Super Typhoon Yagi, the most powerful storm in Asia this year, has killed at least four people after making landfall in northern Vietnam.

The storm hit Hai Phong and Quang Ninh provinces with winds of up to 203 km/h (126 mph) on Saturday morning, the Indo-Pacific Tropical Cyclone Warning Center said.

Strong winds and flying debris have caused damage to buildings and vehicles, with falling trees leading to power outages in the capital, Hanoi.

State media said three people died in the northern Quang Ninh province on Saturday, with another killed in Hai Duong, near Hanoi. Some 78 people are thought to be injured in the region.

In Hai Phong, news agency AFP reports metal roof sheets and commercial sign boards were seen flying across the city.

It comes after Yagi wreaked havoc on the island of Hainan – a popular tourist destination dubbed China’s Hawaii – on Friday.

At least three people have died in China due to the storm, and nearly 100 injured.

The city of Hai Phong, on the coast of northern Vietnam, has a population of two million and has faced the brunt of the storm.

Power outages hit parts of the city – home to multinational factories – on Saturday, while four of the north’s airports have suspended operations for much of the day.

Nearly 50,000 people have been evacuated from coastal towns in Vietnam, with authorities issuing a warning to remain indoors.

Schools have been closed in 12 northern provinces, including Hanoi.

As of 20:00 local time (14:00 BST) on Saturday, Vietnam’s state meteorology agency said the storm was still producing winds of up to 102 km/h (63 mph) as it moved inland.

Satellite imagery shows the eye of the storm was south west of Hanoi by then, and is expected to move into northernmost Laos by Sunday evening.

More than 20cm of rainfall has been recorded in Hai Phong and Quang Ninh since the start of Saturday.

State media published images of motorcyclists in Hanoi sheltering under bridges to escape the heavy rain.

The storm also caused a two-storey house in the capital to collapse – though officials said it had been in the process of being demolished and so had not been inhabited.

Hanoi resident Dang Van Phuong told Reuters: “I’ve never seen such a storm like this. You can’t drive in these winds.”

On Friday, China evacuated some 400,000 people in Hainan island ahead of Yagi’s arrival. Trains, boats and flights were suspended, while schools were shut.

Local media there reported widespread power outages, with about 830,000 households affected. Valuable crops have also been wiped out.

Videos on Chinese social media show windows being ripped out from tower blocks on Hainan.

A super typhoon is equivalent to a Category 5 hurricane.

Yagi is the second strongest typhoon so far this year and has doubled in strength since it hit northern Philippines early this week.

Floods and landslides brought by Yagi killed at least 13 people in northern Philippines, with thousands of people forced to evacuate to safer ground.

Scientists say typhoons and hurricanes are becoming stronger and more frequent with climate change. Warmer ocean waters mean storms pick up more energy, which leads to higher wind speeds.

A warmer atmosphere also holds more moisture, which can lead to more intense rainfall.

The killing of a 15-year-old boy by a classmate last month has fuelled religious tensions in an Indian city, leaving one family grieving and the other shattered by the crime.

On 16 August, Heena* learned her teenage son Zakir*, 15, had been accused of stabbing a classmate at their school in Udaipur, Rajasthan.

Zakir allegedly pulled a knife from his backpack and attacked Devraj, a Hindu boy, who died in the hospital three days later.

The incident sparked a stream of grief and anger as well as a conversation on how to deal with violence in classrooms.

The state police denied any religious angle to the incident. “The students had an argument over notebooks which turned ugly,” investigating officer Chhagan Purohit told the BBC.

But the incident set off a wave of religious violence.

False rumours that Zakir, a Muslim, planned the killing against a Hindu boy went viral on WhatsApp, sparking protests in Udaipur with right-wing Hindu groups torching vehicles and chanting anti-Muslim slogans, leading to a curfew and internet shutdown.

Zakir was taken into custody and sent to a juvenile home, while his father was arrested on the charges of abetment to murder, Mr Purohit said.

The next day, following a familiar pattern in Bharatiya Janata Party-ruled (BJP-ruled) states, bulldozers demolished Heena’s rented home, leaving her and her four daughters homeless.

“My son deserves punishment and I hope he learns to be a better human being,” Heena said. “Why did they have to punish his entire family?”

Though the violence has subsided, Udaipur residents are shaken by how a simple fight escalated. Many now fear their once-integrated Hindu-Muslim neighbourhoods are being torn apart along religious lines.

“Things are getting worse and we can feel it,” one of Heena’s neighbours said on condition of anonymity.

For Devraj’s family, everything else pales in comparison to the pain of losing their son.

“This is the news every parent dreads,” his father Pappu Lal told the BBC.

A cobbler in Kuwait, he found out about the incident while he was thousands of miles away from home. By the time he got home, his son was unconscious. He died without getting a chance to see or speak to his father.

The trauma, Mr Lal said, catapulted his wife and him into debilitating sadness and sparked fury inside him.

“Their house was demolished but we lost our son,” Mr Lal said. “The house can be built again but our child? He will never come back.”

The incident has become a political sore point for the BJP, which governs India and Rajasthan, after some opposition leaders accused the party of fuelling religious tensions for political gains.

Authorities claim that the house where Heena lived was demolished because it was illegally built on forest land. A notice was sent to Heena a day before the action.

But her brother Mukhtar Alam*, who owns the house, questioned how the demolition could take place when only the tenants were alerted. “It was my house and I built it with a lot of hard work. How can they just come and raze it without even telling me?”

He also asked why the other houses in the area were still standing if they were all built on forest land.

Mukesh Saini, an official in Udaipur’s forest department, told the BBC that action would be taken against those structures “at an appropriate time”.

“Right now the atmosphere is not right for that,” he said.

Critics have questioned the timing of the act and say that punishing someone for an alleged crime using laws meant for another makes no sense.

In BJP-governed states like Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, and Assam, bulldozers often swiftly demolish the homes of crime suspects, with officials touting this as evidence of their tough stance on law and order. While victims include Hindu families, opposition leaders and activists argue that these demolitions disproportionately target Muslims, especially following religious violence or protests.

“There is no logic to it except the communal logic of collective punishment and the authority acting as the populist dispenser of tough vigilante justice,” said Asim Ali, a political scientist.

India’s Supreme Court recently criticised the demolition of properties linked to people accused of crimes and said it would issue guidelines around this.

Manna Lal Rawat, the BJP’s Udaipur MP, told BBC Hindi that the demolition was not connected to the stabbing. He also alleged that the stabbing occurred because the accused student “was influenced by extremists” and said he had urged the police to ensure the killing was not a part of a “larger pattern”.

An uneasy calm has prevailed in Udaipur since 2022, when two Muslim men beheaded a Hindu man, filmed the assault and posted it online. They said the act was in response to his support for a politician’s divisive remarks about the Prophet Muhammad.

The killing had sparked massive protests and violence in the city for days.

“The memories of that murder are still alive in the minds of people,” a senior Rajasthan police official, who wanted to stay anonymous, told the BBC. “That’s why a fight between two children turned into riots. Due to politics, the peace of the city has been damaged.”

But Mr Lal cannot understand what prompted the fight in the first place.

He says his son was a good boy – as mischievous as a 15-year-old could be, but also sweet and innocent.

“He never fought with anyone in school. He wanted to become a policeman when he grew up, become the voice of justice,” he said, his eyes on Devraj’s picture in the corner of the living room.

Since Devraj’s death, hundreds of people have been visiting the family’s small house, located in a bustling neighbourhood where Hindus and Muslims have lived peacefully together for years.

But for Mr Lal and his grieving wife, all condolences feel meaningless.

He refuses to talk about the violence or what may have caused it, saying that’s for the administration to answer. “I just want justice for my son”.

Questions have also been raised about the school’s handling of the case.

Mr Lal alleges that no teacher accompanied Devraj to the hospital and that he was taken there on a motorbike by two of his classmates.

The school’s principal, Isha Dharmawat, who has since been suspended for negligence of duty, denied the allegation.

She said she had asked the students to take Devraj on her motorbike to avoid any delay in treatment and that she and four other teachers had also gone to the hospital immediately.

As the city limps back to normalcy, the effects of the incident are most starkly visible at the school where the children studied.

After the stabbing, the school closed for a week and reopened with only one student attending.

The two students who accompanied Devraj to the hospital were questioned by police and soon left the city, citing safety concerns. Parents still sending their children to school are worried about their safety.

“Children should be kept out of politics till they are ready to face the world. This has shaken us all up,” a parent who wanted to remain unnamed said.

Meanwhile, Heena is desperately trying to piece her life back together.

“Half of my belongings are still buried [under the debris of the demolished house]. After the demolition, no one wants to rent me a house,” she said.

Even now, she wonders how her son got the knife or why he allegedly used it on his friend. Was it collapsing mental health, a childish rivalry or something else? She does not know.

But she does know that she will forever be seen as an enabler of the violence and its resulting hatred, and as a terrible parent.

“Everything of mine has been taken away. Now if people want to hang my child, then hang him, what else can I say?”

Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft has completed its journey back to Earth – but the astronauts it was supposed to be carrying remain behind on the International Space Station.

The empty craft travelled in autonomous mode after undocking from the orbiting lab.

The capsule, which suffered technical problems after it launched with Nasa’s Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams on board, was deemed too risky to take the astronauts home.

They will instead return in a SpaceX Crew Dragon, but not until February – extending an eight-day stay on the ISS to eight months.

After Starliner’s return, a Nasa spokesman said he was pleased at the successful landing but wished it could have gone as originally planned.

The flight back lasted six hours. After it re-entered the Earth’s atmosphere parachutes were used to slow its descent at the White Sands Space Harbor in New Mexico on Saturday at 23:01 local time (05:01 GMT).

Nasa said earlier that Butch and Suni were in good spirits and in regular contact with their families.

Steve Stich, Nasa’s commercial crew programme manager, said both astronauts were passionate about their jobs.

“They understand the importance now of moving on and… getting the vehicle back safely.”

This was the first test flight for Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft with astronauts on board.

But it was plagued with problems soon after it blasted off from Cape Canaveral in Florida on 5 June.

The capsule experienced leaks of helium, which pushes fuel into the propulsion system, and several of its thrusters did not work properly.

Engineers at Boeing and Nasa spent months trying to understand these technical issues, but in late August the US space agency decided that Starliner was not safe enough to bring the astronauts home.

In a news briefing following the landing, Steve Stich said: “From a human perspective, all of us feel happy about the successful landing, but then there’s a piece of us – all of us – that wish it would have been the way we had planned it.

“We had planned to have the mission land with Butch and Suni on board.”

He added there was “clearly work to do”, and that it would take “a little time” to determine what will come next.

The briefing panel consisted only of Nasa officials. Missing, were two Boeing representatives who were supposed to be present.

When quizzed on the absence, Nasa official Joel Montalbano said Boeing decided to “defer to Nasa” to represent the mission.

Instead, Boeing released a statement “to recognize the work the Starliner teams did to ensure a successful and safe undocking, deorbit, re-entry and landing”.

It said Boeing will “review the data and determine the next steps” forward for the programme.

Mr Stich previously admitted there was “tension in the room” between Boeing and Nasa while the decision not to bring the astronauts home on Starliner was being made, with Boeing arguing that their spacecraft could safely return with the pair on board.

“The Nasa team, due to the uncertainty and the modelling, could not get comfortable with that,” he said.

The plan to use rival company SpaceX has brought with it a significant delay to the astronauts’ return.

The extra time is to allow SpaceX to launch its next vehicle, with lift off scheduled for the end of September.

It was supposed to have four astronauts on board, but instead it will travel with two. This leaves room for Butch and Suni to join them in the vehicle to return to Earth at the end of its planned stay next February.

Dana Weigel, manager of the International Space Station, said that the astronauts were adapting well to their extended mission. Both have previously completed two long-duration stays in space.

She said the pair were undertaking the exercise programmes needed to stay healthy in the weightless environment.

And she added that they now had all of the gear they needed for their unplanned eight-month stay.

“When we first sent them up, they were borrowing a lot of our generic clothing that we have on board, and we have now switched some of those things out,” she said.

She explained that a resupply mission in July had delivered “specific crew preference items” that the pair had requested.

“So they actually have all of the standard expedition gear at this point that any other crew member would be able to select. And we’ve got another cargo vehicle coming up, so we’ll send up anything else that they need for the back-end half of their mission on that flight.”

The issues with Starliner have no doubt been a blow to Boeing, which is suffering from financial losses as it struggles to repair its reputation following recent in-flight incidents and two fatal accidents five years ago.

After so many problems, a trouble-free landing will be a welcome outcome for the company – and for Nasa.

”We’ll go through a couple months of post-flight analysis,” said Steve Stich.

“There are teams starting to look at what we do to get the vehicle fully certified in the future.”

The US space agency has emphasised its commitment to Boeing’s spacecraft – having two American companies to take astronauts to space has been a key goal for Nasa for some time.

When their space shuttle fleet was retired in 2011, the US spent a decade relying solely on Russia’s Soyuz spacecraft to transport its crew and cargo – a situation Nasa admitted was far from ideal.

So in 2014, Boeing and SpaceX were awarded contracts to provide commercial space flights for Nasa astronauts – Boeing’s was worth $4.2bn (£3.2bn) while SpaceX received $2.6bn (£2bn).

So far SpaceX has sent nine crewed flights to space for Nasa, as well as some commercial missions, but this was Boeing’s first attempt at a crewed mission.

Boeing’s Starliner had already been delayed for several years because of setbacks in the spacecraft’s development and two previous uncrewed flights in 2019 and 2022 also suffered technical problems.

But Nasa administrator Bill Nelson says he is 100% certain it would fly with a crew onboard again.

The United Nations has called for a “full investigation” into the killing of a US-Turkish woman in the occupied West Bank during a protest on Friday.

Local media reported that Aysenur Ezgi Eygi, 26, was shot dead by Israeli forces as she took part in a weekly protest against Jewish settlement expansion in the town of Beita near Nablus.

Israel’s military said it was “looking into reports that a foreign national was killed as a result of shots fired in the area”.

