Venezuelan opposition candidate Edmundo González has vowed to “continue to fight” for democracy in his own country, after being granted asylum in Spain.

Mr González left Venezuela on Saturday, having spent weeks in hiding at the Spanish embassy in Caracas – arriving at the Torrejón de Ardoz military air base in Madrid with his wife at about 16:00 local time (14:00 GMT).

The departure of the 75-year-old from the country followed turmoil in the wake of the 28 July elections, in which President Nicolás Maduro claimed victory – something which was disputed by Mr González, and many sections of the international community.

In an audio message distributed by his press team, he said he was “confident that soon we will continue the fight to achieve freedom and the recovery of democracy in Venezuela”.

Prior to his departure, an arrest warrant had been issued in Venezuela, with the government accusing him of conspiracy and of forging documents, among other “serious crimes”.

Thanking his supporters for expressions of solidarity and confirming his arrival in Spain, Mr González said: “My departure from Caracas was surrounded by episodes of pressure, coercion and threats that I wouldn’t be allowed to leave.”

Earlier, the country’s opposition leader Maria Corina Machado wrote on social media that he had made the decision to leave the country because “his life was in danger”, citing a “brutal wave of repression” in the election aftermath.

Ms Machado, a popular candidate in the country, had been expected to run as the candidate against Mr Maduro, but was prevented from doing so at the last minute by institutions loyal to the president.

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.

The US, the EU and the majority of foreign governments have refused to accept Mr Maduro as the winner without Caracas releasing detailed voting data to prove the result.

In a statement on Sunday, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Mr Gonzalez’s departure from Venezuela “is the direct result of the anti-democratic measures that Nicolás Maduro has unleashed on the Venezuelan people, including [Edmundo] González Urrutia and other opposition leaders, since the election.”

He added: “The election results and the will of the people cannot be merely swept aside by Maduro and the Venezuelan electoral authorities. We stand with González Urrutia in his call to continue the struggle for liberty and the restoration of democracy in Venezuela.”

Earlier on Sunday, the Vice-President of the European Commission Josep Borrell said: “Today is a sad day for democracy in Venezuela.” He added that “in a democracy, no political leader should be forced to seek asylum in another country”.

He said Venezuela needed to end its oppression of opposition leaders and free all political prisoners.

Speaking at a socialist party meeting on Saturday, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez described Mr González as “a hero who Spain will not abandon.”

The country’s Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares said Madrid would grant Mr González asylum as it was “committed to the political rights” of all Venezuelans.

Mr González’s departure came as security forces in Venezuela surrounded the Argentine embassy in the capital, Caracas, where six opposition figures have been sheltering.

The country’s foreign ministry alleged that terrorist acts were being plotted inside.

Two women who say they were raped and strangled by the controversial social media influencer, Andrew Tate, have spoken to the BBC about their experiences.

Another woman has alleged, for the first time, she was raped by Mr Tate’s younger brother, Tristan – also an influencer with millions of followers.

The Tate brothers, aged 37 and 36, currently face charges in Romania of human trafficking and forming an organised group to sexually exploit women. Andrew Tate is also charged with rape.

If found guilty, the two men could be jailed for more than 10 years. They strongly deny the charges against them.

Andrew Tate, is currently under house arrest in Romania. In addition to the charges he already faces, prosecutors are considering new allegations against him, including having sex with a minor and trafficking underage persons. Both brothers are also being investigated for trafficking 34 more women.

Now, two British women not involved with the Romanian case against the Tate brothers, have given detailed first-hand accounts to the BBC, against Andrew Tate, of alleged rape and sexual violence. The allegations date back at least 10 years, to when Mr Tate was living in Luton.

Another British woman has made a new allegation of rape against Tristan Tate, saying he put his put his hands around her throat as he did so.

Anna (not her real name) told us she went out with Andrew Tate in Luton in 2013. After a few dates, she says she went back to his house.

“He started kissing me… and he just looked up at the ceiling and said, ‘I’m just debating whether I should rape you or not. Out of the blue he just grabbed me by the throat, smashed me to the back of the bed, strangling me extremely hard.”

Anna says he then raped her.

She says after the attack, Mr Tate sent her disturbing text messages and voice notes about rape and sexual violence.

“Am I a bad person? Because the more you didn’t like it, the more I enjoyed it,” he said in a voice note.

In a text he wrote: “I love raping you.”

Anna says he also tried to pass the strangulation episode off as a joke: “Are you seriously so offended I strangled you a little bit?”

When the BBC asked him about the messages, Mr Tate declined to comment.

In 2014, Anna told Bedfordshire Police about the alleged attack. Two other women made similar allegations, and a police investigation started.

In 2019, a file was sent to the Crown Prosecution Service, but it was decided there was not enough evidence to bring charges.

Another woman, who we are calling Sienna, describes a similar story.

