The Venezuelan government has said opposition presidential candidate Edmundo González has left the country, seeking asylum in Spain.

Mr González has been in hiding, and a warrant issued for his arrest after the opposition disputed July’s presidential election result – in which the government-controlled National Electoral Council (CNE) declared Nicolás Maduro the winner.

“After taking refuge voluntarily at the Spanish embassy in Caracas a few days ago, (Gonzalez Urrutia) asked the Spanish government for political asylum,” Venezuela’s Vice-President Delcy Rodríguez said on social media.

She added that Caracas had agreed to his safe passage and that he had left.

Venezuela has been in a political crisis since authorities declared President Maduro the victor of the 28 July election.

The opposition claimed it had evidence Mr González had won by a comfortable margin, and uploaded detailed voting tallies to the internet which suggest Mr González beat Mr Maduro convincingly.

A number of countries, including the United States, the European Union and several Latin American countries, have refused to recognize President Maduro as the winner without Caracas releasing detailed voting data.

Prior to leaving the country, Mr González had been in hiding for a month, ignoring three successive summons to appear before prosecutors.

Post-election violence in Venezuela has claimed 27 lives and left 192 people injured while the government says it has arrested some 2,400 people.

In a tucked-away corner of paradise, overlooking the clear waters of the South Pacific, a cyclone of controversy was about to descend on Fiji’s Pearl Resort & Spa.

Standing on stage clutching a bouquet of flowers, 24-year-old MBA student Manshika Prasad had just been crowned Miss Fiji.

But soon after, according to one of the judges, things at the beauty pageant “turned really ugly”.

Ugly is potentially an understatement: what unfolded over the next few days would see beauty queens crowned and unseated, wild allegations thrown around and eventually the emergence of a shadowy figure with a very personal connection to one of the contestants.

Ms Prasad first found out something was wrong two days after her win, when Miss Universe Fiji (MUF) issued a press release. It said a “serious breach of principles” had occurred, and “revised results” would be made public shortly.

A couple of hours later, Ms Prasad was told she wouldn’t be travelling to Mexico to compete for the Miss Universe title in November.

Instead, runner-up Nadine Roberts, a 30-year-old model and property developer from Sydney, whose mother is Fijian, would take her place.

The press release alleged the “correct procedures” had not been followed, and that Ms Prasad had been chosen in a rigged vote which favoured a “Fiji Indian” contestant to win because it would bring financial benefits to the event’s manager.

A distraught Ms Prasad issued a statement saying she would be taking a break from social media, but warned that there was “so much the public did not know about”.

The new queen, meanwhile, offered a message of support. “We are all impacted by this,” Ms Roberts wrote on Instagram, before thanking Miss Universe Fiji for its “swift action”.

But those who took part in the contest were not satisfied: there were too many things that didn’t add up.

“Everything had been running so smoothly,” says Melissa White, one of seven judges on the panel.

A marine biologist by trade, she had been flown in from New Zealand to weigh in on the charity and environmental aspects of the contest.

“It was such a great night, such a successful show. So many people were saying they’d never seen pageant girls get along so well,” Ms White tells the BBC.

As the competition drew to a climax on Friday night, the judges were asked to write down the name of who they thought ought to be the next Miss Fiji.

“By this stage, Manshika [Prasad] was the clear winner,” says Jennifer Chan, another judge, who’s a US-based TV host and style and beauty expert.

“Not only based on what she presented on stage but also how she interacted with the other girls, how she photographed, how she modelled.”

Ms Chan says she was “100% confident” that Ms Prasad was the strongest candidate to represent Fiji.

Enough of her fellow judges agreed and Ms Prasad was declared the winner – receiving four of the seven votes.

But as the newly-crowned Miss Universe Fiji stood on stage, beaming in her sparkling tiara, the judges sensed something was wrong.

To her right, Nadine Roberts – wearing her runners-up sash – was “seething”, alleges Ms Chan.

“I remember going to bed thinking, how could someone feel so entitled to win?

“You win some, you lose some. She’s a seasoned beauty pageant contestant – surely she knew that?”

The next day, Ms Prasad took a celebratory boat trip with the judges.

“She was just in awe, saying: my life will be changed now,” says Ms Chan.

“She’s the embodiment of that good-hearted person who deserves it – it just affirmed to me that I’d picked the right girl.”

But there had still been no official confirmation of Ms Prasad’s victory.

Not only this – one of the judges was conspicuously absent from the trip: Riri Febriani, who was representing Lux Projects, the company that bought the licence to hold Miss Universe in Fiji.

“I remember thinking that was odd,” says Ms White, who shared a room with Ms Febriani. “But she just said she had lots of work to do and she needed to talk to her boss.”

Ms Febriani says she didn’t go on the boat trip as she needed to rest – and there’s no way the others would know who she was messaging on her phone.

But Ms White says she worked out her roommate was fielding calls and texts from a man called “Jamie”.

Miss Universe is a multi-million-dollar business which operates like a franchise – you need to buy a licence which enables you to use the brand and sell tickets for the event.

Those licences are expensive and in small countries it’s hard to find anyone willing to fund a national pageant – which is why Fiji hasn’t entered a contestant since 1981.

But this year, one organisation was willing to buy the licence: property development firm Lux Projects.

Ms Febriani was its representative on the judging panel, but also looked after media communications.

“I’d got on so well with her, she seemed a very sweet person,” says Ms White.

“But that day when she didn’t come on the boat, her demeanour kind of changed. She just kept saying she was super busy with work, always on the phone with this ‘Jamie’ guy.”

It turned out that, despite having Ms Febriani on the panel, Lux Projects was not happy with the outcome of the vote.

Its press release on Sunday said the licensee itself should also get a vote – one which the contracted organiser, Grant Dwyer, had “failed to count”.

Lux Projects would have voted for Ms Roberts, bringing the results to a 4-4 tie.

What’s more, it said, the licensee also had the “determining vote” – making Ms Roberts the winner.

“Never at any point were we told about an eighth judge or any kind of absentee judge,” says Ms Chan.

“It wasn’t on the website, it wasn’t anywhere. Besides, how can you vote on a contest if you’re not even there?”

Ms White was also suspicious.

“I did some digging and it turns out that Lux Projects was closely associated with an Australian businessman called Jamie McIntyre,” says Ms White.

“And Jamie McIntyre,” she told the BBC, “is married to Nadine Roberts.”

Mr McIntyre describes himself as an entrepreneur, investor and “world-leading educator”, who has – according to information available online – been married to Ms Roberts since 2022.

He was also banned from doing business in Australia for a decade in 2016 due to his involvement in a property investment scheme that lost investors more than A$7m ($4.7m; £3.6m). The judge in the case said there was “no evidence to suggest that successful reform is likely”.

A senator who questioned him as part of a parliamentary committee hearing later described him as “the most evasive witness I have had to deal with – and that’s saying something”, according to the Sydney Morning Herald.

But what was he doing here?

“[Mr McIntyre] isn’t a director or shareholder of the MUF licensee company, but has acted as an adviser, as he is a shareholder in associated companies,” Jamie McIntyre’s representatives told the BBC.

However, the company’s Instagram page does feature a video of Mr McIntyre giving property investment advice, as well as a link to 21st Century University, a Bali-based property company owned by Mr McIntyre.

The BBC also understands that a “Jamie” was on the line during phone calls between Ms Roberts and the event organiser, Grant Dwyer.

Mr McIntyre’s representatives insist that allegations that he was involved in the judging controversy are a “conspiracy theory” – although they did concede that he had “provided advice to the licence holder”.

Additionally, the press release’s allegation that Mr Dwyer had pressured the panel to choose Ms Prasad because of her race is undermined by the fact that Mr Dwyer is understood to have voted for Ms Roberts.

“It’s just gross to even bring up race,” says Ms Chan. “It was never, ever once uttered amongst any of the judges,” she adds.

The BBC has sought comment from both Ms Roberts and Ms Prasad, but neither has responded.

Several of those involved – including some judges and contestants – have been sent “cease and desist” emails by Lux Projects, the BBC understands, which have been taken as tantamount to gagging orders by the recipients.

This scandal in Fiji is by no means the first to hit the world of beauty pageants, which historically has seen its fair share of controversies.

“Pageants are full of drama, of controversies, of people saying the contest was a fix,” says Prof Hilary Levey Friedman, author of ‘Here She Is: The Complicated Reign of the Beauty Pageant in America.’

“But I will say that in more recent years, these issues have become much more pronounced thanks to social media,” she adds.

Apart from a voting scandal at the Miss America contest in 2022, recent controversies have tended to be in less developed parts of the world.

This is probably because they tend to be non-profit affairs in many Western countries, according to Prof Friedman, while pageants elsewhere have become more popular and more lucrative than ever.

“Historically, beauty pageants have been an amazing tool for social mobility for women,” says Prof Friedman.

“Apart from the prestige and the glory, it gives you a platform to attract followers and sponsorships. When there’s money involved, the stakes are higher.”

For Ms Prasad though, it turns out there is a happy ending.

On Friday, she posted on one of her social media accounts that she had indeed been re-crowned as Miss Fiji 2024.

“What an incredible journey this has been,” she wrote on Instagram.

Miss Universe Organization (MUO) has not responded to a request for comment, but the BBC understands it is extremely unhappy with the events in Fiji and, after having established the facts, worked hard to reinstate Ms Prasad as the island’s queen.

For Ms Prasad there is elation. For the judges, relief.

As for Ms Roberts, she is calling herself the “real Miss Universe Fiji 2024” on Instagram.

Judge Ms White says she’s “so proud of how Manshika [Prasad] has conducted herself throughout this journey. She’s a brilliant, compassionate, and beautiful young woman, who didn’t deserve this.

“We just wanted the truth to come out and now it has.”

Outside the house where Rebecca Cheptegei lived, flowers have been placed on grass that was charred as the runner rolled on the ground to try to put out flames engulfing her.

The 33-year-old Olympic runner died on Thursday from injuries sustained when her former partner allegedly doused her with petrol and set her ablaze days earlier while at home with her two daughters.

“I was in the house and heard people screaming, ‘fire’. When I came out, I saw Rebecca running towards my house on fire, shouting ‘help me,” Agnes Barabara, Ms Cheptegei’s immediate neighbour, tearfully told the BBC.

“As I went to look for water and started calling out for help, her assailant appeared again and doused more petrol on her, but then he too got burned and he ran off towards the garden to try to put it out. We then went to help Rebecca.”

“I have never seen anyone burn alive in my life. I didn’t eat for days after that incident.”

“She was a very good neighbour and just recently she shared with me maize she’d harvested.”

Police are treating the death as a murder, with her ex-partner named by police as the main suspect. Local administrators said the two had been in conflict about the small piece of land where Ms Cheptegei lived, with the case awaiting resolution.

