came to power in 2009, it cracked down on some of these ethnic militant groups. Ms Hasina also amicably settled several border disputes with India.  

While border security is at the core of the relationship, there are financial aspects too. During Ms Hasina’s 15-year rule, trade relations and connectivity between the two countries flourished. India has gained road, river and train access via Bangladesh to transport goods to its north-eastern states. 

Since 2010, India has also given more than $7bn (£5.3bn) as a line of credit to Bangladesh for infrastructure and development projects. 

Ms Hasina’s sudden exit means that Delhi has to work hard to ensure that these gains are not lost. 

“It’s a setback in the sense that any turbulence in our neighbourhood is always unwanted,” says Pinak Ranjan Chakravarty, a former Indian High Commissioner in Dhaka. 

But the former diplomat insists that Delhi will work with the interim government in Dhaka because “there is no choice” and “you can’t dictate what they do internally”. 

The Indian government has wasted no time in reaching out to the interim government in Dhaka, with Prime Minister Narendra Modi holding a telephone conversation with leader Muhammad Yunus.

However, it will take a while for Delhi to assuage the anger in Bangladesh over its unwavering support for Ms Hasina and her Awami League for the last 15 years.  

Many Bangladeshis attribute the anger against India to Delhi’s swift endorsement of three controversial elections won by Ms Hasina’s party amid allegations of widespread vote-rigging. 

With Ms Hasina’s fall, Delhi’s “neighbourhood first” policy has taken another jolt with Bangladesh joining the Maldives and Nepal in resisting any attempt at dominance by India. 

Analysts say that Delhi can’t afford to lose its influence in another neighbouring country if it wants to protect its status as a regional powerhouse – especially as rival China is also jostling for influence in the region. 

Just last year, Mohamed Muizzu won the presidency in the Maldives on the back of his very public anti-India stand. 

“It’s time for India to do some introspection regarding its regional policy,” says Debapriya Bhattacharya, a senior economist with the Centre for Policy Dialogue in Dhaka.

Delhi needs to look at whether it has adequately taken on board the perspectives of its regional partners, he says.

“I am not only talking about Bangladesh, [but also] almost all other countries in the region,” adds Mr Bhattacharya, who heads a committee appointed by the interim government to prepare a white paper on the state of Bangladesh’s economy.

• Can India help its special ally Bangladesh defuse the crisis?

For example, in the case of Bangladesh, analysts point out that successive Indian governments have failed to engage with other opposition parties, particularly the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP). 

“India somehow thought that the Awami League and its government are the only allies inside Bangladesh. That was a strategic blunder,” says Abdul Moyeen Khan, a senior leader of the BNP.  

If free and fair elections are held in Bangladesh in the coming months, BNP leaders are confident of victory.

That will pose a diplomatic challenge for Delhi. There is a perceived trust deficit between India and the BNP, which is led by Begum Khaleda Zia, who had been prime minister for two terms earlier. 

Ms Zia, who spent most of her time in jail since 2018, has always denied corruption charges against her and has accused Ms Hasina of political vendetta. She has now been released from jail and is recovering from her illness.  

In the coming days, Delhi and the BNP leaders will have to find a way to work past their differences.

During the previous BNP-led coalition government from 2001 to 2006, the bilateral relationship deteriorated with Delhi accusing Dhaka of harbouring insurgents from India’s north-east.

During Ms Zia’s rule, Hindu leaders in Bangladesh said there were a series of attacks against them – including murder, looting and rape – by Islamist parties and the BNP which began as the election results were announced in 2001. 

The BNP denies the charges of giving shelter to anti-Indian insurgents and also of carrying out attacks on minority Hindus in 2001.

BNP leaders, including Mr Khan, say India hasn’t been forthcoming in engaging with them, adding that “now it’s time for a policy shift in Delhi”.  

He also stresses that given India’s proximity, size and its growing economic and military might, his party will not make the mistake of harbouring any anti-Indian insurgents.

• ‘There is no law and order. And Hindus are being targeted again’

There are other factors also behind the anger against India. India and Bangladesh share 54 rivers and the sharing of water resources is a contentious issue.

The recent floods triggered by heavy rains in eastern Bangladesh are an example of how misinformation can fuel suspicions between the two countries. 

Following a sudden heavy downpour in the Indian state of Tripura, the excess water flowed into the Gumti river – which flows between the two countries – inundating vast areas inside the state as well as downstream in neighbouring Bangladesh.  

Millions of people were affected with many losing their houses, belongings and farmland. Many villagers and social media users accused India of deliberately releasing water from a dam in the night, leading to the floods. 

The Indian external affairs ministry was forced to issue a statement denying this, explaining that the floods had been caused by heavy rains in the catchment areas of the Gumti river. 

Then there is another factor – China. Beijing is keen to extend its footprint in Bangladesh as it battles for regional supremacy with India. 

It rolled out the red carpet for Mr Muizzu when he chose China for his first state visit after winning the Maldives election.

Delhi would want to avoid the same fate with Bangladesh. And it would hope that Bangladesh’s reliance on Indian goods and trade will buy it some time to work out its diplomatic strategy and change its image. 

So Delhi will have to tread carefully around Ms Hasina’s presence in India, especially if the new government makes a formal extradition request.

A statement issued on her behalf by her son Sajeeb Wazed Joy last month had already stoked anger in Bangladesh. 

But India wouldn’t want to ask Ms Hasina to leave the country when her future remains uncertain and come across as leaving a formidable former ally in the lurch. 

“It doesn’t matter how she is accorded hospitality in India. But it matters to Bangladeshis how she intervenes in the domestic matters staying over there. If she speaks against the current interim government, that would be considered as an act of hostility,” Mr Bhattacharya warned.  

Diplomats in Delhi will hope that Ms Hasina makes a choice for herself without forcing India’s hand.

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.

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, it’s 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.”

It has been a recurrent theme of this US presidential campaign – has the US economy performed better under Joe Biden or Donald Trump?

“By many indicators our economy is the strongest in the world,” Democratic Vice-President Kamala Harris has claimed.

Trump, the Republican nominee and former president, says he created the “greatest economy in the history of our country”, and the Biden-Harris administration has ruined it.

We have looked at some key indicators to compare economic performance under the two presidencies.

Although the impact of Covid has made comparison difficult, both presidents can count some notable economic successes despite wages struggling to keep up with price increases in recent years.

First, let’s look at economic growth using Gross Domestic Product (GDP) – the value of all goods and services in the US economy.

There was a dramatic collapse in this figure during Covid as many businesses shut.

Following the pandemic, the economy bounced back strongly under Trump and recovered better than many other western countries.

This has continued under Mr Biden, with the US producing the strongest pandemic recovery within the G7 as measured by GDP.

But over Trump’s four years in office, it was not the greatest economy in US history, as he likes to claim.

Between January 2017 and January 2021, average annual growth rate was 2.3%.

This period includes the slowdown and recovery of the economy as a result of the Covid pandemic.

Under the Biden administration so far, this figure is 2.2% – so almost the same.

There have been periods in the past when GDP growth was significantly higher than the average under both Trump and Biden, such as in the 1970s.

The rate at which prices are rising has been a big issue in the campaign.

Prices rose significantly during the first two years under Mr Biden – hitting a peak of 9.1% in June 2022.

Trump has said the US has experienced “the worst inflation we’ve ever had”.

But that’s not true – inflation was last above 9% in 1981, and it has been much higher than that at several other points in US history.

Inflation has now fallen to around 3% – but it remains higher than when Trump left office.

Grocery prices, for example, increased by 13.5% over the year ending in August 2022.

This was the peak under the Biden administration, and prices have stabilised somewhat since, with the cost of groceries rising by 1.1% from July 2023 to July this year.

The recent trend is comparable with many other Western countries which experienced high inflation rates in 2021 and 2022, as global supply chain issues driven by Covid and the war in Ukraine contributed to rising prices.

But some economists say Mr Biden’s $1.9tn (£1.5tn) American Rescue Plan, which passed in 2021, was also a factor – as the injection of cash into the economy led to prices rising further.

The Biden administration has repeatedly pointed to strong job growth as a major achievement.

Before big job losses in 2020 due to Covid, in the first three years of Trump’s presidency almost 6.7 million jobs were added, according to data for non-farm jobs (which covers about 80% of workers in the labour force).

There’s been an increase of almost 16 million jobs since the Biden administration took over in January 2021.

Mr Biden claims this is the “fastest job growth at any point of any president in all of American history”.

That’s correct – if you look at the available data since records began in 1939.

But his administration has benefited from a sharp rebound in economic activity as the country emerged from pandemic lockdowns.

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

This spending plan passed under the Biden administration in 2021 was designed to help stimulate the economy following the pandemic.

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

Both administrations have pointed to low unemployment levels under their leadership.

Prior to the pandemic, Mr Trump delivered an unemployment rate of 3.5%.

As in many parts of the world, Covid lockdown measures led to soaring levels of unemployment in the US – but the unemployment levels had dropped back down to around 7% when Trump left office.

Under the Biden administration unemployment continued to fall to a low of 3.4% in January 2023 – the lowest rate in more than 50 years – but it it has since ticked up to 4.3%.

In terms of wages, these did rise under Trump but at a similar rate to his predecessor Barack Obama, up until the pandemic hit.

Workers’ wages increased rapidly at the start of 2020 during the Covid pandemic – but the sudden uptick in wages was linked to lower paid workers being more likely to be laid off, which raised the average wage of people who were still employed.

Under Mr Biden, average weekly earnings have grown, but they have struggled to keep up with the increase in prices caused by high levels of inflation.

When adjusted for inflation, average weekly wages are less than when Mr Biden came into office.

The US stock market isn’t necessarily a reflection of the broader economy, but many Americans have investments, so its performance holds some importance.

The Dow Jones Index is a measure of the performance of 30 large companies listed on US stock exchanges.

It reached record highs during Trump’s presidency, but crashed as markets reacted to the pandemic, wiping out all the gains made under Trump.

However, the financial markets recovered to above pre-pandemic levels by the time Trump left office in January 2021.

They have continued to grow under Mr Biden, and although there have been recent wobbles, they have reached record levels under his administration as well.

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A judge in Venezuela has issued an arrest warrant for Edmundo González, the opposition’s candidate in the country’s recent presidential election.

It comes after a request by the public prosecutor’s office, which is loyal to President Nicolas Maduro.

Mr Maduro was declared the winner of July’s election by the country’s electoral council – most of whose members are also supportive of the president.

But the government has yet to publish any evidence to support its claim of victory, while the opposition says their polling data shows Mr González won easily.

No sooner was the petition received from Venezuela’s public prosecutor’s office than Judge Edward Briceño, who rules on terrorism-related crimes in Venezuela, granted the request and the arrest warrant against Mr González was issued.

“No-one in this country is above the laws, above the institutions,” President Maduro said in quotes cited by AFP news agency in his weekly television program on Monday.

The step represents a significant ramping up of the political tensions in the South American nation.

Mr González was the candidate who ran against Mr Maduro in the country’s recent presidential election. Since the vote, his opposition alliance has published voting data online which it says shows he won the election by a huge margin, of more than 30%.

It is this data that has led to the issuance of the arrest warrant.

He is accused of “serious crimes” including the “usurpation” of public duties, document falsification, instigation of disobedience and system sabotage, according to the public prosecutor.

Mr González, who has been in hiding since shortly after the election, has denied any wrongdoing.

The European Union has refused to recognise Maduro as having won re-election in July without seeing voting results.

