On the side of a dirt road in Adré, a key crossing on the Sudan-Chad border, 38-year-old Buthaina sits on the ground, surrounded by other women. Each of them has their children by their side. None seems to have any belongings.

Buthaina and her six children fled el-Fasher, a besieged city in the Darfur region of Sudan, more than 480km (300 miles) away, when food and drink ran out.

“We left with nothing, we just ran for our lives,” Buthaina tells the BBC. “We didn’t want to leave – my children were top of their class at school and we had a good life at home.”

Sudan’s civil war began in April last year when the army (SAF) and the their former paramilitary allies, the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), began a vicious struggle for power, in part over proposals to move towards civilian rule.

The war, which shows no signs of ending, has claimed thousands of lives, displaced millions of people and plunged parts of the country into famine.

And aid agencies warn Sudan could soon experience the worst famine of anywhere in the world unless significantly more help arrives.

The BBC saw the desperation of Sudanese people first-hand when we visited camps in Adré, on the country’s western border, and Port Sudan, which is the country’s main aid hub, 1,600km away on the east coast.

Adré has become a potent symbol of the political failure and humanitarian disaster produced by the current conflict.

Until last month, the crossing had been closed since January with only a few aid lorries making it into the country.

It has since reopened but aid agencies fear the deliveries now getting in could be too little, too late.

Every day, dozens of Sudanese refugees cross the border into Chad – many of them women carrying their hungry and thirsty children on their backs.

The moment they arrive, they rush to a water tank set up by the World Food Programme (WFP), one of many UN agencies that have been trying to raise the alarm over the scale of the conflict’s humanitarian impact.

After reaching Adré, we make our way to a makeshift camp near the border that has been assembled by refugees, with bits of wood, cloth and plastic.

Rain begins to fall.

As we leave, it turns torrential and I ask whether the precarious shelters survive the downpours. “They don’t,” says our guide Ying Hu, associate reporting officer from the UNHCR, another UN agency – for refugees.

“With rainfall comes a whole set of diseases,” he adds, “and the worst part is it also means at times it can take days before we can return here by car, because of the flooding, and that means aid can’t reach here either.”

Famine has been declared in one area – in Zamzam camp in Darfur – but this is because it is one of the few places in war-torn Sudan the UN has reliable information on.

The WFP says it delivered more than 200,000 tonnes of food between April 2023 and July 2024 – far less than needed – but both sides are accused of blocking deliveries into areas under rival control.

The RSF and other militias have been accused of stealing and damaging deliveries, while the SAF has been accused of blocking deliveries into areas under RSF control, including most of Darfur.

The BBC approached the RSF and the SAF about the accusations but has not had a response. Both factions have previously denied impeding the delivery of humanitarian relief.

A single convoy of aid trucks can wait six weeks or more in Port Sudan before being cleared by the SAF for onward travel.

On 15 August, the SAF agreed to allow aid agencies to resume shipments via Adré, which should provide much-needed help to the population in Darfur.

In May, Human Rights Watch said ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity have been committed against ethnic Massalit and non-Arab communities in part of Darfur by the RSF and its Arab allies. The RSF rejects this and says it is not involved in what it calls a “tribal conflict” in the region.

During our tour of Port Sudan we visit a camp for people who have been displaced within Sudan.

Walking from tent to tent, we hear one story after another of loss and horror.

In one, a group of women sit in a circle, some holding their babies tightly. All of them share stories of abuse, rape and torture in RSF prisons.

One of the women, who the BBC is not naming, says she was captured with her two-year-old son as she was fleeing Omdurman, near the capital, Khartoum.

“Every day they would take my son to a room down the hallway, and I would hear him cry as they raped me,” she told me.

“It happened so frequently that I would try to focus on his cry as they did it.”

Also at the camp I meet Safaa, a mother of six who fled Omdurman too.

Asked where her husband is, she says he stayed behind because the RSF targets any man who attempts to escape.

“Every day my children ask me, ‘Where is Baba? When will he come?’ But I have not heard from him since January, when we left, and I don’t know if he is still alive,” she says.

Asked about what future she envisages for her and her children, she says: “What future? Our future is over – there is nothing left. My children are traumatised.

“Every day, my 10-year-old son cries wanting to go home. We went from living in a house, going to school and now we live in a tent.”

The BBC approached the RSF for comment about rapes and other attacks but has not had a response. It has previously said reports that its fighters were responsible for widespread abuses were false but where a small number of isolated incidents had occurred their troops had been held accountable.

An employee for Unicef – the UN children’s agency – showing us around the camp says those who have arrived here are the “lucky ones”.

“They managed to escape the fighting and come here… they have shelter and aid,” he says.

The BBC was visiting Adré and Port Sudan with UN Deputy Secretary General Amina Mohamed and her team of executives, who visited government officials and Sudan’s de-facto president, Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, to urge them to keep the Adré crossing open.

Her aim is to put Sudan back on the agenda for the international community at a time when the world’s attention is focused on conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza.

“There is fatigue because there are so many different crises around the world, but that’s just not good enough,” she says.

“You come here and you meet these mothers and their children and you realise they aren’t just numbers.

“If the international community doesn’t step up, people will die.”

• A photographer’s 11-day trek to flee war-torn Sudan
• Famine looms as civil war survivors tell of killings and rapes
• Sudan war: A simple guide to what is happening
• Will more stars boycott Dubai after rapper cancels gig over Sudan war

The father of a 14-year-old boy accused of killing four people at his high school in the US state of Georgia has been arrested.

Colin Gray, 54, is facing four charges of involuntary manslaughter, two counts of second-degree murder and eight of cruelty to children, said the Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI).

Authorities have charged his son, Colt Gray, with four counts of murder and said they plan to prosecute him as an adult. His first court appearance is due on Friday morning.

The shooting on Wednesday at Apalachee High School in the city of Winder, near Atlanta, left two teachers and two students dead, and nine others injured.

GBI Director Chris Hosey said in a news conference on Thursday evening that “these charges are directly connected with the actions of his son and allowing him to possess a weapon”.

Authorities are investigating whether Colin Gray bought the AR-style weapon as a gift for his son in December 2023, law enforcement sources told CBS News, the BBC’s US partner.

In May 2023, the FBI alerted local police to online threats about a school shooting, associated with an email address linked to the suspect.

A sheriff’s deputy went to interview the boy, who was 13 at the time.

His father told police he had guns in the house, but his son did not have unsupervised access to them, the FBI said in a statement on Wednesday.

Officials say the threats were made on Discord, a social media platform popular with video gamers, and contained images of guns.

The account’s profile name was in Russian and translated to the surname of the attacker who killed 26 people at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut in 2012.

A police incident report describing last year’s interview with the boy and his father was released on Thursday.

In the report, a deputy described the boy as “reserved” and “calm” and said he “assured me he never made any threats to shoot up any school”.

They said he claimed to have deleted his Discord account because it was repeatedly hacked.

Colin Gray also told police his son was getting picked on at school and had been struggling with his parents’ separation.

Police records reveal that the boy’s mother and father were in the process of divorcing, and he was staying with his father during the split.

The teen often hunted with his father, who told police he had photographed his son with a deer’s blood on his cheeks.

The boy’s maternal grandfather told the New York Times he partly blames the tumultuous home life after Mr Gray’s split from his daughter.

“I understand my grandson did a horrendous thing – there’s no question about it, and he’s going to pay the price for it,” Charlie Polhamus told the newspaper.

“My grandson did what he did because of the environment that he lived in,” he added.

During the news conference on Thursday, Barrow County Sheriff Jud Smith said all nine of those injured were expected to make a full recovery.

Several victims had already left hospital, he said.

Students Mason Schermerhorn and Christian Angulo, both 14, and teachers Richard Aspinwall, 39, and Christina Irimie, 53, died in the attack.

Witnesses said the suspect left an algebra lesson on Wednesday morning only to return later and try to re-enter the classroom.

Some students went to open the locked door, but apparently saw the weapon and backed away.

Witnesses said they then heard a barrage of 10-15 gunshots. Two school police officers quickly challenged the boy and he immediately surrendered.

These are not the first charges against the parents of a suspect in a school shooting.

In April, the parents of a Michigan teenager who killed four students with a gun they bought for him just days before the shooting were sentenced for their role in the attack.

James and Jennifer Crumbley were both found guilty of manslaughter and each sentenced to 10 to 15 years in prison.

The case was widely reported to be the first time the parents of a child who had carried out a mass shooting were held criminally liable.

Imagine binge-watching The Bear, Succession, Deadpool and reality show Bigg Boss all on one platform – an entertainment bonanza could be just around the corner for Indians if a blockbuster streaming merger goes through as expected.

The deal, which brings together the media assets of India’s largest conglomerate Reliance Industries and entertainment giant Walt Disney, has sparked both excitement and concerns over potential monopolistic dominance in the Indian entertainment and advertising industries.

The $8.5bn (£6.5bn) merger aims to create India’s largest entertainment company, potentially capturing 40% of the TV market, reaching 750 million viewers across 120 channels, and dominating the advertising sector.

This gives Disney a stronger foothold in the challenging Indian market while supporting Reliance’s expansion efforts. It also pits the new entertainment behemoth against popular rivals such as Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Sony and 50-odd other streaming platforms.

Consider the reach of this new entertainment giant: Disney’s Star India operates more than 70 TV channels in eight languages, while Reliance’s Viacom18 runs 38 channels in eight languages. Both own major streaming platforms – Jio Cinema and Hotstar – and film studios.

• India approves $8.5bn Reliance-Disney entertainment mega-merger

Their influence is further amplified by owning the broadcasting rights to a significant number of India’s sports events, including the hugely popular Indian Premier League cricket tournament.

In a cricket-obsessed nation, this is a prime business position. The merged entity is estimated to control 75-80% of the Indian sports streaming market across both linear TV and digital platforms, according to Elara Capital, a global investment and advisory firm.

Their dominance in this sector, especially cricket, means that Reliance and Disney will command a substantial share of the overall advertisement market. It showcases “strong growth in an industry where sports is a key driver of viewership on both TV and digital platforms”, says Karan Taurani, an analyst at Elara Capital, who calls it a “large media juggernaut”.

Though the merger promises to offer consumers diverse content, critics wonder if it puts too much power in the hands of one player.

“The emergence of a giant in the market… with the next competitor struggling with market share in a single digit, would make any competition agency sit up and take notice,” says KK Sharma, who formerly headed the merger control division of the Competition Commission of India (CCI).

This is why, analysts say, India’s competition watchdog scrutinised the agreement before approving the deal with a caveat that makes it “subject to the compliance of voluntary modifications”.

The companies have not made these “voluntary modifications” public yet, but reports say that the two companies have pledged to not raise advertising rates excessively while streaming cricket matches.

The deal hinges on these assurances, Mr Sharma adds, because the CCI “retains its authority to even divide the enterprise – if the dominant enterprise becomes a threat to competition in the market”.

In an increasingly competitive but expanding Indian streaming market, both Disney and Reliance have a lot to gain from the deal, which allows them a chance to consolidate their pole position.

But experts warn that it may also mean a potential drop in the business earnings of smaller players.

“The Indian market values bundling and is price-sensitive. [Subscribing to] this combined entity can offer a comprehensive package including [access to] web series, movies, sports, original content, and a global catalogue,” says Mr Taurani.

And if the combined company can also leverage the large telecom subscriber base of Reliance Jio, other streaming companies may find it hard to raise prices, he adds.

The Reliance Group has a tried-and-tested business strategy that has allowed it to thrive in the price-sensitive Indian market: it offered cheap mobile data when it launched Jio in 2016, and its JioCinema streaming subscription is available for as little as 29 rupees ($0.35; $0.26) a month.

From this deal too, Reliance chairman Mukesh Ambani has promised “unparalleled content at affordable prices”.

• Netflix: How did the streaming service turn its fortunes around?

“Other streaming platforms will be worried about the cost of content and the cost of programming. Will they be forced to drop prices?” says media and entertainment industry specialist Vanita Kohli-Khandekar. She says that the Reliance strategy of offering things at throwaway prices usually “destroys value” for competitors.

Streaming competitors might be easier to handle but the new company will also face stiff challenge from other rivals with deep pockets, such as Google, Meta and Amazon, who have been trying to expand in India.

These global tech giants have “played a pivotal role in expanding India’s video market, now estimated to be worth $8.8bn in revenue for content owners”, according to a report by research firm Media Partners Asia. In 2022-23, Google’s YouTube alone had an 88% share in India’s premium video-on-demand (VOD) market.

So the new Reliance-Disney behemoth will hope to dominate not just news, movies and sports, but also redirect digital advertising revenues from these big firms to its own coffers.

“Now, it’s an even fight,” says Ms Kohli-Khandekar. “Some 80% of digital revenues go to Google and Meta, so you have to have scale, and finally, you have a company that can take on some of the large global majors operating in India.”

But she warns that while the new entity might have scale and heft, it will also need to deliver quality with quantity – if, for instance, the streaming market becomes more dependent on views rather than subscriptions, “programming quality will be good only on one or two apps”, she says.

“That is something I would watch out for.”

Under the scorching sun on Italy’s Adriatic coast, a group of friends from Bangladesh are practising their cricket skills on a small patch of concrete.

They are playing on the outskirts of Monfalcone, close to Trieste airport, because they have in effect been banned by the mayor from playing in the town itself.

They say those who try can face fines of up to €100 (£84).

“If we were playing inside Monfalcone, the police would have already got here to stop us,” says team captain Miah Bappy.