He will be arraigned in court on charges once he is out of hospital, where he continues to recover from injuries he sustained during the incident.

“We have opened a file, investigations are at an advanced stage,” divisional criminal investigations officer Kennedy Apindi told the BBC.

Ms Cheptegei’s mother Agnes said her daughter “was always obedient as a child, and very kind and jovial all through her life”.

Emmanual Kimutai, a friend and neighbour who attended school with Ms Cheptegei, described her as a “very exciting” and “determined” person.

“Even in primary school she was already doing very well in athletics, she was our champion,” Mr Kimutai said.

The Olympian was born on the Kenyan side of the Kenya-Uganda border, but chose to cross over and represent Uganda to chase her athletics dream when she did not get a breakthrough in Kenya.

When she started getting into athletics, she joined the Uganda People’s Defence Forces in 2008 and had risen to sergeant rank. Her career included competing in the Olympics in Paris this year. Although she placed 44th in the marathon, people in her home area called her “champion”.

She lived in Chepkum, a village in Kenya about 25km (15 miles) from the border with Uganda, in a rural area whose main economic activity is farming. Residents also tend to cattle and it is common to see cows, goats, and sheep grazing outside homes. The wider area, called Trans-Nzoia county, is well known as Kenya’s biggest producer of maize, which is the main ingredient for the country’s staple food.

Locals at a shopping centre near her house spoke fondly about a woman they sometimes waved at as she trained along the road whenever she was not in competition or training in Uganda. Kind and humble were the words often mentioned by people there.

While celebrated as an athlete, her personal life was in turmoil. Her former classmate said her performance at the Olympics was because she did not “have peace” owing to the conflict with her ex-partner that began last year.

“They used to live together but began falling out last year because of money,” her brother Jacob recalled. “He asked my sister, ‘what do you do with all the money you make?”

Police told the BBC that the two had previously reported domestic disputes in different stations – which they withdrew.

As Ms Cheptegei’s family waits for justice, they continue to prepare her final journey. She will be laid to rest on 14 September at their ancestral home in Bukwo, Uganda.

The Ugandan is the third athlete to be killed in Kenya in the last three years, where intimate partners are named as the main suspects by police. Athlete-led gender-based violence activist group, Tirop’s Angels, said the trend must end.

“What is heart-breaking is her children witnessed their mother’s attack,” Joan Chelimo, a co-founder of Tirop’s Angels said, as she fought back tears.

“This violence against athletes must stop.”

Pope Francis, who has often appeared to revel in confounding and surprising others, is at it again.

Many times over the years, he has seemed to suggest he is slowing down, only to ramp up his activities again.

At nearly 88 years old, he has a knee ailment that impairs mobility, abdominal problems caused by diverticulitis and is vulnerable to respiratory issues owing to the removal of most of one of his lungs.

Last autumn, the Pope said his health problems meant that foreign travel had become difficult. Soon after, when he cancelled a trip to the UAE, it led to heightened speculation about the extent of his medical difficulties.

But that was then.

Now, he is in the middle of the longest foreign visit of his 11-and-a-half year papacy. It has been one packed with engagements, and as well as Timor-Leste it involves three countries – Indonesia, Papua New Guinea and Singapore – in which Catholics are a minority.

So why is the Pope travelling so extensively and so far from home?

His supporters say his passion drives him.

“He obviously has an enormous amount of stamina and that is driven by his absolute passion for mission,” says Father Anthony Chantry, the UK director of the Pope’s mission charity Missio, who has just been appointed to the Vatican administration’s evangelisation department.

“He talks about all of us having a tireless mission to reach out to others, to set an example.”

Christian “mission” is something that has evolved over the centuries. It is still about spreading the gospel but now the stated aim is focused on social justice and charitable endeavours.

Throughout his trip Pope Francis will meet missionaries, including a group from Argentina now based in Papua New Guinea. But on numerous trips around Asia including this one, he also skirts close to China, a country with deep suspicions about the Church, its mission and its motives.

The Pope has frequently emphasised the importance of evangelisation for every Catholic. Yet in many parts of the world, it is still hard to separate ideas of “missionaries” and “evangelisation” from notions of European colonisation.

As the number of Catholics in Europe declines, is “mission” and “evangelising” in Asia and Africa now about Church expansion in those parts of the world?

“I think what he is preaching is the Gospel of love that will do no one any harm. He’s not trying to drum up support for the Church, that’s not what evangelisation is about,” says Father Anthony.

“It isn’t to be equated with proselytising, that is not what we have done for a long time. That is not the agenda of the Holy Father and not the agenda of the Church. What we do is we share and we help people in any way we can, regardless of their faith or not having any faith.”

Father Anthony says being a Christian missionary in the modern day, for which Pope Francis is setting an example, is about doing good work and listening, but sometimes, “where necessary”, also challenging ideas.

“We believe God will do the rest, and if that leads to people accepting Jesus Christ, that’s great. And if it helps people to appreciate their own spirituality – their own culture – more, then I think that is another success.”

Certainly the Pope has long talked of interfaith harmony and respect for other faiths. One of the most enduring images of his current trip will be his kissing the hand of the Grand Imam of the Istiqlal Mosque in Jakarta and holding it to his cheek.

He was warmly welcomed by people coming out to see him in the most populous Muslim-majority country in the world.

Pope and top Indonesian imam make joint call for peace

Pope Francis will end his marathon trip in Singapore, a country where around three-quarters of the population is ethnic Chinese, but also where the Catholic minority is heavily involved in missionary work in poorer areas.

For centuries now, Singapore has been something of a strategic regional hub for the Catholic Church, and what Pope Francis says and does there is likely to be closely watched in China, not least by the Catholics living there. It is hard to get a true picture of numbers, but estimates suggest around 12 million.

The lack of clarity over numbers is partly because China’s Catholics have been split between the official Catholic Church in China and an underground church loyal to the Vatican that evolved under communism.

In trying to unite the two groups, Pope Francis has been accused of appeasing Beijing and letting down Catholics in the underground movement who had not accepted the Chinese government’s interference, and who face the continued threat of persecution.

Deals struck between the Vatican and Beijing in recent years appear to have left a situation where the Chinese government appoints Catholic bishops, and the Pope gives in and recognises them. China says it’s a matter of sovereignty, while Pope Francis insists he has the final say – though that is not the way it has looked.

“He won’t be pleasing everyone all the time, but I think what the Holy Father really wants to indicate is that the Church is not a threat to the state,” says Father Anthony Chantry. “He is treading a very careful path and it’s fraught with difficulties, but I think what he’s trying to do is just to build up a respectful relationship with the government in China.”

Rightly or wrongly, it is all in the name of bringing more people into the fold. Some of Pope Francis’ predecessors have been more uncompromising in many ways, seeming to be more accepting of a smaller, “purer” global Catholic community, rather than make concessions in either foreign relations or in the way the Church views, for example, divorce or homosexuality.

While some popes have also clearly been more comfortable in study and theology than travel and being surrounded by huge crowds, some have leaned into the politics of their position.

It is very clear when travelling with Pope Francis that while he can often look tired and subdued during diplomatic events, he is quickly rejuvenated by the masses who come out to see him, and energised by the non-dignitaries he meets, particularly young people.

This is certainly not a pope who shuns the limelight – it is being among people, some would say mission, that appears to be his lifeblood.

Father Anthony Chantry says this latest, longest papal trip is just a continued display of how the Pope feels the Church should engage with both Catholics and non-Catholics.

“The whole thrust is that we have got to reach out to others. We have to make everyone feel welcome. I think he (Pope Francis) does that really well, but I don’t think he’s trying to score any points there, it’s just him.”

There is very little the Pope has done since his election in 2013 that has not rankled Catholic traditionalists, who often feel that his spirit of outreach is taken too far. His actions on this trip are unlikely to change that.

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.

A dozen fishermen are missing at sea.

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.

More than 100,000 people protested across France on Saturday against the appointment of the centre-right politician Michel Barnier as the new prime minister.

His appointment follows an inconclusive election in which the left-wing bloc – the New Popular Front (NPF) – won the largest number of seats.

The protests were called by trade unions and members of the NPF, 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

The interior ministry said 110,000 protested nationwide on Saturday, including 26,000 in Paris, though one protest leader claimed the figure was 300,000.

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 were scheduled, 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 manhunt is underway in Kentucky after a number of people were shot along a highway near the city of London on Saturday.

The incident began at about 18:00 local time (22:00 GMT), when police responded to a report of vehicles being fired upon near Interstate 75.

Seven people have been injured in the incident, according to Mayor Randall Weddle of London.

He said not all of these injuries were by gunshot, and that no one has been killed.

The Laurel County Sheriff’s Office has named 32-year-old Joseph A Couch as a person of interest, and warned the public he is considered armed and dangerous.

According to local media, shots may have been fired from a wooded area near to the highway, or from an overpass.

“The suspect or suspects have not been apprehended at this time, but they are searching for them,” said Mayor Randall in a video posted on Facebook at about 21:30 local time.

“Where they are currently, that is some rugged terrain and a lot of tree lines,” he said.

Speaking to CNN, Christina DiNoto, who was driving on Interstate 75 with a friend at the time of the shooting said “it was like a rock went through my back window”, hurting her ear.

“We looked at each other and we were like, ‘Was that a gunshot?’ And then we’re like, ‘No, that wasn’t a gunshot.’”

She said it was only an hour and a half later they learnt that it had been a shooting.

Later on Friday, Mount Vernon Fire Department said a section of the highway close to where the shooting happened had reopened, after being closed for about three hours.

A spokesperson for the University of Kentucky Medical Center in Lexington told the BBC’s US news partner, CBS News that it had received at least two patients from the incident so far, but there was no word on their conditions.

Trooper Scottie Pennington, a Kentucky State Police spokesperson, urged residents in the area to stay inside.

Members of the public have been warned not to approach the person of interest.

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives also confirmed it was involved in the search.

Earlier, Kentucky’s Governor Andy Beshear wrote on social media that law enforcement had “shut the interstate down in both directions” near to where the shooting happened.

He said the area should be avoided, and urged the public to “pray for everyone involved”.

London is a small city of about 8,000 residents near the Daniel Boone National Forest.

Chinese car giant Chery is weighing up the possibility of building cars in the UK, according to a senior executive.

Its UK head Victor Zhang told the BBC it was a “matter of time” before the company made a final decision.

He said Chery, which is already preparing to build cars in Spain, was determined to take a “localised” approach to the European market.

Mr Zhang denied the company’s exports had benefitted from unfair subsidies.

Chery, which was set up in 1997, is one of China’s largest car companies. It is already the country’s biggest exporter of vehicles, but has ambitious plans to expand further.

To help take that plan forward, it has set up two new brands focused entirely on the international market, Omoda and Jaecoo.