Several Latin American countries have also withheld their support, with Mr Maduro’s former ally, President Lula of Brazil, among those calling for full transparency by the Venezuelan government.

The US has recognised Mr González as the winner, saying there is “overwhelming” evidence of Maduro’s defeat.

However, the National Electoral Council declared President Maduro the winner, prompting major protests across Venezuela.

The government of President Maduro has detained more than 2,400 people since the election, creating what the UN has called “a climate of fear”.

Now, the possibility that Mr González may also be detained on charges of inciting public disorder and conspiracy has suddenly become far more likely.

Earlier, the US Department of Justice seized a plane used by President Maduro, saying it was obtained in violation of US sanctions on Venezuela.

In response, President Maduro’s government accused Washington of “piracy” and of “illegally imposing its will” around the world.

A former childcare worker in Australia has pleaded guilty to raping and sexually abusing dozens of young girls under his care for over 20 years.

Ashley Paul Griffith, 46, confessed to committing 307 offences at childcare centres in Brisbane and Italy between 2003 and 2022, a Queensland court heard on Monday.

Most of Griffith’s victims were under the age of 12, the court heard. The judge’s associate took over two hours to read out all of the charges against him.

Police have previously described Griffith as one of Australia’s worst-ever paedophiles.

The charges against him included 28 counts of rape, 190 counts of indecent treatment, 67 counts of making child exploitation material, four counts of producing such material, and one count of distributing it.

Several of his victims and their families were in court on Monday, and some parents cried when the names of their children were read out, according to ABC News.

“We see people going [into the childcare centre now] and I think, this happened to my child in that room,” said one child’s mother. “It’s a room of horrors.”

The same child’s father said he could not believe how Griffith could have gotten away with his crimes for 20 years.

The couple said that while they told their daughter about what happened, she was not able to fully understand because of her young age, ABC News reported.

“As she grows up, we’ll deal with that as it comes but it’s going to be something we deal with through our lives now,” her father said.

Griffith was arrested in August 2022 by Australia’s federal police, after they found thousands of photographs and videos related to his abuse that were uploaded onto the dark web.

Although faces were cropped out of the footage, investigators managed to trace them to Griffith because of a unique set of bedsheets seen in the background of the videos.

Police believe he recorded all his offences on his phones and cameras.

He was charged in November last year with more than 1,600 child sex offences, but most of these were eventually dropped.

Griffith remains in custody and will be sentenced at a later date.

Multiple cars travelling in the motorcade carrying Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, the Democratic candidate for vice-president, crashed in Milwaukee.

Mr Walz was not hurt.

The crash happened around 13:00 local time (18:00 GMT) on Monday. The cars involved were at the rear of the motorcade and were carrying members of the press who travel with Mr Walz.

Reporters said they were “violently thrown forward” after being hit from behind, sending their vehicle into the car in front of them. At least one person was injured.

It is unclear what caused the crash, which occurred on Interstate 794.

Vice-President Kamala Harris, his running mate, phoned Mr Walz to check that he was OK, a White House official told CBS, the BBC’s US partner. Mr Walz said he also received a call from President Joe Biden.

One person appeared to have broken an arm and was being treated by medics, according to pool reporter travelling with Mr Walz.

The affected vehicles pulled over to the side of the road as Mr Walz continued ahead to a scheduled appearance.

Mr Walz addressed the incident in his remarks at a Milwaukee Labor Day event shortly after the crash.

“Some of my staff and members of the press that were travelling up with us were involved in a traffic accident on the way here today. We’ve spoken with the staff,” he told the crowd. “I’m relieved to say that with a few minor injuries, everybody’s going to be okay.”

Mr Walz thanked the Secret Service and local first responders “for their quick reaction to help”.

Republican vice-presidential nominee JD Vance also responded to the reports, writing on X, formerly known as Twitter, “Hoping everyone’s OK.”

It’s not the first time the campaign has faced a motorcade-related crash.

Last week, a Georgia policeman crashed his motorcycle while travelling with the campaign convoy.

The officer, Savannah Police Corporal David Bates, was the only person involved in the crash and sustained “serious injuries”.

NPR reported that motorcade vehicles are often driven by campaign staff who may or may not have professional driving experience.

The excitement about the Oasis reunion turned sour for some fans when they were faced with prices that had more than doubled while they had spent hours in a virtual queue. Will the ensuing row over “dynamic pricing” have a lasting impact?

Oasis fan John and his family planned a major operation to buy Oasis tickets on Saturday – him on his phone and iPad while at work, in Burnley, his wife and son on their phones and laptop at home, in Cumbria, and his daughter on her phone, in Leeds.

“My wife and son were travelling across on the train over to Leeds, changing trains, and were on their phones constantly, in the queue,” he told BBC Radio 5 Live.

“My wife said she saw loads of other people in the same situation, all staring at their phones, trying to buy tickets.”

By mid-afternoon, after six hours in the online queue, John had given up, but his wife was eventually offered tickets – for £355 each.

“I find that just disgraceful,” he said.

Oasis have “built their career on the connection they’ve got with ordinary folk”, John said.

“But when you’ve queued all day and the price of the ticket has more than doubled, I just think they’ve broken their contract with the working class.

“They’re pretty dead to me now.”

John and his family were among many stung by dynamic pricing for the Britpop band’s long-awaited reunion tour.

Some standard standing tickets advertised at £135 plus fees were relabelled “in demand” and changed on Ticketmaster to £355 plus fees.

“You can’t spend your whole day online trying to buy tickets expecting to pay one price, and you get to the front of the queue and it more than doubles,” John said.

“It’s outrageous.”

Another fan, Nicholas, from Macclesfield, in Cheshire, told BBC Radio 5 Live’s Nicky Campbell: “It’s greed, purely and simply.

“They will be looked at very differently.

“There should be difficult questions asked of the band.”

Ticketmaster has said it does not set the prices, which are down to the “event organiser”, who “has priced these tickets according to their market value”.

Performers can opt in or out of the dynamic-pricing system but it is hard to know how much the Gallagher brothers themselves actually knew about the arrangement.

The “event organiser” ultimately means the promoters – SJM, Live Nation, which owns Ticketmaster, MCD and DF.

The tour deal would also have involved the band’s booking agents and managers, who would have discussed it with the two reuniting bandmates.

And opting in to dynamic pricing would mean a bigger payday.

But were those choices offered to the Gallaghers themselves?

In the past, some artists and their teams have decided against using dynamic pricing – Taylor Swift and Ed Sheeran are not thought to have used it for their latest UK tours.

And The Cure frontman Robert Smith has called it “a greedy scam”.

“All artists have the choice not to participate,” he wrote in 2023.

“If no artists participated, it would cease to exist.”

Other stars have said they had it applied without their direct knowledge.

In 2020, Crowded House said: “The band had no prior knowledge of these ‘In Demand’ tickets and did not approve this programme.”

So they told Live Nation to refund the difference between the original face value price and the higher “in demand” cost.

Live Nation has tried to make dynamic pricing a common feature in recent years, especially in the US.

But there was a furore when it was used for Bruce Springsteen’s 2022 US tour, as top ticket prices briefly rose to $5,000 (£3,800), before dynamically dropping again.

The Boss later said most of his tickets were “totally affordable” but the money should go into the pocket of the artist and not a tout who would only resell the ticket for a similar or higher price.

“I’m going, ‘Hey, why shouldn’t that money go to the guys that are going to be up there sweating three hours a night for it?'” he told Rolling Stone.

“It [dynamic pricing] created an opportunity for that to occur.

“And so at that point, we went for it.

“I know it was unpopular with some fans.

“But if there’s any complaints on the way out, you can have your money back.”

Live Nation’s boss has also said dynamic pricing reduces touting – and he wants to use it more widely in Europe as well as the US.

“Promoters are anxious for it,” chief executive Michael Rapino said in February.

“Artists are anxious for it because they see, when they sell an arena in Baltimore versus Milan right now, they look at the grosses and say, ‘Wow, we’re leaving too much on the table for the scalpers. Let’s price this better.'”

Better for whom, though?

Ultimately, the Oasis shows did sell out by Saturday evening.

“It basically comes down to demand and supply,” Schellion Horn, competition economist at accounting firm Grant Thornton, told BBC Radio 5 Live.

“There are people out there for whom this is a once-in-a-lifetime experience and people are willing to pay that [much].”

But the real issue was a “lack of transparency”.

People expected prices to vary for other services such as flights and hotels – but “here, people had in their mind that they were going to get these lower ticket prices”.

“A lot of people finally got to the front of the queue, had invested four, five, six hours of their life [and] felt very invested, and suddenly had five minutes to decide whether to pay these higher prices,” Ms Horn said.

Music journalist John Robb, who recently interviewed Noel Gallagher for his site Louder Than War, told BBC Radio 4 the price fluctuations were “unfair”.

“The price should be the price,” he said.

“But maybe that’s an old-fashioned British way of looking at things.”

There should be legislation to regulate dynamic pricing, he added.

That is now a prospect, after the Oasis outcry led the government to add the issue to a review of ticket reselling it had already announced.

“There are a number of techniques going on here where people are buying a lot of tickets, reselling them at a huge price,” Prime Minister Keir Starmer told 5 Live on Monday.

“And that’s just not fair – it’s just pricing people out of the market.”

Will the controversy tarnish Oasis’ reputation?

Possibly, but the reunion shows are not for almost a year – by which time the fans who did buy tickets might just have paid off their overdrafts and credit-card bills, and be ready to forget the cost and revel in the music.

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.”

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 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.”

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.

Last year, Hugo watched a friend die in a vast field of sweet potatoes, his lifeless body leaning against a truck tyre – one of few shaded areas on the sweltering North Carolina farm.

“They forced him to work,” Hugo recalled. “He kept telling them he was feeling bad, that he was dying.”

“An hour later, he passed out.”

Hugo, which is not his real name, has spent most of his time in the US as a migrant farm worker, a job where the pay generally hovers at or below minimum wage, and where work conditions can be fatal. The BBC agreed to use a pseudonym because he expressed concern he could face repercussions for speaking out about the incident.

Hugo departed Mexico in 2019 with a visa to work in the US, leaving behind a wife and two children to pursue the “American Dream”, unsure of when he would return. Or if.

His friend who died on the sweet potato farm was Jose Arturo Gonzalez Mendoza.

It was Mendoza’s first trip to the US for work. He died within his first few weeks on the farm in September 2023. Mendoza, 29, had also left his wife and children in Mexico.

“We come here out of need. That’s what makes us come to work. And you leave behind what you most wished for, a family,” Hugo says.

From farmers and meatpackers to line cooks and construction workers, migrants often do dangerous jobs where workplace deaths typically go unnoticed by the wider public. But in the past year, the issue has been thrust into the spotlight, by multiple high-profile deaths and by a migrant crisis at the border that has amplified anti-immigrant rhetoric.

The day Mendoza died, the heat was intense.

Temperatures hovered around 32C (90F). There was not enough drinking water for workers and the farm only allowed one five-minute break during hours-long shifts.

The one place to escape the heat was a bus without air conditioning parked in an open field.

The details are outlined in a report by the North Carolina Department of Labor, which fined the farm – Barnes Farming Corporation – this year for its “hazardous” conditions.

The report confirmed the death on the farm and mentioned that management “never” called healthcare services or provided first-aid treatment.

In the hours before his death, Mendoza “became confused, demonstrated difficulty walking, talking and breathing and lost consciousness”, the report said.

Another farm worker eventually called emergency services, according to the report, but Mendoza went into cardiac arrest and died before they arrived.