He points to a group of Bengali teenagers who got “caught” playing their national sport at the local park. Unaware they were being filmed by security cameras, their game was broken up by a police patrol who gave them a fine.

“They say cricket is not for Italy. But I’ll tell you the truth: it’s because we are foreigners,” Miah says.

The ban on cricket has come to symbolise the deep-seated tensions that are flaring up in Monfalcone.

The town has an ethnic make-up unique in Italy: of a population of just over 30,000, nearly a third are foreigners. Most of them are Bangladeshi Muslims who began to arrive in the late 1990s to build giant cruise-ships.

As a consequence the cultural essence of Monfalcone is in danger, according to mayor Anna Maria Cisint, who belongs to the far-right League party.

She swept to power on the back of anti-immigration sentiment – and has gone on a mission to “protect” her town and defend Christian values.

“Our history is being erased,” she tells me. “It’s like it doesn’t matter anymore. Everything is changing for the worse.”

In Monfalcone, Italians in Western clothes mingle with Bangladeshis wearing shalwar kameez and hijabs. There are Bangladeshi restaurants and halal shops, and a network of cycle paths mostly used by the South Asian community.

In her two terms in office, Ms Cisint has removed the benches in the town square where Bangladeshis used to sit and railed against what Muslim women wear at the beach.

“There’s a very strong process of Islamic fundamentalism here,” she says. “A culture where women are treated very badly and oppressed by men.”

When it comes to her ban on cricket, the mayor claims there is no space or money to build a new pitch and says cricket balls pose a danger.

She told the BBC she refuses to grant the Bangladeshis the privilege to play their national sport – and claims they offer “nothing in return”.

“They’ve given nothing to this city, to our community. Zero,” she says. “They are free to go and play cricket anywhere else… outside of Monfalcone.”

The mayor has received death threats because of her views on Muslims – and that’s why she’s now under 24-hour police protection.

Miah Bappy and his fellow cricketers have moved to Italy to build ships at the Fincantieri shipyard – the biggest in Europe, and one of the largest in the world.

The mayor accuses the company of “wage dumping” – the practice of paying wages below the market level, often to foreign workers – arguing that its salaries are so low no Italian would want to do the work for the same money.

But the director of the shipyard Cristiano Bazzarra is adamant that salaries paid by the company and its contractors are aligned with Italian law.

“We are not able to find trained workers. In Europe it’s very difficult to find young people who want to work in a shipyard,” he tells me.

Italy has among the lowest birth rates in Europe. Last year only 379,000 babies were born in Italy with an average of 1.2 children per woman.

Italy is also facing labour shortages and researchers estimate Italy will require 280,000 foreign workers a year until 2050 to make up for a shrinking work force.

Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who leads the far-right Brothers of Italy, has increased the number of permits for non-EU workers despite previously saying she wanted to reduce immigration.

But Anna Maria Cisint firmly believes that the way of life of the Bangladeshi Muslim community is “incompatible” with the life of native-born Italians.

In Monfalcone, the tensions came to a head when the mayor in effect banned collective prayer at the two Islamic centres in the town.

“People from the town started sending me shocking photos and videos which showed a huge number of people praying in the two Islamic centres: as many as 1,900 in just one building,” the mayor says.

“There are so many bikes left on the pavement, and loud prayers five times a day – even at night.”

Mayor Cisint says this was unfair to local residents – and argues her ban on collective prayer comes down to an issue of urban planning regulations. The Islamic centres are not designated for religious worship, and she says it’s not her job to provide them.

Islam is not among the 13 religions that have official status under Italian law, which complicates efforts to build places of worship.

Bangladeshis in Monfalcone say the mayor’s decision has had an enormous impact on the Muslim community.

“The mayor thinks that Bengalis are trying to Islamify Italy – but we are just minding our own business,” says 19-year-old Meheli. She’s originally from Dhaka in Bangladesh but grew up in Italy, wears Western clothes and speaks fluent Italian.

She says she has been sworn at and harassed in the street because of her Bengali heritage.

Miah Bappy is expecting to receive his Italian passport this year, but he’s not sure he will continue to live in Monfalcone.

“We don’t cause any trouble. We pay taxes,” says the shipyard worker. “But they don’t want us here.”

The mayor believes the way of life of the Bangladeshi community is “incompatible” with the life of native born Italians.

But Miah Bappy points out that if they all returned to their homeland tomorrow, “it would take the shipyard five years to build a single ship”.

Over the summer a regional court ruled in favour of the two Islamic centres and annulled the town council’s order banning collective prayer.

But Monfalcone’s mayor has vowed to continue her campaign against what she calls “the Islamisation of Europe” beyond Italy.

She has now been elected to the European Parliament and will soon have a chance to take her message to Brussels.

Hunter Biden has pleaded guilty to all nine charges in his federal tax evasion case, catching federal prosecutors off guard as they prepared to begin his trial.

The son of US President Joe Biden had previously denied allegations that he intentionally avoided paying $1.4m (£1m) in income tax from 2016-19.

Initially Biden, 54, said he wanted to enter a plea where he would accept the charges while maintaining his innocence, but he agreed to simply plead guilty after prosecutors objected.

Three months ago, he was found guilty in a separate case of charges related to gun possession and drug use, becoming the first criminally convicted son of a sitting US president.

The last-minute reversal in the tax case was announced in a Los Angeles court on Thursday as jury selection was about to start.

More than 100 potential jurors had gathered to begin the process of selecting the panel.

Biden’s attorney Abbe Lowell said his client wanted to forego a trial “for the sake of private interest”, sparing his friends and family from testifying about something that happened “when he was addicted to drugs”.

Judge Mark Scarsi said that in pleading guilty, Biden faces a maximum penalty of 15 years in prison and fines ranging from $500,000 to $1m.

He is due to be sentenced on 16 December, a month after the White House election and a month before his father leaves office.

President Biden has previously said he would not use executive power to pardon his son.

There is a portrait of the president in each federal courthouse in the country, and Biden – holding hands with his wife, Melissa Cohen Biden – along with his lawyers and a Secret Service detail had to walk by the picture of his father for the hearing.

The prosecution – representing the Biden administration’s justice department – said they were “shocked” by the suggested Alford plea and reluctant to agree to the deal if it allowed Hunter Biden to maintain his innocence.

They said the defendant was “not entitled to plead guilty on special terms that apply only to him”.

“Hunter Biden is not innocent. Hunter Biden is guilty,” lead prosecutor Leo Wise said.

“We came to court today to try this case.”

Once prosecutors finished reading aloud the entire 56-page indictment against him to the court, the judge asked Biden if he agreed that he had “committed every element of every crime charged.”

“I do,” Biden said.

Biden previously sought to have the case thrown out, arguing that the justice department’s investigation was motivated by politics and that he was targeted because Republican lawmakers were working to impeach his father.

Prosecutors had said they wanted to introduce evidence about the defendant’s overseas business dealings, which have been the focus of Republican lawmakers’ investigations into alleged influence-peddling by the Biden family. The White House denies wrongdoing.

Hunter Biden also argued that the special counsel on the case, David Weiss, had been appointed unlawfully.

These arguments were dismissed by Judge Scarsi, who was appointed by former President Donald Trump.

Biden was charged with three felony tax offences and six misdemeanour offences in December. These included failure to file and pay his taxes, tax evasion and filing a false return.

The indictment detailed how Biden earned $7m in income from his foreign business dealings between 2016-19.

He spent nearly $5m during that period on “everything but his taxes”, said the indictment.

Those purchases included drugs, escorts, lavish hotels, luxury cars and clothing, which Biden falsely labelled as business expenses.

Prosecutors said Biden’s actions amounted to “a four-year scheme”.

“In each year in which he failed to pay his taxes, the defendant had sufficient funds available to him to pay some or all of his outstanding taxes when they were due,” the indictment said. “But he chose not to pay them.”

President Biden did not respond to reporters’ questions about his son’s case as he returned to the White House on Thursday evening from an official trip to Wisconsin.

Hunter Biden first agreed to plead guilty in Delaware last year to misdemeanour tax offences, but that agreement fell apart after another judge said elements of it were unusual.

His tax evasion case marks the second federal criminal case for him this year.

In June, he was convicted on three felony charges connected to his purchase of a revolver in 2018 while battling a drug addiction, and lying about his drug use on a federal form to buy the gun.

The Japanese owner of convenience store chain 7-Eleven has rejected a $38bn (£29.2bn) takeover bid from a Canadian rival.

In a letter addressed to the Circle K owner Alimentation Couche-Tard (ACT), Seven & i Holdings said the Canadian company’s offer “grossly” undervalued the company and was fraught with regulatory risk.

The 7-Eleven owner added, however, that it remains open to negotiations and ready to consider a better proposal.

ACT did not immediately respond to a BBC News request for comment.

“The Special Committee believes that your proposal is opportunistically timed and grossly undervalues our standalone path and the additional actionable avenues we see to realize and unlock shareholder value,” Seven & i’s letter said, referring to a special committee it formed to consider the offer.

ACT’s offer comes at a time of significant weakness in the Japanese yen against the US dollar, making Seven & i more affordable to foreign buyers.

“Your proposal does not adequately acknowledge the multiple and significant challenges such a transaction would face from US competition law enforcement agencies,” Seven & i’s letter added.

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

ACT’s footprint in the US and Canada would more than double to about 20,000 sites were a deal to go ahead.

Surfing was first introduced to Australia more than a century ago.

Since then the sport has blossomed into a cultural phenomenon and a commercial juggernaut.

Research from the Australian National University (ANU) estimates surfing injects at least A$3bn ($2bn; £1.5bn) into the national economy each year.

The study, however, comes with a stark warning that surf breaks – areas where the waves start to collapse or plunge – should not be taken for granted and need more legal protection.

“Unfortunately because of climate change, coastal erosion and competition for coastal spaces, the elements that make these high quality waves possible are on many occasions in danger,” explained Dr Ana Manero, an expert in water economics and governance at the ANU’s Crawford School of Public Policy.

“I don’t think the lack of protection right now is deliberate. It is just surf breaks currently they just fall in a blind spot for policy makers.”

Global warming and poor water quality are surfers’ main concerns, according to the report published in the journal, Marine Policy.

About a dozen surf breaks in the state of New South Wales and Bells Beach in Victoria have formal protection but researchers want much more.

“What I am more worried about is those waves that may not feature on a world-class map but they do provide value for people like you and I,” Dr Manero told the BBC from her office in Perth, Western Australia.

“Those waves that do not attract global attention… are the waves we need to focus our attention on.”

A previous ANU study found waves off the town of Mundaka in northern Spain vanished because of changes to a sand bar after dredging in a nearby river.

Research also found that expansion to a marina in Perth caused the disappearance of three surf breaks in 2022 and an artificial reef has now been proposed.

Some answers for Australia might be found far away in South America or much closer to home.

“In Peru they established what they call La Ley de Rompientes, which means the law of surf breaks, that protects these assets,” added Dr Manero.

In New Zealand, safeguards are provided by an existing act of parliament and a separate, complementary policy that recognises the importance of national, regional and local surf spots. The level of protection they receive is commensurate to their level of significance to surfers.

Using data from the Australian Sports Commission, a government agency, the ANU study estimates there are more than 720,000 active adult surfers in the country. On average they spend about A$3,700 each year.

It is, though, likely to be a conservative figure because it does not consider children, overseas tourists or money generated through professional surfing.

“It is like this cool economy; cafes, restaurants, surf shops, accommodation. Yeah, it’s good. Love it,” said Matt Grainger, who runs the Manly Surf School in Sydney.

“I’ve had the business for 30 years. Just looking forward, I pretty much see it [with] just a slow growth. So, we try not to grow too fast here like with the surf school because you don’t want to crowd out the actual ocean with too many surfers.”

“Once you’ve got your board, it’s free and it’s always different; the tide, the wind, the swell,” he told the BBC.

On a bright and breezy winter’s morning on Australia’s Pacific coast, Mika Flower, an instructor, is preparing to take charge of another lesson.

The work to conquer, or attempt to master, a wave begins with repetitive drills on the sand.

“I have surfed my whole life. It’s super fun,” Ms Flower explains.

“I thought I would love to be able to teach people and share the joy of surfing, and it is nice to not be working in an office. It is nice to be working at the beach getting sunshine and being in the water every day. Australia is, sort of, seen as the country to surf. Everyone wants to jump on the bandwagon.”

For those chasing the perfect wave, surfing is about embracing the power of nature. For them, it’s a gift that should be protected.

Telegram founder and CEO Pavel Durov has hit out at French authorities, calling his arrest last week in relation to allegations of insufficient moderation on the messaging app “misguided”.

In his first public statement since he was detained, he denied claims that Telegram is “some sort of anarchic paradise” as “absolutely untrue”.

Mr Durov was arrested on 25 August at an airport north of Paris and has since been charged over suspected complicity in allowing illicit transactions, drug trafficking, fraud and the spread of child sex abuse images to flourish on his site.

In Mr Durov’s statement, which he published on Telegram, he said holding him responsible for crimes committed by third parties on the platform was both a “surprising” and “misguided approach”.

“If a country is unhappy with an Internet service, the established practice is to start a legal action against the service itself,” the Russian-born billionaire, who is also a French national, said.

“Using laws from the pre-smartphone era to charge a CEO with crimes committed by third parties on the platform he manages is a misguided approach.”

“Building technology is hard enough as it is. No innovator will ever build new tools if they know they can be personally held responsible for potential abuse of those tools,” he added.