Last month, Omoda was officially launched in the UK. It has begun selling a mainstream SUV, the Omoda 5, in both electric and petrol-powered versions.

It has built a network of 60 dealerships, and hopes to have more than 100 here by the end of the year.

But it is far from the only Chinese manufacturer to see the British market as potentially lucrative.

BYD, which has been vying with Tesla for the title of the world’s biggest manufacturer of electric cars, has also opened dozens of dealerships here.

SAIC is already well-established in the UK, selling cars under the classic British MG marque.

Cars for sale in Europe are currently built at Chery’s manufacturing HQ in Wuhu, in Eastern China. But that situation is expected to change.

The company already has a deal with the Spanish firm EV Motors, which will allow Omoda and Jaecoo models to be built at a former Nissan factory in Barcelona. But it wants to establish other bases as well.

Earlier this year, the company said the UK could also be a candidate for an assembly plant. That option remains on the table.

“Barcelona, this is something we are already commited to”, explained Mr Zhang

“For the UK, we are also evaluating. To be honest, we are open for all options and opportunities.

“So I think it’s just a matter of time. If everything is ready, we will do it”.

The UK is not the only country on Chery’s list. It has also been talking to the Italian government about setting up production in Italy, for example.

Mr Zhang denied the decision would come down to whichever country was able to offer the best incentives.

“For such a big investment project, it’s a combination of factors”, he said.

“It’s not just government policy or incentives. You also need to look at the market itself; education, because you need good talented people such as engineers and factory workers; there’s also supply chain, logistics.

“So there will be many factors involved in our final decision”.

The pressure to set up manufacturing bases in Europe has increased since July, when the EU imposed steep tariffs, or taxes, on imports of electric vehicles from China.

This was done, Brussels said, because carmakers in China were benefitting from “unfair subsidies” which allowed their cars to be sold abroad very cheaply, undermining local manufacturers. China accused the EU of protectionism.

By building its products in Europe, Chery would avoid paying those tariffs. But Mr Zhang insisted his company was always committed to local production.

“We are not trying to use any unfair methods”, he insisted.

“We want to be adaptable to the local market, and provide the best products, using the best dealerships. To be localised is the only strategy for the long term,” he said.

The UK has yet say whether it will take a similar approach with tariffs of its own.

China’s domestic car market is vast, with more than 30 million vehicles sold each year.

Its stake in the global market is also already significant, with roughly 5 million cars exported last year. That was a 64% increase on the year before.

In the UK, Chinese brands still account for a relatively small proportion of cars sold, around 5%.

But established carmakers are concerned that figure could grow quickly, with the prices offered by Chinese brands expected to play a key role.

“If the old parties had done their jobs properly then the AfD would not exist,” Ingolf complains, echoing a common sense that the rest of Germany looks down on so-called “Ossis” in the east.

Far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) have already won the most votes in regional elections this month in the eastern state of Thuringia. Now Germany’s bracing for a further political shockwave, as polls suggest the AfD could also take the most votes in Brandenburg state’s election in a few weeks time.

Tucked away near the Polish border, in the two tiny villages of Jämlitz and Klein Düben, support for the far right has soared.

A former conservative (CDU) voter, Ingolf is frustrated about how successive governments have handled education, saying standards were better when he was a boy growing up in the communist German Democratic Republic.

He voices anxiety about Germany’s flatlining economy as well as immigration, comparing the far-right riots in England this summer to “civil war-like conditions”.

Disorder that, while nothing like a civil war, has stoked narratives about the potential for violent clashes within multicultural communities.

“That’s not what we want here in Germany,” he says.

In Jämlitz, most notable for a large goose farm, the idea of civil strife couldn’t feel further away.

Nor could the war raging in Ukraine. But the AfD’s call to stop sending weapons to Kyiv is also resonating strongly.

“The money for Ukraine is an issue,” says Yvonne, who sees all war as “senseless” as we chat to her just down the road.

“And this is our tax money that is sent abroad. We have enough things to fix in our own country.”

However, Yvonne is leaning towards another anti-establishment party launched only this year that also opposes supplying arms to Ukraine and which is a surging force in German politics: the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW).

Ms Wagenknecht’s personal brand of “left-wing conservatism” has already propelled her party this month into the potential role of kingmaker in Saxony and Thuringia.

However, for her critics, she has simply fashioned another unwelcome populist, pro-Putin movement that’s actively undermining central pillars of German foreign policy.

I challenge Yvonne about the idea of ending arms supplies to Ukraine, which could help Russia win a war it began, by invading its neighbour.

“I can understand both sides,” she says after a little hesitation.

This is the part of Germany where the older generation, from the GDR years, grew up learning Russian language and culture.

It’s also a country, scarred by two World Wars, that retains a strong pacifist streak fed by fears the existing conflict could escalate.

“Poland is not big,” Yvonne says, as she points out the Polish border is only a few miles away. “And we are then the first ones to go when the tanks come across.”

In these two villages, that have a population of under 500 people, 57.5% of voters backed the far-right party in a recent local council election, the largest proportion in Brandenburg.

Across the wider district, that number was 43.7%, also unusually high.

It comes ahead of a larger, state-parliament level vote on 22 September, where the AfD is leading the polls – after they already won the most votes in Thuringia and came a close second in Saxony on 1 September.

In Thuringia, the AfD attracted 36% of the under-30s vote, say election researchers.

Their relative strength in the east is despite the fact the party is viewed by many – and officially classed in three states – as right-wing extremist, a charge its supporters avidly reject.

Not far away, I visit one of the beautiful lakes that have been transformed from their original purpose as open cast coal mines.

As I wander around asking people if they want to talk about German politics, most, perhaps unsurprisingly, are not all that tempted.

A woman called Katrin does agree to speak, although she doesn’t want her picture taken.

Ushering us away from a small crowd sunbathing on the grass and a little beach, she lights a cigarette and is watchful as we wait to hear what she has to say.

It feels like it’s going to be really controversial.

She doesn’t like the AfD – something that can feel like a rogue opinion around here.

“Half the people here didn’t vote for the AfD,” she reminds us, adding she is “devastated” by local levels of support for a far-right party.

But why are they so popular, I ask?

“That’s a good question,” says Katrin. “That’s what I ask myself all the time.”

“There is an old saying,” she recalls. “If a donkey is too comfortable it goes on black ice.”

Katrin is saying that she believes life, actually, is relatively good for people in the community, leading to a misguided “grass-is-greener” syndrome – whether that’s with an eye on the past or present.

Average wage levels and household wealth are lower in the east when compared to the west, although inequalities have narrowed through the years.

Overall, Katrin doesn’t understand it. “I’m still thinking myself, why, why, why?”

You get the feeling that mainstream parties, including those in Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s coalition government, are similarly unable to quite comprehend, or respond, to the success of either the AfD or BSW, parties polling nationally at about 18% and 8% respectively.

The traditional parties of power are casting a nervous eye to the east and the Germany’s reputation for relatively calm, consensus politics is under strain.

Pro-euthanasia film The Room Next Door has won the Venice Film Festival’s best film award.

The feature film starring Tilda Swinton and Julianne Moore took the prestigious Golden Lion award on Saturday.

Earlier in the week, the Pedro Almodovar-directed film received an 18-minute standing ovation after it premiered at the festival – one of the longest in recent memory.

Accepting the award, 74-year-old Spanish director told the audience: “I believe that saying goodbye to this world cleanly and with dignity is a fundamental right of every human being.”

The film sees Swinton play a war correspondent suffering from terminal cancer. She asks her old friend, played by Moore, to be at her side as she takes her own life.

Almodovar said he made the film to communicate his belief euthanasia should be available around the world.

“It is not a political issue, but a human issue,” the Oscar-winner Almodovar said. The film is his first feature film in English.

Almodovar also thanked Moore and Swinton for their performances.

“This award really belongs to them, it’s a film about two women and the two women are Julianne and Tilda.”

President of the jury, French actor Isabelle Huppert, said the film tackled important issues thoughtfully and without melodrama.

The Room Next Door is poised to be one of the most talked-about films of awards season.

The 81st edition of the world’s oldest film festival wrapped up on Saturday night, with international celebrities flocking to Venice’s red carpet.

Among the other award winners was Nicole Kidman who won the best actress award for her role in Babygirl, in which she plays a high-powered CEO putting her career and family on the line to begin an affair with her much younger intern.

Although Kidman was in Venice for the film’s premiere last week, the Australian actress did not attend the awards ceremony after learning her mother had died.

“My heart is broken,” Kidman said in a statement read out onstage on her behalf.

“I’m in shock, and I have to go to my family. But this award is for her. She shaped me, she guided me, and she made me,” she said.

France’s Vincent Lindon received the best actor award for French language film The Quiet Son, about a family torn apart by extreme-right radicalism.

The best director award went to American Brady Corbet for The Brutalist, recounting the tale about a Hungarian architect and Holocaust survivor played by Adrien Brody, who seeks to rebuild his life in the US.

Queer with Daniel Craig playing a gay drug addict, and the Maria Callas biopic Maria, starring Angelina Jolie as the celebrated Greek soprano did not get any awards.

The festival marks the start of the awards season.

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.

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

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?”

Surrounded by food trucks, Ferris wheels and funnel cake stands on a hot August afternoon, Stephanie Soucek has one goal in mind.

The 42-year-old chair of the Republican Party in Door County, a bellwether district in the battleground state of Wisconsin, is at the county fair to urge undecided voters to cast a ballot for Donald Trump.

Upon meeting Tammy Conway, a Democrat who is considering voting Republican for the first time in decades, Ms Soucek begins talking about her own family’s two expensive car payments, an economic message that seems to resonate.

Ms Conway is concerned about “sky-high” housing interest rates and said Trump might make the economy “a lot less complicated”.

But as Ms Soucek lays out her case for the Republican presidential candidate, she avoids mentioning the latest spate of controversial remarks Trump has made, including personal attacks on Democratic challenger Kamala Harris.

“I try to tell people to focus on the policies and ignore the candidates,” she said, knowing that Trump’s brash personality has deterred women previously.

Republican officials in a handful of swing states – where the election is likely to be decided – are adopting Ms Soucek’s strategy of promoting policy over personality with white suburban female voters. It’s a pivotal voting bloc Trump narrowly won in his first presidential race but has struggled to appeal to since.

Local Republicans say they wish Trump would adopt a similar approach against Vice-President Harris, whose campaign has been powered by female voters since she replaced Joe Biden at the top of the ticket in July.

The concern brings into focus the widening gender gap that has come to define the election. Trump is courting young – especially black and Hispanic – men while Democrats are working to attract female voters motivated by the overturning of Roe v Wade, a landmark Supreme Court ruling that had enshrined the constitutional right to an abortion.