She says she first met Andrew Tate a decade ago in Luton: “We got on really well and we had a few drinks.”

She says they had what she describes as “a standard one-night stand”.

A few months later, Sienna says she met Mr Tate again.

She claims that on this occasion he attacked her.

“We went to my bedroom… and we started having sex,” she says. “That was when he put his hands around my throat.”

Sienna says she struggled for air, and then lost consciousness. When she came to, she says he was still having sex with her.

“I was absolutely terrified,” she says. “I just remember gasping for air… It was rape.”

In the morning, she says she had a bloodshot eye.

“One of the whites of my eyes had just gone completely red – apparently it’s quite common in domestic abuse cases where there’s been strangulation.”

A friend of Sienna has confirmed to the BBC that she told him about the incident at the time. He also says he saw her eye injury.

Sienna didn’t go to the police and says she regrets it.

BBC Panorama is aware of a total of five women in the UK who say they were strangled by Mr Tate during sex.

When we interviewed him in June last year, he denied ever having strangled or having had sex with a woman without her consent.

“I know I’ve never hurt anybody. It’s not in my nature to hurt people,” he said.

In the second half of the last decade, Andrew Tate began his rise to online fame.

The self-proclaimed misogynist’s videos on YouTube and TikTok, and posts on Twitter, gained him millions of followers and a worldwide profile.

He preached a message aimed at boys and young men that women should be dominated.

In one video, he said women were “intrinsically lazy” and added: “There’s no way you can be rooted in reality and not be sexist.”

Panorama – Andrew Tate: accused

Oana Marocico returns to her home country to investigate Andrew and Tristan Tate’s Romanian webcam business and speaks to women who claim they’ve been abused by the brothers.

Watch on Monday 9 September on BBC One at 20:00 BST (20:30 in Wales) or on BBC iPlayer (UK only) from 20:00 BST

Mr Tate has been singled out by authorities in the UK for the effect he has had in spreading misogyny online.

His videos also showed off the high-rolling lifestyle he claimed to lead in Romania.

Andrew and Tristan Tate are thought to have moved to the country around 2016.

They had been running a webcamming business in Luton – where women chat and strip online for money.

Romania has one of the largest webcam industries in the world, with over half a million employees in the sector. The brothers’ move there apparently saw the business taking off.

At one point, Andrew Tate claimed he was making £400,000 per month from webcamming and that “75 women worked for him at the peak of it all”.

However, when he spoke to the BBC last year, he downplayed these boasts, claiming they had been exaggerations and lies.

The adult entertainment business is central to the criminal case brought against them in Romania.

Prosecutors allege the brothers were trafficking women into the country – in other words, recruiting them, arranging their transport and providing accommodation in Bucharest for the purpose of exploitation. Two of the women named in the case file were brought to Romania from the UK.

Another British woman, not involved in any of the legal proceedings, told Panorama about her experience of working for the Tates. It is the first time she has spoken publicly.

Daisy (not her real name) says that in 2017 she had been dating Tristan Tate in the UK, when he encouraged her to work for the brothers’ webcam business in Bucharest. We have seen evidence that Tristan booked her flight to Bucharest.

Daisy went of her own accord, knowing and agreeing to be involved in the webcamming business. She describes a controlling environment where she and other webcammers lived and worked together.

“The girls had their own rooms, but it wasn’t their personal space. Everything was Tristan’s and Andrew’s, the bedrooms that the girls worked in were also the bedrooms that the brothers would sleep in.”

There were strict rules for all the women, says Daisy with almost every aspect of their lives monitored.

This description is echoed by a Romanian webcam model, who has also spoken to us.

“Raluca” says she was on the Tates’ books in 2021. She claims that “control and manipulation” played a primary role in their business model.

Most of the models working for the Tates “were dating them”, according to Raluca. She adds that some of them were women brought over from the UK.

The Romanian prosecutors say they have statements from three women who describe feeling “controlled” by the brothers. In the case file, some of the women say they were not allowed to leave the house “on their own”.

When Andrew Tate spoke to the BBC last year, he denied such allegations and claimed the women worked for themselves. He said that his role was simply to “help them find a cameraman”.

A few days after arriving in Romania, Daisy says she broke up with Tristan Tate, but she claims it did not stop him trying to have sex with her.

“I told him, ‘no’ 10 to 15 times that I didn’t want to.”

He put his hands around her throat and raped her, she says.

Daisy has not reported her allegation to police.

The BBC has spoken to one of her friends who says that after Daisy returned to the UK she was upset and told him that Tristan Tate had been forceful with her sexually.

We asked Tristan Tate about all the allegations against him – he did not comment.

The Tates’ legal troubles have deepened this year.

As well as the existing charges in Romania, and the new investigation announced last month, they face a number of legal threats elsewhere.