Ms Eygi’s family said in a statement they were in shock and grief that the loving and “fiercely passionate human rights activist” was gone.

The family said video showed she was killed by a bullet from an Israeli military shooter and called for the US to investigate.

The US has urged Israel to investigate the incident. Sean Savett, spokesman for the White House’s National Security Council, said Washington was “deeply disturbed by the tragic death of an American citizen”.

“We have reached out to the government of Israel to ask for more information and request an investigation into the incident,” Mr Savett said.

In a statement, Ms Eygi’s family said that given the circumstances, an Israeli investigation “is not adequate” and called on the US to conduct an independent investigation and “ensure full accountability for the guilty parties”.

Stéphane Dujarric, the spokesman for the UN secretary general, said: “We would want to see a full investigation of the circumstances and that people should be held accountable.”

Civilians, he added, “must be protected at all times”.

Footage from the scene shortly after the shooting shows medics rushing Ms Eygi into an ambulance.

Jewish-Israeli activist Jonathan Pollak, who was at the protest, told BBC World Service’s Newshour programme he had seen “soldiers on the rooftop aiming”.

He said he had heard two separate shots, “with like a second or two distance between them”.

“I heard someone calling my name, saying in English, ‘Help us. We need help. We need help.’ I ran towards them,” he said.

He said he had then seen Ms Eygi “lying on the ground underneath an olive tree, bleeding to death from her head”.

“I put my hand behind her back to try and stop the bleeding,” he said. “I looked up, there was a clear line of sight between the soldiers and where we were. I took her pulse, and it was very, very weak.”

He added that Friday’s demonstration had been Ms Eygi’s first time attending a protest with the International Solidarity Movement, a pro-Palestinian group.

The dual-national was rushed to a hospital in Nablus and later pronounced dead.

Dr Fouad Nafaa, head of Rafidia Hospital where Ms Eygi was admitted, confirmed that a US citizen in her mid-20s had died from a “gunshot in the head”.

In a statement, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said: “During Israeli security forces activity adjacent to the area of Beita, the forces responded with fire toward a main instigator of violent activity who hurled rocks at the forces and posed a threat to them.

“The IDF is looking into reports that a foreign national was killed as a result of shots fired in the area. The details of the incident and the circumstances in which she was hit are under review.”

In his interview with the BBC, Jonathan Pollak was asked about the IDF’s statement, where the Israeli military said security forces had responded to stone-throwing.

Mr Pollak said there had been clashes but he felt that soldiers had been “under no threat”.

There had been “no stone throwing” where she had been, he said.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken deplored the “tragic loss”, while Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan branded the Israeli action “barbaric”.

Ms Eygi’s family said they were wrestling with the reality that she was gone.

“Like the olive tree she lay beneath where she took her last breaths, Aysenur was strong, beautiful, and nourishing. Her presence in our lives was taken needlessly, unlawfully, and violently by the Israeli military,” the family said.

Her family called her a “loving daughter, sister, partner, and aunt” who was “gentle, brave, silly, supportive, and a ray of sunshine” and “lived a life of caring for those in need with action”.

Ms Eygi was born in Antalya, as reported by Turkish media.

She graduated three months ago from the University of Washington in Seattle, where she studied psychology and Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures, her family said. She was active in campus student-led protests and felt compelled to travel to the West Bank to “stand in solidarity with Palestinian civilians”.

The University of Washington’s president, Ana Mari Cauce, described news of Ms Eygi’s death as “awful”, adding that the former student was a “positive influence” on other students.

Israeli forces withdrew from Jenin city and its refugee camp in the occupied West Bank on Friday, following a major nine-day operation there.

The Palestinian health ministry says at least 36 Palestinians were killed – 21 from Jenin governorate – in that time. Most of the dead have been claimed by armed groups as members, but the ministry says children are also among those killed.

In the past 50 years, Israel has built settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, where more than 700,000 Jews now live.

Settlements are held to be illegal under international law – that is the position of the UN Security Council and the UK government, among others – although Israel rejects this.

Tens of thousands of people are protesting across France against the nomination of right-wing Michel Barnier as the new prime minister, after an inconclusive election in which the left won the largest number of seats.

Demonstrations are underway in cities including Paris, Marseille, Nantes, Nice and Starsbourg.

The protests were called by trade unions and left-wing political parties, who are furious that their own candidate for prime minister was rejected by President Emmanuel Macron.

Mr Barnier, the EU’s former Brexit negotiator, said he is open to forming a government with politicians across the political spectrum, including the left.

• Michel Barnier’s journey from Mr Brexit to French PM
• Monsieur Brexit buys Macron time, but French deadlock remains

Jean-Luc Mélenchon, a veteran firebrand from the radical France Unbowed party, called for the “most powerful mobilisation possible” in national marches.

Around 130 protests are being held, with the biggest setting out from central Paris on Saturday afternoon.

Mr Mélenchon joined the Paris protest, giving a speech on the back of a float emblazoned with the slogan: “For democracy, stop Macron’s coup”.

The demonstrators are also using slogans such as “denial of democracy” and “stolen election”.

Parties on the left are angry that their own candidate for prime minister, Lucie Castets, was rejected by Mr Macron, who said she had no chance of surviving a vote of confidence in the National Assembly.

Mr Barnier may be able to survive a confidence vote because the far right, which also won a large number of seats, has said it won’t automatically vote against him.

That has led to criticism that his government will be dependent on the far right.

“We have a prime minister completely dependent on National Rally,” Ms Castets said.

Mr Barnier spent Saturday afternoon visiting a children’s hospital in Paris, where he highlighted the importance of public services, but told healthcare workers his government “is not going to perform miracles”, local broadcaster BFMTV reported.

Against the backdrop of the protests, the new PM is focussed on forming a new government.

After talks with the leaders of the right-wing Republicans and the president’s centrist Ensemble group, he said discussions were going very well and were “full of energy”.

Some on the left have blamed themselves for ending up with Mr Barnier as prime minister.

Socialist Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo pointed out that the president had considered former Socialist prime minister, Bernard Cazeneuve, for the job but that he had been turned down by his own party.

Another Socialist Mayor, Karim Bouamrane, blamed intransigence from other parts of the left alliance: “The path they chose was 100% or nothing – and here we are with nothing.”

The international world order is “under threat in a way we haven’t seen since the Cold War”, the heads of the UK and US foreign intelligence services have warned.

The chiefs of MI6 and the CIA also said both countries stand together in “resisting an assertive Russia and Putin’s war of aggression in Ukraine”.

In a first-ever joint article, Sir Richard Moore and William Burns wrote in the Financial Times that they saw the war in Ukraine coming “and were able to warn the international community”, in part by declassifying secrets to help Kyiv.

And they said there was work being done to “disrupt the reckless campaign of sabotage” across Europe by Russia, push for de-escalation in the Israel-Gaza war, and counterterrorism to thwart the resurgent Islamic State (IS).

In the FT op-ed, they wrote: “There is no question that the international world order – the balanced system that has led to relative peace and stability and delivered rising living standards, opportunities and prosperity – is under threat in a way we haven’t seen since the Cold War.”

“Successfully combating this risk” is at the foundation of the special relationship between the UK and US, they added.

One of the “unprecedented array of threats” faced by both countries is the war in Ukraine, which is in its third year after Russia’s invasion in February 2022.

Sir Richard and Mr Burns said “staying the course is more vital than ever” when it comes to supporting Ukraine, adding Russian President Vladimir Putin “will not succeed”.

The conflict has shown how technology can alter the course of war, and highlighted the need to “adapt, experiment and innovate”, they said.

They continued: “Beyond Ukraine, we continue to work together to disrupt the reckless campaign of sabotage across Europe being waged by Russian intelligence, and its cynical use of technology to spread lies and disinformation designed to drive wedges between us.”

The pair also made their first public speaking appearance together at the FT Weekend Festival at London’s Kenwood House on Saturday.

Mr Burns told attendees he saw no evidence Mr Putin’s grip on power was weakening, while Sir Richard added: “Don’t ever confuse a tight grip with a stable grip.”

The fact Russian intelligence services are using criminal elements for sabotage operations in Europe is a sign they are “a bit desperate”, said the MI6 chief.

Both foreign intelligence services see the rise of China as the main intelligence and geopolitical challenge of the century. They have reorganised their services “to reflect that priority”, the pair said in their op-ed.

They also said they have pushed “hard” for restraint and de-escalation in the Middle East, and have been working “ceaselessly” to secure a ceasefire and hostage deal.

Mr Burns, who has been central to ceasefire efforts, indicated at the FT event there may be a more detailed proposal in the coming days.

“This is ultimately a question of political will” he said, adding he “profoundly” hopes leaders on both sides will do a deal.

It is 11 months since Hamas attacked southern Israel on 7 October, killing about 1,200 people and taking another 251 hostage.

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

US health officials have confirmed a human case of bird flu in a patient that had no immediately known animal exposure.

The patient, in the state of Missouri, was treated in hospital and has since recovered, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said.

It is the 14th human case of bird flu in the US in 2024 and the first without a known occupational exposure to infected animals, according to the CDC.

The agency said that, based on their current data, the risk to the general public remains low.

Bird flu is a viral disease that primarily affects birds and other animals. Human infections are rare.

Previous US cases have been traced back to exposure to infected poultry or cattle, but the Missouri patient marks “the first case of H5 without a known occupational exposure to sick or infected animals,” the CDC said in a statement on Friday.

The Missouri case was detected through routine flu season surveillance. The patient had underlying medical conditions, and received flu antiviral medications.

Bird flu has been on the rise among cows in the US this year. An outbreak was first reported in March, and cattle in 14 states had been affected as of 3 September, according to the CDC.

While outbreaks of bird flu have not been reported in Missouri’s cattle, it has been reported in poultry this year and in wild birds in the past, health officials said.

US health officials discovered a human case of bird flu in March 2024, which was identified after an exposure to dairy cows that were potentially infected.

Bird flu was first detected in China in the 1990s, and has since spread across every continent including Antarctica. World health officials believe the current risk to humans is low, but have actively monitored the disease for years.

It has disease has affected wildlife worldwide, infecting species as varied as sea lions, seals and bears.

Murder charges brought against the father of a US school shooter have laid down a new marker on the issue of parental responsibility.

Colin Gray bought his son Colt an AR-style rifle for Christmas last year, even though the boy had been questioned by police just seven months earlier about online threats to commit a school shooting.

Investigators suspect the 14-year-old may have used that same weapon on Wednesday when he shot dead four people and wounded nine others at Apalachee High School in Winder, Georgia.

The teen has since been charged with murder and – in an unprecedented move – so too has his dad.

Mr Gray, 54, faces two counts of second-degree murder, four counts of involuntary manslaughter and eight counts of cruelty to children.

Together, the charges carry a maximum penalty of 180 years in prison.

The murder counts against Mr Gray stem from him “knowingly allowing his son to possess a weapon”, according to Chris Hosey, director of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.

The pair of charges apply to the two teenagers killed in Wednesday’s rampage: Christian Angulo and Mason Schermerhorn, both 14.

Two Apalachee teachers – Richard Aspinwall, 39, and Cristina Irimie, 53 – also died in the attack.

The charges Mr Gray faces are second-degree and that may be due to specific wording in Georgia law.

According to the state’s criminal code, a person commits second-degree murder “when, in the commission of cruelty to children in the second degree, he or she causes the death of another human being irrespective of malice”.

With prosecutors bringing these charges barely more than 24 hours after the shooting, experts caution the facts are still emerging, and it remains unclear what legal arguments will be directed at Mr Gray.

“There’s a connection between the deaths and ‘the commission of cruelty to children,'” said Evan Bernick, an associate law professor at Northern Illinois University.

“But is the cruelty directly arising from the shooting, or is it cruelty to his son that may have led [the boy] to commit the shooting? We just don’t know yet.”

The son will be tried as an adult, meaning that the criminal justice system will treat his homicide prosecution as that of somebody fully responsible for their own actions.

But that does not mean his father will escape punishment, Prof Bernick told the BBC.

The crux of the argument will be not that Colin Gray wanted the shooting to happen, but that he “failed to intervene, and his failure to intervene was negligent in ways that justify treating him as part of the homicide”.

Across the US, there are laws on the books to punish parents or guardians for everything from academic truancy and underage driving to shoplifting and vandalism.

But prosecutors in the state of Michigan expanded the reach of such statutes earlier this year when they secured dual convictions against the parents of another teen gunman.

James and Jennifer Crumbley were found guilty of involuntary manslaughter and sentenced to at least 10 years in prison for how their criminal negligence as parents contributed to their son Ethan, 14, killing four of his classmates in 2018.

Thursday’s decision to charge the father with murder – a far more severe charge – could again test the legal bounds of parental responsibility.

Eve Brank, a psychology professor at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, researches how the law intervenes and sometimes interferes with family decision-making.

In her view, the emerging concept of punishing parents after school shootings reflects broader frustration around US gun violence and, in the absence of regulatory reform, the inability to curb the country’s unrelenting series of firearm incidents.

“It’s not like we’ve created a bunch of new laws to address these issues. They’re just being used, somewhat creatively, to address the issue,” she said.

“In terms of what the research shows, most people would agree there are a lot of influences on how children behave, not just their parents.”

But she noted that prosecutors in Georgia may be privy to information from the investigation not yet publicly available and may believe they can successfully argue that, like the Crumbleys before him, Colin Gray’s actions were particularly egregious.

Tim Carey, a law and policy adviser at the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions, argues that charging parents is also a reflection on weak gun safety policies.

Georgia has been “very apprehensive to gun violence prevention policies”, he said, and prosecutors in such states may “feel confined to trying to bring a sense of justice or retribution after the fact, in part because they couldn’t prevent” such a tragedy.

Some legal scholars worry that expanding the toolkit prosecutors can use after a shooting could have unintended consequences.

“We know we have a problem of violence and guns in our society,” said Ekow Yankah, a law and philosophy professor at the University of Michigan.

“And instead of tackling it with systemic and regulatory powers, we soothe ourselves with these kind of extraordinary prosecutions.”

But, Prof Yankah warns, prosecutors are now armed with “a hammer” they can bring down on others, including poor families from minority groups and single parents.