An ABC News/Ipsos released in September suggested the vice-president led the former president 54% to 41% among women – a seven-point jump since the Democratic National Convention late last month.

It has some Republicans worried about whether Trump can reverse the trend, Ms Soucek said.

Trump campaign spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said Ms Harris’s has “implemented dangerously liberal policies that have left women worse off financially and far less safe than we were four years ago under President Trump”.

But some who spoke to the BBC said his campaign has remained fixated on men – not women.

Republican pollster Christine Matthews said Trump’s team is “doubling down on a strategy of motivating the Maga base and hoping to motivate men – particularly non-college-educated men including those who are Hispanic in addition to white – in a way that will overpower the gender gap”.

The Trump campaign has leaned into “bro culture”, emphasising masculinity and a contrast of “weak versus tough”, said Chuck Coughlin, a political strategist who works with Republicans in the battleground state of Arizona.

“That appeals to a lot of men,” he said. “It doesn’t appeal to unaffiliated voters.”

Trump’s choice of JD Vance as his running mate reinforced how the campaign is prioritising outreach to men. They may not have expected his addition to the ticket to have been so damaging with women voters, however.

The Ohio senator has faced a backlash over previous comments about women, in particular a 2021 clip in which he calls several Democrats, including Ms Harris, “childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives”.

These types of comments do not help attract swing women voters, according to Betsy Fischer Martin, executive director of the nonpartisan Women & Politics Institute.

“There are plenty of childless cat ladies voting in the suburbs,” she said.

But the former president’s campaign rhetoric does not bother some ardent female supporters like Dixie, a 59-year-old Republican from Door County.

“He’s not going to tell you what you want to hear. He’s going to tell you the truth,” said Dixie, who declined to share her last name for privacy reasons.

Former Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway, who served as his 2016 campaign manager, told the BBC that voters could not have his policies without his “strong and resolute and tough” personality.

“People, and particularly women, tend to kvetch and converse and complain about what offends them, and then they vote according to what affects them,” she said.

Local Republicans in battleground states are hoping to stop the erosion of female support by steering the conversation back to issues that affect families on a daily basis, like crime and the economy, where polls suggest the party is more popular.

The effects of the Covid-19 pandemic make it difficult to compare how the US economy performed under the Trump and Biden administrations. While both enjoyed notable economic growth, inflation has been a persistent problem in the last three years as wages have struggled to keep up with rising prices.

And a recent KFF poll indicated inflation was the top issue in this race for 40% of suburban women voters.

For Lyla Juntunen, 88, a former stay-at-home mom from the suburbs of Green Bay, Wisconsin, the price increases under Mr Biden have been hard to ignore.

“Look at these groceries that you get and how much you pay,” she told the BBC, gesturing toward a full shopping cart in a grocery store car park.

Strategists say Trump would do well to focus more on these specific economic policy points to win over voters like Ms Juntenen.

“If he dials down the attacks and his brand of fiery kind of politics, then he can pick up…female voters in particular,” said Ariel Hill-Davis, co-founder of Republican Women for Progress, which advocates for female representation in the party.

“If your top three issues are the economy, inflation, public safety, I think he could easily sway those voters.”

Republicans in swing states have struggled with another issue that has animated women across the country: reproductive rights.

Democrats have seized on abortion rights as a way to galvanise voters after the fall of Roe v Wade in 2022, while Ms Harris has become the White House’s leading voice on the issue.

Voters in several states – including Republican strongholds – have passed referendums protecting the right to abortion. The issue is on the ballot in at least eight states in November, including in the battleground territories of Nevada and Arizona.

Republicans have struggled to reach a unified message on reproductive rights. Trump has repeatedly said policy should be left up to the states, declining to endorse a national abortion ban that many Republican lawmakers support.

He was roundly criticised by anti-abortion conservatives in recent weeks after giving contradictory remarks on whether he would support a referendum in Florida to protect abortion rights – he later clarified he would vote against it.

The same week, he told a Michigan crowd that if he were re-elected, his administration would cover the costs of IVF, a fertility treatment that Democrats have claimed Republicans are trying to take away through restrictive state abortion laws.

Tom Eddy, the chair of the Erie County Republican Party, a swing district in the must-win state of Pennsylvania, said he’s found the best approach is to avoid the issue altogether.

“I tell my candidates, ‘Stay the hell away from it,’” he said. “I can tell no matter what policy you promote with regard to abortion, you’re going to be wrong, because half the people are going to think the other way.”

Though the KFF poll indicated abortion to be lower on the list of priorities for female suburban voters – behind immigration, border security and the economy – it remains a motivating issue for a growing share.

A survey from the New York Times and Siena College last month suggested it had become the most important issue for female voters under the age of 45.

With polls suggesting the majority of suburban women support access to abortions, Ms Soucek said the Republican Party needs to find a unified message.

“It’s just a matter of making sure that we’re sending the right message to women that we care about women, while also caring about unborn babies,” she said.

Mr Trump’s former senior adviser, Kellyanne Conway, said that while Democrats are focused on “the waist down”, the Republican Party is concentrating on the “waist up”.

“We women, from the waist up, are where our brains, ears, eyes, hearts and mouths are, so we can figure out all the issues: the kitchen table economics, entrepreneurship, taxes, regulation, energy independence,” she said.

But that language isn’t landing with all women voters in Wisconsin.

Holly Rupnow, a 56-year-old former Republican from Green Bay, said one of the reasons she planned to vote for Ms Harris was because of reproductive rights.

“I like the things that she’s going to try to do for us – get us back women’s rights,” she said.

Experts say the political landscape has changed dramatically since Donald Trump first ran for president.

Some female voters in 2016 brushed aside their worries about Trump, believing he would act differently once he was in the White House, according to Ms Fischer Martin.

But the 2016 “Let Trump be Trump” rallying cry would not work now, she said.

During the 2018 midterm elections, suburban and college-educated women largely rejected Trump and Republicans and helped power the so-called blue wave that elected more than 100 women to the US House.

In 2022, reproductive rights played a central role in helping Democrats perform better than expected, raising fears among Republicans it could do so again.

Trump could make strides with female suburban voters by directly addressing their concerns about his personality, according to political experts.

“If he were to say something like: ‘You may not like me personally, you may not like my rhetoric, but if you want to worry less about grocery bills .. I’m your guy,’” Ms Fischer Martin said.

“I don’t know if he’s quite capable of getting there.”

Kellyanne Conway knows Trump better than most. She believes his core message – are voters better off now then when he was in office? – is the same for all Americans, regardless of gender.

“As I told him recently,” she added, “He beat a woman before. He can beat a woman again.”

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Pope Francis, who has often appeared to revel in confounding and surprising others, is at it again.

Many times over the years, he has seemed to suggest he is slowing down, only to ramp up his activities again.

At nearly 88 years old, he has a knee ailment that impairs mobility, abdominal problems caused by diverticulitis and is vulnerable to respiratory issues owing to the removal of most of one of his lungs.

Last autumn, the Pope said his health problems meant that foreign travel had become difficult. Soon after, when he cancelled a trip to the UAE, it led to heightened speculation about the extent of his medical difficulties.

But that was then.

Now, he is in the middle of the longest foreign visit of his 11-and-a-half year papacy. It has been one packed with engagements, and as well as Timor-Leste it involves three countries – Indonesia, Papua New Guinea and Singapore – in which Catholics are a minority.

So why is the Pope travelling so extensively and so far from home?

His supporters say his passion drives him.

“He obviously has an enormous amount of stamina and that is driven by his absolute passion for mission,” says Father Anthony Chantry, the UK director of the Pope’s mission charity Missio, who has just been appointed to the Vatican administration’s evangelisation department.

“He talks about all of us having a tireless mission to reach out to others, to set an example.”

Christian “mission” is something that has evolved over the centuries. It is still about spreading the gospel but now the stated aim is focused on social justice and charitable endeavours.

Throughout his trip Pope Francis will meet missionaries, including a group from Argentina now based in Papua New Guinea. But on numerous trips around Asia including this one, he also skirts close to China, a country with deep suspicions about the Church, its mission and its motives.

The Pope has frequently emphasised the importance of evangelisation for every Catholic. Yet in many parts of the world, it is still hard to separate ideas of “missionaries” and “evangelisation” from notions of European colonisation.

As the number of Catholics in Europe declines, is “mission” and “evangelising” in Asia and Africa now about Church expansion in those parts of the world?

“I think what he is preaching is the Gospel of love that will do no one any harm. He’s not trying to drum up support for the Church, that’s not what evangelisation is about,” says Father Anthony.

“It isn’t to be equated with proselytising, that is not what we have done for a long time. That is not the agenda of the Holy Father and not the agenda of the Church. What we do is we share and we help people in any way we can, regardless of their faith or not having any faith.”

Father Anthony says being a Christian missionary in the modern day, for which Pope Francis is setting an example, is about doing good work and listening, but sometimes, “where necessary”, also challenging ideas.

“We believe God will do the rest, and if that leads to people accepting Jesus Christ, that’s great. And if it helps people to appreciate their own spirituality – their own culture – more, then I think that is another success.”

Certainly the Pope has long talked of interfaith harmony and respect for other faiths. One of the most enduring images of his current trip will be his kissing the hand of the Grand Imam of the Istiqlal Mosque in Jakarta and holding it to his cheek.

He was warmly welcomed by people coming out to see him in the most populous Muslim-majority country in the world.

Pope and top Indonesian imam make joint call for peace

Pope Francis will end his marathon trip in Singapore, a country where around three-quarters of the population is ethnic Chinese, but also where the Catholic minority is heavily involved in missionary work in poorer areas.

For centuries now, Singapore has been something of a strategic regional hub for the Catholic Church, and what Pope Francis says and does there is likely to be closely watched in China, not least by the Catholics living there. It is hard to get a true picture of numbers, but estimates suggest around 12 million.

The lack of clarity over numbers is partly because China’s Catholics have been split between the official Catholic Church in China and an underground church loyal to the Vatican that evolved under communism.

In trying to unite the two groups, Pope Francis has been accused of appeasing Beijing and letting down Catholics in the underground movement who had not accepted the Chinese government’s interference, and who face the continued threat of persecution.

Deals struck between the Vatican and Beijing in recent years appear to have left a situation where the Chinese government appoints Catholic bishops, and the Pope gives in and recognises them. China says it’s a matter of sovereignty, while Pope Francis insists he has the final say – though that is not the way it has looked.

“He won’t be pleasing everyone all the time, but I think what the Holy Father really wants to indicate is that the Church is not a threat to the state,” says Father Anthony Chantry. “He is treading a very careful path and it’s fraught with difficulties, but I think what he’s trying to do is just to build up a respectful relationship with the government in China.”