The farm’s legal representation said in a statement to the BBC that it takes the health and safety of its workers “very seriously” and is contesting the labour department’s findings.

“Many of the team members have been returning to Barnes for years, and returned again for this growing season, because of the farm’s commitment to health and safety,” they said.

But Hugo did not return. He says he now works for a welding company.

“Bad things happen to a lot of us,” Hugo says. “I know it could happen to me, too.”

The agricultural industry also has the highest rate of workplace deaths, followed by transportation and construction, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Earlier this year, back-to-back deaths highlighted some of these dangers.

Six Latin American workers died in Baltimore when the bridge they were repairing overnight collapsed in late March.

Weeks later, a bus carrying Mexican farm workers to the fields crashed in Florida. Eight were killed.

Speaking at the Democratic National Convention, Maryland Governor Wes Moore recalled the Baltimore incident, honouring the workers who died “fixing potholes on a bridge while we slept”.

Both Mendoza and Hugo had H2A visas that allowed them temporarily to work in US agriculture. And the number of foreign-born workers who rely on this type of visa has grown.

Between 2017-2022, H2A visa holders have increased by 64.7%, or by nearly 150,000 workers.

In total, about 70% of farmworkers are foreign born, and over three-quarters are Hispanic, according to the National Center for Farmworker Health.

“Immigration is the key source of workers for many jobs in the US,” Chloe East, a University of Colorado Denver economics professor who focuses on immigration policy, says.

“We know for a fact that foreign-born workers are taking these types of dangerous jobs that US-born workers don’t.”

A 2020 federal investigation into agricultural H2A labourers in Florida, Texas and Georgia described conditions akin to “modern-day slavery”. Due to the investigation, 24 people were charged with trafficking, money laundering and other crimes.

“The American dream is a powerful attraction for destitute and desperate people across the globe, and where there is need, there is greed from those who will attempt to exploit,” Acting US Attorney David Estes said in a press release at the time.

Migrants that enter the country illegally can have even less protections if they’re hired to work, experts say. And almost half of agricultural workers are undocumented, according to the Centre for Migration Studies.

“Undocumented immigrant workers are concentrated in the most dangerous, hazardous, and otherwise unappealing jobs in US,” according to an article published in the International Migration Review.

One of the most dangerous jobs in the agricultural industry is dairy farming.

The dangers include overexposure to poisonous chemicals or hazardous machinery. Manure pits pose the risks of deadly toxic gases and drowning. The animals themselves can also be a threat.

Olga, who moved to the US from Mexico as a teenager, is an undocumented migrant dairy farm worker in Vermont. She says she saw her sister nearly trampled to death by a cow.

“The cow basically stomped on her and she was basically dying. Her tongue was even out,” Olga recalls.

Olga says that although the incident left her sister with a broken arm and two broken ribs, the farm’s manager demanded her return to work almost immediately.

It wasn’t until she provided a doctor’s note showing that her sister couldn’t work that “the boss left her alone”, Olga says. Her sister no longer works in farming.

Olga, however, still does.

The 29-year-old says she’s there “12 hours a day, every day”.

“There’s no raises. There’s no rest, and they don’t even pay on time,” she says. “They pay you when they want.”

Earlier this summer, the US Department of Labor implemented new rules designed to make working conditions for temporary farm workers safer, including protecting workers that organise to advocate for their rights from employer retaliation, and prohibiting employers from withholding workers’ passports and immigration documents.

But just as authorities have tried to crack down on migrant abuse, anti-migrant rhetoric, fuelled by political debates over record-breaking levels of illegal immigration across the US-Mexico border, have added to Hispanic migrants’ difficulties.

On multiple occasions, Donald Trump has referred to illegal immigration as an “invasion” and called those who cross “animals”, “drug dealers”, and “rapists”.

“It makes me feel sad. We’re always being attacked for being migrants,” Olga said.

“They should see how we live to survive in this country.”

Enhanced border restrictions, enacted by President Joe Biden in June, may also make safety conditions worse, Prof East said, noting how stricter immigration laws can make workers afraid to speak up for safety protocols.

“Most people stay quiet because they are scared of all the laws being passed,” Hugo says. “You can’t complain.”

Hugo says lately he has noticed more discrimination, recalling a recent experience where a store owner refused to sell him water because he struggled to speak English.

“People treat us badly,” he says.

For the previous 72 hours, the menacing whirr above our heads has belonged to Russia’s suicide drones, passing over and then bearing down on their targets.

Now the buzz comes from a Ukrainian unmanned aircraft which has not been sent up to kill, but to relay footage from the training ground to commanders back at base.

We’ve been brought to a secret training location in the Chernihiv region where the latest army intake is being fast tracked to the battlefield in the renewed effort to blunt Moscow’s grinding advance.

In the hail of machine gun fire and instructors’ commands, the most striking aspect of the scene is the age of the new recruits. Most seem to be in their 40s and 50s.

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Among the grey-haired contingent, Rostyslav, whose wife and two children are waiting for him back home in the Odesa region.

A month ago he was a driver. Next month he could find himself fighting on Russian soil, with Ukraine vowing to hold on to the land it seized in the Kursk region during its lightning incursion a month ago.

“I think this is the right thing to do,” he says of the operation.

“Look how long they’ve been on our land. We’ve been suffering for so long, we have to do something. You can’t just sit there while they are capturing our territory. What will we do then? Will we become their slaves?”

The training schedule we’re witnessing reflects the accelerated programme new army joiners are undergoing as Ukraine tries to deal with the sheer mass of men Russia is committing to the frontline.

The Ministry of Defence in London estimated there were 70,000 Russian casualties in Ukraine in May and June alone.

Under the scorching sun, the new Ukrainian recruits jump in and out of American-made armoured fighting vehicles and open fire on enemy positions.

The military, anxious that the location of this training remains secret, asked to see the footage we recorded on location before this story was reported across BBC News – but did not see any scripts nor have any editorial control.

In a nearby woodland, a simulated Russian attack on Ukrainian trenches is repelled while the boom of grenade target practice shudders across the plain.

Two and a half years into the war, and Ukraine is desperate for more troops and brought into force a new conscription law which lowered the age of men joining from 27 to 25. Military service for women is not mandatory.

The drive for younger conscripts has not hit this group of men.

All the recruits we see before us have already had 30 days of basic training and today it’s more advanced care – dealing with broken bones, gunshots and catastrophic bleeding – using medical equipment sent from the UK.

Light-hearted moments – a decidedly wonky tourniquet here or there – punctuate a heavy air.

There’s no escaping the fact the simulated emergency care being given under shade of spruces could be carried out in grim reality in the coming weeks and months.

One soldier who’s accompanied us to the site says that if the new intake have not acquired enough fighting skills they will not be sent to the frontline.

“We’re not going to send them to their deaths,” he says sharply.

Still, we have heard complaints, notably from professional soldiers, that raw recruits have been sent to other fronts without adequate training and thrust prematurely into frontline combat.

Ukraine is on the back foot in key parts of the battlefield at home, most notably around the strategically important city of Pokrovsk in Donetsk.

But last month’s incursion into Russia has boosted morale and has added a new dimension to the war.

However, Kyiv is now fighting a battle on yet another front and this is a huge personal gamble for President Zelensky.

His generals have tough strategic decisions to make about where to send their new recruits.

Maxim, a 30-year-old builder by trade, looks to be the most youthful of the cohort.

“We need to train, train and train again. The more we train the more we will learn here. It will help us on the frontline.”

Where will that be, I ask? “We are ready to defend our land either in Donbas – or Kursk,” he says proudly but with a nervous laugh.

Earlier, in Ukraine’s Sumy region, we had travelled under military escort to a new Ukrainian base just a few miles away from the Russian border.

Along the way, we passed whole streets blasted to pieces by previous Russian artillery fire.

The civilians had long gone, and the only human life was clad in the green and driving army vehicles.

As we arrive at the camp, an armoured personnel carrier (APC) fresh from the Kursk incursion roars into life and springs up backwards out of its sunken hiding place.

It pivots and then speeds off through the canopy lined track, leaving a huge plume of copper-coloured dust.

“The Russian soldiers who surrendered, we took as prisoners of war. The Russians who attacked us, we killed.”

It’s a blunt synopsis from the Ukrainian commander who goes by the call-sign “Storm”.

His 22nd Mechanised Brigade was the first to enter Russian territory and now he’s returned to tell the tale.

“We went far into the Kursk region. We were alone as the forward team. We were on foreign soil and we felt like foreigners. Not in our home.”

A father of five with five degrees, Storm cuts a distinctive shadow in the dense forest.

A giant of a man with greying goatee and military tattoos on the skin not covered by his army fatigues and body armour.

“That’s us, in there,” he says showing us a video on his phone of an APC tearing through the Russian countryside.

What was it like fighting the Russians on their home soil, I ask?

“I worried for myself and for my group, for my servicemen, for everyone. Of course, there was fear. “

Like all of the Ukrainian military we met, Storm is understandably reluctant to give any operational information which may help the Russians.

So when I ask if he knows how long he’ll stay on Russian territory when he returns, it is an answer predictably long on patriotism and short on specifics.

“We are fulfilling an order. We’ll be there as long as we are told to. If we are told to move forward, we will move forward. If they tell us to withdraw, we will withdraw.”

He continues in the same vein: “If we have an order to move forward, we can get to Moscow – and we’ll show what Ukraine means and what are our guys are like – real Cossacks.”

It’s been reported that Ukraine sent up to 10,000 elite troops into Russia as part of its rapid advance.

The Russian defence ministry claims Kyiv has suffered thousands of casualties.

The head of the Ukrainian army, Gen Oleksandr Syrskyi, announced the Russians had now sent 30,000 troops to defend Kursk. All these figures are hard to verify.

In another clandestine location, a team clambers out of a German-made Bergepanzer armoured recovery vehicle.

The driver, who goes by the call sign “Producer”, is a father of two who hasn’t seen his two children for three years.

They escaped to Italy with their mother in the weeks after Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.

While we’re unable to ascertain the level of Ukrainian losses, it’s clear that Producer has been busy bringing back damaged and destroyed vehicles from inside Russia.

“I want this war to come to an end,” he tells us wearily in very good English.

“That’s because there is no reason for this (war). One man, Vladimir Putin, attacked our country. So what do we have to do? We must defend our home. Defending, defending, defending. But Ukraine is the smaller country.”

The mismatch between Moscow and Kyiv remains a key thread of President Zelensky’s ongoing call for greater Western help.

Through taking the fight into Russia, Ukraine galvanised its public but worried some allies who remain fearful of Vladimir Putin’s response and the spectre of a wider conflict.

So far, President Putin has largely ignored, at least publicly, the wound inflicted on his country’s side.

Ukraine says that, unlike Russia, it doesn’t have unlimited reserves of conscripts to catapult to the frontline.

We saw a glimpse of the deployment dilemma with our own eyes in the locations we visited this past week.

President Zelensky argues that much greater American and European assistance in air defence is more vital than ever and that permission to use foreign-made long range missiles to strike further into Russia urgently needs to be granted.

Especially now that Kyiv is fighting a battle at home and abroad.

As we leave the training ground, the exhausted soldiers loll on the ground – water bottle and cigarette in hand for many.

Rostyslav, who longs to return to his Odesa, believes his president is absolutely right.

“The Russians can reach our territory with long range weapons and we don’t have such a weapon to reach their territory. We can’t stand this anymore” he explains.

“We would like to hit Moscow to end this dirty war. Children and civilians suffer, everyone does.”

Another rocket-propelled grenade thunders across the parched training field.