“School shootings are highly visible… but I’m worried about the cases that won’t make the news,” he said.

And while parents are now at greater risk of being penalised for their children’s violent actions, less progress has been made on the widespread access to firearms or on the availability of mental health resources for struggling kids.

“Our default response to very deep social problems in the United States is to bring in the apparatus of criminal law,” said Prof Bernick.

Former US Vice-President and lifelong Republican Dick Cheney has confirmed he will vote for the Democrats’ Kamala Harris in November’s presidential election.

Mr Cheney, seen as an influential figure during the presidency of George W Bush, issued a statement saying there had “never been an individual who is a greater threat to our republic than Donald Trump”, the current Republican candidate.

His daughter, former Republican lawmaker Liz Cheney, had told an audience in Texas earlier that her father planned to back the Democratic nominee.

“He [Trump] tried to steal the last election using lies and violence to keep himself in power after the voters had rejected him,” said Mr Cheney. “He can never be trusted with power again.”

“As citizens, we each have a duty to put country above partisanship to defend our constitution,” he added. “That is why I will be casting my vote for Vice-President Kamala Harris.”

Mr Cheney’s remarks were welcomed by the Harris camp.

“The vice-president is proud to have the support of Vice-President Cheney, and deeply respects his courage to put country over party,” said campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon.

Mr Cheney joins a growing list of Republicans who have expressed concern about the candidacy of Donald Trump.

His daughter, Liz Cheney, has already given her backing to Vice-President Harris.

She served on the House select committee investigating the 6 January Capitol riots, and was one of 10 Republicans to vote to impeach former President Trump after the incident.

Ms Cheney lost her seat in Congress in 2022 to a Trump-backed candidate.

Taking to social media following Mr Cheney’s statement, Trump called the former vice-president an “irrelevant RINO” – an acronym which stands for “Republican in name only”.

He also described Mr Cheney as the “King of Endless, Nonsensical Wars” – alluding to his role in the Iraq War.

Pulling power. That is what China still has across Africa.

While the influence of others on the continent is questioned – for instance, France and the rest of the EU are being shunned by the Sahelian military juntas, and Russia’s mercenary-security “offer” is regarded with deep mistrust by pro-Western African governments – China has navigated a middle way.

Delegations from more than 50 states from across the African continent decided it was worth making the trip to Beijing for the latest China-Africa summit – known as the Forum on China-Africa Co-operation (Focac) – this week.

Dozens of leaders turned up – as well as UN chief António Guterres.

Alongside veterans such as Congo-Brazzaville strongman Denis Sassou-Nguesso, this was a first such gathering for the new Senegalese head of state Bassirou Diomaye Faye – rewarded with a front-row place next to President Xi Jinping in a family photo of leaders and their spouses.

For African governments resentful of the pressure to take sides in international disputes, China now appears as a refreshingly reliable partner, ready to collaborate without discrimination both with the allies of Moscow and with civilian-ruled states that are closer to Europe and the US.

Beijing certainly strikes a hard bargain in pursuit of its economic self-interest and need for natural raw materials, in return for development support, especially the construction of heavy infrastructure.

It is regularly accused of inducing African countries to take on too much debt, and was initially slow to join the international effort to alleviate the crushing repayment burden weighing upon some countries.

Even now, it refuses to grant outright debt cancellations.

Complaints that China reserves too many skilled construction roles for its own workers, at the expense of training Africans, are commonplace. The growing presence of Chinese traders has triggered resentments among some traditionally predominant commercial communities.

But for many African governments these are quibbles.

What they appreciate in an increasingly polarised world is Beijing’s non-partisan readiness to remain strongly engaged pretty much everywhere, without political strings.

Of course, it is the Chinese construction of big-ticket transport projects, which international development institutions and Western commercial investors so often treat with caution, that attracts the most attention.

The July 2023 coup in Niger has not dissuaded the Chinese from completing a 2,000km (1,200-mile) pipeline to deliver the country’s growing oil output to an export terminal in Benin.

In Guinea, also under military rule, the China-based Winning Consortium is well advanced in the construction of a 600km railway to the coast. This will run from one of the world’s largest iron ore deposits at Simandou, a scheme for which successive Guinean governments had struggled to secure international donor support.

And this week’s Focac summit brought a continuation of this strategy, with the announcement of a further 360bn yuan ($50.7bn; £36.6bn) in funding, for the next three years.

But this time there is a difference, with a heavy summit focus on the green energy transition, including investment in manufacturing in Africa, particularly electric vehicles.

That is important in both practical and symbolic terms for a continent that has famously lagged far behind Asia in developing sophisticated industries.

But the summit also brought promises of support for other types of green projects, with Mr Xi declaring a readiness to launch 30 clean energy projects and to co-operate in the nuclear sector.

That latter hint touches on a sore point for African commentators resentful of the fact that France has for decades mined Niger’s uranium to supply its own nuclear power sector without proposing generation projects for West Africa.

China is also active in the Nigerien uranium mining sector.

But amid the intensely complex technical and security challenges of the nuclear sector, it remains to be seen whether the Chinese president’s promise will really amount to more than comforting warm words.

Moreover, the Focac summit skated around some of the more sensitive and contentious environmental issues – such as the regular accusations that big Chinese vessels engage in over-fishing, leaving little for the local artisanal boats to catch.

Tactfully, Sierra Leone’s Fisheries Minister Princess Dugba preferred to focus on praising the government there for its construction of a new fishing port.

Meanwhile Mr Xi sought to perpetuate China’s self-presentation as a fellow member of the “global south”, pointing out that his country and Africa together account for a third of the world’s population.

The summit adopted a Beijing Declaration on building “a shared future in the new era” and the Beijing Action Plan for 2025-2027.

Calling on Chinese contractors to return to Africa now that disruptive Covid-era curbs were gone, Mr Xi talked of a tripling of infrastructure schemes, the creation of one million jobs and co-operation across a range of sectors.

But it is not entirely clear what the promised 360bn yuan in financing – an apparent bid to promote the international profile of the Chinese currency – will amount to in concrete terms.

The president said that 210bn yuan ($29.6bn) would be provided through credit lines, while there would be 70bn yuan ($9.9bn) in business investments.

He also announced $280m in military and food aid – but for an entire continent that is a marginal sum, in contrast to the big-budget economic funding.

It remains to be seen how that new financing is distributed – and whether it is managed in a way that avoids pushing some countries back into unsustainable debt.

Over the past 10-15 years Chinese lending to African countries desperate to press forward with the construction of infrastructure was widely blamed for helping to push them back into a debt crisis barely two decades after they benefitted from international debt-forgiveness schemes.

In 2016, the peak year, $30bn in Chinese lending to Africa was announced.

Projects were often financed by China Eximbank on terms that were usually kept confidential but were almost certainly much more expensive than funding from the soft credit windows of institutions like the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the African Development Bank, or the grant aid provided by many Western government donors.

However, defenders of China’s approach could quite reasonably point out that it was frequently willing to finance and build projects, and accept levels of risk, in circumstances where other partners were not willing to tread or commit resources on the necessary scale.

And to some extent, a natural division of labour evolved, where China funded and built heavy infrastructure, while Western donors and the big development institutions financed the equally essential “soft” investments – in health and education, skills training, government systems, food security, rural resilience and so on.

As the scale of the new financial pressures weighing upon many countries became clear, particularly amid the global economic slowdown caused by the pandemic, the G20 countries set up the Common Framework, to get indebted countries back on to a sustainable track.

China did join in the effort to restructure developing countries’ repayment burdens. But critics accused it of not doing enough.

Now, several years on, this week’s Focac summit suggests the picture may be poised for a further evolution.

Just as, two decades ago, China began to fill a role in infrastructure development that Africa’s traditional donors could no longer adequately fill, Beijing now has ambitions to become a key partner for the continent in new hi-tech industry and green technology on a scale that many European and North American companies are unwilling or unable to contemplate.

While Western investment in Africa, particularly in sub-Saharan countries, continues to be dominated largely by mining, oil, gas and agriculture, and Russia focuses on security services for favoured regimes, Beijing talks of a broader economic vision.

However, the question is whether, beyond Mr Xi’s rhetoric, this will amount to a real diversification into new sectors such as green industry.

Beyond a few niche prestige projects – will the traditional focus on big infrastructure continue to predominate?

It is not yet clear if the China-Africa relationship is poised for a fundamental change.

• ‘No preaching’ and other tactics as China woos African leaders
• China’s mission to win African hearts with satellite TV
• Kenya, China and a railway to nowhere
• The fishy business of a Chinese factory in The Gambia

For many people in the UK this week, school has started again.

But for women and girls in Afghanistan, there is still a ban from secondary school classrooms, and much of public life, by the Taliban.

Mah, 22, fled from the country in August 2021 when the group swept into the capital Kabul.

She is now getting an education in the UK, starting a GCSE in English this week and she tells BBC Newsbeat: “I am happy for myself. I am safe. I have freedom. I am free.”

“But at the same time, my friends in Afghanistan can’t do anything,” she adds.

In the three years since the Taliban took control, restrictions on women’s lives have increased.

Women and girls over 12 are banned from schools, and prevented from sitting most university entrance exams. There are also restrictions in the work they can do, with beauty salons being closed, as well as being not being able to go to parks, gyms and sport clubs.

“I don’t put my picture on [Whatsapp or Instagram] stories when I’m happy, when I go out with friends or when I’m in college,” Mah says.

“Because I don’t want my friends [back home] to feel like: ‘Oh she’s in the UK now – she has freedom’.”

Mah, who is in Cardiff, hopes a GCSE in English is the start to eventually becoming a midwife in Wales.

“It’s hard for me because I can go to college here and I can go to work.

“But at the same time, back home, my friends who are the same age, can’t leave the house.”

The Taliban has said its ban is down to religious issues.

They have repeatedly promised women would be readmitted once the issues were sorted – including making sure the curriculum was “Islamic”.

But, there has since been no movement on the ban, and Afghanistan is the only country with such restrictions.

Mah’s journey to education in Cardiff was far from easy.

During the Taliban takeover, she says she fled from Helmand Province to Kandahar and then to Kabul. She woke up in the middle of the night, three days after arriving in the capital city, to find the Taliban on her street.

“If I stayed in Afghanistan, maybe they would kill me, maybe they would marry me.

“I called my mum and said ‘Mum, I’m going.’ She said, ‘where are you going?’

“I said, ‘I don’t know’.”

Mah eventually arrived in the UK, along with other refugees who were being welcomed into the country.

“We came without anything. I didn’t say [a proper] goodbye to my mum. I didn’t even hug her. I will never forget this.

“It’s not safe now, but Afghanistan is the place I grew up and, went to school. I can’t forget the country, and I miss everything about it.”

Mah received support from one of the largest youth organisations, the Urdd, who were providing help in the Welsh capital.

Its chief executive, Sian Lewis, says some people who fled to Wales and received an education are bilingual in Welsh now.

“They were educated here in the Urdd to start off with and a number went to live in different parts of Wales.

“It’s opened so many doors for them,” she says.

When Mah came to the UK, she wasn’t able to speak English.

“It was so hard. I didn’t know anybody. Everything was new.”

But three years on, Mah has spoken to BBC Newsbeat in an English interview which lasted over 20 minutes, and is also learning Welsh.

“People here should say ‘thank God’ everyday.

“Women have rights. People here have whatever they want open to them, and they are safe. They should be happy. They are so lucky.”

Another person who has left Afghanistan is 17-year-old Aqdas.

She’s now in the US with a fully funded scholarship to a college in New Mexico, more than 12,000 miles away from her home.

She recalls the day the Taliban took Kabul.

“I remember that I did not know what to do any more.

“Will they take my rights away? Will I experience violence just like my mother did 20 years ago?

“I noticed that my mum was crying and she placed her hand on my shoulder, telling me that, she couldn’t continue her education because of the Taliban.”

But she told Aqdas that she shouldn’t “let the Taliban or your limitations write the scripts for your life”.

After that, Aqdas continued education online, in secret, with the help of the Herat online school.

“I never gave up on my studying. Whether it was online or finding another way to continue.”

It was a long, and often chaotic, journey for her as well. When she got her scholarship to the USA, she had to get a visa but the embassy was shut in Afghanistan.

She says she then went to Pakistan with her father, using a medical visa because as a female, she did not have permission to leave the country.

Aqdas has now started classes but says there are other things that are often overlooked in Afghanistan.

“Lots of people think the only problem in Afghanistan is just the girls’ education. There are other issues like mental health.

“Girls in Afghanistan are going through depression and anxiety every day and there is no help.”

The UK Government has told BBC Newsbeat that it strongly condemns the ban on women heading to the classroom and university, and that it urgently calls on the Taliban to “reverse these decisions and to protect Afghan girls’ rights”.

Newsbeat has approached the Taliban to comment on concerns that women and girls are banned from education – but have received nothing back.

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

Sir Elton John has made his first public appearance at the Toronto International Film Festival, days after he revealed an eye infection had left him with limited vision.

The 77-year-old smiled and waved at the cameras as he arrived with his husband David Furnish on Friday.

The music legend was in the Canadian city for the world premiere of documentary film Elton John: Never Too Late.

His appearance comes days after Sir Elton revealed he picked up an eye infection over summer leaving him with only limited vision in one eye.

The documentary, billed as a portrait of Sir Elton, looks back on his life his farewell show at Los Angeles’ Dodger Stadium in 2022. It will premiere on Disney+ in December.

On Tuesday Sir Elton told his nearly five million followers on Instagram: “Over the summer, I’ve been dealing with a severe eye infection that has unfortunately left me with only limited vision in one eye.

“I am healing, but it’s an extremely slow process and it will take some time before sight returns to the impacted eye.

“I am so grateful for the excellent team of doctors and nurses and my family, who have taken such good care of me over the last several weeks.

“I have been quietly spending the summer recuperating at home, and am feeling positive about the progress I have made in my healing and recovery thus far.”

Toronto International Film Festival also saw Jennifer Lopez attend the world premiere of Unstoppable, a biographical sports film she stars in.