Rightly or wrongly, it is all in the name of bringing more people into the fold. Some of Pope Francis’ predecessors have been more uncompromising in many ways, seeming to be more accepting of a smaller, “purer” global Catholic community, rather than make concessions in either foreign relations or in the way the Church views, for example, divorce or homosexuality.

While some popes have also clearly been more comfortable in study and theology than travel and being surrounded by huge crowds, some have leaned into the politics of their position.

It is very clear when travelling with Pope Francis that while he can often look tired and subdued during diplomatic events, he is quickly rejuvenated by the masses who come out to see him, and energised by the non-dignitaries he meets, particularly young people.

This is certainly not a pope who shuns the limelight – it is being among people, some would say mission, that appears to be his lifeblood.

Father Anthony Chantry says this latest, longest papal trip is just a continued display of how the Pope feels the Church should engage with both Catholics and non-Catholics.

“The whole thrust is that we have got to reach out to others. We have to make everyone feel welcome. I think he (Pope Francis) does that really well, but I don’t think he’s trying to score any points there, it’s just him.”

There is very little the Pope has done since his election in 2013 that has not rankled Catholic traditionalists, who often feel that his spirit of outreach is taken too far. His actions on this trip are unlikely to change that.

“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.”

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.

In attempting to describe Makala Prison – the scene of a deadly and failed breakout this week in the Democratic Republic of Congo – two people who have been inside used the exact same word: “hell”.

“Makala is a true hell,” Stanis Bujakera, a former inmate and journalist, told the BBC about DR Congo’s largest jail.

Bujakera was sent to the notorious Makala Prison in September last year, after the authorities accused him of writing an article that alleged the military were involved in an opposition politician’s death. He spent six months there.

“Makala is not a prison, but a detention centre resembling a concentration camp, where people are sent to die,” he said.

The prison, located in capital city Kinshasa, has a capacity of 1,500 prisoners but is estimated to hold around 10 times more.

This cramped population ranges from petty criminals to political prisoners to murderers.

Human rights groups have long complained of the dire conditions Makala inmates face, including overcrowding, unsubstantial food and poor access to clean water.

Following a disaster at the facility earlier this week, these conditions have been thrust into the spotlight once again.

After masses of inmates tried to break out of Makala in the early hours of Monday morning, 129 prisoners lost their lives, Interior Minister Jacquemain Shabani said.

Two dozen were shot dead as they tried to escape, Mr Shabani reported, but most were suffocated in a crush.

Four surviving inmates told the New York Times that prior to the escape attempt, prisoners had been held in stifling cells without running water or the electricity to power fans for more than a day-and-a-half.

Some prisoners had initially broken out to escape the heat, they said.

Bujakera said these conditions were far from unusual – taps “constantly” run dry at Makala, while “electricity is random, leaving the detainees without light for days on end”.

“Inmates are literally abandoned to their fate, exposed to overcrowded and unsanitary conditions that foster contamination and the spread of disease,” he added.

Prisoners die “every day” as a result, Bujakera said.

Rostin Manketa, executive director of Congolese human rights group La Voix des Sans Voix, shares a similar account.

He has visited Makala several times and concluded that when a person has been sent to Makala Prison, “it seems like [they] have been sent to hell”.

Stark videos filmed by Bujakera during his time in Makala show dozens of sleeping men, packed tightly together on the floor of an overflowing room.

Their limbs overlap, and in a delicate balancing act some men sleep atop the walls that divide shower stalls.

Conditions are better in Makala’s VIP section, a separate pavilion that only the minority can afford – you get a bed and more space, for example.

Bujakera was asked the pay $3,000 (£2,280) to stay in VIP, but he managed to get this price slashed to $450 (£340) for his stay.

He told the BBC: “Economic inequalities between inmates create a hierarchy… the poorest are abandoned to their fate.”

What is more, wardens at Makala have little presence. Law and order inside the prison is effectively delegated to the inmates themselves.

“Prisoners govern themselves,” Fred Bauma, a human rights activist who was incarcerated in Makala from March 2015 to August 2016, told BBC’s Focus on Africa podcast this week.

“It’s like you’ve changed countries and there’s a new government and you need to learn those rules.”

This system of self-government is dysfunctional and leads to “harmful power dynamics, acts of violence and conflicts between inmates”, Bujakera said.

But Makala is not alone with its abysmal conditions – prisons all over the country are chronically underfunded and overcrowded.

According to the World Prison Brief project, DR Congo’s jails are the sixth-most overcrowded globally.

The authorities have acknowledged this problem on a number of occasions. Following Monday’s jailbreak, Deputy Justice Minister Samuel Mbemba blamed magistrates for prison overcrowding, noting that “even mere suspects are sent to prison”.

Many inmates have not actually been sentenced for a crime but are instead held in jail for months – or years – while waiting to be tried.

The food in DR Congo’s prisons has also been criticised widely.

In Makala, inmates get only one meal per day – and this dish is often of limited nutritional value.

Pictures taken by Bujakera show a tub of maize meal – a staple carbohydrate in DR Congo – turned hard and dry, accompanied by a watery brown vegetable stew.

In order to avoid malnourishment, many prisoners rely on their relatives to bring food into them.

However, not everyone has these connections.

In 2017, a charity reported that at least 17 prisoners starved to death following food shortages in Makala.

Mr Manketa said it was “possible” that Makala’s testing environment led to the tragic attempt to escape.

To avoid a repeat, the authorities should build new prisons and improve existing ones, he argues.

Bujakera, who is now based in the United States, said this change must happen swiftly.

It is a “sick” justice system, he lamented, and as Monday’s disaster demonstrated, people are dying while waiting for a cure.

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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?”

Italy’s culture minister has resigned after a row over the appointment of his former mistress as a top adviser caused weeks of controversy for the the country’s right-wing government.

Gennaro Sangiuliano, 62, found himself at the centre of a media storm when Maria Rosaria Boccia – his ex-lover – posted on LinkedIn that she had been appointed as his adviser for “major events”.

He initially denied the claim, but in a tearful interview with state TV on Wednesday, Mr Sangiuliano admitted to the affair with Ms Boccia and to hiring her as an unpaid consultant.

On Friday, he finally handed in his resignation to Prime Minister Georgia Meloni, but denied that he had broken any ministerial rules.

Mr Sangiuliano also apologised to his wife in Wednesday’s interview and claimed that he had broken off his affair with Ms Boccia during the summer. He said he first met her in Naples in May, before their friendship transitioned into what he called a “sentimental relationship”.

Throughout the affair, Ms Boccia recorded her interactions with Mr Sangiuliano using her phone and a pair of RayBan Stories – sunglasses designed by Meta equipped with a camera and microphone. Many of the photos have since been posted to Instagram, with Ms Boccia insisting that there was “nothing illegal” about her secret recordings.

In the photos posted to her account, Ms Boccia documented numerous trips with Mr Sangiuliano on his official visits, prompting questions as to whether state money was spent on her travel or accommodation.

The minister denied any suggestion that public funds were spent on Ms Boccia, telling state TV on Wednesday that “not a single euro” was spent on her travels. He produced documents which he said backed up his assertion that he had paid for her expenses.

Critics have also raised concerns that Ms Boccia had access to classified information, after photos showed her accompanying the minister to Pompeii – the site of next month’s meeting of G7 culture ministers. Other images showed that she had access to ministry offices and documents.

Since the couple parted ways, the 41-year-old has unleashed a stream of accusations against Mr Sangiuliano, winning her the nickname “the machine gunner” in the Italian press.

Ms Meloni thanked the outgoing culture minister for his “extraordinary work”, writing on X that his efforts had “allowed the Italian government to achieve important results in the relaunch and enhancement of Italy’s great cultural heritage, even beyond its national borders”.

But the debacle is the latest embarrassment to hit Ms Meloni’s government, which is led by her far-right Brothers of Italy party.

A number of her senior ministers have been investigated for a variety of scandals, including Daniela Santanchè, the tourism minister, who faced accusations of false accounting and fraud.

Francesco Lollobrigida, the agriculture minister, prompted fury after ordering a late-night high-speed train to let him off early. And Vittorio Sgarbi – a junior minister – was forced to resign after facing allegations of illegally acquiring a valuable Renaissance painting.

Ms Meloni appeared to express exasperation with her cabinet on Wednesday, telling ministers to employ more caution in their public activities.

“We are making history, and we all need to be aware of it,” the prime minister said during a meeting. “This does not allow for breaks and pauses, and much less for errors and false steps.”

Despite the scandals, her government has remained relatively popular in opinion polls, with Italy’s opposition remaining fractured among multiple parties.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• Listen: The Italian town where praying is a political issue

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Senior Filipino officials have sparked outrage for posing for photos with a former smalltown mayor accused of spying for China, as they escorted her home from Indonesia.

Alice Guo is seen flashing a wide smile and the peace sign with the smiling interior minister and chief of the Philippine National Police. The photo was allegedly taken before they boarded a Manila-bound private jet in Jakarta late on Thursday.

Ms Guo’s story which has involved illegal scam centres, questions over her citizenship and a dubious account of her childhood, has gripped the Philippines for months.

She was arrested just outside Jakarta on Wednesday, after a weeks-long chase.

Authorities accuse Ms Guo of protecting scam centres and human trafficking syndicates that had used online casinos or Pogos (Philippine Online Gaming Operations) for cover while she was the mayor of Bamban.

Her case has exposed how online casinos with mainland Chinese clients have long been used as a front for organised crime.

Lawmakers have also accused Ms Guo of forging her Filipino citizenship and being a Chinese national, allowing her to run for public office and win on her first try, despite being a political novice.

Her case has gripped the public imagination at a time when Manila continues to spar with Beijing over reefs and outcrops in the South China Sea.

Interior Secretary Benhur Abalos, who fetched Ms Guo from Jakarta, said he had the photo taken with her for “documentation”.

Mr Abalos said he was unaware that Ms Guo had posed with a wide smile and flashed the peace sign.

“She requested to speak with me and the [national police] chief because she had been receiving death threats. I told her she had nothing to fear because the police will protect her,” he said in a press conference in Manila.

“We wanted to document it so that everything is clear. I couldn’t see what she was doing because I was looking at the camera,” he said.

Ms Guo, who was in the same press conference, was asked about the photo. She said she had indeed told Mr Abalos and the PNP chief, Gen. Rommel Marbil, about the threats to her life.

“I asked for their help. I was also happy that I saw them. I feel safe,” Ms Guo said.

By that time, Ms Guo had changed into an orange police detainee shirt. At the airport in Jakarta, she was casually dressed in a white striped t-shirt and jeans. She was also not in handcuffs.

Another handout photo from the Philippine National Bureau of Investigation showed Ms Guo smiling with the authorities in the backseat of a vehicle.

The criticism on social media was swift.