While he conceded that Telegram was not perfect, he said French authorities had several ways to get in touch with him and with Telegram, and that the app has an official representative in the EU.

“The claims in some media that Telegram is some sort of anarchic paradise are absolutely untrue. We take down millions of harmful posts and channels every day,” he insisted.

Telegram allows groups of up to 200,000 members, which critics have argued makes it easier for misinformation to spread, and for users to share conspiracist, neo-Nazi, paedophilic, or terror-related content.

Recently in the UK, the app has been scrutinised for hosting far-right channels that were instrumental in organising violent disorder in English cities last month.

Telegram did remove some groups, however cybersecurity experts say overall its system of moderating extremist and illegal content is significantly weaker than that of other social media companies and messenger apps.

In his statement on Thursday, Mr Durov admitted that an “abrupt increase” in the number of users on the messaging app – which he put at 950 million – had “caused growing pains that made it easier for criminals to abuse our platform.”

He said he would aim to “significantly improve things in this regard”.

It comes after the BBC learned last week that Telegram has refused to join international programmes aimed at detecting and removing child abuse material online.

Pavel Durov, 39, was born in Russia and now lives in Dubai, where Telegram is based. He holds citizenship of the United Arab Emirates and France.

Telegram, which he founded in 2013, is particularly popular in Russia, Ukraine and former Soviet Union states.

The app was banned in Russia in 2018, after a previous refusal by him to hand over user data. The ban was reversed in 2021.

Telegram is ranked as one of the major social media platforms after Facebook, YouTube, WhatsApp, Instagram, TikTok and Wechat.

A French woman who was raped by unknown men over 10 years after being drugged to sleep by her husband told a court of her horror at learning how she had been abused.

Gisèle Pélicot, who is 72, was giving evidence on day three of the trial in Avignon, south-east France, of 51 men – including her husband of 50 years, Dominique. All are accused of rape.

Documents before court indicate that Dominique Pélicot, 71, admitted to police that he got satisfaction from watching other men have sex with his unconscious wife.

Many defendants in the case contest the rape charge against them, claiming that they thought they were taking part in a consensual sex game.

But Gisèle Pélicot told the court she was “never complicit” in the sexual acts and had never pretended to be asleep.

This is a case that has shocked France, all the more so because the trial is being held in public.

Gisèle waived her right to anonymity to shift the “shame” back onto the accused, her legal team has previously said.

Taking the stand on Thursday, she said she was speaking for “every woman who’s been drugged without knowing it… so that no woman has to suffer.”

She recalled the moment in November 2020 when she was asked by police to attend an interview alongside her husband.

He had recently been caught taking under-skirt photographs of women at a supermarket, and Gisèle told the court she believed the meeting with police was a formality related to that incident.

“The police officer asked me about my sex life,” she told the court. “I told him I had never practised partner-swapping or threesomes. I said I was a one-man woman. I couldn’t bear any man’s hands on me other than my husband’s.

“But after an hour the officer said, ‘I am going to show you some things which you will not find pleasant’. He opened a folder and he showed me a photograph.

“I did not recognise either the man or the woman asleep on the bed. The officer asked: ‘Madame, is this your bed and bedside table?’

“It was hard to recognise myself dressed up in a way that was unfamiliar. Then he showed me a second photo and a third.

“I asked him to stop. It was unbearable. I was inert, in my bed, and a man was raping me. My world fell apart.”

Gisèle said that up until then their marriage had been generally happy, and she and her husband had overcome a number of financial and health-related difficulties. She said she had forgiven the upskirting after he promised her that it had been a one-off incident.

“All that we had built together had gone. Our three children, seven grandchildren. We used to be an ideal couple.

“I just wanted to disappear. But I had to tell my children their father was under arrest. I asked my son-in-law to stay next to my daughter when I told her that her father had raped me, and had me raped by others.

“She let out a howl, whose sound is still etched on my mind.”

In the coming days, the court will hear more evidence from the investigation, about how Dominique allegedly contacted men via sex-chat websites and invited them to his suburban home in Mazan, a town north-east of Avignon.

Police claim the men were given strict instructions. They had to park at some distance from the house so as to not attract attention, and to wait for up to an hour so that the sleeping drugs which he had given Gisèle could take effect.

They further claim that, once in the home, the men were told to undress in the kitchen, and then to warm their hands with hot water or on a radiator. Tobacco and perfume were not allowed in case they awoke Gisèle. Condoms were not required.

No money changed hands.

According to the investigation, Dominique watched and filmed the proceedings, eventually creating a hard-drive file with some 4,000 photos and videos on it. It was as a result of the upskirting episode that police found the files on his computer.

Police say they have evidence of around 200 rapes carried out between 2011 and 2020, initially at their home outside Paris, but mainly in Mazan, where they moved in 2013.

Investigators allege that just over half the rapes were carried out by her husband. Most of the other men lived only a few kilometres away.

Asked Thursday by the judge if she knew any of the accused, Gisèle said she recognised only one.

“He was our neighbour. He came over to check our bikes. I used to see him at the bakery. He was always polite. I had no idea he was coming to rape me.”

Gisèle was then reminded by the judge that in order to respect the presumption of innocence, it had been agreed in court not to use the word rape but “sex scene”.

She replied: “I just think they should recognise the facts. When I think of what they have done I am overcome with disgust. They should at least have the responsibility to recognise what they did.”

After the truth emerged, Gisèle found that she was carrying four sexually-transmitted diseases.

“I have had no sympathy from any of the accused. One who was HIV-positive came six times. Not once did my husband express any concern about my health,” she said.

She is now in the process of divorcing him.

After speaking for two hours in front of Dominique and the other accused, she said: “Inside me, it is a scene of devastation. The façade may look solid… but behind it…”

Veteran French conservative Michel Barnier has taken over as prime minister, almost two months after France’s snap elections ended in political stalemate.

He said France had come to a “serious moment” and he was facing it with humility: “All political forces will have to be respected and listened to, and I mean all.”

President Emmanuel Macron named the EU’s former chief Brexit negotiator, ending weeks of talks with political parties and potential candidates.

Mr Barnier, 73, arrived at the prime minister’s residence at Hôtel Matignon in Paris on Thursday evening, taking over the role from Gabriel Attal, France’s youngest ever prime minister who has been in office for the past eight months.

His immediate task will be to form a government that can survive a National Assembly divided into three big political blocs, with none able to form a clear majority.

But Mr Barnier will need all his political skills to navigate the coming weeks, with the centre-left Socialists already planning to challenge his appointment with a vote of confidence.

He said he would respond in the coming days to the “challenges, the anger and the sense of being abandoned and of injustice that run through our towns and countryside”.

He promised to tell the truth to the French people about the financial and environmental challenges facing the country, and to work with “all those in good faith” towards great respect and unity.

It has taken President Macron 60 days to make up his mind on choosing a prime minister, having called a “political truce” during the Paris Olympics.

In his farewell speech outside Hôtel Matignon, Gabriel Attal said “French politics is sick, but a cure is possible, provided that we all agree to move away from sectarianism”.

Having led the marathon talks on the UK’s exit from the European Union between 2016 and 2019, Mr Barnier has considerable experience of political deadlock. He has had a long political career in France as well as the EU and has long been part of the right-wing Republicans (LR) party.

Known in France as , he is France’s oldest prime minister since the Fifth Republic came into being in 1958.

Three years ago, he tried and failed to become his party’s candidate to take on President Macron for the French presidency. He said he wanted to limit and take control of immigration.

Mr Macron’s presidency lasts until 2027. Normally the government comes from the president’s party, as they are elected weeks apart.

But the man who has called himself “the master of the clocks” changed that when he called snap elections in June and his centrists came second to the left-wing New Popular Front.

President Macron has interviewed several potential candidates for the role of prime minister, but his task was complicated by the need to come up with a name who could survive a so-called censure vote on their first appearance in the National Assembly.

The Elysée Palace said that by appointing Mr Barnier, the president had ensured that the prime minister and future government would offer the greatest possible stability and the broadest possible unity.

Mr Barnier had been given the task of forming a unifying government “in the service of the country and the French people”, the presidency stressed.

Mr Barnier’s initial challenge as prime minister will be to steer through France’s 2025 budget and he has until 1 October to submit a draft plan to the National Assembly.

Gabriel Attal has already been working on a provisional budget over the summer, but getting it past MPs will require all Mr Barnier’s political skills.

His nomination has already caused discontent within the New Popular Front (NFP), whose own candidate for prime minister was rejected by the president.

Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the leader of the radical France Unbowed (LFI) – the biggest of the four parties that make up the NFP – said the election had been “stolen from the French people”.

Instead of coming from the the alliance that came first on 7 July, he complained that the prime minister would be “a member of a party that came last”, referring to the Republicans.

“This is now essentially a Macron-Le Pen government,” said Mr Mélenchon, referring to the leader of the far-right National Rally (RN).

He then called for people to join a left-wing protest against Mr Macron’s decision planned for Saturday.

To survive a vote of confidence, Mr Barnier will need to persuade 289 MPs in the 577-seat National Assembly to back his government.

Marine Le Pen has made clear her party will not take part in his administration, but she said he at least appeared to meet National Rally’s initial requirement, as someone who “respected different political forces”.

Jordan Bardella, the 28-year-old president of the RN, said Mr Barnier would be judged on his words, his actions and his decisions on France’s next budget, which has to be put before parliament by 1 October.

He cited the cost of living, security and immigration as major emergencies for the French people, adding that “we hold all means of political action in reserve if this is not the case in the coming weeks”.

Mr Barnier is likely to attract support from the president’s centrist Ensemble alliance. Macron ally Yaël Braun-Pivet, who is president of the National Assembly, congratulated the nominee and said MPs would now have to play their full part: “Our mandate obliges us to.”

The former Brexit negotiator had only emerged as a potential candidate late on Wednesday afternoon.

Until then, two other experienced politicians had been touted as most likely candidates: former Socialist prime minister Bernard Cazeneuve and Republicans regional leader Xavier Bertrand. But it soon became apparent that neither would have survived a vote of confidence.

That was Mr Macron’s explanation for turning down the left-wing candidate, Lucie Castets, a senior civil servant in Paris who he said would have fallen at the first hurdle.

The president has been widely criticised for igniting France’s political crisis.

A recent opinion poll suggested that 51% of French voters thought the president should resign.

There is little chance of that, but the man Mr Macron picked as his first prime minister in 2017, Édouard Philippe, has now put his name forward three years early for the next presidential election.

Kim’s Convenience, a heart-warming comedy-drama play about a Korean immigrant family running a corner shop in Toronto, inspired a hit sitcom and is now on stage in London.

“This is a love letter to my parents and all first-generation immigrants who have made the country they have settled in their home,” says the show’s creator, Ins Choi.

He wrote the play, which revolves around the everyday life of a family-run Korean store, and starred as the son when it was first staged in Toronto in 2011.

He then co-wrote the TV series, which became a hit in Canada from 2016 and found a worldwide audience after being picked up by Netflix two years later.

Choi is now back on stage – this time in the lead role of Appa (Dad in Korean).

In the play, the family’s proud, hard-working patriarch grapples with the changing neighbourhood and the growing divide between his first-generation immigrant values and those of his children.

For instance, Appa tries to convince daughter Janet (Jennifer Kim) to take over the shop, instead of pursuing her dream of becoming a photographer.

He also warns that her “expiration date is over”, as she shows no intention to marry as a 30-year-old single woman.

• Listen on BBC Sounds: Kim’s Convenience cast talks about ‘immigrant life’

While this all-Asian lead cast gives an opportunity to look into one East Asian family’s life, it also resonates with different cultures and ages, says Choi.

“In the end, it’s a comedy. It’s a story about a family.

“Regardless of your background, I think everyone can relate to parents who they feel they disappointed. Or if you’re a parent, kids who don’t appreciate you.

“So it’s both sides of that dynamic.”

When it was first on stage, a show with an all-Asian lead cast was rare.

“When I played [son] Jung 14 years ago, there weren’t many Asian actors,” Choi says.

“But now, when we do a casting call, there are many Janets that we can choose from. I was so pleasantly surprised that we now have options.”

In fact, the genesis of Kim’s Convenience stems from the lack of opportunities Choi had as a young actor.

After graduating from drama school, he auditioned for many roles but kept getting rejected. Eventually, he decided to write his own story, which became his debut play – and later a Netflix hit.

While he understands that directors today are looking for new Asian voices, he feels some theatre companies have quite a “white programme”, which still makes plays like Kim’s Convenience stand out.

“I think it’s still kind of a rare thing in an English-speaking city to have an Asian-led play on stage,” he says. “So that’s unfortunately always been one reason for interest because it’s still the unique thing to watch.

“It’s a little different, not a white family’s living room. How often do you get that?”

Throughout the play, Appa and Umma (Mum, played by Namju Go) speak in a fairly strong Korean accent. This was also the case with the TV series, and some have argued that heavy accents perpetuate stereotypes.

Choi vehemently disagrees. “Maybe producers don’t want people speaking accents because they don’t want to be seen as offensive. But then they’re just dismissing and erasing [it], which, in my opinion, is more offensive.”

He has put both charaters centre stage, celebrating their three-dimensional personalities.

“Whether people want to admit it or not, there’s a whole part of society that is unrepresented in media. For fear of backlash, they are not seen and heard,” adds Choi.

He says he is doing his best job imitating his own parents and what he grew up hearing. And he says he is, in fact, pulling back from the accent, so a “Western ear” can understand him better.