Next time, it won’t be a drill.

It was 2022 and Cai, then 16, was scrolling on his phone. He says one of the first videos he saw on his social media feeds was of a cute dog. But then, it all took a turn.

He says “out of nowhere” he was recommended videos of someone being hit by a car, a monologue from an influencer sharing misogynistic views, and clips of violent fights. He found himself asking – why me?

Over in Dublin, Andrew Kaung was working as an analyst on user safety at TikTok, a role he held for 19 months from December 2020 to June 2022.

He says he and a colleague decided to examine what users in the UK were being recommended by the app’s algorithms, including some 16-year-olds. Not long before, he had worked for rival company Meta, which owns Instagram – another of the sites Cai uses.

When Andrew looked at the TikTok content, he was alarmed to find how some teenage boys were being shown posts featuring violence and pornography, and promoting misogynistic views, he tells BBC Panorama. He says, in general, teenage girls were recommended very different content based on their interests.

TikTok and other social media companies use AI tools to remove the vast majority of harmful content and to flag other content for review by human moderators, regardless of the number of views they have had. But the AI tools cannot identify everything.

Andrew Kaung says that during the time he worked at TikTok, all videos that were not removed or flagged to human moderators by AI – or reported by other users to moderators – would only then be reviewed again manually if they reached a certain threshold.

He says at one point this was set to 10,000 views or more. He feared this meant some younger users were being exposed to harmful videos. Most major social media companies allow people aged 13 or above to sign up.

TikTok says 99% of content it removes for violating its rules is taken down by AI or human moderators before it reaches 10,000 views. It also says it undertakes proactive investigations on videos with fewer than this number of views.

When he worked at Meta between 2019 and December 2020, Andrew Kaung says there was a different problem. He says that, while the majority of videos were removed or flagged to moderators by AI tools, the site relied on users to report other videos once they had already seen them.

He says he raised concerns while at both companies, but was met mainly with inaction because, he says, of fears about the amount of work involved or the cost. He says subsequently some improvements were made at TikTok and Meta, but he says younger users, such as Cai, were left at risk in the meantime.

Several former employees from the social media companies have told the BBC Andrew Kaung’s concerns were consistent with their own knowledge and experience.

Algorithms from all the major social media companies have been recommending harmful content to children, even if unintentionally, UK regulator Ofcom tells the BBC.

“Companies have been turning a blind eye and have been treating children as they treat adults,” says Almudena Lara, Ofcom’s online safety policy development director.

TikTok told the BBC it has “industry-leading” safety settings for teens and employs more than 40,000 people working to keep users safe. It said this year alone it expects to invest “more than $2bn (£1.5bn) on safety”, and of the content it removes for breaking its rules it finds 98% proactively.

Meta, which owns Instagram and Facebook, says it has more than 50 different tools, resources and features to give teens “positive and age-appropriate experiences”.

Cai told the BBC he tried to use one of Instagram’s tools and a similar one on TikTok to say he was not interested in violent or misogynistic content – but he says he continued to be recommended it.

He is interested in UFC – the Ultimate Fighting Championship. He also found himself watching videos from controversial influencers when they were sent his way, but he says he did not want to be recommended this more extreme content.

“You get the picture in your head and you can’t get it out. [It] stains your brain. And so you think about it for the rest of the day,” he says.

Girls he knows who are the same age have been recommended videos about topics such as music and make-up rather than violence, he says.

Meanwhile Cai, now 18, says he is still being pushed violent and misogynistic content on both Instagram and TikTok.

When we scroll through his Instagram Reels, they include an image making light of domestic violence. It shows two characters side by side, one of whom has bruises, with the caption: “My Love Language”. Another shows a person being run over by a lorry.

Cai says he has noticed that videos with millions of likes can be persuasive to other young men his age.

For example, he says one of his friends became drawn into content from a controversial influencer – and started to adopt misogynistic views.

His friend “took it too far”, Cai says. “He started saying things about women. It’s like you have to give your friend a reality check.”

Cai says he has commented on posts to say that he doesn’t like them, and when he has accidentally liked videos, he has tried to undo it, hoping it will reset the algorithms. But he says he has ended up with more videos taking over his feeds.

So, how do TikTok’s algorithms actually work?

According to Andrew Kaung, the algorithms’ fuel is engagement, regardless of whether the engagement is positive or negative. That could explain in part why Cai’s efforts to manipulate the algorithms weren’t working.

The first step for users is to specify some likes and interests when they sign up. Andrew says some of the content initially served up by the algorithms to, say, a 16-year-old, is based on the preferences they give and the preferences of other users of a similar age in a similar location.

According to TikTok, the algorithms are not informed by a user’s gender. But Andrew says the interests teenagers express when they sign up often have the effect of dividing them up along gender lines.

The former TikTok employee says some 16-year-old boys could be exposed to violent content “right away”, because other teenage users with similar preferences have expressed an interest in this type of content – even if that just means spending more time on a video that grabs their attention for that little bit longer.

The interests indicated by many teenage girls in profiles he examined – “pop singers, songs, make-up” – meant they were not recommended this violent content, he says.

He says the algorithms use “reinforcement learning” – a method where AI systems learn by trial and error – and train themselves to detect behaviour towards different videos.

Andrew Kaung says they are designed to maximise engagement by showing you videos they expect you to spend longer watching, comment on, or like – all to keep you coming back for more.

The algorithm recommending content to TikTok’s “For You Page”, he says, does not always differentiate between harmful and non-harmful content.

According to Andrew, one of the problems he identified when he worked at TikTok was that the teams involved in training and coding that algorithm did not always know the exact nature of the videos it was recommending.

“They see the number of viewers, the age, the trend, that sort of very abstract data. They wouldn’t necessarily be actually exposed to the content,” the former TikTok analyst tells me.

That was why, in 2022, he and a colleague decided to take a look at what kinds of videos were being recommended to a range of users, including some 16-year-olds.

He says they were concerned about violent and harmful content being served to some teenagers, and proposed to TikTok that it should update its moderation system.

They wanted TikTok to clearly label videos so everyone working there could see why they were harmful – extreme violence, abuse, pornography and so on – and to hire more moderators who specialised in these different areas. Andrew says their suggestions were rejected at that time.

TikTok says it had specialist moderators at the time and, as the platform has grown, it has continued to hire more. It also said it separated out different types of harmful content – into what it calls queues – for moderators.

Panorama: Can We Live Without Our Phones?

What happens when smartphones are taken away from kids for a week? With the help of two families and lots of remote cameras, Panorama finds out. And with calls for smartphones to be banned for children, Marianna Spring speaks to parents, teenagers and social media company insiders to investigate whether the content pushed to their feeds is harming them.

Watch on Monday on BBC One at 20:00 BST (20:30 in Scotland) or on BBC iPlayer (UK only)

Andrew Kaung says that from the inside of TikTok and Meta it felt really difficult to make the changes he thought were necessary.

“We are asking a private company whose interest is to promote their products to moderate themselves, which is like asking a tiger not to eat you,” he says.

He also says he thinks children’s and teenagers’ lives would be better if they stopped using their smartphones.

But for Cai, banning phones or social media for teenagers is not the solution. His phone is integral to his life – a really important way of chatting to friends, navigating when he is out and about, and paying for stuff.

Instead, he wants the social media companies to listen more to what teenagers don’t want to see. He wants the firms to make the tools that let users indicate their preferences more effective.

“I feel like social media companies don’t respect your opinion, as long as it makes them money,” Cai tells me.

In the UK, a new law will force social media firms to verify children’s ages and stop the sites recommending porn or other harmful content to young people. UK media regulator Ofcom is in charge of enforcing it.

Almudena Lara, Ofcom’s online safety policy development director, says that while harmful content that predominantly affects young women – such as videos promoting eating disorders and self-harm – have rightly been in the spotlight, the algorithmic pathways driving hate and violence to mainly teenage boys and young men have received less attention.

“It tends to be a minority of [children] that get exposed to the most harmful content. But we know, however, that once you are exposed to that harmful content, it becomes unavoidable,” says Ms Lara.

Ofcom says it can fine companies and could bring criminal prosecutions if they do not do enough, but the measures will not come in to force until 2025.

TikTok says it uses “innovative technology” and provides “industry-leading” safety and privacy settings for teens, including systems to block content that may not be suitable, and that it does not allow extreme violence or misogyny.

Meta, which owns Instagram and Facebook, says it has more than “50 different tools, resources and features” to give teens “positive and age-appropriate experiences”. According to Meta, it seeks feedback from its own teams and potential policy changes go through robust process.

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 any more,” 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.”

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.

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.

Ten people who took part in last month’s protests across Nigeria have been charged with treason and other serious offences at the federal high court in the capital, Abuja.

All of the accused pleaded not guilty.

The demonstrations, dubbed “10 days of rage”, were called in response to the extremely tough economic times many are living through.

They turned violent in some places as protesters clashed with security forces leaving at least seven dead, according to police, though rights groups have put the death toll at 23.

There were also nearly 700 arrests.

As well as treason, the 10 who appeared in court on Monday were charged with the destruction of public property and injuring police officers.

They were accused of working with a British citizen “to destabilise Nigeria by calling on the military to take over government from President Bola Ahmed Tinubu”, according to the charge sheet.

They allegedly shouted: “Tinubu must go, it is soldiers we want.”

Despite an appeal that the 10 accused should be bailed as they had already been held for a month, the court decided that they would remain in custody.

Rights group Amnesty International earlier criticised the legal process and called the trial “a sham”.

Last month, it called for investigations into the killings during the protests.

Demonstrations in all major Nigerian cities began on 1 August with people chanting slogans such as “we are hungry” and “end bad governance”.

The protests, organised through social media, were in part inspired by the success of demonstrators in Kenya who forced the government to scrap plans to increase taxes.

In some parts of the country curfews were imposed. The authorities said the protests had been “hijacked by thugs” who engaged in widespread looting and the destruction of property.

Nigeria is experiencing its worst economic crisis in a generation. Annual inflation stands at more than 30%. Food prices have risen even faster – for example, in the commercial hub, Lagos, yams, a staple food, are almost four times more expensive than last year.

• Family of killed Nigerian protester demand justice
• Curfew imposed in Nigerian state after ‘hunger’ protest
• Is Nigeria on the right track after a year of Tinubu?

Brazil’s Supreme Court has upheld a ban on social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter.

The judges voted unanimously in favour of the measure, meaning the ban will stay in place.

X has been suspended in Brazil since the early hours of Saturday after it failed to appoint a new legal representative in the country before a court-imposed deadline.

It is the latest development in a feud between Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes and X’s owner Elon Musk which began in April, when the judge ordered the suspension of dozens of accounts for allegedly spreading disinformation.

Justice Moraes had called for the five-member panel to rule on the suspension, which has caused division in Brazil.

One of the justices, Flávio Dino, argued that “freedom of expression is closely linked to a duty of responsibility”.

“The first can’t exist without the second, and vice-versa,” he added.

Reacting to the decision to ban X, Mr Musk had earlier 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 said was illegal under Brazilian law.

Justice Moraes had ordered that X accounts accused of spreading disinformation – many of which belonged to 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.

With access to X blocked, many Brazilians have been turning to microblogging platform Bluesky as an alternative.

Bluesky announced on Saturday that it had registered half a million new users in the South American country over the two previous days alone.

Among those pointing followers to his Bluesky account was Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who on Thursday tweeted links to his social media accounts on platforms other than X.

Lula’s Bluesky profile was top of the list, which also included links to his Instagram, WhatsApp, Threads, TikTok and Facebook accounts.