It is produced by Oscar-winners Matt Damon and Lopez’s husband Ben Affleck who she is divorcing after two years of marriage. He did not attend.

The estranged couple are yet to comment on news of their divorce.

“Think of it as cricket cake, like fish cake,” the chef said as he urged the man in the buffet line to try the steaming, spicy laksa – a coconut noodle broth – full of “textured cricket protein”.

Next to it was a plate of chilli crickets, the bug version of a beloved Singaporean dish – stir-fried mud crabs doused in a rich, sweet chilli sauce.

It looked like any other buffet, except for the main ingredient in every dish: crickets.

The line included a woman who gingerly scooped stir-fried Korean glass noodles topped with minced crickets onto her plate, and a man who wouldn’t stop grilling the young chef.

You would have expected the diners to snap up the feast. After all, they were among more than 600 scientists, entrepreneurs and environmentalists from around the world who had descended on Singapore as part of a mission to make insects delicious. The name of the conference said it all – Insects to Feed the World.

And yet more of them were drawn to the buffet next to the insect-laden spread. It was the usual fare, some would have argued: wild-caught barramundi infused with lemongrass and lime, grilled sirloin steak with onion marmalade, a coconut vegetable curry.

Some two billion people, about a quarter of the world’s population, already eat insects as part of their everyday diet, according to the United Nations.

More people should join them, according to a growing tribe of bug advocates who champion insects as a healthy and green choice. But is the prospect of saving the planet enough to get people to sample their top creepy crawlies?

“We have to focus on making them delicious,” said New York-based chef Joseph Yoon, who designed the cricket-laced menu for the conference, along with Singaporean chef Nicholas Low. The event had permission to use only crickets.

“The idea that insects are sustainable, dense with nutrients, can address food security, and so on,” is not enough to make them palatable, let alone appetising, he added.

Studies have found that just six crickets met a person’s daily protein needs. And rearing them required less water and land, compared with livestock.

Some countries have given insect diets a nudge, if not a push. Singapore recently approved 16 types of bugs, including crickets, silkworms, grasshoppers and honey bees, as food.

It is among a handful of countries, including the European Union, Australia, New Zealand, South Korea and Thailand, that are regulating what is still an incipient edible insects industry. Estimates vary from $400m to $1.4bn (£303m to £1.06bn).

Enter chefs like Nicholas Low who have had to find ways to “break down” insects to cook with them because people are not always up for trying them “in their original form”.

For the conference, Mr Low reinvented the popular laksa when he replaced the usual fish cake with patties made of minced cricket.

He said it also took some work to mask the earthy smell of the insects. Dishes with “strong flavours”, like laksa, were ideal because the delights of the original recipe distracted people from the crushed bugs.

Mr Low said crickets left little room for him to experiment. Usually deep-fried for a satisfying crunch, or ground to a fine powder, they were unlike meats, which made for versatile cooking, from braises to barbecue.

He could not imagine cooking with crickets every day: “I’m more likely to cook it as a special dish that is part of a larger menu.”

Since Singapore approved cooking with bugs, some restaurants have been trying their hand at it. A seafood spot has taken to sprinkling crickets on their satays and squid ink pastas, or serving them on the side of a fish head curry.

Of course there are others who have been more committed to the challenge. Tokyo-based Takeo Cafe has been serving customers insects for the past 10 years.

The menu includes a salad with twin Madagascar hissing cockroaches nestling on a bed of leaves and cherry tomatoes, a generous scoop of ice cream with three tiny grasshoppers perched on it and even a cocktail with spirits made from silkworm poo.

“What’s most important is [the customer’s] curiosity,” said Saeki Shinjiro, Takeo’s chief sustainability officer.

What about the environment? “Customers are not concerned so much,” he said.

Just to be on the safe side, Takeo also has a bug-free menu. “When designing the menu, we keep in mind not to discriminate against people who do not eat insects… Some customers are merely here to accompany their friends,” Mr Shinjiro said.

“We do not want such people to feel uncomfortable. There is no need to eat insects forcibly.”

It hasn’t always been this way, though. For centuries, insects have been a valued food source in different parts of the world.

In Japan grasshoppers, silkworms, and wasps were traditionally eaten in land-locked areas where meat and fish were scarce. The practice resurfaced during food shortages in World War Two, Takeo’s manager Michiko Miura said.

Today, crickets and silkworms are commonly sold as snacks at night markets in Thailand, while diners in Mexico City pay hundreds of dollars for ant larvae, a dish once considered a delicacy by the Aztecs, who ruled the region from the 14th Century to the 16th Century.

But bug experts worry that these culinary traditions have been unravelling with globalisation, as people who eat insects now associate the diet with poverty.

There is a “growing sense of shame” in places with a long history of insect consumption, like Asia, Africa and South America, said Joseph Yoon, the New York-based chef.

“They now get glimpses of foreign cultures over the internet and they are embarrassed about eating insects because that is not the practice elsewhere.”

In her book Edible Insects and Human Evolution, anthropologist Julie Lesnik argued that colonialism deepened the stigma of eating insects. She wrote that Christopher Columbus and members of his expedition described the native Americans’ consumption of insects as “bestiality… greater than that of any beast upon the face of the earth”.

Of course, people’s attitudes could change. After all, gourmet treats such as sushi and lobster were once an alien concept to most people.

Sushi started out as a working-class dish found in street stalls. And lobsters, known as the “poor man’s chicken”, were once fed to prisoners and slaves in north-eastern America because of their abundance, said food researcher Keri Matiwck from Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University.

But as transport networks made travel easier and food storage improved, more and more people were introduced to the crustacean. As demand increased, so did its price and status.

Foods once seen as “exotic”, or not even regarded as food, can gradually become mainstream, Dr Matwick said. “[But] cultural beliefs take time to change. It will take a while to change the perceptions of insects as disgusting and dirty.”

Some experts encourage people to raise their children to be more tolerant of unusual food, including insects, because future generations will face the full consequences of the climate crisis.

Insects may well become the “superfoods” of the future, as coveted as quinoa and berries. They may be grudgingly eaten, rather than sought out for the joy that a buttery steak or a hearty bowl of ramen brings.

For now, Singapore chef Nicholas Low believes there is nothing pushing people to change their diets, especially in wealthy places where almost anything you want is a few clicks away.

Younger consumers may be willing to taste them out of curiosity, but the novelty will wear off, he said.

“We are spoilt for choice. We like our meat as meat, and our fish as fish.”

Despite being a doctor who runs his own clinic in Algeria, Adlan does not stop thinking of emigrating to Europe as he doubts that Saturday’s presidential election will usher in a new era of democracy and prosperity in his home country.

“I am bitter and disappointed,” Dr Adlan, who preferred not to give his surname, tells me when I meet him in a cafe in the capital, Algiers.

And yet five years ago his hopes – like those of many other Algerians who were part of the Hirak movement – were high that freedom and democracy were at hand.

A father of two, he regularly participated in a popular uprising that forced Algeria’s longest-serving president, Abdelaziz Bouteflika, to step down after 20 years in power.

“I protested for nearly 50 Fridays in a row. We wanted our voices to be heard, we dreamed of accountability,” Dr Adlan says.

But today, the situation in Algeria is not very different from what has happened in other North African states such as Egypt and Tunisia following the Arab Spring, which was aimed at ending authoritarian rule.

Algeria’s street protests failed to diminish the power of the military, influential since independence and which continues to pull the strings.

President Abdelmadjid Tebboune, 78, is widely seen as being backed by the generals and won elections in 2019 after Mr Bouteflika was forced to step down.

He is expected to easily secure a second term in the poll being contested by two other candidates – Abdelaali Hassani, head of the Movement of Society of Peace, and Youcef Aouchiche, who leads the Front of Socialist Forces.

The election commission disqualified 13 candidates – including Zubaida Assoul, a lawyer and an opposition party leader who took part in the 2019 protests.

“The authorities don’t want to hold real elections that can bring about solid change,” she says.

“All the states resources have been dedicated to the president’s campaign.”

The law required candidates to collect 50,000 signatures from registered voters, across various provinces, or 600 signatures from members of parliamentary and local councils, to qualify to run for the presidency.

Ms Assoul believes the requirements were intended to make it insurmountable for candidates like her to contest the poll.

“How could any candidate collect 50,000 endorsements in one month, during summer vacation, and in a huge county like Algeria?” Ms Assoul says.

But Abdelrahman Saleh, the head of a party that supports Mr Tebboune, dismisses her criticism.

“They failed to complete the required documents, and tried to find an excuse for their failure. I wish they were responsible enough, to admit that they couldn’t convince voters,” he says.

Dr Adlan tells me that dozens of his fellow doctors have left for Europe in the past five years.

Algerians are largely French-speaking, so their favourite destinations are usually France, and sometimes, the French-speaking provinces in Canada.

While some Algerians follow the legal route to search for a better life abroad, others make the risky journey, via the Mediterranean, to reach Europe’s shores.

“Thousands jump into dinghies, throwing themselves into the unknown because they can’t stand their life here anymore,” Dr Adlan says.

Although there are no accurate figures, illegal migration has always been a deeply rooted problem across North Africa.

Many of the youth cannot take their dire living conditions anymore. Despite its natural wealth of oil and gas, youth unemployment in Algeria is above 30%, according to the International Labour Organization.

President Tebboune has promised to create more jobs if he wins a second term, but his critics doubt if he can fix the chronic problem of unemployment and bring about economic prosperity.

I ask Dr Adlan if he is going to vote – he is one of nearly 24 million registered voters. But he tells me he is undecided.

Next to him sits AbdelWakeel Blam, a journalist who also took part in the 2019 protests. He says he is boycotting the polls.

“How can we have a fair and democratic election, when journalists and activists go to jail over a social media post?

“I had to quit a couple of jobs, due to restrictions on freedom of expression,” he says with a voice full of anger.

But pro-government voices reject such criticism. Mr Saleh says that only people who violate the law are prosecuted.

“No journalists are held behind bars in Algeria due to their work. Neither are there any politicians detained because of their political views. It’s all about breaching the law,” he says.

Voting will take place between 07:00 GMT and 16:00 GMT, with preliminary results expected on Sunday. If no candidate wins an absolute majority, a second round will be held between the two leading candidates.

As I walk around in Algiers, I spot very few campaign posters and banners.

I ask some people why more of a campaign buzz does not exist.

“What for? We all know who the winner is,” one of them replies.

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Like many charming, clever people, Emmanuel Macron is used to getting his own way.

Still only 46 years old, France’s suave leader can already point back to a glittering career path strewn with obstacles avoided or overcome.

A meteoric rise, the transformation of France’s political landscape, the formation of his own triumphant party, securing the presidency twice, subduing the (yellow-jacket)protests, pension reform, and this summer’s glorious Paris Olympics.

“He’s incredibly smart, a very hard worker, dynamic and creative,” conceded a former minister, Jean-Michel Blanquer, in a recent French newspaper interview, despite falling out with the president.

So how do you persuade a man like Emmanuel Macron to accept that he may, at last, have messed up badly?

The short answer, judging from the past few weeks, appears to be that you cannot.

Ever since Macron took what is widely considered to have been a rash, poorly timed, and profoundly counter-productive decision to dissolve France’s parliament and call early elections in June, France’s president has been struggling to find a way to frame the outcome as anything but a humiliating personal defeat.

It’s true that France’s National Assembly, jolted by the rise of the far-right National Rally (RN) party and by the arrival of Macron’s own disruptive political project, was already straying towards swamp-like territory after many decades switching comfortably between centre-left and centre-right parties.

But the sudden summer elections, meant to provide greater “clarification,” instead left the seats in the chamber’s famous semi-circle split evenly between three blocs, all furiously at odds with each other: the left and hard left, a newly muddled centre, and the populist right.

“It’s a crappy situation,” the constitutional expert Benjamin Morel told the BBC, at a loss for a more erudite phrase to sum things up.

“It’s a mess. Macron has lost his touch. He’s not in sync with the country as he once was,” agreed journalist Isabelle Lasserre, author of a recent book about the president.

Ever since the elections, he has sought to present the new parliamentary arithmetic as an almost deliberate, almost welcome message from the French electorate to politicians of all stripes, encouraging them to compromise and to embrace the sort of coalition-building so commonplace in other European countries.

But many French voters and politicians are unconvinced.

They see the president’s framing as arrogant spin – an attempt to avoid blame for a mess of his own making and to continue with business as usual.

Which helps explain why, this weekend, parties on the left are planning street demonstrations across France. It could be the start of a long autumn of discontent.

The left, which came together to form a new NFP alliance against the far right for these elections, is beyond furious that Macron has ignored the fact that their bloc won the largest share of seats in parliament.

Instead, the president has veered to the centre right, by picking Michel Barnier as his new prime minister.

Will that be enough to steady the ship? Macron aides are indicating that Mr Barnier will have total freedom – with no red lines – to direct domestic policy and to seek enough support in parliament to avoid a no-confidence vote.

“Picking Barnier was a cunning move. The best choice,” said Lasserre, arguing that the former EU commissioner was an experienced hand, who might buy Mr Macron some time.

But how much time, and to what end?

The president has recently sought to present himself as an aloof, almost regal figure, merely interested in safeguarding national stability.

But he continues to wade into parliamentary politics, insisting, high-handedly, that neither the far left nor far right can have any role or influence whatsoever in government.

Emmanuel Macron still has two and a half more years in office.

Will he be forced out before then by street protests? Will he see his hard-won pension reforms overturned?

Will another “clarifying” parliamentary election be required next year? Could the Fifth Republic’s constitution require amending, or even replacing altogether?

Or might France’s leader, a former banker with an appetite for the high-wire act, find a way, once again, to outsmart his rivals and to win back the support of an increasingly sceptical public?

“I doubt it. He may steady things, but no more than that,” concluded Isabelle Lasserre.

Significantly, the main beneficiary of this current crisis is, almost certainly, the one person President Macron has sought most to thwart.

He has spent years trying to ensure that Marine Le Pen, leader of the far-right, anti-immigrant National Rally, now the country’s largest single party, never gets close to real power.