“When my kids watched the play, they couldn’t stop laughing. They loved it. They said I was just like Halabeoji [Grandad]. And I was like, ‘Thank you.'”

The play’s UK staging precedes a triumphant homecoming to Toronto’s acclaimed Soulpepper Theatre in January 2025. That will be 14 years since it won the Patron’s Pick award at the Toronto Fringe Festival, where it premiered.

Choi originally played estranged son Jung, but it has now been so long since the original run that he has been playing Appa since last year.

“Going back to Soulpepper Theatre will feel almost like a physical, geographic full circle, in terms of the son becoming the parent,” he says.

He acknowledges that it was a “strange but normal feeling” when he first played Appa, adding that he has been “rehearsing for the last 10 years” to play the father, as his real-life children have grown up and he has grown into the role.

“I love the sound of Appa – it’s so warm and conjures great feelings,” he says.

“So now, when I get called Appa by Janet and Jung, I already respond to that name.”

So what does he hope the audience will take from the play, other than laughter and tears?

“This is me being idealistic but I hope a play like this brings communities together, where it’s like, ‘Yeah, my family’s just like your family, guys. My dad is just like your dad.’

“It can actually build bridges and people realise we’re all dysfunctional. Yeah, I think it has that power – art, in general.”

And having helped out at his uncle’s corner shop as a child, he has one more wish.

“I hope that when people come and see the show, they meet this family who owns this store.

“And that the next time they walk into an off-licence, they have an inkling of the person having a whole life behind the counter. And hopefully treat them with more understanding or compassion.”

There’s chaos in HMP Pentonville.

A piercing alarm alerts us to what prison officers describe as an “incident”. There’s a cacophony of slamming metal doors, keys jangling, and shouts and screams from inmates as officers race to see what’s happened. We run behind as they head to where the trouble is.

Cell doors and chipped painted white bars are just about the only scenery as we move through this chaotic and nerve-jangling environment.

A muffled walkie-talkie tells us it’s a case of self-harm. An inmate who’s been locked up for most of the day has carved “mum and dad” into his arm with a sharp object. A quick glance into the cell and the sight of blood. A prison officer crouches down, stemming the flow.

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The BBC has been given rare access to HMP Pentonville men’s prison in north London at a time of major crisis for jails in England and Wales.

Next week, with prisons across the country running out of cells for new inmates, the government will release some offenders early in a controversial scheme aimed at easing the overwhelming pressure on a system on the brink of collapse.

Over the course of two days inside Pentonville this week, we were confronted with the stark reality of this crisis.

The pressure on staff is immense. In just half a day, we hear six alarms. The day before there were more than 30. Prison officers don’t know what they’re running towards behind those locked and bolted doors. Blood, violence or even death are all possibilities.

Shay Dhury has been a prison officer here for almost five years and says she’s never seen it this bad. Recently, both her wrists were broken as she tried to separate two gang members during a fight. She believes gang-related crime is one of the main reasons there are so many people in prisons, especially Pentonville.

“They go for each other – and when two people go, other people go,” she says. “It ends up us just trying to stop the fight. It gets really messy sometimes – stressful, yeah.”

HMP Pentonville was built in 1842 and is largely unchanged structurally in 180 years. Originally designed to hold 520 people in single cells, it now has an operational capacity of 1,205, with two prisoners packed into each cell.

The jail is dangerously close to capacity – with just nine beds remaining when we are there. And humans are not the only inmates here: mice and cockroaches are rife.

The government says Pentonville epitomises the challenges facing ageing, inner-city prisons with transient populations who have varied and complex needs.

More than 80% of Pentonville inmates are on remand, which means they are awaiting trial. The rest have been convicted of serious crimes including murder, rape, and drug offences.

Remand is at a 50-year high across England and Wales – and that’s partly down to a backlog in the criminal courts. Ministry of Justice (MoJ) figures show the Crown Court system has a backlog of more than 60,000 cases. The Magistrates Court has a backlog of more than 300,000 cases.

• It costs £48,949 to keep a prisoner in Pentonville for a year, £52.4m for the whole population
• 57% of inmates live in crowded accommodation
• Those not in training or education spend just one hour a day out of their cell
• 104 incidents of self harm were recorded in March 2024 – the most in a single month since records began
• There were seven suicides in the prison between 2019 and 2023

Source

Tom – not his real name – is on remand. His cell is tiny. It’s around seven feet by six feet (2m x 1.8m) and has a pungent smell of urine, faeces, and rotten food. A bunk bed takes up most of the space. The toilet, in the corner beside the sink, is leaking and there are wet splashes on the floor.

“I’ve been telling them about that for three weeks,” Tom says. “I could fix it – I’m actually a plumber – but it had no washers in there.”

Overcrowding impacts all areas of life inside. With fewer officers to inmates, prisoners’ needs can’t always be met, which means some, like Tom, are living in cells that aren’t properly operational for several weeks when repairs are needed.

Michael Lewis is inside for drug offences. He’s 38 and has been in and out of jail for several years, but hopes this will be his last stint.

“It’s hard to rehabilitate yourself in a place where you’ve got gang violence, postcode wars, drug violence, money wars,” he says, highlighting how overstretched staff are.

“They’re trying to do this, this, this and this – but now you want help as well? So it’s hard.”

He tells me about the night he woke to find his former cellmate trying to hang himself.

“I could tell he wasn’t dead because he was still breathing, he’s still warm,” Lewis says, describing the wait for a prison officer to come to help.

“He can’t open the door on his own at night – keys and everything, security risk,” Lewis explains. “Waited for another staff member – and as soon as he came in he saw to him.

“He survived.”

I’ve been to several prisons and the situation at Pentonville is the worst I have seen.

The staff seem to be doing what they can in very difficult circumstances, fighting problems, crises, and violence – but they are often struggling to cope.

Sixteen people will be released from here next week when the government releases thousands of offenders early. The prison’s governor, Simon Drysdale, says that will alleviate some of the pressure and mean more people who’ve been sent to Pentonville – a reception prison serving all London courts – can be transferred on to other jails because they too will have more available cells.

“Our total focus is on making sure that we’ve got space and capacity,” Mr Drysdale says. “That takes up a large proportion of our thinking space and a lot of the staff’s time, and because of that we don’t get as much time as we would like to think about things like getting men into more meaningful work.”

But some Pentonville inmates are doubtful that 16 inmates being released from here will make a difference. One, who didn’t want to be filmed, speaks to us while crouched on the floor with his back against the wall.

“Nothing will ever change,” he says, sobbing.

“They don’t care about us. I would rather die.”

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Tonga’s sleepy capital Nuku’alofa was buzzing last week as leaders from across the Pacific region descended upon it for the annual Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) meeting.

Every so often, a police escort would speed through its streets, sirens blaring. On the bonnet of the cars, small flags identified the foreign delegations. China and Taiwan were visible, as well as the Union Jack and the United Nations.

All of them only participated as dialogue partners or observers. But they made a lot of noise. Their security detail was bigger than those of most of the 18 PIF members, save perhaps New Zealand and Australia. Tonga’s Royal Palace looked understated in comparison with only a sole guard looking after the King, according to sources.

Throughout the week, diplomats called the meeting fascinating – but the underlying concern is that the interest by these delegations is not necessarily in line with what PIF leaders or its people want.

The PIF is made up of 18 members – mostly Pacific Island nations as well as Australia and New Zealand – but delegations from across the world also attend, keen to play a role in the region, which is assuming greater geopolitical significance.

The big players are no longer just Australia and the US. China is a rising power in the Pacific and one that causes ructions.

Nuku’alofa has almost buckled under the pressure of all this interest. Outside one of its top hotels, where the big delegations were staying, there was a billboard looking for staff – declaring “no experience necessary – all positions”.

Inside the hotel, another notice warned that Tonga was facing a scarcity of skilled workers and therefore couldn’t service the general public during the forum.

It was a pertinent reminder of the “brain drain” that many Pacific nations face as their people head to Australia and New Zealand for a better future.

At the forum itself, Australia scored a victory quite early on when it announced a A$400m ($268m; £204m) Pacific Policing Initiative that aims to set up a police training facility in Brisbane and four centres across the Pacific. It will also train regional officers to be deployed across the region for major disasters or big events.

No sooner than the plan had been announced, it was eclipsed by a “hot mic” moment. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was caught on camera calling the deal “a cracker” in a conversation with US Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell. In a conversation he didn’t think was being filmed, he even joked with Mr Campbell about going “halfsies on the cost”.

It was an awkward gaffe that made it pretty clear that the policing initiative was a “win” against China’s growing influence in the region – 1-0 to Australia and its friends.

That Mr Albanese’s remarks were made in the auditorium that was built by the Chinese makes the competition all the more relevant. Chinese influence on the island is clear. Next to the auditorium is a large patch of land that holds the Royal Tombs, which has now been boarded up with big signs on the outside saying a renovation is being carried out with the help of China Aid. It’s a similar story across the Pacific.

But the conversation also backed up reservations made by Vanuatu’s Prime Minister and the head of the Melanesian Spearhead Group that the policing initiative could be seen more about cutting out China than focusing on the benefits for the Pacific Islands.

Mr Albanese’s “cracker” comments weren’t the only controversy last week. In the final communique issued by PIF leaders on Friday afternoon, there was a reaffirmation of a 1992 agreement allowing Taiwan to play a role in forum leaders’ meetings. The communique was then removed and put up again, removing the reference to Taiwan. That then led to accusations that PIF leaders had given in to pressure from China although they suggested it was in fact an administrative error.

Of the 18 countries in the Pacific Islands Forum, just three have diplomatic relations with Taiwan. While China is a “dialogue partner’” Taiwan is a “development partner”, which is a step down in importance.

What all these arguments show is the very real competition that is hotting up in the Pacific. Everyone wants to come to the PIF because everyone wants a piece of the region.

The thing is, while superpowers fight it out for relevance, so too do the Pacific Islands. There’s a real emphasis on making sure that those who participate in this forum do so in the Pacific way – and for the benefit of people in the Pacific.

A recent report by the Lowy Institute found that strategic rivalry can at times forget the needs of people.

“Many of these economies are struggling to meet basic development needs,” according to the report entitled ‘The Great Game in the Pacific islands’.

“Larger powers often prioritise projects that deliver strategic gains such as telecommunications, ports and military facilities, or political dividends such as stadiums and convention centres, over less visibly impressive projects.”

On the penultimate day, leaders went on a retreat on the island of Vava’u. Meanwhile in Nuku’alofa, side events carried on. One was on the Pacific Resilience Facility, the first Pacific-led climate and disaster resilience financing fund whose headquarters will be in Tonga.

Attending the event were ministers and diplomats from members including Tonga, Tuvalu and Australia. There was great pride in the fund with expectations that this could be the answer to supporting climate change concerns across the region. Australia has been the biggest donor so far, with A$100m. The US, China and Saudi Arabia have also contributed but the fund still only has US$137m in total – that’s a long way from their target of US$500m by 2026 and a long-term goal of US$1.5bn.

“I think it’s harder to get funding for climate change,” Paulson Panapa, Tuvalu’s Minister for Foreign Affairs, Labour and Trade told the BBC. “We want all donors to treat both as very important just like it’s important to us.

The Pacific Islands are small but in many ways they are mighty. These nations sit in an ocean that accounts for a third of the world’s surface area – what happens in their waters – politically, economically, diplomatically will shape the future of the world – both for good and bad.

Four-year-old Sandhya was sleeping outside her mud hut in India’s Uttar Pradesh state on the night of 17 August when a power cut plunged the village into darkness.

“The wolves attacked within two minutes of the lights going out. By the time we realised what was happening, they had taken her away,” recalls her mother, Sunita.

Sandhya’s body was found lying next day in the sugarcane farms, some 500 metres from her home.

Earlier in the month, in a neighbouring village, eight-year-old Utkarsh was sleeping under a mosquito net when his mother spotted a wolf creeping into their hut.

“The animal lunged from the shadows. I screamed, ‘Leave my son alone!’ My neighbours rushed in, and the wolf fled,” she recounts.

Since mid-April, a wave of wolf attacks has terrorised around 30 villages in Bahraich district, near the border with Nepal. Nine children and an adult have been carried off and killed by the wolves. The youngest victim was a one-year-old boy, and the oldest was a 45-year-old woman. At least 34 others have been injured.

Fear and hysteria have gripped the affected villages. With many village homes lacking locks, children are being kept indoors, and men are patrolling the darkly lit streets at night. Authorities have deployed drones and cameras, set traps and used firecrackers to scare away the wolves. So far, three wolves have been captured and relocated to zoos.

Such attacks on humans are extremely rare and most involve wolves infected with rabies, a viral disease that affects the central nervous system. A rabid wolf will typically make multiple assaults without consuming the victims.

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A report by the Norwegian Institute for Nature Research reported 489 “relatively reliable cases” of wolf attacks in 21 countries – including India – between 2002 and 2020. Only 26 of them were fatal. Around 380 people were victims of “rabid attacks”.

There have been only two confirmed cases of wolf-related fatalities in North America over the past 50 years, Dave Mech, a renowned American biologist who specialises in wolf behaviour, told the BBC. This is despite a population of approximately 70,000 wolves spread across North America.

So why are wolves attacking humans in Bahraich?

Nestled between a river and forests, parts of Bahraich have long been a traditional wolf habitat. Located in the floodplain of the Ghaghara river, the district, home to 3.5 million people, is prone to seasonal flooding.