In the UK, Bedfordshire Police have begun extradition proceedings against both brothers on allegations of rape and human trafficking, dating back to 2012-2015. None of these are connected to the women we spoke to.

And in a civil case brought by Devon and Cornwall Police, a magistrate is expected to rule next month on whether the Tates owe millions in unpaid tax on their online businesses.

Sienna and Anna are now suing Andrew Tate, and their case is due to be heard in the High Court in London. Along with two other women, they accuse him of rape and sexual assault. He intends to contest the claims.

We asked Mr Tate about all the latest allegations – he has declined to comment.

Last year he told us: “I look forward to the truth coming out. I look forward to the truth being blasted all over the BBC that Andrew Tate was found not guilty because I’ve never done anything wrong.”

The mother of the suspect in last week’s Georgia shooting contacted his school to warn of an “extreme emergency” and asked them to check on her son the day of the attack, US media reports.

Both the suspect’s mother and grandmother were in contact with the school prior to the shooting, according to reports.

Colt Gray, 14, is accused of carrying out a shooting at Apalachee High School that left four people dead and nine injured. He faces four counts of first-degree murder.

The revelations come after authorities also charged the suspect’s father, Colin Gray, with second degree murder, manslaughter, and child cruelty.

Officials accuse him of allowing his son to possess an AR-15 style rifle.

Both father and son appeared in court on Friday but neither entered a plea.

The Washington Post obtained text messages sent by the boy’s mother, Marcee Gray, to her sister, explaining that she had asked school officials to check on her son the morning of the shooting.

“I was the one that notified the school counsellor at the high school,” Ms Gray wrote.

“I told them it was an extreme emergency and for them to go immediately and find [my son] to check on him.”

The suspect’s aunt, Annie Brown, provided the text messages and call logs to the Post. The suspect’s mother later confirmed the records to the newspaper.

Ms Brown also confirmed the text exchanges to other US media outlets.

It is not clear what caused the mother to contact the school, though CNN reported on Sunday that she did so after her son sent her a text saying: “I’m sorry”.

The phone records show Ms Gray called the school about a half an hour before the shooting began.

According to the Post, there appears to have been some confusion when a school administrator went to look for the boy, as another child had a similar name.

Separately, Charlie Polhamus, Colt Gray’s grandfather, told CBS News, the BBC’s US partner, that the boy’s grandmother had spoken with school officials that week.

“My wife had gone up there… the day before and met with the teachers to get him some, they were having some problems with him not going to school, and this kind of thing,” he said.

The Georgia Bureau of Investigation, which is handling the case, did not immediately return a request for comment.

The Barrow County School System has also not commented to media on the reports.

Colt Gray is accused of shooting and killing two 14-year-olds, Mason Schermerhorn and Christian Angulo, and teachers Richard Aspinwall, 39, and Cristina Irimie, 53.

In the months leading up to the shooting, he had faced mental health struggles and difficulties at home, Ms Brown told the Washington Post.

The FBI also said that police interviewed the boy in May 2023 about anonymous online threats to commit a school shooting. He denied to police he was behind them.

Vigils have been held to commemorate the victims and mourners have created a memorial of flowers, candles, and balloons outside Apalachee High School.

An influential Filipino pastor wanted in the Philippine and the US for child sex trafficking has been arrested, ending a two-week long standoff between police officers and his followers.

Police have been attempting to arrest Apollo Quiboloy who claims to be the “Appointed Son of God”, in a raid on his sprawling church compound.

Violent scuffles broke out between thousands of his followers and anti-riot police officers, with one church member dying of a heart attack during the raid.

Mr Quiboloy, whose Kingdom of Jesus Christ (KOJC) claims to have seven million followers, has denied all charges against him.

In 2021, the US Department of Justice (DOJ) charged Mr Quiboloy with sex trafficking of children, fraud and coercion and bulk cash smuggling.

The US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) said he trafficked girls and women from the Philippines to the US, where they are forced to solicit money for a bogus charity.

He also required his female personal assistants, who are called “pastorals”, to have sex with him, the FBI said.

But as all this was happening, Mr Quiboloy was rising to national prominence under then-president Rodrigo Duterte, previously serving as spiritual adviser to the former leader.

However, his fortunes turned when Mr Duterte stepped down in June 2022.

Filipino authorities soon charged him with child abuse, sexual abuse and human trafficking and a warrant was issued for his arrest.

For two weeks, thousands of policemen have been engaged in a standoff with Mr Quiboloy’s followers, as they raided his 30-hectare (75-acre) KOJC compound in Davao. They said Mr Quiboloy was hiding in an underground bunker based on the sound of heartbeats detected by surveillance equipment.

The complex is home to some 40 buildings, including a cathedral, a school and even a hangar.

Mr Quiboloy’s lawyer said the two-week-long manhunt had turned the KOJC compound into a “police garrison”, with one of their cathedrals “desecreated”.