Bluesky CEO Jay Graber expressed her delight at the influx of new users, posting in Portuguese and English: “Good job Brazil, you made the right choice.”

Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo has triggered a heated debate by saying she wants to keep the Olympic rings on the Eiffel Tower after the summer Games are over.

“The decision is up to me, and I have the agreement of the IOC [International Olympic Committee],” she told the Ouest-France newspaper over the weekend.

“So yes, they [the rings] will stay on the Eiffel Tower,” she added.

Some Parisians backed the move, but others – including heritage campaigners – said it was a bad idea and would “defile” the French capital’s iconic monument.

The five rings – 29m (95ft) wide, 15m high and weighing 30 tonnes – were installed on the Eiffel Tower before the Paris Olympics opened on 26 July, and were expected to be taken down after the Paralympics’ closing ceremony on 8 September.

But Ms Hidalgo said she wanted to keep the interlaced rings of blue, yellow, black, green and red, symbolising the five continents.

She added that the current rings – each one measuring 9m in diameter – were too heavy and would be replaced by a lighter version at some point.

The Socialist mayor also claimed that “the French have fallen in love with Paris again” during the Games, and she wanted “this festive spirit to remain”.

Some Parisians as well as visitors to the French capital supported the mayor.

“The Eiffel Tower is very beautiful, the rings add colour. It’s very nice to see it like this,” a young woman, who identified herself as Solène, told the France Bleu website.

But Manon, a local resident, said this was “a really bad idea”.

“It’s a historic monument, why defile it with rings? It was good for the Olympics but now it’s over, we can move on, maybe we should remove them and return the Eiffel Tower to how it was before,” he told France Bleu.

Social media user Christophe Robin said Ms Hidalgo should have consulted Parisians before going ahead with her plan.

In a post on X, he reminded that the Eiffel Tower featured a Citroën advert in 1925-36.

The Eiffel Tower was built in1889 for the World’s Fair. The wrought-iron lattice tower was initially heavily criticised by Parisian artists and intellectuals – but is now seen by many as the symbol of the “City of Light”.

Ms Hidalgo, who has been running Paris since 2014, is known for her bold – and sometimes controversial – reforms.

Under her tenure, many city streets, including the banks of the river Seine, have been pedestrianised.

Last year, she won convincingly a city referendum to ban rental electric scooters. However, fewer than 8% of those eligible turned out to vote.

In February, Ms Hidalgo was again victorious after Parisians approved a steep rise in parking rates for sports utility vehicles (SUVs).

But both drivers’ groups and opposition figures attacked the scheme, saying the SUV classification was misleading as many family-size cars would be affected.

France’s Environment Minister Christophe Béchu said at the time that the surcharge amounted to “punitive environmentalism”.

And just before the Paris Olympics, Ms Hidalgo and other officials went into the Seine to prove the river was safe to swim.

But during the Olympics, triathlon events were subject to several delays caused by heavy rain.

And Para-triathlon events – originally scheduled for 1 September – had to be postponed by 24 hours because of poor water quality.

Last Saturday, a Telegram message popped up on Heejin’s phone from an anonymous sender. “Your pictures and personal information have been leaked. Let’s discuss.”

As the university student entered the chatroom to read the message, she received a photo of herself taken a few years ago while she was still at school. It was followed by a second image using the same photo, only this one was sexually explicit, and fake.

Terrified, Heejin, which is not her real name, did not respond, but the images kept coming. In all of them, her face had been attached to a body engaged in a sex act, using sophisticated deepfake technology.

Deepfakes, the majority of which combine a real person’s face with a fake, sexually explicit body, are increasingly being generated using artificial intelligence.

“I was petrified, I felt so alone,” Heejin told the BBC.

But she was not alone.

Two days earlier, South Korean journalist Ko Narin had published what would turn into the biggest scoop of her career. It had recently emerged that police were investigating deepfake porn rings at two of the county’s major universities, and Ms Ko was convinced there must be more.

She started searching social media and uncovered dozens of chat groups on the messaging app Telegram where users were sharing photos of women they knew and using AI software to convert them into fake pornographic images within seconds.

“Every minute people were uploading photos of girls they knew and asking them to be turned into deepfakes,” Ms Ko told us.

Ms Ko discovered these groups were not just targeting university students. There were rooms dedicated to specific high schools and even middle schools. If a lot of content was created using images of a particular student, she might even be given her own room. Broadly labelled “humiliation rooms” or “friend of friend rooms”, they often come with strict entry terms.

Ms Ko’s report in the Hankyoreh newspaper has shocked South Korea. On Monday, police announced they were considering opening an investigation into Telegram, following the lead of authorities in France, who recently charged Telegram’s Russian founder for crimes relating to the app. The government has vowed to bring in stricter punishments for those involved, and the president has called for young men to be better educated.

The BBC has reached out to Telegram for comment and while it is yet to reply on this particular case, it has previously told the BBC that it proactively searches for illegal activity, including child sexual abuse, on its site. It said undisclosed action was taken against 45,000 groups worldwide, in August alone.

The BBC has viewed the descriptions of a number of these chatrooms. One calls for members to post more than four photos of someone along with their name, age and the area they live in.

“I was shocked at how systematic and organised the process was,” said Ms Ko. “The most horrific thing I discovered was a group for underage pupils at one school that had more than 2,000 members.”

In the days after Ms Ko’s article was published, women’s rights activists started to scour Telegram too, and follow leads.

By the end of that week, more than 500 schools and universities had been identified as targets. The actual number impacted is still to be established, but many are believed to be aged under 16, which is South Korea’s age of consent. A large proportion of the suspected perpetrators are teenagers themselves.

Heejin said learning about the scale of the crisis had made her anxiety worse, as she now worried how many people might have viewed her deepfakes. Initially she blamed herself. “I couldn’t stop thinking did this happen because I uploaded my photos to social media, should I have been more careful?”

Scores of women and teenagers across the country have since removed their photos from social media or deactivated their accounts altogether, frightened they could be exploited next.

“We are frustrated and angry that we are having to censor our behaviour and our use of social media when we have done nothing wrong,” said one university student, Ah-eun, whose peers have been targeted.

Ah-eun said one victim at her university was told by police not to bother pursuing her case as it would be too difficult to catch the perpetrator, and it was “not really a crime” as “the photos were fake”.

At the heart of this scandal is the messaging app Telegram. Unlike public websites, which the authorities can access easily, and then request for images be removed, Telegram is a private, encrypted messaging app.

Users are often anonymous, rooms can be set to “secret” mode, and their contents quickly deleted without a trace. This has made it a prime space for criminal behaviour to flourish.

Last week, politicians and the police responded forcefully, promising to investigate these crimes and bring the perpetrators to justice.

On Monday, Seoul National Police Agency announced it would look to investigate Telegram over its role in enabling fake pornographic images of children to be distributed.

• South Korea faces deepfake porn ’emergency’
• South Korean women protest in Seoul over hidden sex cameras

The app’s founder, Pavel Durov, was charged in France last week with being complicit in a number of crimes related to the app, including enabling the sharing of child pornography.

But women’s rights activists accuse the authorities in South Korea of allowing sexual abuse on Telegram to simmer unchecked for too long, because Korea has faced this crisis before. In 2019, it emerged that a sex ring was using Telegram to coerce women and children into creating and sharing sexually explicit images of themselves.

Police at the time asked Telegram for help with their investigation, but the app ignored all seven of their requests. Although the ringleader was eventually sentenced to more than 40 years in jail, no action was taken against the platform, because of fears around censorship.

“They sentenced the main actors but otherwise neglected the situation, and I think this has exacerbated the situation,” said Ms Ko.

Park Jihyun, who, as a young student journalist, uncovered the Nth room sex-ring back in 2019, has since become a political advocate for victims of digital sex crimes. She said that since the deepfake scandal broke, pupils and parents had been calling her several times a day crying.

“They have seen their school on the list shared on social media and are terrified.”

Ms Park has been leading calls for the government to regulate or even ban the app in South Korea. “If these tech companies will not cooperate with law enforcement agencies, then the state must regulate them to protect its citizens,” she said.

Before this latest crisis exploded, South Korea’s Advocacy Centre for Online Sexual Abuse victims (ACOSAV) was already noticing a sharp uptick in the number of underage victims of deepfake pornography.

In 2023 they counselled 86 teenage victims. That jumped to 238 in just the first eight months of this year. In the past week alone, another 64 teen victims have come forward.

One of the centre’s leaders, Park Seonghye, said over the past week her staff had been inundated with calls and were working around the clock. “It’s been a full scale emergency for us, like a wartime situation,” she said.

“With the latest deepfake technology there is now so much more footage than there used to be, and we’re worried it’s only going to increase.”

As well as counselling victims, the centre tracks down harmful content and works with online platforms to have it taken down. Ms Park said there had been some instances where Telegram had removed content at their request. “So it’s not impossible,” she noted.

While women’s rights organisations accept that new AI technology is making it easier to exploit victims, they argue this is just the latest form of misogyny to play out online in South Korea.

First women were subjected to waves of verbal abuse online. Then came the spy cam epidemic, where they were secretly filmed using public toilets and changing rooms.

“The root cause of this is structural sexism and the solution is gender equality,” read a statement signed by 84 women’s groups.

This is a direct criticism of the country’s President Yoon Suk Yeol, who has denied the existence of structural sexism, cut funding to victim support groups and is abolishing the government’s gender equality ministry.

Lee Myung-hwa, who treats young sex offenders, agreed that although the outbreak of deepfake abuse might seem sudden, it had long been lurking under the surface. “For teenagers, deepfakes have become part of their culture, they’re seen as a game or a prank,” said the counsellor, who runs the Aha Seoul Youth Cultural Centre.

Ms Lee said it was paramount to educate young men, citing research that shows when you tell offenders exactly what they have done wrong, they become more aware of what counts as sexual abuse, which stops them from reoffending.

Meanwhile, the government has said it will increase the criminal sentences of those who create and share deepfake images, and will also punish those who view the pornography.

It follows criticism that not enough perpetrators were being punished. One of the issues is that the majority of offenders are teenagers, who are typically tried in youth courts, where they receive more lenient sentences.

Since the chatrooms were exposed, many have been closed down, but new ones will almost certainly take their place. A humiliation room has already been created to target the journalists covering this story. Ms Ko, who broke the news, said this had given her sleepless nights. “I keep checking the room to see if my photo has been uploaded,” she said.

Such anxiety has spread to almost every teenage girl and young woman in South Korea. Ah-eun, the university student, said it had made her suspicious of her male acquaintances.

“I now can’t be certain people won’t commit these crimes behind my back, without me knowing,” she said. “I’ve become hyper-vigilant in all my interactions with people, which can’t be good.”

It’s been nearly a month since former Bangladesh prime minister Sheikh Hasina hurriedly landed at a military base near Delhi after a chaotic exit from her country.

Ms Hasina’s dramatic ouster on 5 August followed weeks of student-led protests which spiralled into deadly, nationwide unrest. She was initially expected to stay in India for just a short period, but reports say her attempts to seek asylum in the UK, the US and the UAE have not been successful so far.

Her continued presence in India has generated challenges for Delhi in developing a strong relationship with the new interim government in Dhaka. 

For India, Bangladesh is not just any neighbouring country. It’s a strategic partner and a close ally crucial to India’s border security, particularly in the north-eastern states. 

The two countries share a porous border 4,096km (2,545 miles) long which makes it relatively easy for armed insurgent groups from India’s north-eastern states to cross into Bangladesh for a safe haven. 