Heavy rains and flooding during the monsoons have drastically altered the landscape. The swollen river has inundated the forests, potentially driving the wolves out in search of food and water. Indian wolves prey on black buck, chinkara (Indian gazelle) and hare.

“Climate change is a gradual process but flooding can lead to habitat disruptions for the wolves, forcing them into human settlements in search of food,” says Amita Kanaujia of the Institute of Wildlife Sciences in Lucknow University.

Why would children be a target of the wolves in search of food?

During an investigation into killings of a large number of children in wolf attacks in Uttar Pradesh villages in 1996, wildlife experts found there was minimal supervision of children because most victims came from impoverished single-parent households, usually led by mothers.

In these poor Indian villages, livestock is often better protected than children. When a hungry wolf, facing a depleted prey habitat and limited access to livestock, encounters such vulnerable children, they become more likely targets. “Nowhere else in the world have we witnessed surges of wolf attacks on children,” Yadvendradev Jhala, a leading Indian scientist and conservationist, told me.

The current wolf attacks in Uttar Pradesh are possibly the fourth such wave in four decades. In 1981-82, wolf attacks in Bihar claimed the lives of at least 13 children. Between 1993 and 1995, another 80 children were attacked, this time by what were believed to be five wolf packs in the region’s Hazaribagh district.

The deadliest episode occurred over eight months in 1996, when at least 76 children from more than 50 villages in Uttar Pradesh were attacked, resulting in 38 deaths. The killings stopped after authorities killed 11 wolves. The media described them as “man-eating” wolves.

Mr Jhala and his colleague Dinesh Kumar Sharma conducted a meticulous investigation into the 1996 killings, examining body remains, wolf hair, village hutments, population density, livestock and autopsy reports. The current attacks in Uttar Pradesh bear an eerie resemblance to their findings from nearly 30 years ago.

In both instances, children were killed and partially consumed, showing bite marks on their throats and puncture wounds on various parts of their bodies. Most attacks occurred at night, with children sleeping outdoors in the heart of villages being taken away. Victims were frequently discovered in open areas, such as farms or meadows.

Like Bahraich today, the 1996 wolf attacks took place in villages near riverbanks, surrounded by rice and sugarcane farms and swampy groves. Both cases involved crowded villages and a large number of vulnerable children from poor farming families, which increased the risk.

• Switzerland’s wolves get too close for comfort

It is unclear whether the ongoing attacks are by a lone wolf or a pack. Based on his 30 years of studying wolves, Mr Jhala believes that a single wolf – like in 1996 – is probably responsible for the recent killings. Villagers have reported seeing a group of five to six wolves in their fields during the day, while the mother of eight-year-old Utkarsh, who survived, saw a single wolf entering her home and attacking her son.

For centuries, humans and wolves in India co-existed peacefully, thanks to the traditional tolerance of pastoralist communities, say wildlife experts. This long-standing co-existence has allowed wolves to persist despite frequent conflicts, particularly over livestock. However, times have changed, and the recent surge in attacks has raised new concerns.

Wildlife experts like Mr Jhala advise that children in the affected villages should stay indoors, sleep between adults if housing is inadequate, and be accompanied by an adult to the toilet at night. Villagers should avoid letting children roam unsupervised in areas where wolves might be hiding and appoint night watchmen to patrol the streets.

“Until we determine the exact reasons behind these attacks, these precautions are crucial to keep people safe,” Mr Jhala says. Meanwhile, people in Bahraich remain on edge every night.

The killing of Indian rapper Sidhu Moose Wala made an impact on many around the world.

For those who knew him, it hit even harder.

Close friend Steel Banglez says it took “months” before he was ready to return to music.

His latest track, Attach, is a tribute to Moose Walla, who Steel Banglez credits with inspiring him to make his “best music ever”.

The video for the song, which includes the artist’s last-ever appearance, has been viewed millions of times.

Steel Banglez has worked with the likes of Burna Boy, J Hus, Rudimental and Dave and says he wants to keep Sidhu Moose Wala’s music “legacy going”.

“Knowing our relationship, knowing what he was like, knowing what we spoke about.

“I know he would want me to do my thing,” the 37-year-old tells BBC Asian Network.

“So with that acceptance… it’s just put me in a place to go and achieve more.”

Moose Wala was killed in 2022 and while being considered by some as a divisive and controversial figure, he was also a household name in his home country, gaining international recognition with a music legacy that has endured.

Steel Banglez describes the pair as “like best friends” and says he feels a responsibility to “do something in his name”.

“Whether it’s building studios in India in his hometown [of Punjab], or even directing a film.

“I have to keep that legacy going, and can’t let that die,” he says.

Attach so far has two million Spotify streams and the video has been viewed over 18 million times on YouTube.

Steel Banglez reveals the song was made in April 2021, and was part of an experiment of using different sounds like Afrobeats and drill.

“I thought it’d be dope for Sidhu to jump on.”

The initial plan was for the song to be on his album The Playlist, released last year.

“But I held the song back because obviously Sidhu passed away,” he says.

“It was one of them things that I had dear to my heart. So I kept the record and wanted to release it at the right time, maybe a better time after speaking to the family.”

The music video, which he also directed, came about quite quickly, he says, and the end scene features a voicenote from Moose Wala.

“My last real big moment with him. Editing it was a bit emotional.

“It’s really deep to be honest. I don’t even know what to think.”

It has not yet hit home that the track is finally out, he says.

“It’s been on my laptop for so long. Maybe it’ll hit me in a couple of weeks.”

He adds he has tried to ignore comments, even though many are positive about the song.

“[Because] I know I’ve done my job and I know the track’s a banger.

“No one’s seen Sidhu since he passed away, and that video is where I just have him, and fun so it was actually a good thing for people to see.”

The use of AI has been a prominent issue in the industry recently, with debate around copyright, artist rights and voice cloning.

Tools have been used which can mimic artists, including with music involving Sidhu Moose Wala since his death.

Steel Banglez says he is a fan “if it’s used correctly” and that it can be helpful when he uses it for samples and production.

“But ripping people off and using people’s vocals and trying to make hype for yourself… that’s not real creativity to me.

“And at the end of the day. AI is moving into our day to day lives.

“And you gotta get with it. And if you don’t get with it. You’re going to get left behind,” he says.

That evolution in the industry is one that Steel Banglez has been a part of, and is keen to drive on with younger artists.

After being inspired by the likes of Panjabi MC, Bally Sagoo and Dr Zeus in the 1990s, he says he is “in a phase” that he wants to promote others and the sound of South Asian artists “that fans don’t hear from the UK”.

“I want to take talent and put them on tracks with Afrobeat artists because I feel like we’re really close melodically in our artistry.

“I solidified myself as one of the leaders.

“I think I’m way past needing to develop my brand and for people to know.

“I feel like there’s a whole new generation that have looked at my journey so far and been shown what it is possible,” he says.

Listen to Newsbeat live at 12:45 and 17:45 weekdays – or listen back here.

A court in Greenland has ruled that anti-whaling activist Paul Watson must remain in custody pending a decision to extradite him to Japan.

The veteran campaigner, who has featured in the reality television show “Whale Wars”, was apprehended by police in July as his ship docked in Greenland’s capital, Nuuk.

They were acting on a 2012 Japanese warrant which accuses him of causing damage to a Japanese whaling ship, obstructing business and injuring a crew member during an encounter in Antarctic waters in February 2010.

Officials in Japan argue that whaling and eating whale meat is part of the country’s culture and way of life. However, it has been heavily criticised by conservation groups.

Dressed in jeans and a white shirt, Mr Watson sat beside his defence lawyers and listened to proceedings through an interpreter as several of his supporters looked on.

“This is about revenge for a television show that extremely embarrassed Japan in the eyes of the world,” he told the small courtroom.

“What happened in the Southern Ocean is documented by hundreds of hours of video,” Mr Watson said.

“I think a review of all the video and of all the documentation will exonerate me from the accusations.”

However the prosecution argued that the defendant was a flight risk, and the judge concluded he should remain in custody until 2 October.

Paul Watson is the former head of Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, which he left in 2022 to set up the Captain Paul Watson Foundation.

He was also a founding member of Greenpeace, but they parted ways in 1977, amid disagreements over his radical tactics.

The 73-year old Canadian-American campaigner has been a controversial figure known for confrontations with whaling vessels at sea.

Mr Watson’s vessel, called the M/Y John Paul DeJoria, had been heading to the North Pacific with a crew of 26 volunteers on board, in a bid to intercept a new Japanese whaling ship when it docked to refuel in Nuuk on 21 July.

He was arrested and led away in handcuffs, and has been held at the local prison for the last seven weeks.

His defence team have appealed against the decision to keep him in custody before Greenland’s High Court.

Greenland is an autonomous territory of Denmark and, although the court in Nuuk is overseeing the custody hearings, the decision about Mr Watson’s extradition lies with Danish authorities in Copenhagen.

Last month, Japan asked Denmark to hand Paul Watson over, even though there is no extradition treaty between the two countries.

Police in Nuuk are carrying out an investigation before handing their findings to Denmark’s ministry of justice and a decision could be expected within the next few weeks.

“It’s a serious case, and it has to have some serious consideration. It has a deep impact on Mr Watson if we get to the point that he has to be extradited. So I will take the time needed to do it properly,” Greenland chief prosecutor Mariam Khalil told the BBC.

At the defence’s request, the judge granted permission for a video clip to be played, which appeared to show a zodiac-type speedboat sailing alongside a Japanese ship and firing a stink bomb.

However, Mr Watson’s lawyers say a second video clip, which was not shown, proves no-one was on deck at the time.

“We have video footage of a stink bomb being shot on to the ship, and the position that the Japanese claim the sailor should be in, he simply isn’t there,” Jonas Christoffersen told BBC.

“There’s no evidential basis for the allegation that somebody got got injured.”

Lyon-based international police body Interpol has confirmed the existence of an outstanding red notice for the arrest of Mr Watson.

In 2012, Paul Watson was also detained in Germany, but left the country after learning that he was sought for extradition by Japan.

Masashi Mizobuchi, assistant press secretary for the Japanese ministry of foreign affairs, told the BBC that Japan had not yet received any response from the Danish authorities.

“We will continue to take appropriate measures, including necessary outreach to the relevant countries and organisations,” Mr Mizobuchi said.

Japan withdrew from the International Whaling Commission and resumed commercial whaling in 2019, after a 30-year hiatus. However, it had continued whaling for what it said were research purposes.

French President Emmanuel Macron’s office has asked Denmark not to extradite Paul Watson, and there has been vocal support from legendary actress turned animals rights activist Brigitte Bardot.

Meanwhile a petition calling for Mr Watson’s release has surpassed 120,000 signatures.

Telegram has apologised to South Korean authorities for its handling of deepfake pornographic material shared via its messaging app, amid a digital sex crime epidemic in the country.

It comes days after South Korean police said they had launched an investigation into Telegram, accusing it of “abetting” the distribution of such images.

In recent weeks, a large number of Telegram chatrooms – many of them run by teenagers – were found to have been creating sexually explicit “deepfakes” using doctored photographs of young women.

Authorities say Telegram has since removed such videos from its platform.

In a statement to South Korea’s Communications Standards Commission (KCSC), Telegram said the situation was “unfortunate”, adding that it “apologised if there had been an element of misunderstanding”.

It also confirmed that it had taken down 25 such videos as requested by KCSC.

In its latest statement to KCSC, Telegram also proposed an email address dedicated to future communication with the regulator.

KCSC described the company’s approach as “very forward-looking” and said Telegram has “acknowledged the seriousness” of the situation.

Deepfakes are generated using artificial intelligence, and often combine the face of a real person with a fake body.

The recent deepfake crisis has been met with outrage in South Korea, after journalists discovered police were investigating deepfake porn rings at two of the country’s major universities.

It later emerged that police received 118 reports of such videos in the last five days. Seven suspects, six of whom are teenagers, have been questioned by the police in the past week.

The chat groups were linked to individual schools and universities across the country. Many of their victims were students and teachers known to the perpetrators.

In South Korea, those found guilty of creating sexually explicit deepfakes can be jailed for up to five years and fined up to 50 million won ($37,500; £28,300).

These discoveries in South Korea follow the arrest of the Russian-born founder of Telegram, Pavel Durov, in France, on allegations that child pornography, drug trafficking and fraud were taking place on the messaging app.

Mr Durov has since been charged.

Last Tuesday, South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol had instructed authorities to “thoroughly investigate and address these digital sex crimes to eradicate them”.

Women’s rights activists have accused South Korean authorities of allowing sexual abuse to take place on Telegram.

In 2019, it was discovered that a sex ring had used the app to blackmail dozens of women and children to film pornographic content. The ring leader Cho Ju-bin, who was then 20, was sentenced to 42 years in jail.

A US mother accused of shooting two of her children at their home in Colorado was “begged” by her third child not to kill her, a UK court has heard.

Kimberlee Singler has attended the start of her extradition hearing in London after being accused of murdering her daughter Elianna, 9, and son Aden, 7, who were found dead in their bedroom in Colorado Springs on 19 December last year.

The eldest child, aged 11 at the time, survived being stabbed in the neck but needed emergency surgery, Westminster Magistrates’ Court heard.

Through her defence barrister Ms Singler, 36, denied responsibility for the deaths and the attack on the third child.

It will not ultimately be for the London court to carry out a criminal trial.

Ms Singler is wanted in Colorado to face a seven-count indictment, comprising two counts of first-degree murder, one count of attempted murder, two counts of class-two felony child abuse, one count of class-three felony child abuse, and one count of assault.