On Sunday, Mr Quiboloy surrendered peacefully after he was given a 24-hour “ultimatum”, said Col Jean Fajardo, the national police spokesperson.

Mr Quiboloy’s lawyer, Israelito Torreon, said his client surrendered “because he does not want the lawless violence to continue to happen”.

The circumstances of his arrest were not immediately clear, except that it happened in the compound.

The regional police chief, Brig Gen Nicolas Torre, said a “concerted effort of everyone involved” led to the arrest.

Mr Quiboloy and four others who were arrested with him were flown to national police headquarters in the capital Manila where they are currently detained.

Before his arrest, Mr Quiboloy said that the “devil” was behind his legal woes.

He has also said that he does not want the FBI to “meddle” in his case.

The standoff at the KOJC has taken place as a very public falling out between the Marcos and Duterte political families has unfolded.

The US Department of Justice had earlier charged him with child sex trafficking, fraud and bulk cash smuggling and sought his arrest a few months before Mr Duterte handed power to current President Ferdinand Marcos Jr, but it was only during Mr Marcos’ term that authorities started pursuing the pastor.

While Mr Quiboloy was in hiding, Mr Duterte said he knew where he was but would not tell the police.

Mr Duterte’s daughter, Vice-President Sara Duterte also criticised police pursuing Mr Quiboloy of applying “questionable” force.

Super typhoon Yagi, Asia’s most powerful storm this year, has killed at least 21 people and injured 229 others in northern Vietnam, according to state media.

It has been downgraded to a tropical depression, but authorities have warned of more flooding and landslides as the storm moves westwards.

Among the victims were four family members, who died after parts of a hill collapsed onto their house in the mountainous Hoa Binh province on Sunday at around midnight local time (Saturday 17:00 GMT).

A 51-year-old man was able to escape while his wife, daughter and two grandchildren were buried. Their bodies were recovered later, AFP news agency reported.

State media reported that a landslide in Sa Pa, in the northern mountainous Lao Cai province, occurred around noon on Sunday, burying 17 people. Six of them have since been found dead, with nine others left injured.

A 68-year-old woman, a one-year-old boy and a newborn baby were among those said to be killed.

After Yagi made landfall in northern Vietnam on Saturday, the storm hit Hai Phong and Quang Ninh provinces with winds of up to 203 km/h (126 mph), the Indo-Pacific Tropical Cyclone Warning Centre said.

It lifted roofs from buildings and uprooted trees, leading to power outages across the region, including in the capital, Hanoi.

Videos online showed car drivers slowing down to shield motorbike riders trapped on the roads due to strong winds.

State media said four people died in the northern Quang Ninh province, with another killed in Hai Duong, near Hanoi.

Search and rescue found 27 people drifting at sea after a dozen fishermen were reported missing. Some 41 fishing boats are among vessels sunk or adrift in the wake of the storm.

In the port city of Hai Phong, several areas were under half a metre (1.6 feet) of flood waters on Sunday, with power lines and electrical poles damaged, according to AFP.

Metal roof sheets and commercial sign boards were seen flying across the city of two million, which faced the brunt of the storm.

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

At the Hai Au boat lock on Tuan Chau island, north of Hai Phong, at least 23 boats were seriously damaged or sunk, according to local residents.

51-year-old sailor Pham Van Thanh told AFP he had never experienced such a strong and violent typhoon.

He said all the crew had remained on board his tourist boat since Friday to stop it from sinking.

“The wind was pushing from our back, with so much pressure that no boat could stand,” he told AFP.

“Then the first one sank. Then one after another.”

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

Schools were temporarily closed in 12 northern provinces, including Hanoi.

Duong The Hung, a restaurant owner in Ha Long Bay, a Unesco world Heritage site, said his business’s signs had all fallen off.

“The ceiling has collapsed. The metal roof needs repairs. The damage is severe.”

The storm is expected to move into northernmost Laos by Sunday evening.

Before hitting Vietnam on Saturday, the typhoon brought devastation to the Chinese island of Hainan – a popular tourist destination dubbed China’s Hawaii – and to the Philippines, killing at least 24 people and injuring dozens of others, AFP reported.

On Friday, China evacuated some 400,000 people in Hainan island. 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.

A super typhoon is equivalent to a Category 5 hurricane.

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

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

The Pacific Islands are scattered across a vast area of ocean, with some of the clearest waters in the world, and pristine beaches and rainforests.

They are a magnet for tourism, which is vital for many of the countries’ economies.

But the region’s travel industry, and those who rely on it, are increasingly fearful of the impact of continuing climate change.

“Pacific Island leaders have declared climate change as the foremost threat to the livelihoods, security, and well-being of Pacific communities,” says Christopher Cocker, the chief executive of the Pacific Tourism Organisation.

“Without immediate and innovative action, the future of tourism in the region remains highly uncertain.”