• Sheikh Hasina: The pro-democracy icon who became an autocrat

After Ms Hasina’s Awami League party came to power in 2009, it cracked down on some of these ethnic militant groups. Ms Hasina also amicably settled several border disputes with India.  

While border security is at the core of the relationship, there are financial aspects too. During Ms Hasina’s 15-year rule, trade relations and connectivity between the two countries flourished. India has gained road, river and train access via Bangladesh to transport goods to its north-eastern states. 

Since 2010, India has also given more than $7bn (£5.3bn) as a line of credit to Bangladesh for infrastructure and development projects. 

Ms Hasina’s sudden exit means that Delhi has to work hard to ensure that these gains are not lost. 

“It’s a setback in the sense that any turbulence in our neighbourhood is always unwanted,” says Pinak Ranjan Chakravarty, a former Indian High Commissioner in Dhaka. 

But the former diplomat insists that Delhi will work with the interim government in Dhaka because “there is no choice” and “you can’t dictate what they do internally”. 

The Indian government has wasted no time in reaching out to the interim government in Dhaka, with Prime Minister Narendra Modi holding a telephone conversation with leader Muhammad Yunus.

However, it will take a while for Delhi to assuage the anger in Bangladesh over its unwavering support for Ms Hasina and her Awami League for the last 15 years.  

Many Bangladeshis attribute the anger against India to Delhi’s swift endorsement of three controversial elections won by Ms Hasina’s party amid allegations of widespread vote-rigging. 

With Ms Hasina’s fall, Delhi’s “neighbourhood first” policy has taken another jolt with Bangladesh joining the Maldives and Nepal in resisting any attempt at dominance by India. 

Analysts say that Delhi can’t afford to lose its influence in another neighbouring country if it wants to protect its status as a regional powerhouse – especially as rival China is also jostling for influence in the region. 

Just last year, Mohamed Muizzu won the presidency in the Maldives on the back of his very public anti-India stand. 

“It’s time for India to do some introspection regarding its regional policy,” says Debapriya Bhattacharya, a senior economist with the Centre for Policy Dialogue in Dhaka.

Delhi needs to look at whether it has adequately taken on board the perspectives of its regional partners, he says.

“I am not only talking about Bangladesh, [but also] almost all other countries in the region,” adds Mr Bhattacharya, who heads a committee appointed by the interim government to prepare a white paper on the state of Bangladesh’s economy.

• Can India help its special ally Bangladesh defuse the crisis?

For example, in the case of Bangladesh, analysts point out that successive Indian governments have failed to engage with other opposition parties, particularly the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP). 

“India somehow thought that the Awami League and its government are the only allies inside Bangladesh. That was a strategic blunder,” says Abdul Moyeen Khan, a senior leader of the BNP.  

If free and fair elections are held in Bangladesh in the coming months, BNP leaders are confident of victory.

That will pose a diplomatic challenge for Delhi. There is a perceived trust deficit between India and the BNP, which is led by Begum Khaleda Zia, who had been prime minister for two terms earlier. 

Ms Zia, who spent most of her time in jail since 2018, has always denied corruption charges against her and has accused Ms Hasina of political vendetta. She has now been released from jail and is recovering from her illness.  

In the coming days, Delhi and the BNP leaders will have to find a way to work past their differences.

During the previous BNP-led coalition government from 2001 to 2006, the bilateral relationship deteriorated with Delhi accusing Dhaka of harbouring insurgents from India’s north-east.

During Ms Zia’s rule, Hindu leaders in Bangladesh said there were a series of attacks against them – including murder, looting and rape – by Islamist parties and the BNP which began as the election results were announced in 2001. 

The BNP denies the charges of giving shelter to anti-Indian insurgents and also of carrying out attacks on minority Hindus in 2001.

BNP leaders, including Mr Khan, say India hasn’t been forthcoming in engaging with them, adding that “now it’s time for a policy shift in Delhi”.  

He also stresses that given India’s proximity, size and its growing economic and military might, his party will not make the mistake of harbouring any anti-Indian insurgents.

• ‘There is no law and order. And Hindus are being targeted again’

There are other factors also behind the anger against India. India and Bangladesh share 54 rivers and the sharing of water resources is a contentious issue.

The recent floods triggered by heavy rains in eastern Bangladesh are an example of how misinformation can fuel suspicions between the two countries. 

Following a sudden heavy downpour in the Indian state of Tripura, the excess water flowed into the Gumti river – which flows between the two countries – inundating vast areas inside the state as well as downstream in neighbouring Bangladesh.  

Millions of people were affected with many losing their houses, belongings and farmland. Many villagers and social media users accused India of deliberately releasing water from a dam in the night, leading to the floods. 

The Indian external affairs ministry was forced to issue a statement denying this, explaining that the floods had been caused by heavy rains in the catchment areas of the Gumti river. 

Then there is another factor – China. Beijing is keen to extend its footprint in Bangladesh as it battles for regional supremacy with India. 

It rolled out the red carpet for Mr Muizzu when he chose China for his first state visit after winning the Maldives election.

Delhi would want to avoid the same fate with Bangladesh. And it would hope that Bangladesh’s reliance on Indian goods and trade will buy it some time to work out its diplomatic strategy and change its image. 

So Delhi will have to tread carefully around Ms Hasina’s presence in India, especially if the new government makes a formal extradition request.

A statement issued on her behalf by her son Sajeeb Wazed Joy last month had already stoked anger in Bangladesh. 

But India wouldn’t want to ask Ms Hasina to leave the country when her future remains uncertain and come across as leaving a formidable former ally in the lurch. 

“It doesn’t matter how she is accorded hospitality in India. But it matters to Bangladeshis how she intervenes in the domestic matters staying over there. If she speaks against the current interim government, that would be considered as an act of hostility,” Mr Bhattacharya warned.  

Diplomats in Delhi will hope that Ms Hasina makes a choice for herself without forcing India’s hand.

Last October, Palestinian grandmother Ayesha Shtayyeh says a man pointed a gun at her head and told her to leave the place she had called home for 50 years.

She told the BBC the armed threat was the culmination of an increasingly violent campaign of harassment and intimidation that began in 2021, after an illegal settler outpost was established close to her home in the occupied West Bank.

The number of these outposts has risen rapidly in recent years, new BBC analysis shows. There are currently at least 196 across the West Bank, and 29 were set up last year – more than in any previous year.

The outposts – which can be farms, clusters of houses, or even groups of caravans – often lack defined boundaries and are illegal under both Israeli and international law.

But the BBC World Service has seen documents showing that organisations with close ties to the Israeli government have provided money and land used to establish new illegal outposts.

The BBC has also analysed open source intelligence to examine their proliferation, and has investigated the settler who Ayesha Shtayyeh says threatened her.

Experts say outposts are able to seize large swathes of land more rapidly than settlements, and are increasingly linked to violence and harassment towards Palestinian communities.

Official figures for the number of outposts do not exist. But BBC Eye reviewed lists of them and their locations gathered by Israeli anti-settlement watchdogs Peace Now and Kerem Navot – as well as the Palestinian Authority, which runs part of the occupied West Bank.

We analysed hundreds of satellite images to verify that outposts had been constructed at these locations and to confirm the year they were set up. The BBC also checked social media posts, Israeli government publications and news sources to corroborate this and to show that outposts were still in use.

Our analysis suggests almost half (89) of the 196 outposts we verified have been built since 2019.

Some of these are linked to growing violence against Palestinian communities in the West Bank. Earlier this year, the British government sanctioned eight extremist settlers for inciting or perpetrating violence against Palestinians. At least six had established, or are living on, illegal outposts.

A former commander of the Israeli army in the West Bank, Avi Mizrahi, says most settlers are law-abiding Israeli citizens, but he does admit the existence of outposts makes violence more likely.

“Whenever you put outposts illegally in the area, it brings tensions with the Palestinians… living in the same area,” he says.

One of the extremist settlers sanctioned by the UK was Moshe Sharvit – the man Ayesha says threatened her at gunpoint. Both he and the outpost he set up less than 800m (0.5miles) from Ayesha’s home, were also sanctioned by the US government in March. His outpost was described as a “base from which he perpetrates violence against Palestinians”.

“He’s made our life hell,” Ayesha says, who must now live with her son in a town close to Nablus.

Outposts lack any official Israeli planning approval – unlike settlements, which are larger, typically urban, Jewish enclaves built throughout the West Bank, legal under Israeli law.

Both are considered illegal under international law, which forbids moving a civilian population into an occupied territory. But many settlers living in the West Bank claim that, as Jews, they have a religious and historical connection to the land.

In July, the UN’s top court, in a landmark opinion, said Israel should stop all new settlement activity and evacuate all settlers from the Occupied Palestinian Territory. Israel rejected the opinion as “fundamentally wrong” and one-sided.

Despite outposts having no legal status, there is little evidence that the Israeli government has been trying to prevent their rapid growth in numbers.

The BBC has seen new evidence showing how two organisations with close ties to the Israeli state have provided money and land used to set up new outposts in the West Bank.

One is the World Zionist Organization (WZO), an international body founded more than a century ago and instrumental in the establishment of the state of Israel. It has a Settlement Division – responsible for managing large areas of the land occupied by Israel since 1967. The division is funded entirely by Israeli public funds and describes itself as an “arm of the Israeli state”.

Contracts obtained by Peace Now, and analysed by the BBC, show the Settlement Division has repeatedly allocated land on which outposts have been built. In the contracts, the WZO forbids the building of any structures and says the land should only be used for grazing or farming – but satellite imagery reveals that, in at least four cases, illegal outposts were built on it.

One of these contracts was signed by Zvi Bar Yosef in 2018. He – like Moshe Sharvit – was sanctioned by the UK and US earlier this year for violence and intimidation against Palestinians.

We contacted the WZO to ask if it was aware that multiple tracts of land it had allocated for grazing and farming were being used for the construction of illegal outposts. It did not respond. We also put questions to Zvi Bar Yosef, but received no reply.

The BBC has also uncovered two documents revealing that another key settler organisation – Amana – loaned hundreds of thousands of shekels to help establish outposts.

In one case, the organisation loaned NIS 1,000,000 ($270,000/£205,000) to a settler to build greenhouses on an outpost considered illegal under Israeli law.

Amana was founded in 1978 and has worked closely with the Israeli government to build settlements throughout the West Bank ever since.

But in recent years, there has been growing evidence that Amana also supports outposts.

In a recording from a meeting of executives in 2021, leaked by an activist, Amana’s CEO Ze’ev Hever can be heard stating that: “In the last three years… one operation we have expanded is the herding farm [outposts].”

“Today, the area [they control] is almost twice the size of built settlements.”

This year, the Canadian government included Amana in a round of sanctions against individuals and organisations responsible for “violent and destabilising actions against Palestinian civilians and their property in the West Bank”. The sanctions did not mention outposts.

There is also a trend of the Israeli government retroactively legalising outposts – effectively transforming them into settlements. Last year, for example, the government began the process of legalising at least 10 outposts, and granted at least six others full legal status.

In February, Moshe Sharvit – the settler Ayesha Shtayyeh says evicted her from her home – hosted an open day at his outpost, filmed by a local camera crew. Speaking candidly, he laid out just how effective outposts can be for capturing land.

“The biggest regret when we [settlers] built settlements was that we got stuck within the fences and couldn’t expand,” he told the crowd. “The farm is very important, but the most important thing for us is the surrounding area.”

He claimed he now controls about 7,000 dunams (7 sq km) of land – an area greater than many large, urban settlements in the West Bank with populations in the thousands.