The court was told in the days that followed the attack, Ms Singler “fled” the US and was arrested 11 days later in London.

Ms Singler’s hearing, before District Judge John Zani, is expected to last three days. The final decision on whether Ms Singler should be extradited to the US will be made by the UK home secretary.

On Wednesday, prosecutor Joel Smith KC told the court Ms Singler’s alleged crimes were “committed against the backdrop of acrimonious court proceedings” concerning the custody of her children with her ex-husband Kevin Wentz.

Mr Smith said she shot and stabbed the first two children and attacked the third with a knife, causing “serious lacerations”.

“She initially blamed an unknown male, and cast suspicion on her former partner.”

The court heard that on 19 December the Colorado Springs Police Department responded to a 911 call reporting a burglary at a Colorado residence at 00:29 local time (06:29 GMT).

When officers arrived at the defendant’s address, they found two dead children and a third with a serious injury to her neck. She was taken to hospital.

Live rounds and spent cartridges were found in a closet and a “blood-stained handgun” was discovered on the floor of the bedroom, the prosecutor added.

A blood-stained knife was also found in the living room of the property, Mr Smith added.

The court heard that DNA tests were carried out on the knife and the gun and revealed the presence of mixed profiles matching the children and Ms Singler.

Mr Smith added: “Two empty bottles of sleeping tablets were also found and there were no signs of a break-in.”

The court heard the third child required emergency surgery, but survived.

Mr Smith said Ms Singler blamed her husband for the attack, but it was found he had been driving a “GPS-tracked truck” in Denver, giving what the prosecutor described as a “complete and verifiable alibi”.

In the days that followed, the third child, who was not named in court, was moved into foster care after her emergency surgery.

On Christmas Day, she told her foster carer that Ms Singler had been responsible for the attack and had asked her to lie to police, Mr Smith said.

The prosecutor said the girl was interviewed by police on 26 December, during which time she recounted how the attack had unfolded after the defendant guided all three children into their bedroom.

“The defendant told her that God was telling her to do it, and that the children’s father would take them away,” Mr Smith said.

The police investigation then led to a warrant being issued by Fourth Judicial District Court in El Paso County, Colorado, for Ms Singler’s arrest.

Mr Smith said Ms Singler was arrested in the Chelsea area of west London on 30 December.

Ms Singler’s defence barrister Edward Fitzgerald told the court she “denies she is responsible for the death of her two young children and the attempted murder of her third child”.

“She is innocent,” he said.

Members of Ms Singler’s family joined via a video link, as did the Colorado State prosecutor and officials from the US Department of Justice (DoJ).

The extradition hearing continues.

The UK competition regulator has launched an investigation into the sale of Oasis tickets, including the use of “dynamic pricing”.

The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) is investigating whether ticket-selling platform Ticketmaster breached consumer protection law.

Dynamic pricing meant that, on Ticketmaster, where tickets to the reunion tour were originally sold, prices rose in line with demand.

The investigation will examine whether:

• Ticketmaster engaged in unfair commercial practices
• Buyers were given clear information to explain that the tickets could be subject to price rices
• People were put under pressure to buy tickets within a short period of time

The CMA’s probe follows widespread criticism of dynamic pricing over the past week from Oasis fans.

Many said they ended up paying significantly more than they expected for tickets to the band’s tour next year – up to £350 per ticket, around £200 more than had been advertised.

The band also hit out at the system, saying: “It needs to be made clear that Oasis leave decisions on ticketing and pricing entirely to their promoters and management.”

The independent CMA said it was at the “initial stage of its investigation”.

It said it would engage with Ticketmaster and gather “evidence from various other sources,” which could include the band’s management and event organisers.

The CMA said: “It should not be assumed that Ticketmaster has broken consumer protection law.

“The CMA will also consider whether it is appropriate to investigate the conduct of anyone else in relation to the matter.”

A Ticketmaster spokesperson said: “We are committed to cooperating with the CMA and look forward to sharing more facts about the ticket sale with them.”

Ticketmaster, which says it is the world’s biggest entertainment ticketing platform and is one of three official sellers for the Oasis shows, has said it did not set ticket pricing policy – artists and promoters did.

But an investigation by the BBC’s Chi Chi Izundu and James Stuart found that the division was not as clear as Ticketmaster made it sound.

There are three promoters for the Oasis reunion tour, all with links to one company: Live Nation, the US multinational which owns Ticketmaster.

A letter from the CMA to Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy and Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds said that dynamic pricing was not unlawful.

But it added that the use of the practice must not mislead consumers and must be done in a transparent manner.

CMA chair Marcus Bokkerink and chief executive Sarah Cardell said: “We are keeping open all potential options for action.

“This includes potential enforcement action where we see evidence of possible breaches of consumer protection law.”

The CMA is also inviting fans to submit evidence of their experiences in relation to the sale of tickets for the Britpop band, such as screenshots of the ordering process.

On Wednesday, Oasis added two more Wembley dates to their tour, but said there would be a “staggered invitation-only ballot”.

Some of the band’s fans told the BBC’s Ian Youngs earlier this week that their excitement about the reunion soured when they were faced with prices that had more than doubled while they had spent hours in a virtual queue.

Oasis fan John and his family all tried simultaneously to get tickets, but 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.”

In January last year, Ticketmaster apologised to Taylor Swift and her fans during a US Senate hearing, months after its system was overwhelmed by demand for her ongoing Eras Tour.

Thousands of so-called “Swifties” were unable to buy seats.

“We need to do better and we will,” Live Nation president Joe Berchtold told lawmakers on Tuesday.

He claimed a bot attack was responsible for the “terrible consumer experience”.

The BBC’s Mark Savage wrote at the time that Ticketmaster, which merged with Live Nation in 2010, has repeatedly faced criticism from fans and politicians, who say it has too much control over the live music market and artificially inflates the cost of tickets with fees and service charges.

The father of a 14-year-old boy accused of killing four people at his high school in the US state of Georgia has been arrested.

Colin Gray, 54, is facing four charges of involuntary manslaughter, two counts of second-degree murder and eight of cruelty to children, said the Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI).

Authorities have charged his son, Colt Gray, with four counts of murder and said they plan to prosecute him as an adult. His first court appearance is due on Friday morning.

The shooting on Wednesday at Apalachee High School in the city of Winder, near Atlanta, left two teachers and two students dead, and nine others injured.

GBI Director Chris Hosey said in a news conference on Thursday evening that “these charges are directly connected with the actions of his son and allowing him to possess a weapon”.

Authorities are investigating whether Colin Gray bought the AR-style weapon as a gift for his son in December 2023, law enforcement sources told CBS News, the BBC’s US partner.

In May 2023, the FBI alerted local police to online threats about a school shooting, associated with an email address linked to the suspect.

A sheriff’s deputy went to interview the boy, who was 13 at the time.

His father told police he had guns in the house, but his son did not have unsupervised access to them, the FBI said in a statement on Wednesday.

Officials say the threats were made on Discord, a social media platform popular with video gamers, and contained images of guns.

The account’s profile name was in Russian and translated to the surname of the attacker who killed 26 people at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut in 2012.

A police incident report describing last year’s interview with the boy and his father was released on Thursday.

In the report, a deputy described the boy as “reserved” and “calm” and said he “assured me he never made any threats to shoot up any school”.

They said he claimed to have deleted his Discord account because it was repeatedly hacked.

Colin Gray also told police his son was getting picked on at school and had been struggling with his parents’ separation.

Police records reveal that the boy’s mother and father were in the process of divorcing, and he was staying with his father during the split.

The teen often hunted with his father, who told police he had photographed his son with a deer’s blood on his cheeks.

The boy’s maternal grandfather told the New York Times he partly blames the tumultuous home life after Mr Gray’s split from his daughter.

“I understand my grandson did a horrendous thing – there’s no question about it, and he’s going to pay the price for it,” Charlie Polhamus told the newspaper.

“My grandson did what he did because of the environment that he lived in,” he added.

During the news conference on Thursday, Barrow County Sheriff Jud Smith said all nine of those injured were expected to make a full recovery.

Several victims had already left hospital, he said.

Students Mason Schermerhorn and Christian Angulo, both 14, and teachers Richard Aspinwall, 39, and Christina Irimie, 53, died in the attack.

Witnesses said the suspect left an algebra lesson on Wednesday morning only to return later and try to re-enter the classroom.

Some students went to open the locked door, but apparently saw the weapon and backed away.

Witnesses said they then heard a barrage of 10-15 gunshots. Two school police officers quickly challenged the boy and he immediately surrendered.

These are not the first charges against the parents of a suspect in a school shooting.

In April, the parents of a Michigan teenager who killed four students with a gun they bought for him just days before the shooting were sentenced for their role in the attack.

James and Jennifer Crumbley were both found guilty of manslaughter and each sentenced to 10 to 15 years in prison.

The case was widely reported to be the first time the parents of a child who had carried out a mass shooting were held criminally liable.

A French woman who was raped by unknown men over 10 years after being drugged to sleep by her husband told a court of her horror at learning how she had been abused.

Gisèle Pélicot, who is 72, was giving evidence on day three of the trial in Avignon, south-east France, of 51 men – including her husband of 50 years, Dominique. All are accused of rape.

Documents before court indicate that Dominique Pélicot, 71, admitted to police that he got satisfaction from watching other men have sex with his unconscious wife.

Many defendants in the case contest the rape charge against them, claiming that they thought they were taking part in a consensual sex game.

But Gisèle Pélicot told the court she was “never complicit” in the sexual acts and had never pretended to be asleep.

This is a case that has shocked France, all the more so because the trial is being held in public.

Gisèle waived her right to anonymity to shift the “shame” back onto the accused, her legal team has previously said.

Taking the stand on Thursday, she said she was speaking for “every woman who’s been drugged without knowing it… so that no woman has to suffer.”

She recalled the moment in November 2020 when she was asked by police to attend an interview alongside her husband.

He had recently been caught taking under-skirt photographs of women at a supermarket, and Gisèle told the court she believed the meeting with police was a formality related to that incident.

“The police officer asked me about my sex life,” she told the court. “I told him I had never practised partner-swapping or threesomes. I said I was a one-man woman. I couldn’t bear any man’s hands on me other than my husband’s.

“But after an hour the officer said, ‘I am going to show you some things which you will not find pleasant’. He opened a folder and he showed me a photograph.

“I did not recognise either the man or the woman asleep on the bed. The officer asked: ‘Madame, is this your bed and bedside table?’

“It was hard to recognise myself dressed up in a way that was unfamiliar. Then he showed me a second photo and a third.

“I asked him to stop. It was unbearable. I was inert, in my bed, and a man was raping me. My world fell apart.”

Gisèle said that up until then their marriage had been generally happy, and she and her husband had overcome a number of financial and health-related difficulties. She said she had forgiven the upskirting after he promised her that it had been a one-off incident.

“All that we had built together had gone. Our three children, seven grandchildren. We used to be an ideal couple.

“I just wanted to disappear. But I had to tell my children their father was under arrest. I asked my son-in-law to stay next to my daughter when I told her that her father had raped me, and had me raped by others.

“She let out a howl, whose sound is still etched on my mind.”

In the coming days, the court will hear more evidence from the investigation, about how Dominique allegedly contacted men via sex-chat websites and invited them to his suburban home in Mazan, a town north-east of Avignon.

Police claim the men were given strict instructions. They had to park at some distance from the house so as to not attract attention, and to wait for up to an hour so that the sleeping drugs which he had given Gisèle could take effect.

They further claim that, once in the home, the men were told to undress in the kitchen, and then to warm their hands with hot water or on a radiator. Tobacco and perfume were not allowed in case they awoke Gisèle. Condoms were not required.

No money changed hands.

According to the investigation, Dominique watched and filmed the proceedings, eventually creating a hard-drive file with some 4,000 photos and videos on it. It was as a result of the upskirting episode that police found the files on his computer.

Police say they have evidence of around 200 rapes carried out between 2011 and 2020, initially at their home outside Paris, but mainly in Mazan, where they moved in 2013.

Investigators allege that just over half the rapes were carried out by her husband. Most of the other men lived only a few kilometres away.

Asked Thursday by the judge if she knew any of the accused, Gisèle said she recognised only one.

“He was our neighbour. He came over to check our bikes. I used to see him at the bakery. He was always polite. I had no idea he was coming to rape me.”

Gisèle was then reminded by the judge that in order to respect the presumption of innocence, it had been agreed in court not to use the word rape but “sex scene”.

She replied: “I just think they should recognise the facts. When I think of what they have done I am overcome with disgust. They should at least have the responsibility to recognise what they did.”

After the truth emerged, Gisèle found that she was carrying four sexually-transmitted diseases.

“I have had no sympathy from any of the accused. One who was HIV-positive came six times. Not once did my husband express any concern about my health,” she said.

She is now in the process of divorcing him.

After speaking for two hours in front of Dominique and the other accused, she said: “Inside me, it is a scene of devastation. The façade may look solid… but behind it…”

The Japanese owner of convenience store chain 7-Eleven has rejected a $38bn (£29.2bn) takeover bid from a Canadian rival.

In a letter addressed to the Circle K owner Alimentation Couche-Tard (ACT), Seven & i Holdings said the Canadian company’s offer “grossly” undervalued the company and was fraught with regulatory risk.

The 7-Eleven owner added, however, that it remains open to negotiations and ready to consider a better proposal.