He adds: “All islands of the Pacific are vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. However, low-lying atoll countries like Tuvalu, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, and the Federated States of Micronesia are more vulnerable.

“These islands are not only prone to inundation from rising seas, especially during king tides, but access to clean and safe drinking water is a challenge, with prolonged droughts and unpredictable rainfall patterns.”

Then there’s the threat of erratic and potentially devastating tropical storms, which are ranked from one (the weakest), to five (the strongest).

Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology has said that climate models of the Pacific Ocean have suggested “there could be a future shift towards fewer, but more intense, cyclones”.

However, in Tonga locals say they are now seeing stronger storms hit more often.

Nomuka is a small triangular island in Tonga’s Ha’apai archipelago, about 3,500km (2,175 miles) north-west of Sydney, Australia. Surrounded by ocean, its population of about 400 people feels at the mercy of nature’s whims and fury.

“We live with cyclones almost every year. I grew up there, and there were usually one or two that come in for a direct hit,” says Sione Taufa, an associate dean Pacific at the University of Auckland Business School, and a member of the New Zealand-Tonga Business Council.

“But nowadays we are seeing more of those category four or five cyclones coming in much more regularly.”

The peril that Pacific Islands states face has been highlighted recently by United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres. Last month he attended the Pacific Island Forum Leaders Meeting in Tonga, and called for the world’s most polluting countries to cut their greenhouse gas emissions.

“The small [Pacific] islands don’t contribute to climate change but everything that happens because of climate change is multiplied here,” he said.

A two-hour flight heading north-west from Tonga are the islands of Fiji, a former British colony.

Last year Fiji welcomed 929,740 visitors, mostly from Australia, New Zealand, North America and China.

Here, too, there is anxiety about a shifting climate.

Marica Vakacola is from the Mamanuca Environment Society, a community organisation based in Nadi, by Fiji’s main international airport.

The group champions sustainable tourism and environment protection, and is restoring mangroves and planting trees. But Ms Vakacola tells me that this part of Viti Levu, Fiji’s biggest island, is already living with the consequences of warming temperatures.

Bore water is being contaminated by salinity from the encroaching sea and, more and more, rainwater must be harvested during the wet season.

“Water security is a big risk in terms of climate change,” explains Ms Vakacola.

“Most of the freshwater sources that were once good enough to be consumed are now being intruded by salt water. Beach fronts are being eroded by rising sea levels and we have experienced coral bleaching events because of changing temperatures of seawater.”

Susanne Becken, a professor of sustainable tourism at Griffith University in Australia, foresees potential for friction over scarce supplies of water across the Pacific Islands.

“Drinking water is increasingly becoming an issue in some places,” she says.

“There could be conflict with the community because tourists effectively use the water that local people need.”

Prof Becken has recently undertaken research in Fiji and the Cook Islands. It revealed some unexpected attitudes to climate change and the threat it brings to the island nations.

“There’s a bit of denial, where people were a little bit fatalist in the sense that there is not much we can do about it. It was easily dismissed as a global problem that the Pacific Islands can’t do much about. I was a bit surprised, to be honest, that people maybe feel a little bit helpless.

“It is almost like ‘let’s not talk about it’. Maybe they are preoccupied about getting growth of the tourism market back. It is not part of the story. It is a really tricky topic.”

Hard truths are, though, being confronted in the Cook Islands, a jewel of Polynesia popular with New Zealanders and Australians, where most of the tourism infrastructure stretches in ribbons around the coasts of the main islands.

Brad Kirner is the director of destination development at the Cook Islands Tourism Corporation. He concedes that discussions about global warming in the community can be fraught.

“If we face reality it’s going to need some pretty serious adaptation measures put in play. It’s a challenging conversation.

“There’s also the challenging conservation that, yes, travel is a significant contributor to global warming, and we need to face that fact. How do we come up with solutions?”

“We are a tiny percentage of world population and therefore we have a very small carbon footprint, but we are on the front line of climate change,” he adds.

While there might be a sense of despair, it shouldn’t be mistaken for an admission of defeat. Far from it. Tenacity runs deep in some of the world’s most isolated nations.

Social systems vary across the islands, where the influence of kinship groups, community networks and the diaspora in Australia, New Zealand and beyond is paramount.

“Obviously, they will appreciate all the assistance that is given especially in the aftermath of any natural disaster, but being treated with a victim mentality isn’t quite helpful,” says the University of Auckland’s Sione Taufa.

“If any assistance comes we’ll be grateful for it, and if it doesn’t we’ll try our best to survive. You lean on your neighbours to help you in time of need. Most importantly, it is a trust system.”

Actress Kate Winslet has told the BBC that women should celebrate “being a real [body] shape” after being told on a recent film set to sit up straighter to hide her belly rolls.

Speaking about her upcoming film Lee, on Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg, Winslet said it was her job to be like her character – the fashion model turned acclaimed World War Two photographer Elizabeth ‘Lee’ Miller.