Gaining control over large areas, often at the expense of Palestinian communities, is a key goal for some settlers who set up and live on outposts, says Hagit Ofran of Peace Now.

“Settlers who live on the hilltop [outposts] see themselves as ‘protecting lands’ and their daily job is to kick out Palestinians from the area,” she says.

Ayesha says that Moshe Sharvit began a campaign of harassment and intimidation almost as soon as he set up his outpost in late 2021.

When her husband, Nabil, grazed his goats in pastures he had used for decades, Sharvit would quickly arrive in an all-terrain vehicle and he and young settlers would chase the animals away, he says.

“I responded that we’d leave if the government, or police, or judge tells us to,” Nabil says.

“He told me: ‘I’m the government, and I’m the judge, and I’m the police.’”

Settlements Above The Law

Extremist settlers are receiving money and land from powerful groups with ties to the Israeli government and are using it to build illegal settlement outposts, BBC Eye reveals.

Watch on iPlayer or, if you are outside the UK, watch on YouTube

West Bank: settlers, guns and sanctions

For more than six months, a BBC Eye team has been investigating extremist settlers are establishing a new type of illegal settlement known as a “herding outpost”.

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Through limiting access to grazing land, outpost settlers like Moshe Sharvit are able to put Palestinian farmers in increasingly precarious positions, says Moayad Shaaban, the head of the Palestinian Authority’s Colonization and Wall Resistance Commission.

“It reaches a point where Palestinians don’t have anything anymore. They can’t eat, they can’t graze, can’t get water,” he says.

Following the 7 October Hamas attacks on southern Israel and Israel’s war in Gaza, Moshe Sharvit’s harassment became even more aggressive, says Ariel Moran, who supports Palestinian communities facing settler aggression.

Sharvit had always carried a pistol with him in the fields, but now he began approaching activists and Palestinians with an assault rifle slung over his shoulder and his threats became more menacing, Ariel says.

“I think he saw the chance of taking a shortcut and not waiting for another year or two years of gradually wearing them [Palestinian families] out.

“Just do it overnight. And it worked.”

Many of the families, like Ayesha’s, who say they left their homes following threats from Moshe Sharvit, did so in the weeks immediately following 7 October.

Throughout the West Bank, OCHA – the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs – says settler violence has reached “unprecedented levels”.

In the past 10 months, it has recorded more than 1,100 settler attacks against Palestinians. At least 10 Palestinians have been killed and more than 230 injured by settlers since 7 October, it says.

At least five settlers have been killed and at least 17 injured by Palestinians in the West Bank over the same time frame, OCHA says.

In December 2023, two months after they say they were forced from their home, we filmed Ayesha and Nabil as they returned to collect some of their belongings.

When they arrived at the house, they found it had been ransacked. In the kitchen, the cupboards hung from their hinges. In the living room, someone had taken a knife to the sofas, slashing through the upholstery.

“I didn’t hurt him. I didn’t do anything to him. What have I done to deserve this?” Ayesha said.

As they began to sort through the damage, Moshe Sharvit arrived in a buggy. Before long, the Israeli police and army arrived. They told the couple, and the Israeli peace activists accompanying them, that they had to leave the area.

“He hasn’t left anything for us,” Ayesha told the BBC.

We contacted Moshe Sharvit on multiple occasions to ask for his response to the allegations made against him, but he did not respond.

In July 2023, the BBC approached him in person at his outpost to seek his response to allegations and also to ask if he would allow Palestinians – like Ayesha – to return to the area. He said he didn’t know what we were talking about and denied that he was Moshe Sharvit.

The collapse of a massive statue of a 17th Century ruler has sparked protests and a political controversy in the western Indian state of Maharashtra.

Shivaji Shahaji Bhosale was a warrior king whose exploits against the Mughals made him a hero during his own lifetime. He is revered in the state and celebrated as an icon of the Hindu right.

So the statue’s collapse, weeks before elections are due in Maharashtra, has put the state’s ruling coalition on the back foot and given opposition parties a potent issue to raise.

It even drew an apology from Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who inaugurated the statue in December and whose Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is part of Maharashtra’s ruling coalition.

“I extend my apologies to all those who worship Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj (Emperor Shivaji) as their revered deity. I know their sentiments are hurt,” he said on Friday.

The BJP is part of an alliance which runs the state government along with breakaway factions of two regional parties, the Shiv Sena and the National Congress Party (NCP).

Even members of the NCP held “silent protests” last week, demanding action from the state government that they are part of.

Built at a cost of 23.6m rupees ($281,285; £214,185), the 35-ft (10.6m) statue in Sindhudurg district collapsed on 26 August amid heavy monsoon rains.

The opposition has demanded Chief Minister Eknath Shinde’s resignation, alleging corruption in its construction.

Senior opposition leader Sharad Pawar said during a protest rally that numerous statues of Shivaji across the state were still standing but only the newly installed one had collapsed.

“There was corruption in the process of installing the statue. This is an insult to Chhatrapati Maharaj,” he alleged.

Mr Shinde has denied the charges, saying the statue collapsed because of strong winds in the coastal town.

Ravindra Chavan, a state minister, said that the public works department, which he heads, had already informed the Indian Navy – responsible for overseeing the statue’s construction – about rust in its nuts and bolts.”

Ashish Shelar, the BJP’s state chief, has also apologised publicly, saying the mistake will be rectified and the culprits will face punishment. Police have arrested one person, the structural consultant on the project, and say they are on the lookout for the statue’s sculptor.

Formally crowned as Chhatrapati – king in Sanskrit – in 1674 at Rajkot fort where the collapsed statue was installed, Shivaji ruled over a Maratha kingdom which included parts of western, central and southern India. He was seen as an astute leader who successfully made alliances with or militarily resisted the ruling powers of his time.

He has become an increasingly central figure in Maharashtra’s politics of late and no political party can afford to ignore him or be accused of insulting him. Marathas from Shivaji’s caste dominate the political landscape of the state – 12 of 20 chief ministers since the state’s formation have been Marathas.

Politicians would also not prefer to inflame the sentiments of the Maratha community, who have repeatedly protested in recent years demanding quotas in government jobs and educational institutions.

So the opposition will hope to frame the issue as an insult to the state and Maratha pride.

The opposition alliance, called Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) has organised state-wide protests. In response, the BJP has held counter-protests, accusing the MVA of politicising the issue.

It has been a recurrent theme of this US presidential campaign – has the US economy performed better under Joe Biden or Donald Trump?

“By many indicators our economy is the strongest in the world,” Democratic Vice-President Kamala Harris has claimed.

Trump, the Republican nominee and former president, says he created the “greatest economy in the history of our country”, and the Biden-Harris administration has ruined it.

We have looked at some key indicators to compare economic performance under the two presidencies.

Although the impact of Covid has made comparison difficult, both presidents can count some notable economic successes despite wages struggling to keep up with price increases in recent years.

First, let’s look at economic growth using Gross Domestic Product (GDP) – the value of all goods and services in the US economy.

There was a dramatic collapse in this figure during Covid as many businesses shut.

Following the pandemic, the economy bounced back strongly under Trump and recovered better than many other western countries.

This has continued under Mr Biden, with the US producing the strongest pandemic recovery within the G7 as measured by GDP.

But over Trump’s four years in office, it was not the greatest economy in US history, as he likes to claim.

Between January 2017 and January 2021, average annual growth rate was 2.3%.

This period includes the slowdown and recovery of the economy as a result of the Covid pandemic.

Under the Biden administration so far, this figure is 2.2% – so almost the same.

There have been periods in the past when GDP growth was significantly higher than the average under both Trump and Biden, such as in the 1970s.

The rate at which prices are rising has been a big issue in the campaign.

Prices rose significantly during the first two years under Mr Biden – hitting a peak of 9.1% in June 2022.

Trump has said the US has experienced “the worst inflation we’ve ever had”.

But that’s not true – inflation was last above 9% in 1981, and it has been much higher than that at several other points in US history.

Inflation has now fallen to around 3% – but it remains higher than when Trump left office.

Grocery prices, for example, increased by 13.5% over the year ending in August 2022.

This was the peak under the Biden administration, and prices have stabilised somewhat since, with the cost of groceries rising by 1.1% from July 2023 to July this year.

The recent trend is comparable with many other Western countries which experienced high inflation rates in 2021 and 2022, as global supply chain issues driven by Covid and the war in Ukraine contributed to rising prices.

But some economists say Mr Biden’s $1.9tn (£1.5tn) American Rescue Plan, which passed in 2021, was also a factor – as the injection of cash into the economy led to prices rising further.

The Biden administration has repeatedly pointed to strong job growth as a major achievement.

Before big job losses in 2020 due to Covid, in the first three years of Trump’s presidency almost 6.7 million jobs were added, according to data for non-farm jobs (which covers about 80% of workers in the labour force).

There’s been an increase of almost 16 million jobs since the Biden administration took over in January 2021.

Mr Biden claims this is the “fastest job growth at any point of any president in all of American history”.

That’s correct – if you look at the available data since records began in 1939.

But his administration has benefited from a sharp rebound in economic activity as the country emerged from pandemic lockdowns.

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

This spending plan passed under the Biden administration in 2021 was designed to help stimulate the economy following the pandemic.

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

Both administrations have pointed to low unemployment levels under their leadership.

Prior to the pandemic, Mr Trump delivered an unemployment rate of 3.5%.

As in many parts of the world, Covid lockdown measures led to soaring levels of unemployment in the US – but the unemployment levels had dropped back down to around 7% when Trump left office.

Under the Biden administration unemployment continued to fall to a low of 3.4% in January 2023 – the lowest rate in more than 50 years – but it it has since ticked up to 4.3%.

In terms of wages, these did rise under Trump but at a similar rate to his predecessor Barack Obama, up until the pandemic hit.

Workers’ wages increased rapidly at the start of 2020 during the Covid pandemic – but the sudden uptick in wages was linked to lower paid workers being more likely to be laid off, which raised the average wage of people who were still employed.

Under Mr Biden, average weekly earnings have grown, but they have struggled to keep up with the increase in prices caused by high levels of inflation.

When adjusted for inflation, average weekly wages are less than when Mr Biden came into office.

The US stock market isn’t necessarily a reflection of the broader economy, but many Americans have investments, so its performance holds some importance.

The Dow Jones Index is a measure of the performance of 30 large companies listed on US stock exchanges.

It reached record highs during Trump’s presidency, but crashed as markets reacted to the pandemic, wiping out all the gains made under Trump.

However, the financial markets recovered to above pre-pandemic levels by the time Trump left office in January 2021.

They have continued to grow under Mr Biden, and although there have been recent wobbles, they have reached record levels under his administration as well.

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The US has seized a plane belonging to Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, claiming it was bought illegally for $13m (£9.8m) and smuggled out of the country.

According to the US justice department, the Falcon 900EX aircraft was seized in the Dominican Republic and transferred to the US state of Florida.

It is unclear how and when the plane ended up in the Dominican Republic. Tracking data showed it leaving La Isabela airport near the capital Santo Domingo on Monday, arriving at Fort Lauderdale airport in Florida soon after.

Venezuela has denounced the seizure, saying that it amounted to an act of “piracy”.

Foreign Minister Yván Gil said the US had justified itself “with the coercive measures that they unilaterally and illegally impose around the world”.

In a statement, the Venezuelan government said it “reserves the right to take any legal action to repair this damage to the nation”.

US officials said the plane was seized for suspected violations of US export control and sanctions laws.