“For now, she is the biggest winner from this crisis. She lost the elections, but she increased the size of her (parliamentary) group by 1.5 times. She has more money. She has everything to set up the next generation of her party,” concluded Benjamin Morel.

He predicted, if Emmanuel Macron’s true legacy proved to be a future electoral victory for National Rally, that chaos would follow.

“We can find temporary solutions (today)… But if the RN wins an absolute majority, we will enter into a conflict that will no longer be in parliament, but on the streets.”

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.”

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.

The killing of a 15-year-old boy by a classmate last month has fuelled religious tensions in an Indian city, leaving one family grieving and the other shattered by the crime.

On 16 August, Heena* learned her teenage son Zakir*, 15, had been accused of stabbing a classmate at their school in Udaipur, Rajasthan.

Zakir allegedly pulled a knife from his backpack and attacked Devraj, a Hindu boy, who died in the hospital three days later.

The incident sparked a stream of grief and anger as well as a conversation on how to deal with violence in classrooms.

The state police denied any religious angle to the incident. “The students had an argument over notebooks which turned ugly,” investigating officer Chhagan Purohit told the BBC.

But the incident set off a wave of religious violence.

False rumours that Zakir, a Muslim, planned the killing against a Hindu boy went viral on WhatsApp, sparking protests in Udaipur with right-wing Hindu groups torching vehicles and chanting anti-Muslim slogans, leading to a curfew and internet shutdown.

Zakir was taken into custody and sent to a juvenile home, while his father was arrested on the charges of abetment to murder, Mr Purohit said.

The next day, following a familiar pattern in Bharatiya Janata Party-ruled (BJP-ruled) states, bulldozers demolished Heena’s rented home, leaving her and her four daughters homeless.

“My son deserves punishment and I hope he learns to be a better human being,” Heena said. “Why did they have to punish his entire family?”

Though the violence has subsided, Udaipur residents are shaken by how a simple fight escalated. Many now fear their once-integrated Hindu-Muslim neighbourhoods are being torn apart along religious lines.

“Things are getting worse and we can feel it,” one of Heena’s neighbours said on condition of anonymity.

For Devraj’s family, everything else pales in comparison to the pain of losing their son.

“This is the news every parent dreads,” his father Pappu Lal told the BBC.

A cobbler in Kuwait, he found out about the incident while he was thousands of miles away from home. By the time he got home, his son was unconscious. He died without getting a chance to see or speak to his father.

The trauma, Mr Lal said, catapulted his wife and him into debilitating sadness and sparked fury inside him.

“Their house was demolished but we lost our son,” Mr Lal said. “The house can be built again but our child? He will never come back.”

The incident has become a political sore point for the BJP, which governs India and Rajasthan, after some opposition leaders accused the party of fuelling religious tensions for political gains.

Authorities claim that the house where Heena lived was demolished because it was illegally built on forest land. A notice was sent to Heena a day before the action.

But her brother Mukhtar Alam*, who owns the house, questioned how the demolition could take place when only the tenants were alerted. “It was my house and I built it with a lot of hard work. How can they just come and raze it without even telling me?”

He also asked why the other houses in the area were still standing if they were all built on forest land.

Mukesh Saini, an official in Udaipur’s forest department, told the BBC that action would be taken against those structures “at an appropriate time”.

“Right now the atmosphere is not right for that,” he said.

Critics have questioned the timing of the act and say that punishing someone for an alleged crime using laws meant for another makes no sense.

In BJP-governed states like Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, and Assam, bulldozers often swiftly demolish the homes of crime suspects, with officials touting this as evidence of their tough stance on law and order. While victims include Hindu families, opposition leaders and activists argue that these demolitions disproportionately target Muslims, especially following religious violence or protests.

“There is no logic to it except the communal logic of collective punishment and the authority acting as the populist dispenser of tough vigilante justice,” said Asim Ali, a political scientist.

India’s Supreme Court recently criticised the demolition of properties linked to people accused of crimes and said it would issue guidelines around this.

Manna Lal Rawat, the BJP’s Udaipur MP, told BBC Hindi that the demolition was not connected to the stabbing. He also alleged that the stabbing occurred because the accused student “was influenced by extremists” and said he had urged the police to ensure the killing was not a part of a “larger pattern”.

An uneasy calm has prevailed in Udaipur since 2022, when two Muslim men beheaded a Hindu man, filmed the assault and posted it online. They said the act was in response to his support for a politician’s divisive remarks about the Prophet Muhammad.

The killing had sparked massive protests and violence in the city for days.

“The memories of that murder are still alive in the minds of people,” a senior Rajasthan police official, who wanted to stay anonymous, told the BBC. “That’s why a fight between two children turned into riots. Due to politics, the peace of the city has been damaged.”

But Mr Lal cannot understand what prompted the fight in the first place.

He says his son was a good boy – as mischievous as a 15-year-old could be, but also sweet and innocent.

“He never fought with anyone in school. He wanted to become a policeman when he grew up, become the voice of justice,” he said, his eyes on Devraj’s picture in the corner of the living room.

Since Devraj’s death, hundreds of people have been visiting the family’s small house, located in a bustling neighbourhood where Hindus and Muslims have lived peacefully together for years.

But for Mr Lal and his grieving wife, all condolences feel meaningless.

He refuses to talk about the violence or what may have caused it, saying that’s for the administration to answer. “I just want justice for my son”.

Questions have also been raised about the school’s handling of the case.

Mr Lal alleges that no teacher accompanied Devraj to the hospital and that he was taken there on a motorbike by two of his classmates.

The school’s principal, Isha Dharmawat, who has since been suspended for negligence of duty, denied the allegation.

She said she had asked the students to take Devraj on her motorbike to avoid any delay in treatment and that she and four other teachers had also gone to the hospital immediately.

As the city limps back to normalcy, the effects of the incident are most starkly visible at the school where the children studied.

After the stabbing, the school closed for a week and reopened with only one student attending.

The two students who accompanied Devraj to the hospital were questioned by police and soon left the city, citing safety concerns. Parents still sending their children to school are worried about their safety.

“Children should be kept out of politics till they are ready to face the world. This has shaken us all up,” a parent who wanted to remain unnamed said.

Meanwhile, Heena is desperately trying to piece her life back together.

“Half of my belongings are still buried [under the debris of the demolished house]. After the demolition, no one wants to rent me a house,” she said.

Even now, she wonders how her son got the knife or why he allegedly used it on his friend. Was it collapsing mental health, a childish rivalry or something else? She does not know.

But she does know that she will forever be seen as an enabler of the violence and its resulting hatred, and as a terrible parent.

“Everything of mine has been taken away. Now if people want to hang my child, then hang him, what else can I say?”

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.”

Police searching for a British man believed to have been swept away by flash floods in Majorca say they have found a body.

It comes after a British woman was found dead in the popular tourist destination earlier this week.

Spain’s Civil Guard said the pair had been hiking on a trail from a canyon to the Mediterranean sea when they went missing after a storm hit the island on Tuesday.

Rescuers had been searching the Torrente de Pareis canyon area in the Tramuntana mountain range since Wednesday.

The Spanish Civil Guard told Reuters news agency the body of a man had been found by emergency services on Friday.

Earlier in the week, local authorities warned of “very intense storms” and urged people to avoid outdoor activities after strong winds and heavy rain were forecast in the area.

Spain’s mountain rescue brigade in the Balearic islands said ten other tourists who had been trapped by floods were rescued after being “surprised by the storm”.

The rescued hikers had informed the authorities of two people who had been swept away by the water.

The deep gorge which paves the way to a hidden beach is often flooded from autumn until spring, and has no easy exists because of its sheer cliffs, according to a local tourism website.

The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office earlier said it was supporting the families of two missing Britons.

Sir Elton John has made his first public appearance at the Toronto International Film Festival, days after he revealed an eye infection had left him with limited vision.

The 77-year-old smiled and waved at the cameras as he arrived with his husband David Furnish on Friday.

The music legend was in the Canadian city for the world premiere of documentary film Elton John: Never Too Late.

His appearance comes days after Sir Elton revealed he picked up an eye infection over summer leaving him with only limited vision in one eye.

The documentary, billed as a portrait of Sir Elton, looks back on his life his farewell show at Los Angeles’ Dodger Stadium in 2022. It will premiere on Disney+ in December.

On Tuesday Sir Elton told his nearly five million followers on Instagram: “Over the summer, I’ve been dealing with a severe eye infection that has unfortunately left me with only limited vision in one eye.

“I am healing, but it’s an extremely slow process and it will take some time before sight returns to the impacted eye.

“I am so grateful for the excellent team of doctors and nurses and my family, who have taken such good care of me over the last several weeks.

“I have been quietly spending the summer recuperating at home, and am feeling positive about the progress I have made in my healing and recovery thus far.”

Toronto International Film Festival also saw Jennifer Lopez attend the world premiere of Unstoppable, a biographical sports film she stars in.

It is produced by Oscar-winners Matt Damon and Lopez’s husband Ben Affleck who she is divorcing after two years of marriage. He did not attend.

The estranged couple are yet to comment on news of their divorce.

Scientists have studied more than 2,000 samples of poo from babies in the UK to get a clearer idea of which types of bacteria first colonise a newborn’s gut.

Researchers say they were surprised to find baby poo fell into three distinct microbiological profiles, with different “pioneer bacteria” being abundant in each.

One in particular, called , could help babies make the most of nutrients in breast milk and ward off bugs, preliminary tests suggest.

Another type could be harmful and put babies at greater risk of infection, the early work, published in Nature Microbiology, shows.

There is growing evidence that a person’s microbiome – the ecosystem of millions of different microbes living in our guts – has a wide-ranging influence on our health.

But there are few studies on the make-up of a baby’s microbiome as it develops in the first few days of life.

Scientists from the Wellcome Sanger Institute, University College London and the University of Birmingham studied stool samples from 1,288 healthy infants who were all born in UK hospitals and were under one month old.

They found most samples fell into three broad categories with different bacteria being dominant.

and bacteria groups were thought to be beneficial.

Their genetic profiles suggest they can help babies utilise the nutrients in breast milk.

However, could at times put babies at greater risk of infection, preliminary tests show.

Most babies in the study were fully or partially breastfed in the first few weeks of life.

But whether the baby had breast milk or formula milk did not seem to influence the type of pioneer bacteria in their gut, researchers say.

Meanwhile, babies of mothers who were given antibiotics in labour were more likely to have present.

It is not yet clear if this has any long-term health impacts.

And other factors such as the mother’s age, ethnicity and how many times someone has given birth, also play a role in the developing microbiome.

More work is being done to determine the exact impact these microbes have on children’s long-term health.

Dr Yan Shao, from the Wellcome Sanger Institute, said: “By analysing the high-resolution genomic information from over 1,200 babies, we have identified three pioneer bacteria that drive the development of the gut microbiota, allowing us to group them into infant microbiome profiles.

“Being able to see the make-up of these ecosystems and how they differ is the first step in developing effective personalised therapy to help support a healthy microbiome.”

Meanwhile, Dr Ruairi Robertson, Queen Mary University of London lecturer in microbiome science and who was not involved in the research, said: “This study significantly expands on existing knowledge about how the gut microbiome assembles in the first month of life.

“We have gained a lot of knowledge in recent years about the influence of birth mode and breastfeeding on gut microbiome assembly and the implications for common childhood disorders such as asthma and allergies.

“However, this has not yet translated into effective microbiome-targeted therapies.”

Prof Louise Kenny, from the University of Liverpool, said decisions around childbirth and breastfeeding were “complex and personal” and there was no “one-size-fits-all approach” when it came to the best options.

“We still have an incomplete understanding of how the role of mode of birth and different methods of infant feeding influence microbiome development and how this impacts later health,” she said.

“That’s why this research is vital,” she added.

The research is part of the ongoing UK Baby Biome study and is funded by Wellcome and the Wellcome Sanger Institute.

One of the authors, Dr Trevor Lawley, is the co-founder of a company working on adult probiotics as well as a researcher at the Wellcome Sanger Institute.

Brazilian musician Sérgio Mendes, who helped popularise bossa nova and samba with Western audiences, has died at the age of 83, his family has confirmed.

The bandleader and composer is best known for the buoyant Latin pop hit Mas Que Nada, and putting Brazilian twists on English songs such as The Look Of Love and The Beatles’ The Fool On The Hill.

Mendes recorded more than 35 albums, many of which went gold or platinum in the US; and received an Oscar nomination in 2012 for co-writing the song Real in Rio from the animated film Rio.

A statement from his family said Mendes “passed away peacefully” on Thursday in Los Angeles, surrounded by his wife and children.

No official cause of death was given, however the family said Mendes had been suffering with long-term Covid, and the musician was known to have suffered respiratory problems since the end of 2023.

The family’s statement said Mendes “brought the joyous sounds of his native Brasil to the world”.

“Mendes last performed in November 2023 to sold out and wildly enthusiastic houses in Paris, London and Barcelona,” it continued.

“For the last several months, his health had been challenged by the effects of long-term COVID.”

The statement concluded by saying Mendes “leaves us with an incredible musical legacy from more than six decades of a unique sound”.

The son of a physician, Mendes was born in Niteroi, Brazil, and initially studied classical piano, with the intention of becoming a concert pianist.

But his life changed in 1956 when he heard his first jazz record, Take Five by the American musician Dave Brubeck, and abandoned his studies.

“For me that was like, I would say, one of the incredible moments of my life,” he told US radio station NPR in 2014, “because when I heard that, I had no idea about jazz or anything”.

He started playing in nightclubs in Rio de Janeiro, just as the bossa nova craze hit – and began to immerse himself in that scene, alongside other luminaries such as Antonio Carlos Jobim and João Gilberto.

His first recording, Dance Moderno, was released in 1961 on the Philips Records label.

Three years later, he left Brazil for the USA to escape the military dictatorship – but it was not an easy transition.

His Brazilian bandmates returned home, forcing Mendes to form a new group. Called Brasil ’66, it featured two American singers, Lani Hall and Karen Philip.

Signed to A&M Records, they hit on a winning formula – jazzy renditions of popular Brazilian songs alongside samba-enriched versions of the hits of the day.