“She wasn’t lifting weights or doing Pilates. She was eating cheese, bread and drinking wine, and not making a big deal of it. So of course, her body would be soft,” Winslet said.

She said women should celebrate “being a real shape, being soft and maybe having a few extra rolls”.

“We’re so used to perhaps not necessarily seeing that and enjoying it. The instinct weirdly is to see it and criticise it,” she said. “It’s interesting how much people do like labels for women.”

Winslet said the topic is a conversation that needs to be had.

“Life is too short,” she added. “I don’t want to look back and go ‘why did I worry about that thing’ and so guess what – I don’t worry anymore.”

Winslet, 48, has been a champion for women and has openly spoken out against body shaming in the past.

In a recent interview with Harper’s Bazaar UK, Winslet spoke of being told to sit up straighter to hide her “belly rolls” while on set filming Lee.

“There’s a bit where Lee’s sitting on a bench in a bikini,” Winslet said. “And one of the crew came up between takes and said ‘You might want to sit up straighter.’ So you can’t see my belly rolls? Not on your life! It was deliberate.”

Winslet was asked if she minded looking “less-than-perfect” on screen, to which she replied: “The opposite. I take pride in it because it is my life on my face, and that matters. It wouldn’t occur to me to cover that up.”

“I’m more comfortable in myself as each year passes. It enables me to allow the opinions of others to evaporate,” she added.

At least 48 people have been killed in the central Nigerian state of Niger, after a fuel tanker collided with a lorry carrying passengers and cattle, the country’s disaster agency said.

The Niger State Emergency Management Agency said the collision happened at about 00:30 local time (01:30 GMT) on Sunday, and caused an explosion which engulfed both vehicles.

Director-general of the agency, Abdullahi Baba-arah, said response teams were dispatched to the scene to manage the situation.

A number of other vehicles were also caught up in the explosion.

Footage taken from the scene shortly after the incident shows the two vehicles, which have been entirely burnt out, as well as a number of dead cattle.

Speaking to the Reuters news agency after the incident, an emergency rescue worker said they were working to recover bodies, as well as dead animals which were still inside the vehicle.

According to state media, a mass burial is taking place for the victims.

Governor Umaru Bago said he was “pained by the unfortunate incident” in a condolence message to the families of the victims.

Fuel tanker explosions and accidents are common in Nigeria, partly due to the poor state of roads.

Boeing is offering its staff a 25% pay bump over a four-year contract, in a bid to avoid a strike that could potentially shut down its assembly lines as early as Friday.

Union leaders representing more than 30,000 employees have urged the workers to support the proposal, describing it as the best contract they had ever negotiated.

If approved the agreement would be an important achievement for Boeing’s new chief executive, Kelly Ortberg, who faces pressure to fix the company’s quality and reputational issues.

Boeing workers in the Seattle and Portland region are set to vote on the deal on Thursday. A strike can still happen if two thirds of union members support it in a separate vote.

In a video message to Boeing workers, the aerospace giant’s chief operating officer, Stephanie Pope, described the proposal as a “historic offer”.

If ratified by union members, it would be the first full labour agreement between the firm and the unions in 16 years.

Aside from the pay bump, the deal also offers workers improved retirement benefits and a commitment by Boeing to build its next commercial airplane in the Seattle area.

“We can honestly say that this proposal is the best contract we’ve negotiated in our history,” said a statement from the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM).

“Financially, the company finds itself in a tough position due to many self-inflicted missteps. It is IAM members who will bring this company back on track,” the negotiators said, referring to the safety and quality crises faced by Boeing in recent years.

Mr Ortberg, an aerospace industry veteran and engineer, took over as Boeing’s new chief executive last month.

His appointment came as the firm reported deepening financial losses and continued to struggle to repair its reputation following recent in-flight incidents and two fatal accidents five years ago.

A British prisoner is among five inmates who have escaped from a high-security prison in Portugal.

A search is continuing for Mark Cameron Roscaleer and four other prisoners after they broke out of the Vale de Judeus jail about 43 miles (70km) north of the capital Lisbon on Saturday.

They escaped by scaling the wall with a ladder and had “external help”, the Portuguese prison service said, according to Reuters news agency.

Roscaleer is serving a nine-year prison sentence for kidnap and robbery, Portuguese media report.

Vale de Judeus is a high-security prison with a capacity of 560 inmates, according to its website.

The prison service said the escape happened on Saturday morning, at 10:00 local time (09:00 GMT).

As well as Roscaleer, the five inmates included two Portuguese men, an Argentinian and a Georgian, Portuguese media say.

The two Portuguese escapees were serving 25-year sentences for offences including drug trafficking, criminal association, theft, robbery and kidnapping, Portugal’s prison service told Reuters.

The other three had been convicted of offences such as theft, kidnapping and robbery.