“We want answers, NOT a photoshoot. Alice Guo, the fake Filipino, has a lot of explaining to do,” said Sen Risa Hontioveros, who is leading an inquiry in parliament on Ms Guo’s case.

“The Philippine justice system is a circus,” one X user said.

“Probably one of the most disturbing clips in the news right now. How can Alice Guo manage to still smile and wink like a movie star?” another X user said.

Another X user said the interior secretary and the police chief had posed for a photo with someone that is “symbolic of their own failure”.

“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.”

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.

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

The Venezuelan government has said opposition presidential candidate Edmundo González has left the country, seeking asylum in Spain.

Mr González has been in hiding, and a warrant issued for his arrest after the opposition disputed July’s presidential election result – in which the government-controlled National Electoral Council (CNE) declared Nicolás Maduro the winner.

“After taking refuge voluntarily at the Spanish embassy in Caracas a few days ago, (Gonzalez Urrutia) asked the Spanish government for political asylum,” Venezuela’s Vice-President Delcy Rodríguez said on social media.

She added that Caracas had agreed to his safe passage and that he had left.

Venezuela has been in a political crisis since authorities declared President Maduro the victor of the 28 July election.

The opposition claimed it had evidence Mr González had won by a comfortable margin, and uploaded detailed voting tallies to the internet which suggest Mr González beat Mr Maduro convincingly.

A number of countries, including the United States, the European Union and several Latin American countries, have refused to recognize President Maduro as the winner without Caracas releasing detailed voting data.

Prior to leaving the country, Mr González had been in hiding for a month, ignoring three successive summons to appear before prosecutors.

Post-election violence in Venezuela has claimed 27 lives and left 192 people injured while the government says it has arrested some 2,400 people.

In a tucked-away corner of paradise, overlooking the clear waters of the South Pacific, a cyclone of controversy was about to descend on Fiji’s Pearl Resort & Spa.

Standing on stage clutching a bouquet of flowers, 24-year-old MBA student Manshika Prasad had just been crowned Miss Fiji.

But soon after, according to one of the judges, things at the beauty pageant “turned really ugly”.

Ugly is potentially an understatement: what unfolded over the next few days would see beauty queens crowned and unseated, wild allegations thrown around and eventually the emergence of a shadowy figure with a very personal connection to one of the contestants.

Ms Prasad first found out something was wrong two days after her win, when Miss Universe Fiji (MUF) issued a press release. It said a “serious breach of principles” had occurred, and “revised results” would be made public shortly.

A couple of hours later, Ms Prasad was told she wouldn’t be travelling to Mexico to compete for the Miss Universe title in November.

Instead, runner-up Nadine Roberts, a 30-year-old model and property developer from Sydney, whose mother is Fijian, would take her place.

The press release alleged the “correct procedures” had not been followed, and that Ms Prasad had been chosen in a rigged vote which favoured a “Fiji Indian” contestant to win because it would bring financial benefits to the event’s manager.

A distraught Ms Prasad issued a statement saying she would be taking a break from social media, but warned that there was “so much the public did not know about”.

The new queen, meanwhile, offered a message of support. “We are all impacted by this,” Ms Roberts wrote on Instagram, before thanking Miss Universe Fiji for its “swift action”.

But those who took part in the contest were not satisfied: there were too many things that didn’t add up.

“Everything had been running so smoothly,” says Melissa White, one of seven judges on the panel.

A marine biologist by trade, she had been flown in from New Zealand to weigh in on the charity and environmental aspects of the contest.

“It was such a great night, such a successful show. So many people were saying they’d never seen pageant girls get along so well,” Ms White tells the BBC.

As the competition drew to a climax on Friday night, the judges were asked to write down the name of who they thought ought to be the next Miss Fiji.

“By this stage, Manshika [Prasad] was the clear winner,” says Jennifer Chan, another judge, who’s a US-based TV host and style and beauty expert.

“Not only based on what she presented on stage but also how she interacted with the other girls, how she photographed, how she modelled.”

Ms Chan says she was “100% confident” that Ms Prasad was the strongest candidate to represent Fiji.

Enough of her fellow judges agreed and Ms Prasad was declared the winner – receiving four of the seven votes.

But as the newly-crowned Miss Universe Fiji stood on stage, beaming in her sparkling tiara, the judges sensed something was wrong.

To her right, Nadine Roberts – wearing her runners-up sash – was “seething”, alleges Ms Chan.

“I remember going to bed thinking, how could someone feel so entitled to win?

“You win some, you lose some. She’s a seasoned beauty pageant contestant – surely she knew that?”

The next day, Ms Prasad took a celebratory boat trip with the judges.

“She was just in awe, saying: my life will be changed now,” says Ms Chan.

“She’s the embodiment of that good-hearted person who deserves it – it just affirmed to me that I’d picked the right girl.”

But there had still been no official confirmation of Ms Prasad’s victory.

Not only this – one of the judges was conspicuously absent from the trip: Riri Febriani, who was representing Lux Projects, the company that bought the licence to hold Miss Universe in Fiji.

“I remember thinking that was odd,” says Ms White, who shared a room with Ms Febriani. “But she just said she had lots of work to do and she needed to talk to her boss.”

Ms Febriani says she didn’t go on the boat trip as she needed to rest – and there’s no way the others would know who she was messaging on her phone.

But Ms White says she worked out her roommate was fielding calls and texts from a man called “Jamie”.

Miss Universe is a multi-million-dollar business which operates like a franchise – you need to buy a licence which enables you to use the brand and sell tickets for the event.

Those licences are expensive and in small countries it’s hard to find anyone willing to fund a national pageant – which is why Fiji hasn’t entered a contestant since 1981.

But this year, one organisation was willing to buy the licence: property development firm Lux Projects.

Ms Febriani was its representative on the judging panel, but also looked after media communications.

“I’d got on so well with her, she seemed a very sweet person,” says Ms White.

“But that day when she didn’t come on the boat, her demeanour kind of changed. She just kept saying she was super busy with work, always on the phone with this ‘Jamie’ guy.”

It turned out that, despite having Ms Febriani on the panel, Lux Projects was not happy with the outcome of the vote.

Its press release on Sunday said the licensee itself should also get a vote – one which the contracted organiser, Grant Dwyer, had “failed to count”.

Lux Projects would have voted for Ms Roberts, bringing the results to a 4-4 tie.

What’s more, it said, the licensee also had the “determining vote” – making Ms Roberts the winner.

“Never at any point were we told about an eighth judge or any kind of absentee judge,” says Ms Chan.

“It wasn’t on the website, it wasn’t anywhere. Besides, how can you vote on a contest if you’re not even there?”

Ms White was also suspicious.

“I did some digging and it turns out that Lux Projects was closely associated with an Australian businessman called Jamie McIntyre,” says Ms White.

“And Jamie McIntyre,” she told the BBC, “is married to Nadine Roberts.”

Mr McIntyre describes himself as an entrepreneur, investor and “world-leading educator”, who has – according to information available online – been married to Ms Roberts since 2022.

He was also banned from doing business in Australia for a decade in 2016 due to his involvement in a property investment scheme that lost investors more than A$7m ($4.7m; £3.6m). The judge in the case said there was “no evidence to suggest that successful reform is likely”.

A senator who questioned him as part of a parliamentary committee hearing later described him as “the most evasive witness I have had to deal with – and that’s saying something”, according to the Sydney Morning Herald.

But what was he doing here?

“[Mr McIntyre] isn’t a director or shareholder of the MUF licensee company, but has acted as an adviser, as he is a shareholder in associated companies,” Jamie McIntyre’s representatives told the BBC.

However, the company’s Instagram page does feature a video of Mr McIntyre giving property investment advice, as well as a link to 21st Century University, a Bali-based property company owned by Mr McIntyre.

The BBC also understands that a “Jamie” was on the line during phone calls between Ms Roberts and the event organiser, Grant Dwyer.

Mr McIntyre’s representatives insist that allegations that he was involved in the judging controversy are a “conspiracy theory” – although they did concede that he had “provided advice to the licence holder”.

Additionally, the press release’s allegation that Mr Dwyer had pressured the panel to choose Ms Prasad because of her race is undermined by the fact that Mr Dwyer is understood to have voted for Ms Roberts.

“It’s just gross to even bring up race,” says Ms Chan. “It was never, ever once uttered amongst any of the judges,” she adds.

The BBC has sought comment from both Ms Roberts and Ms Prasad, but neither has responded.

Several of those involved – including some judges and contestants – have been sent “cease and desist” emails by Lux Projects, the BBC understands, which have been taken as tantamount to gagging orders by the recipients.

This scandal in Fiji is by no means the first to hit the world of beauty pageants, which historically has seen its fair share of controversies.

“Pageants are full of drama, of controversies, of people saying the contest was a fix,” says Prof Hilary Levey Friedman, author of ‘Here She Is: The Complicated Reign of the Beauty Pageant in America.’

“But I will say that in more recent years, these issues have become much more pronounced thanks to social media,” she adds.

Apart from a voting scandal at the Miss America contest in 2022, recent controversies have tended to be in less developed parts of the world.

This is probably because they tend to be non-profit affairs in many Western countries, according to Prof Friedman, while pageants elsewhere have become more popular and more lucrative than ever.

“Historically, beauty pageants have been an amazing tool for social mobility for women,” says Prof Friedman.

“Apart from the prestige and the glory, it gives you a platform to attract followers and sponsorships. When there’s money involved, the stakes are higher.”

For Ms Prasad though, it turns out there is a happy ending.

On Friday, she posted on one of her social media accounts that she had indeed been re-crowned as Miss Fiji 2024.

“What an incredible journey this has been,” she wrote on Instagram.

Miss Universe Organization (MUO) has not responded to a request for comment, but the BBC understands it is extremely unhappy with the events in Fiji and, after having established the facts, worked hard to reinstate Ms Prasad as the island’s queen.

For Ms Prasad there is elation. For the judges, relief.

As for Ms Roberts, she is calling herself the “real Miss Universe Fiji 2024” on Instagram.

Judge Ms White says she’s “so proud of how Manshika [Prasad] has conducted herself throughout this journey. She’s a brilliant, compassionate, and beautiful young woman, who didn’t deserve this.

“We just wanted the truth to come out and now it has.”

More than 100,000 people protested across France on Saturday against the appointment of the centre-right politician Michel Barnier as the new prime minister.

His appointment follows an inconclusive election in which the left-wing bloc – the New Popular Front (NPF) – won the largest number of seats.

The protests were called by trade unions and members of the NPF, 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

The interior ministry said 110,000 protested nationwide on Saturday, including 26,000 in Paris, though one protest leader claimed the figure was 300,000.

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 were scheduled, 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 manhunt is underway in Kentucky after a number of people were shot along a highway near the city of London on Saturday.