They scored their first major hit with Mas Que Nada, a sun-kissed cover of a Jorge Ben original, full of finger clicks, shimmying shakers and an ebullient chorus that sings of the urge to dance.

There is “something very magical about that chant”, Mendes later recalled. “People love that song – everywhere in the world.”

It was the first Portuguese-language song to become a global hit; and propelled Brasil ’66’s self-titled debut album into the top 10 of the US charts.

Later records saw Mendes perfect his blend of Western melodies and Brazilian rhythms, covering Simon & Garfunkel’s Scarborough Fair, and Otis Redding’s (Sittin’ On) The Dock Of The Bay.

When he covered The Beatles’ The Fool On The Hill on the 1967 album Look Around, Paul McCartney wrote Mendes a letter, telling him it was his favourite version of the song.

Although his music was dismissed as “easy listening” at the time, he was hugely popular, playing arena tours and performing at the White House for presidents Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard Nixon.

He was a regular on TV shows alongside artists such as Perry Como, Jerry Lewis, Fred Astaire and Frank Sinatra, with whom he struck up a close friendship.

In the 1970s, he relaunched his band as Brasil ’77, but his commercial fortunes waned until the 1983 comeback album, Sergio Mendes, gave him the biggest chart hit of his career – a cover of the Dionne Warwick classic Never Gonna Let You Go.

The success came about almost by accident, as Mendes only added the song to his repertoire at the last minute.

“All the other songs on the album were up and festive. I needed a ballad on the album, just to change the pace a bit,” he said in an interview for The Billboard Book of No. 1 Adult Contemporary Hits.

In 1992, he won a Grammy for his album Brasileiro, which featured several tracks with the young percussionist and singer Carlinhos Brown – now one of Brazil’s most prominent musicians.

Among their collaborations was Magalenha – a joyous song powered by the energetic sounds of Bahian percussionists from the streets of Rio – that quickly became a Latin standard.

Two decades later, in 2012, the duo received an Oscar nomination for their work on the Rio soundtrack.

The inclusion of Mas Que Nada on the soundtrack to Mike Myers’ Austin Powers film introduced Mendes to a whole new audience in 1997, and by the early 21st Century, most of his back catalogue had been reissued for new fans.

Around the same time, Mendes began to incorporate elements of hip-hop into his sound, collaborating with the Black Eyed Peas on a new version of Mas Que Nada, and recording songs with rappers including Common and Q-Tip.

Mendes also made a cameo in the 24-hour-long video for Pharrell Williams’ Happy; and won a lifetime achievement award at the 2005 Latin Grammys.

A film of his life, Sergio Mendes In The Key Of Joy, was released in conjunction with a new album in 2020 – and he continued playing live until very recently, including an appearance at the London Jazz Festival last October.

Summing up his philosophy of music, Mendes once said: “When I think about Brazilian music the first words that would come to my mind would be joy, celebration, party… I think it is in the spirit of the people in general.”

The musician is survived by by his wife, Gracinha Leporace, who sang on many of his records. He also had 5 children.

A selection of striking news photographs taken around the world this week.

Selena Gomez rose to fame as a child star on Barney and the Disney Channel. Her latest role? Billionaire.

The 32-year-old actress and singer has amassed a fortune worth $1.3bn, according to Bloomberg, which added the celebrity to its billionaire index on Friday.

It said her wealth came mainly from her Rare Beauty make-up company, which she founded five years ago and retains a stake in worth more than $1bn, the publication estimated.

The brand’s success has made her one of the “youngest female self-made” wealthy on the list, alongside the likes of Taylor Swift and Rihanna.

Rare Beauty, known for liquid blush and lip tint that have had viral success on social media, reportedly did net sales of $400m in the 12 months to February.

Gomez has also brought in tens of millions of dollars from endorsement deals with the likes of Louis Vuitton, Coach and Puma, according to Bloomberg.

It said she also took home “at least” $6m per season for her Emmy-nominated turn in the Hulu hit “Only Murders in the Building”, which was recently renewed for a fifth season.

Despite her on-screen and musical success – including multiple nominations for Emmy and Grammy Awards – those achievements count for a relatively a small fraction of her wealth, Bloomberg said.

Gomez, born in Texas, has spent nearly three decades in the public eye, where her success has brought scrutiny of her fashion, boyfriends and health travails – including diagnoses of bipolar disorder and the autoimmune disease lupus.

She has written about her family’s journey to the US from Mexico, starting with her aunt “hidden in the back of a truck” and recording songs in Spanish.

The singer became the most followed woman in the world on Instagram last year.

She counts more than 424 million fans on the platform, ahead of Swift and Kylie Jenner – a dubious distinction for a star who has discussed the platform’s negative impact on her mental health and at times deleted it.

On Friday, the account was quiet as word of her latest distinction hit headlines.

In an interview with BBC1 nearly a decade ago, Ms Gomez reflected on the longevity of her career, despite her youth.

“It’s weird it’s almost two decades…am I too old?” she joked, adding that there was more she wanted to achieve.

“You know what’s crazy, is that a lot of times I don’t even feel I’ve started,” she said.

China has announced that it is ending the practice of allowing children to be adopted overseas, bringing uncertainty to families currently going through the process.

A spokeswoman said that the rule change was in line with the spirit of international agreements.

At least 150,000 Chinese children have been adopted abroad in the last three decades.

More than 82,000 have gone to the US, a greater number than anywhere else in the world.

At a daily briefing Thursday, foreign ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning said in the future Beijing would only allow foreign nationals who are relatives to adopt Chinese children.

She did not explain the reason for the decision, other than saying it was in line with international agreements.

Ms Mao thanked families “for their desire and love in adopting children from China”.

The ban on foreign adoptions has created uncertainty for hundreds of families in the US currently going through the process of adopting children from China.

In a call with US diplomats in China, Beijing said it would “not continue to process cases at any stage” other than those cases covered by an exception clause. This position was confirmed by spokeswoman Ms Mao.

Washington is seeking clarification from China’s civic ministry.

China’s controversial one-child policy, introduced in 1979 when the country was worried about a surging population, forced many families to abandon their children.

Families that violated the rules were fined and, in some cases, lost jobs. In a culture that historically favours boys over girls, it often meant that female babies were given up.

International adoption was formalised in the 1990s, and since then tens of thousands of children have been adopted, with about half going to parents in the US – including celebrities like Meg Ryan and Woody Allen.

However, the international adoption programme has at various times come under criticism. In 2013, Chinese police rescued 92 abducted children and arrested suspected members of a trafficking network.

Critics at the time pointed to China’s one-child policy and adoption laws, which they said had created a thriving underground market for buying children.

A number of countries have expressed concerns about international adoptions.

Denmark has closed its only overseas adoption agency, over concerns about fabricated documents. The Netherlands has also said it will no longer allow its citizens to adopt children from abroad.

But Beijing has also altered the way it views children. In stark contrast to the position taken by officials at end of the 1970s, the country’s leaders now worry there are not enough babies being born to sustain the population.

In 2016 China scrapped the one-child policy and in 2021 Beijing formally revised its laws to allow married couples to have up to three children.

In recent years, the Chinese government also offered tax breaks and better maternal healthcare, among other incentives, in an attempt to reverse, or at least slow, the falling birth rate.

But these polices have not lead to a sustained increase in births, and in 2023 the country’s total population fell for the first time in 60 years.

The international world order is “under threat in a way we haven’t seen since the Cold War”, the heads of the UK and US foreign intelligence services have warned.

The chiefs of MI6 and the CIA also said both countries stand together in “resisting an assertive Russia and Putin’s war of aggression in Ukraine”.

In a first-ever joint article, Sir Richard Moore and William Burns wrote in the Financial Times that they saw the war in Ukraine coming “and were able to warn the international community”, in part by declassifying secrets to help Kyiv.

And they said there was work being done to “disrupt the reckless campaign of sabotage” across Europe by Russia, push for de-escalation in the Israel-Gaza war, and counterterrorism to thwart the resurgent Islamic State (IS).

In the FT op-ed, they wrote: “There is no question that the international world order – the balanced system that has led to relative peace and stability and delivered rising living standards, opportunities and prosperity – is under threat in a way we haven’t seen since the Cold War.”

“Successfully combating this risk” is at the foundation of the special relationship between the UK and US, they added.

One of the “unprecedented array of threats” faced by both countries is the war in Ukraine, which is in its third year after Russia’s invasion in February 2022.

Sir Richard and Mr Burns said “staying the course is more vital than ever” when it comes to supporting Ukraine, adding Russian President Vladimir Putin “will not succeed”.

The conflict has shown how technology can alter the course of war, and highlighted the need to “adapt, experiment and innovate”, they said.

They continued: “Beyond Ukraine, we continue to work together to disrupt the reckless campaign of sabotage across Europe being waged by Russian intelligence, and its cynical use of technology to spread lies and disinformation designed to drive wedges between us.”

The pair also made their first public speaking appearance together at the FT Weekend Festival at London’s Kenwood House on Saturday.

Mr Burns told attendees he saw no evidence Mr Putin’s grip on power was weakening, while Sir Richard added: “Don’t ever confuse a tight grip with a stable grip.”

The fact Russian intelligence services are using criminal elements for sabotage operations in Europe is a sign they are “a bit desperate”, said the MI6 chief.

Both foreign intelligence services see the rise of China as the main intelligence and geopolitical challenge of the century. They have reorganised their services “to reflect that priority”, the pair said in their op-ed.

They also said they have pushed “hard” for restraint and de-escalation in the Middle East, and have been working “ceaselessly” to secure a ceasefire and hostage deal.

Mr Burns, who has been central to ceasefire efforts, indicated at the FT event there may be a more detailed proposal in the coming days.

“This is ultimately a question of political will” he said, adding he “profoundly” hopes leaders on both sides will do a deal.

It is 11 months since Hamas attacked southern Israel on 7 October, killing about 1,200 people and taking another 251 hostage.

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

Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft has completed its journey back to Earth – but the astronauts it was supposed to be carrying remain behind on the International Space Station.

The empty craft travelled in autonomous mode after undocking from the orbiting lab.

The capsule, which suffered technical problems after it launched with Nasa’s Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams on board, was deemed too risky to take the astronauts home.

They will instead return in a SpaceX Crew Dragon, but not until February – extending an eight-day stay on the ISS to eight months.

After Starliner’s return, a Nasa spokesman said he was pleased at the successful landing but wished it could have gone as originally planned.

The flight back lasted six hours. After it re-entered the Earth’s atmosphere parachutes were used to slow its descent at the White Sands Space Harbor in New Mexico on Saturday at 23:01 local time (05:01 GMT).

Nasa said earlier that Butch and Suni were in good spirits and in regular contact with their families.

Steve Stich, Nasa’s commercial crew programme manager, said both astronauts were passionate about their jobs.

“They understand the importance now of moving on and… getting the vehicle back safely.”

This was the first test flight for Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft with astronauts on board.

But it was plagued with problems soon after it blasted off from Cape Canaveral in Florida on 5 June.

The capsule experienced leaks of helium, which pushes fuel into the propulsion system, and several of its thrusters did not work properly.

Engineers at Boeing and Nasa spent months trying to understand these technical issues, but in late August the US space agency decided that Starliner was not safe enough to bring the astronauts home.

In a news briefing following the landing, Steve Stich said: “From a human perspective, all of us feel happy about the successful landing, but then there’s a piece of us – all of us – that wish it would have been the way we had planned it.

“We had planned to have the mission land with Butch and Suni on board.”

He added there was “clearly work to do”, and that it would take “a little time” to determine what will come next.

The briefing panel consisted only of Nasa officials. Missing, were two Boeing representatives who were supposed to be present.

When quizzed on the absence, Nasa official Joel Montalbano said Boeing decided to “defer to Nasa” to represent the mission.

Instead, Boeing released a statement “to recognize the work the Starliner teams did to ensure a successful and safe undocking, deorbit, re-entry and landing”.

It said Boeing will “review the data and determine the next steps” forward for the programme.

Mr Stich previously admitted there was “tension in the room” between Boeing and Nasa while the decision not to bring the astronauts home on Starliner was being made, with Boeing arguing that their spacecraft could safely return with the pair on board.

“The Nasa team, due to the uncertainty and the modelling, could not get comfortable with that,” he said.

The plan to use rival company SpaceX has brought with it a significant delay to the astronauts’ return.

The extra time is to allow SpaceX to launch its next vehicle, with lift off scheduled for the end of September.

It was supposed to have four astronauts on board, but instead it will travel with two. This leaves room for Butch and Suni to join them in the vehicle to return to Earth at the end of its planned stay next February.

Dana Weigel, manager of the International Space Station, said that the astronauts were adapting well to their extended mission. Both have previously completed two long-duration stays in space.

She said the pair were undertaking the exercise programmes needed to stay healthy in the weightless environment.

And she added that they now had all of the gear they needed for their unplanned eight-month stay.

“When we first sent them up, they were borrowing a lot of our generic clothing that we have on board, and we have now switched some of those things out,” she said.

She explained that a resupply mission in July had delivered “specific crew preference items” that the pair had requested.

“So they actually have all of the standard expedition gear at this point that any other crew member would be able to select. And we’ve got another cargo vehicle coming up, so we’ll send up anything else that they need for the back-end half of their mission on that flight.”

The issues with Starliner have no doubt been a blow to Boeing, which is suffering from financial losses as it struggles to repair its reputation following recent in-flight incidents and two fatal accidents five years ago.

After so many problems, a trouble-free landing will be a welcome outcome for the company – and for Nasa.

”We’ll go through a couple months of post-flight analysis,” said Steve Stich.

“There are teams starting to look at what we do to get the vehicle fully certified in the future.”

The US space agency has emphasised its commitment to Boeing’s spacecraft – having two American companies to take astronauts to space has been a key goal for Nasa for some time.

When their space shuttle fleet was retired in 2011, the US spent a decade relying solely on Russia’s Soyuz spacecraft to transport its crew and cargo – a situation Nasa admitted was far from ideal.