ACT did not immediately respond to a BBC News request for comment.

“The Special Committee believes that your proposal is opportunistically timed and grossly undervalues our standalone path and the additional actionable avenues we see to realize and unlock shareholder value,” Seven & i’s letter said, referring to a special committee it formed to consider the offer.

ACT’s offer comes at a time of significant weakness in the Japanese yen against the US dollar, making Seven & i more affordable to foreign buyers.

“Your proposal does not adequately acknowledge the multiple and significant challenges such a transaction would face from US competition law enforcement agencies,” Seven & i’s letter added.

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

ACT’s footprint in the US and Canada would more than double to about 20,000 sites were a deal to go ahead.

Under the scorching sun on Italy’s Adriatic coast, a group of friends from Bangladesh are practising their cricket skills on a small patch of concrete.

They are playing on the outskirts of Monfalcone, close to Trieste airport, because they have in effect been banned by the mayor from playing in the town itself.

They say those who try can face fines of up to €100 (£84).

“If we were playing inside Monfalcone, the police would have already got here to stop us,” says team captain Miah Bappy.

He points to a group of Bengali teenagers who got “caught” playing their national sport at the local park. Unaware they were being filmed by security cameras, their game was broken up by a police patrol who gave them a fine.

“They say cricket is not for Italy. But I’ll tell you the truth: it’s because we are foreigners,” Miah says.

The ban on cricket has come to symbolise the deep-seated tensions that are flaring up in Monfalcone.

The town has an ethnic make-up unique in Italy: of a population of just over 30,000, nearly a third are foreigners. Most of them are Bangladeshi Muslims who began to arrive in the late 1990s to build giant cruise-ships.

As a consequence the cultural essence of Monfalcone is in danger, according to mayor Anna Maria Cisint, who belongs to the far-right League party.

She swept to power on the back of anti-immigration sentiment – and has gone on a mission to “protect” her town and defend Christian values.

“Our history is being erased,” she tells me. “It’s like it doesn’t matter anymore. Everything is changing for the worse.”

In Monfalcone, Italians in Western clothes mingle with Bangladeshis wearing shalwar kameez and hijabs. There are Bangladeshi restaurants and halal shops, and a network of cycle paths mostly used by the South Asian community.

In her two terms in office, Ms Cisint has removed the benches in the town square where Bangladeshis used to sit and railed against what Muslim women wear at the beach.

“There’s a very strong process of Islamic fundamentalism here,” she says. “A culture where women are treated very badly and oppressed by men.”

When it comes to her ban on cricket, the mayor claims there is no space or money to build a new pitch and says cricket balls pose a danger.

She told the BBC she refuses to grant the Bangladeshis the privilege to play their national sport – and claims they offer “nothing in return”.

“They’ve given nothing to this city, to our community. Zero,” she says. “They are free to go and play cricket anywhere else… outside of Monfalcone.”

The mayor has received death threats because of her views on Muslims – and that’s why she’s now under 24-hour police protection.

Miah Bappy and his fellow cricketers have moved to Italy to build ships at the Fincantieri shipyard – the biggest in Europe, and one of the largest in the world.

The mayor accuses the company of “wage dumping” – the practice of paying wages below the market level, often to foreign workers – arguing that its salaries are so low no Italian would want to do the work for the same money.

But the director of the shipyard Cristiano Bazzarra is adamant that salaries paid by the company and its contractors are aligned with Italian law.

“We are not able to find trained workers. In Europe it’s very difficult to find young people who want to work in a shipyard,” he tells me.

Italy has among the lowest birth rates in Europe. Last year only 379,000 babies were born in Italy with an average of 1.2 children per woman.

Italy is also facing labour shortages and researchers estimate Italy will require 280,000 foreign workers a year until 2050 to make up for a shrinking work force.

Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who leads the far-right Brothers of Italy, has increased the number of permits for non-EU workers despite previously saying she wanted to reduce immigration.

But Anna Maria Cisint firmly believes that the way of life of the Bangladeshi Muslim community is “incompatible” with the life of native-born Italians.

In Monfalcone, the tensions came to a head when the mayor in effect banned collective prayer at the two Islamic centres in the town.

“People from the town started sending me shocking photos and videos which showed a huge number of people praying in the two Islamic centres: as many as 1,900 in just one building,” the mayor says.

“There are so many bikes left on the pavement, and loud prayers five times a day – even at night.”

Mayor Cisint says this was unfair to local residents – and argues her ban on collective prayer comes down to an issue of urban planning regulations. The Islamic centres are not designated for religious worship, and she says it’s not her job to provide them.

Islam is not among the 13 religions that have official status under Italian law, which complicates efforts to build places of worship.

Bangladeshis in Monfalcone say the mayor’s decision has had an enormous impact on the Muslim community.

“The mayor thinks that Bengalis are trying to Islamify Italy – but we are just minding our own business,” says 19-year-old Meheli. She’s originally from Dhaka in Bangladesh but grew up in Italy, wears Western clothes and speaks fluent Italian.

She says she has been sworn at and harassed in the street because of her Bengali heritage.

Miah Bappy is expecting to receive his Italian passport this year, but he’s not sure he will continue to live in Monfalcone.

“We don’t cause any trouble. We pay taxes,” says the shipyard worker. “But they don’t want us here.”

The mayor believes the way of life of the Bangladeshi community is “incompatible” with the life of native born Italians.

But Miah Bappy points out that if they all returned to their homeland tomorrow, “it would take the shipyard five years to build a single ship”.

Over the summer a regional court ruled in favour of the two Islamic centres and annulled the town council’s order banning collective prayer.

But Monfalcone’s mayor has vowed to continue her campaign against what she calls “the Islamisation of Europe” beyond Italy.

She has now been elected to the European Parliament and will soon have a chance to take her message to Brussels.

Hunter Biden has pleaded guilty to all nine charges in his federal tax evasion case, catching federal prosecutors off guard as they prepared to begin his trial.

The son of US President Joe Biden had previously denied allegations that he intentionally avoided paying $1.4m (£1m) in income tax from 2016-19.

Initially Biden, 54, said he wanted to enter a plea where he would accept the charges while maintaining his innocence, but he agreed to simply plead guilty after prosecutors objected.

Three months ago, he was found guilty in a separate case of charges related to gun possession and drug use, becoming the first criminally convicted son of a sitting US president.

The last-minute reversal in the tax case was announced in a Los Angeles court on Thursday as jury selection was about to start.

More than 100 potential jurors had gathered to begin the process of selecting the panel.

Biden’s attorney Abbe Lowell said his client wanted to forego a trial “for the sake of private interest”, sparing his friends and family from testifying about something that happened “when he was addicted to drugs”.

Judge Mark Scarsi said that in pleading guilty, Biden faces a maximum penalty of 15 years in prison and fines ranging from $500,000 to $1m.

He is due to be sentenced on 16 December, a month after the White House election and a month before his father leaves office.

President Biden has previously said he would not use executive power to pardon his son.

There is a portrait of the president in each federal courthouse in the country, and Biden – holding hands with his wife, Melissa Cohen Biden – along with his lawyers and a Secret Service detail had to walk by the picture of his father for the hearing.

The prosecution – representing the Biden administration’s justice department – said they were “shocked” by the suggested Alford plea and reluctant to agree to the deal if it allowed Hunter Biden to maintain his innocence.

They said the defendant was “not entitled to plead guilty on special terms that apply only to him”.

“Hunter Biden is not innocent. Hunter Biden is guilty,” lead prosecutor Leo Wise said.

“We came to court today to try this case.”

Once prosecutors finished reading aloud the entire 56-page indictment against him to the court, the judge asked Biden if he agreed that he had “committed every element of every crime charged.”

“I do,” Biden said.

Biden previously sought to have the case thrown out, arguing that the justice department’s investigation was motivated by politics and that he was targeted because Republican lawmakers were working to impeach his father.

Prosecutors had said they wanted to introduce evidence about the defendant’s overseas business dealings, which have been the focus of Republican lawmakers’ investigations into alleged influence-peddling by the Biden family. The White House denies wrongdoing.

Hunter Biden also argued that the special counsel on the case, David Weiss, had been appointed unlawfully.

These arguments were dismissed by Judge Scarsi, who was appointed by former President Donald Trump.

Biden was charged with three felony tax offences and six misdemeanour offences in December. These included failure to file and pay his taxes, tax evasion and filing a false return.

The indictment detailed how Biden earned $7m in income from his foreign business dealings between 2016-19.

He spent nearly $5m during that period on “everything but his taxes”, said the indictment.

Those purchases included drugs, escorts, lavish hotels, luxury cars and clothing, which Biden falsely labelled as business expenses.

Prosecutors said Biden’s actions amounted to “a four-year scheme”.

“In each year in which he failed to pay his taxes, the defendant had sufficient funds available to him to pay some or all of his outstanding taxes when they were due,” the indictment said. “But he chose not to pay them.”

President Biden did not respond to reporters’ questions about his son’s case as he returned to the White House on Thursday evening from an official trip to Wisconsin.

Hunter Biden first agreed to plead guilty in Delaware last year to misdemeanour tax offences, but that agreement fell apart after another judge said elements of it were unusual.

His tax evasion case marks the second federal criminal case for him this year.

In June, he was convicted on three felony charges connected to his purchase of a revolver in 2018 while battling a drug addiction, and lying about his drug use on a federal form to buy the gun.

A Belfast man has pleaded guilty to trying to blackmail 16 women into sending him sexual videos and images.

Christopher Morrow, 27, of Rochester Road in east Belfast, appeared at Belfast Crown Court on Thursday to be re-arraigned on 17 charges.

Morrow entered guilty pleas to all 16 counts of blackmail.

The defendant admitted making unwarranted demands with menaces for sexual videos and images from 16 individual women.

The charges span a four-month period between 14 January and 10 April 2023.

He also pleaded guilty to possessing an extreme pornographic image on 10 April, 2023.

A prosecution lawyer told the court the pleas were acceptable to the Crown and that a separate charge of harassment was to be “left on the books”.

Morrow, who was granted continuing bail, is due to be sentenced on 24 October.

Olympic athlete Rebecca Cheptegei has died days after being doused in petrol and set on fire by a former boyfriend.

The 33-year-old Ugandan marathon runner, who competed in the recent Paris Olympics, had suffered extensive burns after Sunday’s attack.

The authorities in north-west Kenya, where Cheptegei lived and trained, said she was targeted after returning home from church with her two daughters.

Her father, Joseph Cheptegei, said that he had lost a “very supportive” daughter. Fellow Ugandan athlete James Kirwa told the BBC about her generosity and how she had helped out other runners financially.

A report filed by a local administrator alleged the athlete and her ex-partner had been wrangling over a piece of land. Police say an investigation is under way.

Cheptegei, from a region just across the border in Uganda, is said to have bought a plot in Trans Nzoia county and built a house to be near Kenya’s elite athletics training centres.

Attacks on women have become a major concern in Kenya. In 2022 at least 34% of women said they had experienced physical violence, according to a national survey.

“This tragedy is a stark reminder of the urgent need to combat gender-based violence, which has increasingly affected even elite sports,” Kenya’s Sports Minister Kipchumba Murkomen said.

Different organisations within the UN have also spoken out on the issue.

“We join the UN Population Fund and UN Women in strongly condemning [Cheptegei’s} violent murder,” spokesperson for the UN secretary-general Stephane Dujarric is quoted by the AFP news agency as saying.

Speaking to journalists outside the hospital where she had been treated, Mr Cheptegei asked the Kenyan government to ensure justice was done after the death of his daughter.

“We have lost our breadwinner,” he added and wondered how her two young children would “proceed with their education”.

Dr Kimani Mbugua, a consultant at Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital in Eldoret, told local media that the staff did all they could for her but the athlete “had a severe percentage of burns, which unfortunately led to multi-organ failure, which ultimately led to her passing this morning at 05:30 [02:30 GMT]”.

Kirwa, who often trained with Cheptegei and had visited her in hospital, told the BBC she “was a very affable person. [She] helped us all even financially and she brought me training shoes when she came back from the Olympics. She was like an older sister to me”.

Uganda’s athletics federation said in a post on X: “We are deeply saddened to announce the passing of our athlete, Rebecca Cheptegei early this morning who tragically fell victim to domestic violence. As a federation, we condemn such acts and call for justice. May her soul rest In Peace.”

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“This is heart-breaking. Even more heart-breaking that it’s not the first time the athletics community has lost such an incredible female athlete to domestic violence,” British Olympian runner Eilish McColgan wrote on X.

Cheptegei’s former boyfriend was also admitted to the hospital in Eldoret – but with less severe burns. He is still in intensive care but his condition was “improving and stable”, Moi hospital’s Dr Owen Menach said.

Earlier, local police chief Jeremiah ole Kosiom was quoted by local media as saying: “The couple were heard quarrelling outside their house. During the altercation, the boyfriend was seen pouring a liquid on the woman before burning her.”

“This was a cowardly and senseless act that has led to the loss of a great athlete. Her legacy will continue to endure,” the head of Uganda’s Olympic committee Donald Rukare said on X.

Talking to reporters earlier in the week, her father said that he prayed “for justice for my daughter”, adding that he had never seen such an inhumane act in his life.

Uganda’s Sports Minister Peter Ogwang said arrangements were being made to transport Cheptegei’s body back to Uganda for burial.

“We mourn with the family as a country,” he told the BBC World Service’s Newshour programme.

He added that Cheptegei had wanted to talk to him when they were at the Olympics together.