The incident began at about 18:00 local time (22:00 GMT), when police responded to a report of vehicles being fired upon near Interstate 75.

Seven people have been injured in the incident, according to Mayor Randall Weddle of London.

He said not all of these injuries were by gunshot, and that no one has been killed.

The Laurel County Sheriff’s Office has named 32-year-old Joseph A Couch as a person of interest, and warned the public he is considered armed and dangerous.

According to local media, shots may have been fired from a wooded area near to the highway, or from an overpass.

“The suspect or suspects have not been apprehended at this time, but they are searching for them,” said Mayor Randall in a video posted on Facebook at about 21:30 local time.

“Where they are currently, that is some rugged terrain and a lot of tree lines,” he said.

Speaking to CNN, Christina DiNoto, who was driving on Interstate 75 with a friend at the time of the shooting said “it was like a rock went through my back window”, hurting her ear.

“We looked at each other and we were like, ‘Was that a gunshot?’ And then we’re like, ‘No, that wasn’t a gunshot.’”

She said it was only an hour and a half later they learnt that it had been a shooting.

Later on Friday, Mount Vernon Fire Department said a section of the highway close to where the shooting happened had reopened, after being closed for about three hours.

A spokesperson for the University of Kentucky Medical Center in Lexington told the BBC’s US news partner, CBS News that it had received at least two patients from the incident so far, but there was no word on their conditions.

Trooper Scottie Pennington, a Kentucky State Police spokesperson, urged residents in the area to stay inside.

Members of the public have been warned not to approach the person of interest.

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives also confirmed it was involved in the search.

Earlier, Kentucky’s Governor Andy Beshear wrote on social media that law enforcement had “shut the interstate down in both directions” near to where the shooting happened.

He said the area should be avoided, and urged the public to “pray for everyone involved”.

London is a small city of about 8,000 residents near the Daniel Boone National Forest.

Surrounded by food trucks, Ferris wheels and funnel cake stands on a hot August afternoon, Stephanie Soucek has one goal in mind.

The 42-year-old chair of the Republican Party in Door County, a bellwether district in the battleground state of Wisconsin, is at the county fair to urge undecided voters to cast a ballot for Donald Trump.

Upon meeting Tammy Conway, a Democrat who is considering voting Republican for the first time in decades, Ms Soucek begins talking about her own family’s two expensive car payments, an economic message that seems to resonate.

Ms Conway is concerned about “sky-high” housing interest rates and said Trump might make the economy “a lot less complicated”.

But as Ms Soucek lays out her case for the Republican presidential candidate, she avoids mentioning the latest spate of controversial remarks Trump has made, including personal attacks on Democratic challenger Kamala Harris.

“I try to tell people to focus on the policies and ignore the candidates,” she said, knowing that Trump’s brash personality has deterred women previously.

Republican officials in a handful of swing states – where the election is likely to be decided – are adopting Ms Soucek’s strategy of promoting policy over personality with white suburban female voters. It’s a pivotal voting bloc Trump narrowly won in his first presidential race but has struggled to appeal to since.

Local Republicans say they wish Trump would adopt a similar approach against Vice-President Harris, whose campaign has been powered by female voters since she replaced Joe Biden at the top of the ticket in July.

The concern brings into focus the widening gender gap that has come to define the election. Trump is courting young – especially black and Hispanic – men while Democrats are working to attract female voters motivated by the overturning of Roe v Wade, a landmark Supreme Court ruling that had enshrined the constitutional right to an abortion.

An ABC News/Ipsos released in September suggested the vice-president led the former president 54% to 41% among women – a seven-point jump since the Democratic National Convention late last month.

It has some Republicans worried about whether Trump can reverse the trend, Ms Soucek said.

Trump campaign spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said Ms Harris’s has “implemented dangerously liberal policies that have left women worse off financially and far less safe than we were four years ago under President Trump”.

But some who spoke to the BBC said his campaign has remained fixated on men – not women.

Republican pollster Christine Matthews said Trump’s team is “doubling down on a strategy of motivating the Maga base and hoping to motivate men – particularly non-college-educated men including those who are Hispanic in addition to white – in a way that will overpower the gender gap”.

The Trump campaign has leaned into “bro culture”, emphasising masculinity and a contrast of “weak versus tough”, said Chuck Coughlin, a political strategist who works with Republicans in the battleground state of Arizona.

“That appeals to a lot of men,” he said. “It doesn’t appeal to unaffiliated voters.”

Trump’s choice of JD Vance as his running mate reinforced how the campaign is prioritising outreach to men. They may not have expected his addition to the ticket to have been so damaging with women voters, however.

The Ohio senator has faced a backlash over previous comments about women, in particular a 2021 clip in which he calls several Democrats, including Ms Harris, “childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives”.

These types of comments do not help attract swing women voters, according to Betsy Fischer Martin, executive director of the nonpartisan Women & Politics Institute.

“There are plenty of childless cat ladies voting in the suburbs,” she said.

But the former president’s campaign rhetoric does not bother some ardent female supporters like Dixie, a 59-year-old Republican from Door County.

“He’s not going to tell you what you want to hear. He’s going to tell you the truth,” said Dixie, who declined to share her last name for privacy reasons.

Former Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway, who served as his 2016 campaign manager, told the BBC that voters could not have his policies without his “strong and resolute and tough” personality.

“People, and particularly women, tend to kvetch and converse and complain about what offends them, and then they vote according to what affects them,” she said.

Local Republicans in battleground states are hoping to stop the erosion of female support by steering the conversation back to issues that affect families on a daily basis, like crime and the economy, where polls suggest the party is more popular.

The effects of the Covid-19 pandemic make it difficult to compare how the US economy performed under the Trump and Biden administrations. While both enjoyed notable economic growth, inflation has been a persistent problem in the last three years as wages have struggled to keep up with rising prices.

And a recent KFF poll indicated inflation was the top issue in this race for 40% of suburban women voters.

For Lyla Juntunen, 88, a former stay-at-home mom from the suburbs of Green Bay, Wisconsin, the price increases under Mr Biden have been hard to ignore.

“Look at these groceries that you get and how much you pay,” she told the BBC, gesturing toward a full shopping cart in a grocery store car park.

Strategists say Trump would do well to focus more on these specific economic policy points to win over voters like Ms Juntenen.

“If he dials down the attacks and his brand of fiery kind of politics, then he can pick up…female voters in particular,” said Ariel Hill-Davis, co-founder of Republican Women for Progress, which advocates for female representation in the party.

“If your top three issues are the economy, inflation, public safety, I think he could easily sway those voters.”

Republicans in swing states have struggled with another issue that has animated women across the country: reproductive rights.

Democrats have seized on abortion rights as a way to galvanise voters after the fall of Roe v Wade in 2022, while Ms Harris has become the White House’s leading voice on the issue.

Voters in several states – including Republican strongholds – have passed referendums protecting the right to abortion. The issue is on the ballot in at least eight states in November, including in the battleground territories of Nevada and Arizona.

Republicans have struggled to reach a unified message on reproductive rights. Trump has repeatedly said policy should be left up to the states, declining to endorse a national abortion ban that many Republican lawmakers support.

He was roundly criticised by anti-abortion conservatives in recent weeks after giving contradictory remarks on whether he would support a referendum in Florida to protect abortion rights – he later clarified he would vote against it.

The same week, he told a Michigan crowd that if he were re-elected, his administration would cover the costs of IVF, a fertility treatment that Democrats have claimed Republicans are trying to take away through restrictive state abortion laws.

Tom Eddy, the chair of the Erie County Republican Party, a swing district in the must-win state of Pennsylvania, said he’s found the best approach is to avoid the issue altogether.

“I tell my candidates, ‘Stay the hell away from it,’” he said. “I can tell no matter what policy you promote with regard to abortion, you’re going to be wrong, because half the people are going to think the other way.”

Though the KFF poll indicated abortion to be lower on the list of priorities for female suburban voters – behind immigration, border security and the economy – it remains a motivating issue for a growing share.

A survey from the New York Times and Siena College last month suggested it had become the most important issue for female voters under the age of 45.

With polls suggesting the majority of suburban women support access to abortions, Ms Soucek said the Republican Party needs to find a unified message.

“It’s just a matter of making sure that we’re sending the right message to women that we care about women, while also caring about unborn babies,” she said.

Mr Trump’s former senior adviser, Kellyanne Conway, said that while Democrats are focused on “the waist down”, the Republican Party is concentrating on the “waist up”.

“We women, from the waist up, are where our brains, ears, eyes, hearts and mouths are, so we can figure out all the issues: the kitchen table economics, entrepreneurship, taxes, regulation, energy independence,” she said.

But that language isn’t landing with all women voters in Wisconsin.

Holly Rupnow, a 56-year-old former Republican from Green Bay, said one of the reasons she planned to vote for Ms Harris was because of reproductive rights.

“I like the things that she’s going to try to do for us – get us back women’s rights,” she said.

Experts say the political landscape has changed dramatically since Donald Trump first ran for president.

Some female voters in 2016 brushed aside their worries about Trump, believing he would act differently once he was in the White House, according to Ms Fischer Martin.

But the 2016 “Let Trump be Trump” rallying cry would not work now, she said.

During the 2018 midterm elections, suburban and college-educated women largely rejected Trump and Republicans and helped power the so-called blue wave that elected more than 100 women to the US House.

In 2022, reproductive rights played a central role in helping Democrats perform better than expected, raising fears among Republicans it could do so again.

Trump could make strides with female suburban voters by directly addressing their concerns about his personality, according to political experts.

“If he were to say something like: ‘You may not like me personally, you may not like my rhetoric, but if you want to worry less about grocery bills .. I’m your guy,’” Ms Fischer Martin said.

“I don’t know if he’s quite capable of getting there.”

Kellyanne Conway knows Trump better than most. She believes his core message – are voters better off now then when he was in office? – is the same for all Americans, regardless of gender.

“As I told him recently,” she added, “He beat a woman before. He can beat a woman again.”

• SIMPLE GUIDE: Everything you need to know about the vote

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• EXPLAINER: Seven swing states that could decide election

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• FACT CHECK: Was US economy stronger or weaker under Trump?

Pope Francis, who has often appeared to revel in confounding and surprising others, is at it again.

Many times over the years, he has seemed to suggest he is slowing down, only to ramp up his activities again.

At nearly 88 years old, he has a knee ailment that impairs mobility, abdominal problems caused by diverticulitis and is vulnerable to respiratory issues owing to the removal of most of one of his lungs.

Last autumn, the Pope said his health problems meant that foreign travel had become difficult. Soon after, when he cancelled a trip to the UAE, it led to heightened speculation about the extent of his medical difficulties.

But that was then.

Now, he is in the middle of the longest foreign visit of his 11-and-a-half year papacy. It has been one packed with engagements, and as well as Timor-Leste it involves three countries – Indonesia, Papua New Guinea and Singapore – in which Catholics are a minority.