So in 2014, Boeing and SpaceX were awarded contracts to provide commercial space flights for Nasa astronauts – Boeing’s was worth $4.2bn (£3.2bn) while SpaceX received $2.6bn (£2bn).

So far SpaceX has sent nine crewed flights to space for Nasa, as well as some commercial missions, but this was Boeing’s first attempt at a crewed mission.

Boeing’s Starliner had already been delayed for several years because of setbacks in the spacecraft’s development and two previous uncrewed flights in 2019 and 2022 also suffered technical problems.

But Nasa administrator Bill Nelson says he is 100% certain it would fly with a crew onboard again.

Super Typhoon Yagi, the most powerful storm in Asia this year, has killed at least four people after making landfall in northern Vietnam.

The storm hit Hai Phong and Quang Ninh provinces with winds of up to 203 km/h (126 mph) on Saturday morning, the Indo-Pacific Tropical Cyclone Warning Center said.

Strong winds and flying debris have caused damage to buildings and vehicles, with falling trees leading to power outages in the capital, Hanoi.

State media said three people died in the northern Quang Ninh province on Saturday, with another killed in Hai Duong, near Hanoi. Some 78 people are thought to be injured in the region.

In Hai Phong, news agency AFP reports metal roof sheets and commercial sign boards were seen flying across the city.

It comes after Yagi wreaked havoc on the island of Hainan – a popular tourist destination dubbed China’s Hawaii – on Friday.

At least three people have died in China due to the storm, and nearly 100 injured.

The city of Hai Phong, on the coast of northern Vietnam, has a population of two million and has faced the brunt of the storm.

Power outages hit parts of the city – home to multinational factories – on Saturday, while four of the north’s airports have suspended operations for much of the day.

Nearly 50,000 people have been evacuated from coastal towns in Vietnam, with authorities issuing a warning to remain indoors.

Schools have been closed in 12 northern provinces, including Hanoi.

As of 20:00 local time (14:00 BST) on Saturday, Vietnam’s state meteorology agency said the storm was still producing winds of up to 102 km/h (63 mph) as it moved inland.

Satellite imagery shows the eye of the storm was south west of Hanoi by then, and is expected to move into northernmost Laos by Sunday evening.

More than 20cm of rainfall has been recorded in Hai Phong and Quang Ninh since the start of Saturday.

State media published images of motorcyclists in Hanoi sheltering under bridges to escape the heavy rain.

The storm also caused a two-storey house in the capital to collapse – though officials said it had been in the process of being demolished and so had not been inhabited.

Hanoi resident Dang Van Phuong told Reuters: “I’ve never seen such a storm like this. You can’t drive in these winds.”

On Friday, China evacuated some 400,000 people in Hainan island ahead of Yagi’s arrival. Trains, boats and flights were suspended, while schools were shut.

Local media there reported widespread power outages, with about 830,000 households affected. Valuable crops have also been wiped out.

Videos on Chinese social media show windows being ripped out from tower blocks on Hainan.

A super typhoon is equivalent to a Category 5 hurricane.

Yagi is the second strongest typhoon so far this year and has doubled in strength since it hit northern Philippines early this week.

Floods and landslides brought by Yagi killed at least 13 people in northern Philippines, with thousands of people forced to evacuate to safer ground.

Scientists say typhoons and hurricanes are becoming stronger and more frequent with climate change. Warmer ocean waters mean storms pick up more energy, which leads to higher wind speeds.

A warmer atmosphere also holds more moisture, which can lead to more intense rainfall.

Former US Vice-President and lifelong Republican Dick Cheney has confirmed he will vote for the Democrats’ Kamala Harris in November’s presidential election.

Mr Cheney, seen as an influential figure during the presidency of George W Bush, issued a statement saying there had “never been an individual who is a greater threat to our republic than Donald Trump”, the current Republican candidate.

His daughter, former Republican lawmaker Liz Cheney, had told an audience in Texas earlier that her father planned to back the Democratic nominee.

“He [Trump] tried to steal the last election using lies and violence to keep himself in power after the voters had rejected him,” said Mr Cheney. “He can never be trusted with power again.”

“As citizens, we each have a duty to put country above partisanship to defend our constitution,” he added. “That is why I will be casting my vote for Vice-President Kamala Harris.”

Mr Cheney’s remarks were welcomed by the Harris camp.

“The vice-president is proud to have the support of Vice-President Cheney, and deeply respects his courage to put country over party,” said campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon.

Mr Cheney joins a growing list of Republicans who have expressed concern about the candidacy of Donald Trump.

His daughter, Liz Cheney, has already given her backing to Vice-President Harris.

She served on the House select committee investigating the 6 January Capitol riots, and was one of 10 Republicans to vote to impeach former President Trump after the incident.

Ms Cheney lost her seat in Congress in 2022 to a Trump-backed candidate.

Taking to social media following Mr Cheney’s statement, Trump called the former vice-president an “irrelevant RINO” – an acronym which stands for “Republican in name only”.

He also described Mr Cheney as the “King of Endless, Nonsensical Wars” – alluding to his role in the Iraq War.

US health officials have confirmed a human case of bird flu in a patient that had no immediately known animal exposure.

The patient, in the state of Missouri, was treated in hospital and has since recovered, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said.

It is the 14th human case of bird flu in the US in 2024 and the first without a known occupational exposure to infected animals, according to the CDC.

The agency said that, based on their current data, the risk to the general public remains low.

Bird flu is a viral disease that primarily affects birds and other animals. Human infections are rare.

Previous US cases have been traced back to exposure to infected poultry or cattle, but the Missouri patient marks “the first case of H5 without a known occupational exposure to sick or infected animals,” the CDC said in a statement on Friday.

The Missouri case was detected through routine flu season surveillance. The patient had underlying medical conditions, and received flu antiviral medications.

Bird flu has been on the rise among cows in the US this year. An outbreak was first reported in March, and cattle in 14 states had been affected as of 3 September, according to the CDC.

While outbreaks of bird flu have not been reported in Missouri’s cattle, it has been reported in poultry this year and in wild birds in the past, health officials said.

US health officials discovered a human case of bird flu in March 2024, which was identified after an exposure to dairy cows that were potentially infected.

Bird flu was first detected in China in the 1990s, and has since spread across every continent including Antarctica. World health officials believe the current risk to humans is low, but have actively monitored the disease for years.

It has disease has affected wildlife worldwide, infecting species as varied as sea lions, seals and bears.

The killing of a 15-year-old boy by a classmate last month has fuelled religious tensions in an Indian city, leaving one family grieving and the other shattered by the crime.

On 16 August, Heena* learned her teenage son Zakir*, 15, had been accused of stabbing a classmate at their school in Udaipur, Rajasthan.

Zakir allegedly pulled a knife from his backpack and attacked Devraj, a Hindu boy, who died in the hospital three days later.

The incident sparked a stream of grief and anger as well as a conversation on how to deal with violence in classrooms.

The state police denied any religious angle to the incident. “The students had an argument over notebooks which turned ugly,” investigating officer Chhagan Purohit told the BBC.

But the incident set off a wave of religious violence.

False rumours that Zakir, a Muslim, planned the killing against a Hindu boy went viral on WhatsApp, sparking protests in Udaipur with right-wing Hindu groups torching vehicles and chanting anti-Muslim slogans, leading to a curfew and internet shutdown.

Zakir was taken into custody and sent to a juvenile home, while his father was arrested on the charges of abetment to murder, Mr Purohit said.

The next day, following a familiar pattern in Bharatiya Janata Party-ruled (BJP-ruled) states, bulldozers demolished Heena’s rented home, leaving her and her four daughters homeless.

“My son deserves punishment and I hope he learns to be a better human being,” Heena said. “Why did they have to punish his entire family?”

Though the violence has subsided, Udaipur residents are shaken by how a simple fight escalated. Many now fear their once-integrated Hindu-Muslim neighbourhoods are being torn apart along religious lines.

“Things are getting worse and we can feel it,” one of Heena’s neighbours said on condition of anonymity.

For Devraj’s family, everything else pales in comparison to the pain of losing their son.

“This is the news every parent dreads,” his father Pappu Lal told the BBC.

A cobbler in Kuwait, he found out about the incident while he was thousands of miles away from home. By the time he got home, his son was unconscious. He died without getting a chance to see or speak to his father.

The trauma, Mr Lal said, catapulted his wife and him into debilitating sadness and sparked fury inside him.

“Their house was demolished but we lost our son,” Mr Lal said. “The house can be built again but our child? He will never come back.”

The incident has become a political sore point for the BJP, which governs India and Rajasthan, after some opposition leaders accused the party of fuelling religious tensions for political gains.

Authorities claim that the house where Heena lived was demolished because it was illegally built on forest land. A notice was sent to Heena a day before the action.

But her brother Mukhtar Alam*, who owns the house, questioned how the demolition could take place when only the tenants were alerted. “It was my house and I built it with a lot of hard work. How can they just come and raze it without even telling me?”

He also asked why the other houses in the area were still standing if they were all built on forest land.

Mukesh Saini, an official in Udaipur’s forest department, told the BBC that action would be taken against those structures “at an appropriate time”.

“Right now the atmosphere is not right for that,” he said.

Critics have questioned the timing of the act and say that punishing someone for an alleged crime using laws meant for another makes no sense.

In BJP-governed states like Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, and Assam, bulldozers often swiftly demolish the homes of crime suspects, with officials touting this as evidence of their tough stance on law and order. While victims include Hindu families, opposition leaders and activists argue that these demolitions disproportionately target Muslims, especially following religious violence or protests.

“There is no logic to it except the communal logic of collective punishment and the authority acting as the populist dispenser of tough vigilante justice,” said Asim Ali, a political scientist.

India’s Supreme Court recently criticised the demolition of properties linked to people accused of crimes and said it would issue guidelines around this.

Manna Lal Rawat, the BJP’s Udaipur MP, told BBC Hindi that the demolition was not connected to the stabbing. He also alleged that the stabbing occurred because the accused student “was influenced by extremists” and said he had urged the police to ensure the killing was not a part of a “larger pattern”.

An uneasy calm has prevailed in Udaipur since 2022, when two Muslim men beheaded a Hindu man, filmed the assault and posted it online. They said the act was in response to his support for a politician’s divisive remarks about the Prophet Muhammad.

The killing had sparked massive protests and violence in the city for days.

“The memories of that murder are still alive in the minds of people,” a senior Rajasthan police official, who wanted to stay anonymous, told the BBC. “That’s why a fight between two children turned into riots. Due to politics, the peace of the city has been damaged.”

But Mr Lal cannot understand what prompted the fight in the first place.

He says his son was a good boy – as mischievous as a 15-year-old could be, but also sweet and innocent.

“He never fought with anyone in school. He wanted to become a policeman when he grew up, become the voice of justice,” he said, his eyes on Devraj’s picture in the corner of the living room.

Since Devraj’s death, hundreds of people have been visiting the family’s small house, located in a bustling neighbourhood where Hindus and Muslims have lived peacefully together for years.

But for Mr Lal and his grieving wife, all condolences feel meaningless.

He refuses to talk about the violence or what may have caused it, saying that’s for the administration to answer. “I just want justice for my son”.

Questions have also been raised about the school’s handling of the case.

Mr Lal alleges that no teacher accompanied Devraj to the hospital and that he was taken there on a motorbike by two of his classmates.

The school’s principal, Isha Dharmawat, who has since been suspended for negligence of duty, denied the allegation.

She said she had asked the students to take Devraj on her motorbike to avoid any delay in treatment and that she and four other teachers had also gone to the hospital immediately.

As the city limps back to normalcy, the effects of the incident are most starkly visible at the school where the children studied.

After the stabbing, the school closed for a week and reopened with only one student attending.

The two students who accompanied Devraj to the hospital were questioned by police and soon left the city, citing safety concerns. Parents still sending their children to school are worried about their safety.

“Children should be kept out of politics till they are ready to face the world. This has shaken us all up,” a parent who wanted to remain unnamed said.

Meanwhile, Heena is desperately trying to piece her life back together.

“Half of my belongings are still buried [under the debris of the demolished house]. After the demolition, no one wants to rent me a house,” she said.

Even now, she wonders how her son got the knife or why he allegedly used it on his friend. Was it collapsing mental health, a childish rivalry or something else? She does not know.

But she does know that she will forever be seen as an enabler of the violence and its resulting hatred, and as a terrible parent.

“Everything of mine has been taken away. Now if people want to hang my child, then hang him, what else can I say?”

Looking up at the glimmering Landmark Pinnacle on London’s Isle of Dogs, it’s hard to crane your neck back far enough to see right to the top.

Completed in 2020, it is the tallest mainly residential building in Europe, soaring 784ft (239m) and 75 floors into the sky. It has a gym, roof terrace and designated Pilates area.

Inside, one of three concierges asks – without smiling – who I’m visiting, and I’m shown to one of the lifts. Apparently they don’t usually let you in without a name.

Seven years ago, the catastrophic fire at Grenfell Tower led to changes in how high-rises should be designed to keep residents safe during a blaze.

But problems persist in existing blocks.

I visited the Landmark Pinnacle as well as Invicta House, a council-owned block on an estate just outside Margate. While there are significant differences, concerns have crept up at both.

Invicta House, built in the 1960s on the Isle of Thanet in East Kent has a mere 14 floors and stands austere among mainly low-rise housing.

There are no door staff here, and I tailgated some residents through a starkly decorated lobby.

Both towers have stunning views – of the Kent coast and the looping Thames respectively. But there is no denying the economic gulf between those on minimum wage and benefits at Invicta House, and the city workers and well-off foreign students living at the Landmark Pinnacle.

You could buy 15 one-bed flats at Invicta House for the same price as a studio apartment just over 70-miles away, in the Landmark Pinnacle in Canary Wharf.

Invicta resident David Bond is a council tenant, and proud of his military service in Cold War Germany, signified by two model tanks carefully displayed on his sideboard.

The block is a place where “people keep themselves to themselves”, he says, admitting he prefers it this way.

There are drug-users, drinkers and prison-leavers among his neighbours, and “too many dogs”, he complains. The overpowering smell in the building’s lifts, several residents explain, is dog urine.