They added that an investigation found that people affiliated with Mr Maduro had allegedly used a Caribbean-based shell company to hide their involvement in the plane’s illegal purchase from a company based in Florida in late 2022 and early 2023.

The aircraft was then illegally exported from the United States to Venezuela through the Caribbean in April 2023.

The argument by US officials that the plane’s sale and export was in violation of US sanctions is unlikely to carry much weight with President Maduro, who has repeatedly accused the US of meddling in his country’s internal affairs.

A spokesperson for the White House national security council said the action represented “an important step to ensure that Maduro continues to feel the consequences from his misgovernance of Venezuela”.

Markenzy Lapointe, US attorney for the Southern District of Florida, said the Dominican Republic authorities had given the US government “invaluable assistance” in organising the seizure.

“It doesn’t matter how fancy the private jet or how powerful the officials – we will work relentlessly with our partners here and across the globe to identify and return any aircraft illegally smuggled outside of the United States,” said Matthew S Axelrod from the department of commerce – one of the federal agencies involved in the operation to recover the plane.

The plane appeared to be flown to the Venezuelan capital Caracas after arriving in Kingston in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines in April 2023, according to data held by the Flightradar24 website.

US officials said it subsequently flew “almost exclusively to and from a military base in Venezuela”. It is unclear how and when the plane arrived in the Dominican Republic.

But US officials said the jet had been used by Mr Maduro “on visits to other countries”.

The Venezuelan government announced in late July that it was temporarily suspending commercial flights to both the Dominican Republic and Panama following the controversial re-election of Mr Maduro.

Venezuela’s opposition has released polling data which suggests its unity candidate, Edmundo González, won a convincing victory. However, his win has not been recognised by an electoral council loyal to Mr Maduro.

The European Union has refused to recognise Maduro as having won re-election in July without seeing voting results.

Several Latin American countries have also withheld their support, with Mr Maduro’s former ally, President Lula of Brazil, among those calling for full transparency by the Venezuelan government.

The US has recognised Mr González as the winner, saying there is “overwhelming” evidence of Maduro’s defeat.

This is not the first time Mr Maduro or Venezuela’s government have been targeted by US federal authorities over alleged corruption.

In 2020, the justice department charged Mr Maduro and 14 Venezuelan officials with narco-terrorism, corruption, and drug trafficking, among other charges.

The state department has offered a reward of up to $15m for information leading to Mr Maduro’s arrest or conviction.

Hong Kong’s flagship airline Cathay Pacific has cancelled tens of flights after a plane heading from the city to Zurich was forced to turn around due to an “engine component failure”.

The company says it is now inspecting all 48 of its Airbus A350 aircraft and has found that a faulty part in some of the engines needs to be replaced.

Rolls-Royce has told the BBC the plane was powered by its Trent XWB-97 engines.

Since Monday, Cathay Pacific has cancelled two dozen return flights, including routes linking Hong Kong to Sydney, Singapore, Bangkok, Tokyo, Osaka and Taipei.

The airline said it expected the disruptions to continue until at least Wednesday.

Cathay Pacific said the engine component that caused its plane to return to Hong Kong was “the first of its type to suffer such failure on any A350 aircraft worldwide.”

“Thus far we have identified a number of the same engine components that need to be replaced, spare parts have been secured and repair work is underway,” the airline said in a statement.

“As a result, a number of aircraft will be out of service for several days while this process is being completed and Cathay Pacific’s operating schedules will be affected.”

The airline expects the inspection of its A350 fleet to be completed later on Tuesday.

Cathay Pacific took delivery of its Airbus A350 aircraft in 2016, which are equipped with fuel-efficient Rolls-Royce engines.

“We are committed to working closely with the airline, aircraft manufacturer and the relevant authorities to support their investigation into this incident,” Rolls-Royce told BBC News.

The UK-based engineering giant’s shares fell by more than 6% in Monday’s trading session in London.

Earlier this year, Rolls-Royce announced plans to invest in making improvements to its range of engines, including the Trent XWB-97.

In 2023, Tim Clark, the boss of gulf carrier Emirates, voiced concerns about the durability of the engine and the prices Rolls-Royce charged for maintenance.

Benjamin Netanyahu has asked for “forgiveness” from Israelis for failing to return six hostages found dead in Gaza on Saturday, as Hamas warned more could be “returned to their families in shrouds” if a ceasefire isn’t reached.

His comments came as intense street protests over his handling of negotiations entered a second night in Israel.

Pressure also mounted internationally as the UK suspended some arms sales to Israel, citing a risk of equipment being used to violate international law.

But Israel’s prime minister struck a defiant tone, insisting its troops must control Gaza’s Philadelphi Corridor – a strategically important strip of land which is a sticking point in negotiations with Hamas.

Thousands of Israelis took to the streets on Monday in fresh protests called by hostages’ families to express their anger at Mr Netanyahu’s failure to bring home their loved ones after almost 11 months.

The Times of Israel reported that police were using considerable aggression at one protest outside the prime minister’s home in Jerusalem, including violently pushing protesters, throwing some to the ground, and dragging many away.

One member of the police squeezed the throat of a Times of Israel reporter, according to the newspaper.

The latest demonstrations come after hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets in protests across the country on Sunday, with some demonstrators blocking a major highway in Tel Aviv. Many wore Israeli flags and hung yellow ribbons – a symbol of solidarity with the hostages – from a bridge overlooking the Ayalon Highway.

A total of 97 hostages remain unaccounted for after being kidnapped by Hamas on 7 October last year.

Hamas said on Monday that hostages would be returned “inside coffins” if military pressure from Israel continues and added that “new instructions” have been given to militants guarding captives if they are approached by Israeli troops.

“Netanyahu’s insistence to free prisoners through military pressure, instead of sealing a deal means they will be returned to their families in shrouds. Their families must choose whether they want them dead or alive,” a spokesperson for the group said, without elaborating on what new orders had been issued.

Earlier on Monday, Israel’s biggest trade union said hundreds of thousands of people had joined a general strike called to put pressure on the government to agree a Gaza ceasefire and hostage release deal with Hamas.

Despite this, Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion airport reported limited disruption and many restaurants and hospitality services operated as normal. Far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich boasted that Israelis had gone to work “in droves” and proved that they were no longer slaves to “political needs”.

Elsewhere, US President Joe Biden said Mr Netanyahu was not doing enough to secure a hostage deal and ceasefire with Hamas, amid reports suggesting a new proposal would be sent to the Israeli prime minister as “final”.

Many accuse Mr Netanyahu of blocking a deal to prioritise his own political survival – a claim he rejects.

Mr Netanyahu’s far-right allies have threatened to pull out of the coalition government, undermining his chances of staying in power, if he were to accept a deal tied to a permanent ceasefire before Hamas was destroyed.

US, Egyptian and Qatari mediators are trying to broker a ceasefire deal that would see Hamas release the 97 hostages still being held, including 33 who are presumed dead, in exchange for Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails.

UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy said on Monday that the UK had suspended 30 out of 350 arms export licences to Israel, citing a “clear risk” the equipment could be used to commit serious violations of international law.

The affected equipment includes parts for fighter jets, helicopters and drones.

Mr Lammy said the UK continued to support Israel’s right to defend itself, and this did not amount to an arms embargo.

Israel’s Defence Minister Yoav Gallant posted on X, to say he was “deeply disheartened” by the move, while Foreign Minister Israel Katz said it sent a “very problematic message” to Hamas and Iran.

Meanwhile, funeral services for some of the hostages killed on Saturday have been held.

The mother of Hersh Goldberg-Polin – one of the hostages whose body was recovered by Israel on Saturday – spoke at his funeral and said she had been in “such torment and worry” about him for months.

Rachel Goldberg-Polin said it had been a “stunning honour” to be her son’s mother. Around the time of his kidnap, Hersh sent two texts to his family, writing: “I love you guys,” and “I’m sorry”.

Mourners lined the streets in Jerusalem and Israel’s President Isaac Herzog spoke to relatives at the funeral.

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

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

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 who has been campaigning for a ceasefire with the group London for Sudan. “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 campaigners.

“There’s always a hope for the Sudanese people,” the activist says.

And already, some people appear to 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 had now changed tack: “Your post encouraged me to research a bit more and I decided to decline the offer.”

BBC Radio 4 – What’s happening in Sudan?

On Monday evening, protestors carried empty coffins past Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s house – the burden he carries is much heavier, they say.

Since six Israeli hostages were found dead in a Gaza tunnel last weekend, the weight of the war there has hung heavier on Israel’s leader.

“I think the fact that they were alive and murdered right before they could have been saved – that broke it,” said Anna Rubin, who joined a protest in Tel Aviv.

“That’s a breaking point for a lot of people – [they] are on the edge of their seat, and they realise that sitting at home is not going to do anything.”

Tens of thousands of people took to the streets again on Monday, after mass demonstrations flooded Tel Aviv last night. Many want to see this moment as a turning point, but Prime Minister Netanyahu has been here before.

He’s lived through months of these street protests – and years of similar ones. Protected by a parliamentary majority, his strategy has largely been to ignore their demands.

But then, if Mr Netanyahu isn’t listening, many people in Israel are not protesting.

A one-day general strike, called by the country’s labour union, was very patchily observed – even in Tel Aviv, the country’s beach-side liberal heartland.

Shops and restaurants in the city centre were mostly open, after briefly closing in solidarity with the protest on Sunday night.

“I don’t agree with the decision,” one of the staff at local cafe told me. “We should have closed.”

Tamara was picking up a street scooter, in large shades and perfect lipstick. “I don’t agree with the strike,” she said. “We want the hostages back – but we can’t stop everything; we need to live.”

Twenty-three-year-old Niva said she was surprised to see so many places open. “The country is in a very confrontational mood now,” she said.

But the most striking confrontation isn’t happening in the streets.

In a live press conference on Monday night, Mr Netanyahu defied anyone to demand more concessions from Israel in its negotiations over a hostage and ceasefire deal, brokered by the US.

“These murderers executed six of our hostages; they shot them in the back of the head,” he said. “And now, after this, we’re asked to show seriousness? We’re asked to make concessions?”

The message that would send to Hamas, he said, would be: “kill more hostages [and] you’ll get more concessions.”

He said no-one who was serious about achieving peace and freeing the hostages – including US President Joe Biden – would ask him to make more concessions.

A short while earlier, Mr Biden, when asked by reporters, said he didn’t think Israel’s prime minister was doing enough to secure a ceasefire deal.

A key demand of Hamas is that Israel withdraws all its forces from a strip of land along Gaza’s border with Egypt, known as the Philadelphi Corridor.

Israel’s security chiefs, including the defence minister, Yoav Gallant, have been widely reported in local media as supporting alternatives to keeping troops on the ground.

Mr Gallant has publicly pressed the cabinet to back a proposed compromise.

The most dangerous moment of Israel’s previous mass protests, sparked by Mr Netanyahu’s judicial reform plans, was when he tried to sack Mr Gallant – and was then forced to reinstate him.

If he tried that again, says political analyst Tamar Hermann of Israel’s Democracy Institute, that could be the real turning point for protests here.

The threat to him from demonstrators now, she says, is “zero”.

Most are left-leaning critics whose opposition to the prime minister runs far deeper than the hostage crisis in Gaza.

“Netanyahu knows better than I do,” she said, “the best thing is to let it play as a safety valve – let people say, ‘we hate you, you are a murderer’.”

Prime Minister Netanyahu, protected by his parliamentary majority, seems to believe he can ride out the demands for a deal being made from the street, at least for now.

But the demands from his own defence minister, from the US president, could prove harder to ignore.