Portugal’s national union for prison guards – the Sindicato Nacional do Corpo da Guarda Prisional (SNCGP) – shared mugshots of the five on social media.

Frederico Morais, the head of SNCGP, told Portugal’s SIC Noticias news channel that the inmates were extremely dangerous and the public should not approach them.

Mr Morais also said the escape happened due to a lack of prison guards, which meant the surveillance towers were not manned, the Portuguese news site Diario de Noticias reported.

The prison service said the men escaped “with external help through the launch of a ladder, which allowed the inmates to scale the wall and access the outside”.

Portuguese police have reportedly asked for international cooperation to capture the five inmates.

The BBC has contacted the UK Foreign Office.

The last time US presidential candidates met on stage, they traded barbs and personal takedowns in a debate that upended the 2024 campaign.

President Joe Biden’s performance forced him to drop out of the race. So now Kamala Harris, his replacement as the Democratic nominee, will face off against former President Donald Trump in the second debate on 10 September.

The event represents an opportunity for a do-over for both parties and the consensus among voters is clear: they want more policy and less political sparring.

The BBC spoke to voters from across the political spectrum. Here’s what seven of them are hoping to see unfold.

I’m curious to see what they’re both going to do. Kamala Harris has been knocked recently for not doing a lot of interviews and for being underground versus Donald Trump, who usually gets knocked for his style in terms of how he conducts himself during debates and just his loudness.

I’ve decided I’m going to vote for Trump this time, but I would like to see what the vice-president has to say. I’d like to see how she performs more off the cuff and without an ability to read from the prompter. I want to see how she does with those fast questions interacting with Trump.

Even though I’m voting for him, it’s not because I’m comfortable with it necessarily. It’s really just a style thing. I hope Trump can just stand there and not go all crazy and whatever – just minimise the attacks and focus on policies.

I feel like I know what’s going to happen. I know that Kamala Harris is an extremely competent debater. I still remember her and Mike Pence’s debate from four years ago and I’m really excited to see her go toe-to-toe with Trump. I’m happy to have somebody on stage who will be able to directly counter, really be an opposing force, to him on stage.

The biggest trap is that Donald Trump says so many things so quickly. It’s easy to get wrapped up in what he’s saying. I hope that Harris doesn’t sink to his level. I’d love to see her maintain her optimistic, upbeat message even in the face of Trump.

I honestly haven’t been planning on watching the debate, at least not live. I’m not excited about either candidate at all.

From what I’ve seen from our debates in the last few elections, they’re just platforms for who can yell the loudest and who’s got the best one liner that will catch a headline. I haven’t heard anything of substance.

If someone got up on stage and they were realistic about what they could achieve or could not achieve, then maybe that would change my mind. But I don’t think either of them are going to say anything like that.

I’m looking at it like it’s a job interview, it’s who I’m choosing for president.

Everyday, I talk to people at the poverty level and it seems like it’s getting worse. I personally think the economy was better under Trump. I want to hear what Kamala Harris is going to do.

What I’ve been hearing is mostly her vibes and you can’t run the United States of America on vibes only.

I am hoping for a great debate where both parties actually lay their policies out on the table.

I think it will be informative and entertaining at the very least.

I‘d like to know how our economy is going to get back on track. I’d also like to know about the candidates’ plans for reducing illegal immigration.

I believe Trump’s strengths are an actual laid out policy. I think Kamala Harris has kind of hidden her views or switched her views. He does a better job laying out his plans. But I think his biggest weakness is his demeanour.

I do plan on voting for Trump again and I hope he wins the debate, but I think there’s not a lot either of them can do or say to change people’s minds.

I am much happier that we’ll be having Kamala up there and I’m really happy that they’re going to be doing it muted [so they can’t interrupt each other].

[The candidates are] getting so personal about each other. Even in the last debate, I’m like: ‘Did you guys even answer the question? Or are you guys just defending yourself about what he said about you?’ They’re just personally attacking each other instead of answering any of the things that we want to hear.

I do plan on watching. I think Biden’s debate performance was pretty disappointing and so I’m way more excited to see what Harris is able to do and how she carries herself and presents herself.

A big issue for me is climate change and environmental policy and so I’d be curious to hear what she says on that.

However, the sad thing, at least for me, is that I would vote for anyone [over Trump]. I almost don’t care what your policy positions are. I just know what your policy positions aren’t and so therefore, I’m stuck with you come hell or high water.

• SIMPLE GUIDE: Everything you need to know about the vote
• ANALYSIS: Will Harris debate tactics work against Trump?
• EXPLAINER: Seven swing states that could decide election
• IMMIGRATION: Could Trump really deport a million migrants?
• FACT CHECK: Was US economy stronger or weaker under Trump?

The public inquiry into the pandemic will start 10 weeks of hearings on Monday looking at the impact on patients, healthcare workers and the wider NHS.