In spite of their differences, something the residents of both Invicta House and Landmark Pinnacle have in common is their complete reliance on lifts.

On a high floor at Invicta, John – who asked me not to use his real name – says the two lifts in the building, which serve odd and even floors, constantly break down. Engineers use parts from one to fix the other.

John has a number of medical conditions and walking up the stairs just isn’t an option.

“You fear going out in case you get back and find the lifts aren’t working,” he says. Sometimes he has had to stay with friends instead of going home.

At the Landmark Pinnacle building a lift takes me to the 13th floor in a matter of seconds.

Two years ago, Guy Benson, a young city worker and part time Liberal Democrat activist, bought 25% of the lease for his £700,000 flat under a shared ownership scheme.

Landmark Pinnacle has also had lifts out of action, and one isn’t working today – but Guy puts that down to teething problems.

“It’s like building a massive machine and you don’t get everything right the first time,” he says, adding that having more lifts would probably be helpful. The building already has seven.

Using the stairs would be daunting. Looking down the stairwell from the 75th floor the landings seem to stretch into infinity.

What happened at Grenfell Tower in 2017, when a devastating fire destroyed the building and 72 people lost their lives, raised major questions about the design and operation of high-rise towers, and the response of their residents in an emergency. There has been much discussion about staircases.

As a result of Grenfell, from 2026 all new buildings over 59ft (18m) must have two staircases – one for firefighters to go up to tackle fires, the other for residents to come down in a “simultaneous evacuation”. Lifts aren’t recommended in a fire.

Unsurprisingly, Invicta House, built more than five decades ago, has a single staircase.

But the state-of-the-art Landmark Pinnacle, completed in the wake of a building safety crisis, was also designed to have only one. Adding another staircase to a building already under construction when the law changed wasn’t practical, it seems, but two could have been part of the original design.

Both towers have had recent fires.

In 2021, a candle set light to a flat at the Landmark Pinnacle on a floor in the 30s. Some residents couldn’t hear a fire alarm and like those at Grenfell had to decide to stay put or get out.

The building has a “stay put” policy because it is designed so fires can’t spread between flats. Alarms don’t even go off on unaffected floors.

Yet in Facebook messages shown to the BBC, residents – some of whom could smell burning and see fire trucks gathering outside – appear confused about what to do. Grenfell was doubtless on everyone’s mind.

The fire was swiftly put out, with the help of the in-built sprinkler system.

And should there be another fire, Guy Benson has faith that the way this building has been designed will keep him safe.

“I don’t feel at risk at all,” he says.

At Invicta House there has been a spate of fires, apparently started deliberately, in chutes used to send rubbish to the ground floor. Jane, one of the residents, describes opening her door to a thick wall of smoke.

But seven years after Grenfell – and in contrast to Landmark Pinnacle – Invicta House is still a fire risk. In particular, the combustible polystyrene insulation on its walls. Planning permission to remove it was granted in March, but the work, predicted to start in April this year, still hasn’t.

The rubbish chutes have been modified to deter arsonists, and a trained fire warden patrols around the clock. Like Grenfell, there’s a risk that any fire would spread throughout this building, so residents are advised to “get out” if the alarms go off – and that means taking the stairs.

“I can’t get down the stairs,” says Jane, “I’m on crutches.” Last time the fire alarm went off, she says she just shut the door.

On another floor an empty wheelchair sits on a landing, a symbol of the vulnerability of many in the building.

The residents mainly rent, so aren’t stuck with a flat they can’t sell like many around the country – but most have no other housing options.

John – who moved here after a fire in his previous accommodation – pays £70 a week rent.

“I’m lucky to have a place that I can afford,” he says, “and when I close the door I’ve closed the outside world out.”

The difference in fire safety experiences between tower block residents at opposite ends of the economic spectrum greatly concerns Dr Barbara Lane, one of the Grenfell Tower public inquiry’s expert witnesses, who argues that removing this “inequity” should be a priority.

To do so would require a comprehensive examination of the existing fire risks of older buildings, proactively removing them, and thinking more carefully about how vulnerable people will get out.

For those tenants who need extra help, Thanet District Council offers a Personal Emergency Evacuation Plan. This is already a recommendation of the Grenfell Tower public inquiry, and the government has recently announced that offering an evacuation plan is to become a legal requirement for building owners.

The residents of the Landmark Pinnacle and Invicta House have something else in common – a degree of powerlessness.

They all live in a building they do not own. The tenants in Margate rely on Thanet District Council. The leaseholders in east London, on their building manager.

On the 13th floor of the Landmark Pinnacle, Guy Benson studies a spreadsheet at a window which looks out over an expanse of south London.

He is worried about his growing energy bills and service charges – despite not paying extra for access to the Landmark’s gym and private cinema. He agrees there is a power imbalance.

“You’re never able to negate it, you do have less control, ” he says. “Being able to understand the system and the levers you have to pull is absolutely an advantage – but you shouldn’t have to become a property law expert.”

Another resident at the Landmark Pinnacle, Alex – not his real name – echoes the view of many leaseholders in England and Wales of their landlords.

“We feel like we are getting ripped off. There’s nothing we can do. It’s like paying taxes but without being able to get rid of your government.”

Alex wants the Landmark Pinnacle’s residents to exercise their Right to Manage. He has asked the building managers, Rendall & Rittner, to contact the owners of each flat to let them know about his plan – but says they have refused. Alex reckons the management company is protecting its own interests. However, Rendall & Rittner, told the BBC it has not received any requests from residents about Right to Manage.

The government plans further reforms to leasehold laws building on changes introduced by the Conservatives.

In Kent, David Bond, who has a sea view from his balcony, says council officials “build a big wall” when he raises concerns about the lifts and delays to building safety work. He doesn’t blame the housing officers he deals with, but says they are “struggling with regulations”.

“People don’t take us seriously,” he says. “We should stop paying the rent and then it would become serious.”

A spokesperson for Rendall & Rittner, the management company that runs Landmark Pinnacle, told the BBC the building’s stay put policy is communicated to all residents and leaseholders regularly. A requirement set by London Fire Brigade, it “forms part of the overall fire strategy and Fire Risk Assessment that is reviewed by specialist consultants to ensure the highest level of compliance”.

Rendall & Rittner said it “endeavours to keep service charges as reasonable as possible, however new requirements brought in by the Building Safety Act, together with the cost of living and energy crisis, have contributed to increasing costs”, while highlighting that although one of the Landmark Pinnacle’s seven lifts is currently undergoing general maintenance this is at no additional cost to leaseholders.

A spokesperon for Thanet District Council told the BBC the safety of its residents is “paramount”, and that they “work closely with the Kent Fire and Rescue Service”.

The statement continues: “Work at Invicta House, which includes the replacement of the external wall insulation, is now planned to start in May 2025.

“In 2019, the fire protection was upgraded in the building’s stairwells, all the fire doors were replaced and the fire alarm system was upgraded. We moved from a ‘stay put policy’ to ‘simultaneous evacuation’ in July 2021. All residents must evacuate the block if they hear the fire alarm.”

Living at height isn’t for everyone, but those I spoke to said, on balance, they liked looking down on the rest of us.

“I wouldn’t have chosen to live here,” says John, at Invicta House, “but I know more of my neighbours here than I’ve ever known living elsewhere.”

For Alex, at Landmark Pinnacle, high-rise living has many benefits.

“We can’t all live in detached houses,” he says, arguing that on an island short on space, building upwards was the most sustainable option.

“It’s good to have people around you – it makes you more open-minded.”

Murder charges brought against the father of a US school shooter have laid down a new marker on the issue of parental responsibility.

Colin Gray bought his son Colt an AR-style rifle for Christmas last year, even though the boy had been questioned by police just seven months earlier about online threats to commit a school shooting.

Investigators suspect the 14-year-old may have used that same weapon on Wednesday when he shot dead four people and wounded nine others at Apalachee High School in Winder, Georgia.

The teen has since been charged with murder and – in an unprecedented move – so too has his dad.

Mr Gray, 54, faces two counts of second-degree murder, four counts of involuntary manslaughter and eight counts of cruelty to children.

Together, the charges carry a maximum penalty of 180 years in prison.

The murder counts against Mr Gray stem from him “knowingly allowing his son to possess a weapon”, according to Chris Hosey, director of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.

The pair of charges apply to the two teenagers killed in Wednesday’s rampage: Christian Angulo and Mason Schermerhorn, both 14.

Two Apalachee teachers – Richard Aspinwall, 39, and Cristina Irimie, 53 – also died in the attack.

The charges Mr Gray faces are second-degree and that may be due to specific wording in Georgia law.

According to the state’s criminal code, a person commits second-degree murder “when, in the commission of cruelty to children in the second degree, he or she causes the death of another human being irrespective of malice”.

With prosecutors bringing these charges barely more than 24 hours after the shooting, experts caution the facts are still emerging, and it remains unclear what legal arguments will be directed at Mr Gray.

“There’s a connection between the deaths and ‘the commission of cruelty to children,'” said Evan Bernick, an associate law professor at Northern Illinois University.

“But is the cruelty directly arising from the shooting, or is it cruelty to his son that may have led [the boy] to commit the shooting? We just don’t know yet.”

The son will be tried as an adult, meaning that the criminal justice system will treat his homicide prosecution as that of somebody fully responsible for their own actions.

But that does not mean his father will escape punishment, Prof Bernick told the BBC.

The crux of the argument will be not that Colin Gray wanted the shooting to happen, but that he “failed to intervene, and his failure to intervene was negligent in ways that justify treating him as part of the homicide”.

Across the US, there are laws on the books to punish parents or guardians for everything from academic truancy and underage driving to shoplifting and vandalism.

But prosecutors in the state of Michigan expanded the reach of such statutes earlier this year when they secured dual convictions against the parents of another teen gunman.

James and Jennifer Crumbley were found guilty of involuntary manslaughter and sentenced to at least 10 years in prison for how their criminal negligence as parents contributed to their son Ethan, 14, killing four of his classmates in 2018.

Thursday’s decision to charge the father with murder – a far more severe charge – could again test the legal bounds of parental responsibility.

Eve Brank, a psychology professor at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, researches how the law intervenes and sometimes interferes with family decision-making.

In her view, the emerging concept of punishing parents after school shootings reflects broader frustration around US gun violence and, in the absence of regulatory reform, the inability to curb the country’s unrelenting series of firearm incidents.

“It’s not like we’ve created a bunch of new laws to address these issues. They’re just being used, somewhat creatively, to address the issue,” she said.

“In terms of what the research shows, most people would agree there are a lot of influences on how children behave, not just their parents.”

But she noted that prosecutors in Georgia may be privy to information from the investigation not yet publicly available and may believe they can successfully argue that, like the Crumbleys before him, Colin Gray’s actions were particularly egregious.

Tim Carey, a law and policy adviser at the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions, argues that charging parents is also a reflection on weak gun safety policies.

Georgia has been “very apprehensive to gun violence prevention policies”, he said, and prosecutors in such states may “feel confined to trying to bring a sense of justice or retribution after the fact, in part because they couldn’t prevent” such a tragedy.

Some legal scholars worry that expanding the toolkit prosecutors can use after a shooting could have unintended consequences.

“We know we have a problem of violence and guns in our society,” said Ekow Yankah, a law and philosophy professor at the University of Michigan.

“And instead of tackling it with systemic and regulatory powers, we soothe ourselves with these kind of extraordinary prosecutions.”

But, Prof Yankah warns, prosecutors are now armed with “a hammer” they can bring down on others, including poor families from minority groups and single parents.

“School shootings are highly visible… but I’m worried about the cases that won’t make the news,” he said.

And while parents are now at greater risk of being penalised for their children’s violent actions, less progress has been made on the widespread access to firearms or on the availability of mental health resources for struggling kids.

“Our default response to very deep social problems in the United States is to bring in the apparatus of criminal law,” said Prof Bernick.

Tens of thousands of people are protesting across France against the nomination of right-wing Michel Barnier as the new prime minister, after an inconclusive election in which the left won the largest number of seats.

Demonstrations are underway in cities including Paris, Marseille, Nantes, Nice and Starsbourg.

The protests were called by trade unions and left-wing political parties, who are furious that their own candidate for prime minister was rejected by President Emmanuel Macron.

Mr Barnier, the EU’s former Brexit negotiator, said he is open to forming a government with politicians across the political spectrum, including the left.

• Michel Barnier’s journey from Mr Brexit to French PM
• Monsieur Brexit buys Macron time, but French deadlock remains

Jean-Luc Mélenchon, a veteran firebrand from the radical France Unbowed party, called for the “most powerful mobilisation possible” in national marches.

Around 130 protests are being held, with the biggest setting out from central Paris on Saturday afternoon.

Mr Mélenchon joined the Paris protest, giving a speech on the back of a float emblazoned with the slogan: “For democracy, stop Macron’s coup”.

The demonstrators are also using slogans such as “denial of democracy” and “stolen election”.

Parties on the left are angry that their own candidate for prime minister, Lucie Castets, was rejected by Mr Macron, who said she had no chance of surviving a vote of confidence in the National Assembly.

Mr Barnier may be able to survive a confidence vote because the far right, which also won a large number of seats, has said it won’t automatically vote against him.

That has led to criticism that his government will be dependent on the far right.

“We have a prime minister completely dependent on National Rally,” Ms Castets said.

Mr Barnier spent Saturday afternoon visiting a children’s hospital in Paris, where he highlighted the importance of public services, but told healthcare workers his government “is not going to perform miracles”, local broadcaster BFMTV reported.

Against the backdrop of the protests, the new PM is focussed on forming a new government.

After talks with the leaders of the right-wing Republicans and the president’s centrist Ensemble group, he said discussions were going very well and were “full of energy”.

Some on the left have blamed themselves for ending up with Mr Barnier as prime minister.

Socialist Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo pointed out that the president had considered former Socialist prime minister, Bernard Cazeneuve, for the job but that he had been turned down by his own party.

Another Socialist Mayor, Karim Bouamrane, blamed intransigence from other parts of the left alliance: “The path they chose was 100% or nothing – and here we are with nothing.”

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…”