“She [said she] had a family problem.”

Cheptegei finished 44th in the marathon at the recent Paris Olympics.

She also won gold at the World Mountain and Trail Running Championships in Chiang Mai, Thailand, in 2022.

Her death comes after the killings of fellow East African athletes Agnes Tirop in 2021 and Damaris Mutua the following year, with their partners identified as the main suspects in both cases by the authorities.

Tirop’s husband is currently facing murder charges, which he denies, while a hunt for Mutua’s boyfriend continues.

“Today has been a sad moment for me. It has been a sad moment for athletes because it really reminded us [of] the day that Agnes was murdered,” Kenyan athlete Joan Chelimo told the BBC.

She is involved in Tirop’s Angels, an organisation she said was set up as a “wake-up call” after Tirop’s murder to address gender-based violence.

“We say we need to unite together as athletes and just try to raise awareness, create a place where women can just come and speak up. But it is still on the rise.”

Cheptegei’s friend Milcah Chemos-Cheywa, a Kenyan athlete who with her in Paris, echoed these feelings.

“I can say we are still in shock, and we are in pain, especially as athletes, and this thing happening in Kenya,” she told the Reuters news agency. “We remember the case of Agnes Tirop, now it has come to Rebecca, so we are not happy.’’

Imagine binge-watching The Bear, Succession, Deadpool and reality show Bigg Boss all on one platform – an entertainment bonanza could be just around the corner for Indians if a blockbuster streaming merger goes through as expected.

The deal, which brings together the media assets of India’s largest conglomerate Reliance Industries and entertainment giant Walt Disney, has sparked both excitement and concerns over potential monopolistic dominance in the Indian entertainment and advertising industries.

The $8.5bn (£6.5bn) merger aims to create India’s largest entertainment company, potentially capturing 40% of the TV market, reaching 750 million viewers across 120 channels, and dominating the advertising sector.

This gives Disney a stronger foothold in the challenging Indian market while supporting Reliance’s expansion efforts. It also pits the new entertainment behemoth against popular rivals such as Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Sony and 50-odd other streaming platforms.

Consider the reach of this new entertainment giant: Disney’s Star India operates more than 70 TV channels in eight languages, while Reliance’s Viacom18 runs 38 channels in eight languages. Both own major streaming platforms – Jio Cinema and Hotstar – and film studios.

• India approves $8.5bn Reliance-Disney entertainment mega-merger

Their influence is further amplified by owning the broadcasting rights to a significant number of India’s sports events, including the hugely popular Indian Premier League cricket tournament.

In a cricket-obsessed nation, this is a prime business position. The merged entity is estimated to control 75-80% of the Indian sports streaming market across both linear TV and digital platforms, according to Elara Capital, a global investment and advisory firm.

Their dominance in this sector, especially cricket, means that Reliance and Disney will command a substantial share of the overall advertisement market. It showcases “strong growth in an industry where sports is a key driver of viewership on both TV and digital platforms”, says Karan Taurani, an analyst at Elara Capital, who calls it a “large media juggernaut”.

Though the merger promises to offer consumers diverse content, critics wonder if it puts too much power in the hands of one player.

“The emergence of a giant in the market… with the next competitor struggling with market share in a single digit, would make any competition agency sit up and take notice,” says KK Sharma, who formerly headed the merger control division of the Competition Commission of India (CCI).

This is why, analysts say, India’s competition watchdog scrutinised the agreement before approving the deal with a caveat that makes it “subject to the compliance of voluntary modifications”.

The companies have not made these “voluntary modifications” public yet, but reports say that the two companies have pledged to not raise advertising rates excessively while streaming cricket matches.

The deal hinges on these assurances, Mr Sharma adds, because the CCI “retains its authority to even divide the enterprise – if the dominant enterprise becomes a threat to competition in the market”.

In an increasingly competitive but expanding Indian streaming market, both Disney and Reliance have a lot to gain from the deal, which allows them a chance to consolidate their pole position.

But experts warn that it may also mean a potential drop in the business earnings of smaller players.

“The Indian market values bundling and is price-sensitive. [Subscribing to] this combined entity can offer a comprehensive package including [access to] web series, movies, sports, original content, and a global catalogue,” says Mr Taurani.

And if the combined company can also leverage the large telecom subscriber base of Reliance Jio, other streaming companies may find it hard to raise prices, he adds.

The Reliance Group has a tried-and-tested business strategy that has allowed it to thrive in the price-sensitive Indian market: it offered cheap mobile data when it launched Jio in 2016, and its JioCinema streaming subscription is available for as little as 29 rupees ($0.35; $0.26) a month.

From this deal too, Reliance chairman Mukesh Ambani has promised “unparalleled content at affordable prices”.

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“Other streaming platforms will be worried about the cost of content and the cost of programming. Will they be forced to drop prices?” says media and entertainment industry specialist Vanita Kohli-Khandekar. She says that the Reliance strategy of offering things at throwaway prices usually “destroys value” for competitors.

Streaming competitors might be easier to handle but the new company will also face stiff challenge from other rivals with deep pockets, such as Google, Meta and Amazon, who have been trying to expand in India.

These global tech giants have “played a pivotal role in expanding India’s video market, now estimated to be worth $8.8bn in revenue for content owners”, according to a report by research firm Media Partners Asia. In 2022-23, Google’s YouTube alone had an 88% share in India’s premium video-on-demand (VOD) market.

So the new Reliance-Disney behemoth will hope to dominate not just news, movies and sports, but also redirect digital advertising revenues from these big firms to its own coffers.

“Now, it’s an even fight,” says Ms Kohli-Khandekar. “Some 80% of digital revenues go to Google and Meta, so you have to have scale, and finally, you have a company that can take on some of the large global majors operating in India.”

But she warns that while the new entity might have scale and heft, it will also need to deliver quality with quantity – if, for instance, the streaming market becomes more dependent on views rather than subscriptions, “programming quality will be good only on one or two apps”, she says.

“That is something I would watch out for.”

On the side of a dirt road in Adré, a key crossing on the Sudan-Chad border, 38-year-old Buthaina sits on the ground, surrounded by other women. Each of them has their children by their side. None seems to have any belongings.

Buthaina and her six children fled el-Fasher, a besieged city in the Darfur region of Sudan, more than 480km (300 miles) away, when food and drink ran out.

“We left with nothing, we just ran for our lives,” Buthaina tells the BBC. “We didn’t want to leave – my children were top of their class at school and we had a good life at home.”

Sudan’s civil war began in April last year when the army (SAF) and the their former paramilitary allies, the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), began a vicious struggle for power, in part over proposals to move towards civilian rule.

The war, which shows no signs of ending, has claimed thousands of lives, displaced millions of people and plunged parts of the country into famine.

And aid agencies warn Sudan could soon experience the worst famine of anywhere in the world unless significantly more help arrives.

The BBC saw the desperation of Sudanese people first-hand when we visited camps in Adré, on the country’s western border, and Port Sudan, which is the country’s main aid hub, 1,600km away on the east coast.

Adré has become a potent symbol of the political failure and humanitarian disaster produced by the current conflict.

Until last month, the crossing had been closed since January with only a few aid lorries making it into the country.

It has since reopened but aid agencies fear the deliveries now getting in could be too little, too late.

Every day, dozens of Sudanese refugees cross the border into Chad – many of them women carrying their hungry and thirsty children on their backs.

The moment they arrive, they rush to a water tank set up by the World Food Programme (WFP), one of many UN agencies that have been trying to raise the alarm over the scale of the conflict’s humanitarian impact.

After reaching Adré, we make our way to a makeshift camp near the border that has been assembled by refugees, with bits of wood, cloth and plastic.

Rain begins to fall.

As we leave, it turns torrential and I ask whether the precarious shelters survive the downpours. “They don’t,” says our guide Ying Hu, associate reporting officer from the UNHCR, another UN agency – for refugees.

“With rainfall comes a whole set of diseases,” he adds, “and the worst part is it also means at times it can take days before we can return here by car, because of the flooding, and that means aid can’t reach here either.”

Famine has been declared in one area – in Zamzam camp in Darfur – but this is because it is one of the few places in war-torn Sudan the UN has reliable information on.

The WFP says it delivered more than 200,000 tonnes of food between April 2023 and July 2024 – far less than needed – but both sides are accused of blocking deliveries into areas under rival control.

The RSF and other militias have been accused of stealing and damaging deliveries, while the SAF has been accused of blocking deliveries into areas under RSF control, including most of Darfur.

The BBC approached the RSF and the SAF about the accusations but has not had a response. Both factions have previously denied impeding the delivery of humanitarian relief.

A single convoy of aid trucks can wait six weeks or more in Port Sudan before being cleared by the SAF for onward travel.

On 15 August, the SAF agreed to allow aid agencies to resume shipments via Adré, which should provide much-needed help to the population in Darfur.

In May, Human Rights Watch said ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity have been committed against ethnic Massalit and non-Arab communities in part of Darfur by the RSF and its Arab allies. The RSF rejects this and says it is not involved in what it calls a “tribal conflict” in the region.

During our tour of Port Sudan we visit a camp for people who have been displaced within Sudan.

Walking from tent to tent, we hear one story after another of loss and horror.

In one, a group of women sit in a circle, some holding their babies tightly. All of them share stories of abuse, rape and torture in RSF prisons.

One of the women, who the BBC is not naming, says she was captured with her two-year-old son as she was fleeing Omdurman, near the capital, Khartoum.

“Every day they would take my son to a room down the hallway, and I would hear him cry as they raped me,” she told me.

“It happened so frequently that I would try to focus on his cry as they did it.”

Also at the camp I meet Safaa, a mother of six who fled Omdurman too.

Asked where her husband is, she says he stayed behind because the RSF targets any man who attempts to escape.

“Every day my children ask me, ‘Where is Baba? When will he come?’ But I have not heard from him since January, when we left, and I don’t know if he is still alive,” she says.

Asked about what future she envisages for her and her children, she says: “What future? Our future is over – there is nothing left. My children are traumatised.

“Every day, my 10-year-old son cries wanting to go home. We went from living in a house, going to school and now we live in a tent.”

The BBC approached the RSF for comment about rapes and other attacks but has not had a response. It has previously said reports that its fighters were responsible for widespread abuses were false but where a small number of isolated incidents had occurred their troops had been held accountable.

An employee for Unicef – the UN children’s agency – showing us around the camp says those who have arrived here are the “lucky ones”.

“They managed to escape the fighting and come here… they have shelter and aid,” he says.

The BBC was visiting Adré and Port Sudan with UN Deputy Secretary General Amina Mohamed and her team of executives, who visited government officials and Sudan’s de-facto president, Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, to urge them to keep the Adré crossing open.

Her aim is to put Sudan back on the agenda for the international community at a time when the world’s attention is focused on conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza.

“There is fatigue because there are so many different crises around the world, but that’s just not good enough,” she says.

“You come here and you meet these mothers and their children and you realise they aren’t just numbers.

“If the international community doesn’t step up, people will die.”

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Telegram founder and CEO Pavel Durov has hit out at French authorities, calling his arrest last week in relation to allegations of insufficient moderation on the messaging app “misguided”.

In his first public statement since he was detained, he denied claims that Telegram is “some sort of anarchic paradise” as “absolutely untrue”.

Mr Durov was arrested on 25 August at an airport north of Paris and has since been charged over suspected complicity in allowing illicit transactions, drug trafficking, fraud and the spread of child sex abuse images to flourish on his site.

In Mr Durov’s statement, which he published on Telegram, he said holding him responsible for crimes committed by third parties on the platform was both a “surprising” and “misguided approach”.

“If a country is unhappy with an Internet service, the established practice is to start a legal action against the service itself,” the Russian-born billionaire, who is also a French national, said.

“Using laws from the pre-smartphone era to charge a CEO with crimes committed by third parties on the platform he manages is a misguided approach.”

“Building technology is hard enough as it is. No innovator will ever build new tools if they know they can be personally held responsible for potential abuse of those tools,” he added.

While he conceded that Telegram was not perfect, he said French authorities had several ways to get in touch with him and with Telegram, and that the app has an official representative in the EU.

“The claims in some media that Telegram is some sort of anarchic paradise are absolutely untrue. We take down millions of harmful posts and channels every day,” he insisted.

Telegram allows groups of up to 200,000 members, which critics have argued makes it easier for misinformation to spread, and for users to share conspiracist, neo-Nazi, paedophilic, or terror-related content.

Recently in the UK, the app has been scrutinised for hosting far-right channels that were instrumental in organising violent disorder in English cities last month.

Telegram did remove some groups, however cybersecurity experts say overall its system of moderating extremist and illegal content is significantly weaker than that of other social media companies and messenger apps.

In his statement on Thursday, Mr Durov admitted that an “abrupt increase” in the number of users on the messaging app – which he put at 950 million – had “caused growing pains that made it easier for criminals to abuse our platform.”

He said he would aim to “significantly improve things in this regard”.

It comes after the BBC learned last week that Telegram has refused to join international programmes aimed at detecting and removing child abuse material online.

Pavel Durov, 39, was born in Russia and now lives in Dubai, where Telegram is based. He holds citizenship of the United Arab Emirates and France.

Telegram, which he founded in 2013, is particularly popular in Russia, Ukraine and former Soviet Union states.

The app was banned in Russia in 2018, after a previous refusal by him to hand over user data. The ban was reversed in 2021.

Telegram is ranked as one of the major social media platforms after Facebook, YouTube, WhatsApp, Instagram, TikTok and Wechat.