So why is the Pope travelling so extensively and so far from home?

His supporters say his passion drives him.

“He obviously has an enormous amount of stamina and that is driven by his absolute passion for mission,” says Father Anthony Chantry, the UK director of the Pope’s mission charity Missio, who has just been appointed to the Vatican administration’s evangelisation department.

“He talks about all of us having a tireless mission to reach out to others, to set an example.”

Christian “mission” is something that has evolved over the centuries. It is still about spreading the gospel but now the stated aim is focused on social justice and charitable endeavours.

Throughout his trip Pope Francis will meet missionaries, including a group from Argentina now based in Papua New Guinea. But on numerous trips around Asia including this one, he also skirts close to China, a country with deep suspicions about the Church, its mission and its motives.

The Pope has frequently emphasised the importance of evangelisation for every Catholic. Yet in many parts of the world, it is still hard to separate ideas of “missionaries” and “evangelisation” from notions of European colonisation.

As the number of Catholics in Europe declines, is “mission” and “evangelising” in Asia and Africa now about Church expansion in those parts of the world?

“I think what he is preaching is the Gospel of love that will do no one any harm. He’s not trying to drum up support for the Church, that’s not what evangelisation is about,” says Father Anthony.

“It isn’t to be equated with proselytising, that is not what we have done for a long time. That is not the agenda of the Holy Father and not the agenda of the Church. What we do is we share and we help people in any way we can, regardless of their faith or not having any faith.”

Father Anthony says being a Christian missionary in the modern day, for which Pope Francis is setting an example, is about doing good work and listening, but sometimes, “where necessary”, also challenging ideas.

“We believe God will do the rest, and if that leads to people accepting Jesus Christ, that’s great. And if it helps people to appreciate their own spirituality – their own culture – more, then I think that is another success.”

Certainly the Pope has long talked of interfaith harmony and respect for other faiths. One of the most enduring images of his current trip will be his kissing the hand of the Grand Imam of the Istiqlal Mosque in Jakarta and holding it to his cheek.

He was warmly welcomed by people coming out to see him in the most populous Muslim-majority country in the world.

Pope and top Indonesian imam make joint call for peace

Pope Francis will end his marathon trip in Singapore, a country where around three-quarters of the population is ethnic Chinese, but also where the Catholic minority is heavily involved in missionary work in poorer areas.

For centuries now, Singapore has been something of a strategic regional hub for the Catholic Church, and what Pope Francis says and does there is likely to be closely watched in China, not least by the Catholics living there. It is hard to get a true picture of numbers, but estimates suggest around 12 million.

The lack of clarity over numbers is partly because China’s Catholics have been split between the official Catholic Church in China and an underground church loyal to the Vatican that evolved under communism.

In trying to unite the two groups, Pope Francis has been accused of appeasing Beijing and letting down Catholics in the underground movement who had not accepted the Chinese government’s interference, and who face the continued threat of persecution.

Deals struck between the Vatican and Beijing in recent years appear to have left a situation where the Chinese government appoints Catholic bishops, and the Pope gives in and recognises them. China says it’s a matter of sovereignty, while Pope Francis insists he has the final say – though that is not the way it has looked.

“He won’t be pleasing everyone all the time, but I think what the Holy Father really wants to indicate is that the Church is not a threat to the state,” says Father Anthony Chantry. “He is treading a very careful path and it’s fraught with difficulties, but I think what he’s trying to do is just to build up a respectful relationship with the government in China.”

Rightly or wrongly, it is all in the name of bringing more people into the fold. Some of Pope Francis’ predecessors have been more uncompromising in many ways, seeming to be more accepting of a smaller, “purer” global Catholic community, rather than make concessions in either foreign relations or in the way the Church views, for example, divorce or homosexuality.

While some popes have also clearly been more comfortable in study and theology than travel and being surrounded by huge crowds, some have leaned into the politics of their position.

It is very clear when travelling with Pope Francis that while he can often look tired and subdued during diplomatic events, he is quickly rejuvenated by the masses who come out to see him, and energised by the non-dignitaries he meets, particularly young people.

This is certainly not a pope who shuns the limelight – it is being among people, some would say mission, that appears to be his lifeblood.

Father Anthony Chantry says this latest, longest papal trip is just a continued display of how the Pope feels the Church should engage with both Catholics and non-Catholics.

“The whole thrust is that we have got to reach out to others. We have to make everyone feel welcome. I think he (Pope Francis) does that really well, but I don’t think he’s trying to score any points there, it’s just him.”

There is very little the Pope has done since his election in 2013 that has not rankled Catholic traditionalists, who often feel that his spirit of outreach is taken too far. His actions on this trip are unlikely to change that.

Outside the house where Rebecca Cheptegei lived, flowers have been placed on grass that was charred as the runner rolled on the ground to try to put out flames engulfing her.

The 33-year-old Olympic runner died on Thursday from injuries sustained when her former partner allegedly doused her with petrol and set her ablaze days earlier while at home with her two daughters.

“I was in the house and heard people screaming, ‘fire’. When I came out, I saw Rebecca running towards my house on fire, shouting ‘help me,” Agnes Barabara, Ms Cheptegei’s immediate neighbour, tearfully told the BBC.

“As I went to look for water and started calling out for help, her assailant appeared again and doused more petrol on her, but then he too got burned and he ran off towards the garden to try to put it out. We then went to help Rebecca.”

“I have never seen anyone burn alive in my life. I didn’t eat for days after that incident.”

“She was a very good neighbour and just recently she shared with me maize she’d harvested.”

Police are treating the death as a murder, with her ex-partner named by police as the main suspect. Local administrators said the two had been in conflict about the small piece of land where Ms Cheptegei lived, with the case awaiting resolution.

He will be arraigned in court on charges once he is out of hospital, where he continues to recover from injuries he sustained during the incident.

“We have opened a file, investigations are at an advanced stage,” divisional criminal investigations officer Kennedy Apindi told the BBC.

Ms Cheptegei’s mother Agnes said her daughter “was always obedient as a child, and very kind and jovial all through her life”.

Emmanual Kimutai, a friend and neighbour who attended school with Ms Cheptegei, described her as a “very exciting” and “determined” person.

“Even in primary school she was already doing very well in athletics, she was our champion,” Mr Kimutai said.

The Olympian was born on the Kenyan side of the Kenya-Uganda border, but chose to cross over and represent Uganda to chase her athletics dream when she did not get a breakthrough in Kenya.

When she started getting into athletics, she joined the Uganda People’s Defence Forces in 2008 and had risen to sergeant rank. Her career included competing in the Olympics in Paris this year. Although she placed 44th in the marathon, people in her home area called her “champion”.

She lived in Chepkum, a village in Kenya about 25km (15 miles) from the border with Uganda, in a rural area whose main economic activity is farming. Residents also tend to cattle and it is common to see cows, goats, and sheep grazing outside homes. The wider area, called Trans-Nzoia county, is well known as Kenya’s biggest producer of maize, which is the main ingredient for the country’s staple food.

Locals at a shopping centre near her house spoke fondly about a woman they sometimes waved at as she trained along the road whenever she was not in competition or training in Uganda. Kind and humble were the words often mentioned by people there.

While celebrated as an athlete, her personal life was in turmoil. Her former classmate said her performance at the Olympics was because she did not “have peace” owing to the conflict with her ex-partner that began last year.

“They used to live together but began falling out last year because of money,” her brother Jacob recalled. “He asked my sister, ‘what do you do with all the money you make?”

Police told the BBC that the two had previously reported domestic disputes in different stations – which they withdrew.

As Ms Cheptegei’s family waits for justice, they continue to prepare her final journey. She will be laid to rest on 14 September at their ancestral home in Bukwo, Uganda.

The Ugandan is the third athlete to be killed in Kenya in the last three years, where intimate partners are named as the main suspects by police. Athlete-led gender-based violence activist group, Tirop’s Angels, said the trend must end.

“What is heart-breaking is her children witnessed their mother’s attack,” Joan Chelimo, a co-founder of Tirop’s Angels said, as she fought back tears.

“This violence against athletes must stop.”

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.

A dozen fishermen are missing at sea.

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.

Venezuelan security forces have surrounded the Argentine embassy in the capital Caracas, which is sheltering six Venezuelan political figures opposed to President Nicolás Maduro.

Members of the Venezuelan opposition posted images and videos of officers from the country’s intelligence service forming a perimeter around the embassy complex.

Opposition figures inside the building said they were under “siege” by Mr Maduro’s regime.

The embassy, as well as Argentine interests in Venezuela, have been represented by Brazil since diplomatic relations between Argentina and Venezuela broke down over the summer due to the outcome of Venezuela’s presidential election.

On Saturday, the Venezuelan government revoked Brazil’s custody of the embassy, it said, in an apparent attempt to remove its diplomatic protection.

Argentina is among several countries to have disputed the official results of the presidential election, which gave Mr Maduro a third term.

Others have called on the Venezuelan government to publish voting data, while allies of Mr Maduro – including Russia and China – have recognised his victory.

Voting tallies published by the Venezuelan opposition indicate its candidate, Edmundo González, won – but western nations have stopped short of recognising him as the president-elect.

The latest actions by the Venezuelan government come after the Argentine foreign ministry said it would ask the International Criminal Court to issue arrest warrants for Mr Maduro and other senior officials.

Pedro Urruchurtu Noselli, an adviser to opposition leader María Corina Machado, who has been at the embassy since March, wrote on X that as of Saturday morning, there was “an increasing presence of hooded officials.

“They have closed off vehicular traffic on the street. We are still without electricity.”

Meanwhile Omar Gonzalez Moreno, another opposition official, said that the embassy had been without electricity since Friday evening.

“The siege and threat of attack on the Argentine diplomatic headquarters in Caracas, represented by Brazil, by security agents of the Maduro regime continues,” he added.

The Venezuelan government said it had been forced to take action after it supposedly uncovered “evidence of the use of the facilities… for the planning of terrorist activities and assassination attempts” against Mr Maduro and his deputy.

Brazil said in a subsequent statement that it would continue to represent Argentina’s interests in Venezuela until another government was selected to fulfil the role.

It emphasised “the inviolability of the facilities of the Argentine diplomatic mission”.

The Argentine foreign affairs ministry said in its own statement: “Any attempt to interfere or kidnap asylum seekers staying in our official residence will be harshly condemned by the international community.

“Actions such as these reinforce the belief that fundamental human rights are not respected in Maduro’s Venezuela.”

The foreign ministry of Chile criticised Venezuela for what it described as acting “without justification”, adding the move showed “serious disregard” for international convention on diplomatic premises.

Venezuela’s decision has also attracted condemnation from Paraguay and Uruguay.