Covid patients have been admitted to hospital more than a million times in the UK since the virus emerged in 2020, while countless others have had care for other conditions disrupted.

The third stage of the inquiry will also examine the impact on NHS staff, the use of masks and PPE in hospitals, the policy of shielding the most vulnerable and the treatment of long Covid.

And for the first time, the stories of more than 30,000 healthcare staff, patients and relatives will form part of the material entered into evidence.

BBC News has spoken to some of them.

“It was absolutely horrendous. We were really struggling, having to scrounge around for masks and gloves,“ says Mandi Masters, a community midwife from Aylesbury in Buckinghamshire.

At that early stage the NHS was, she says, “working in the dark” as the virus spread from China to Italy and then to the UK.

Later Mandi caught Covid herself – she is convinced at work – and ended up in hospital on oxygen for three weeks.

“My husband took me to A&E but had to leave me there, turn around and walk away,” she says.

“The news was coming out on how many health professionals were dying of Covid, but I was just too poorly to care at that point,” she says.

“Looking back, I have to admit, it was extremely frightening.”

Mandi, 62, has now returned to work part-time, but still struggles to catch her breath after a short walk.

Every cold or chest infection “wipes her out” and she “grieves for the person I was before Covid”.

The third section of the Covid public inquiry will look in detail at the effect on healthcare workers.

It will also cover:

• The diagnosis and treatment of patients with Covid and long-Covid
• Masks, PPE and infection control in hospitals
• The policy of shielding the most clinically vulnerable
• The use of GPs, ambulances and the NHS 111 helpline
• Maternity and end-of-life care
• NHS staffing including the use of private hospitals and temporary “Nightingale” sites

It has to examine the impact on the wider healthcare system, including the sharp increase in delays and waiting lists triggered by the pandemic.

Lynda Ross, from Portadown, was booked in for spinal surgery in early 2020.

Her operation was cancelled and, by the time she could see her specialist again, she was told it was too late for treatment.

“The consequence of that is I have to live my life in a level of pain that has me on the same medication as someone who is dying from cancer.” she says.

“It feels like the rest of my life has been destroyed.”

More than 50 witnesses are expected to give evidence over the next 10 weeks, including scientists, medical experts, healthcare workers and politicians.

Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice UK, which represents more than 7,000 relatives, says it is “deeply worried” that only two of the 23 witnesses it has put forward have been called to appear.

“Without our input, the inquiry risks repeating the mistakes that played out during the pandemic by failing to take into consideration the lived experience of ordinary families,” said its spokesperson Rivka Gottlieb.

The inquiry says it does allow members of the public to contribute online to its Every Story Matters project, and has run 20 different face-to-face events so far in town centres across the UK.

The stories of more than 30,000 healthcare workers, patients and relatives have been collated into a 200-page written record that will be entered into evidence on Monday.

The inquiry’s secretary, Ben Connah, said the document could not replace one-to-one testimony, but did allow a large number of people to contribute anonymously – “some of whom wouldn’t want to give formal evidence in a frankly scary courtroom”.

The public inquiry, likely to be one of the most expensive in legal history, has been split into nine different sections, each of which will hear from witnesses and report findings separately.

Baroness Hallett, who is chairing the inquiry, has already taken evidence on pandemic planning and political decision-making, with future sections expected on the vaccine rollout, the care sector, test and trace, the impact on children, and the economy.

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 crickets are high in protein. 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.”

Jacqueline Wilson has been described as many things over the years, but one title that still surprises her is “gay icon”.

In 2020, the British children’s writer announced that she was in a long-term relationship with a woman.

The beloved author, who is known for her nuanced depictions of childhood struggles, has found a new and unexpected audience after opening up about her sexuality.

“I’m very touched to be thought of as a gay icon, it’s an absolute delight,” she tells the BBC.

Aged 78, she can’t quite see herself “rampaging around with a rainbow flag, but I highly applaud and approve of anyone who does”.

Wilson has just published her first adult novel which, among other themes, explores same-sex relationships.

Think Again is the sequel to the Girls series and follows the life of Ellie Allard, and her best friends Nadine and Magda, as she turns 40.

Wilson says the idea “has been on my mind for years and started when my daughter asked me if I ever wonder what happens to my characters when they grow up”.

Having written more than 100 books, Wilson says now felt like the right time to write her first adult novel.

“In real time the girls would be hitting 40,” she reflects, “and that’s a significant age where you have to make big decisions, and, for some people, life doesn’t look like what you dreamt of as a teenager”.

In the book, none of the three women has quite the life they hoped for and Ellie is stuck in a rut as she reaches her milestone birthday.

“The girls don’t have their happy-ever-after ending but I didn’t want to write something that is all grim because there are things in their lives that are great and fun,” explains Wilson. “I just wanted it to be realistic.”

“Nowadays many teenagers are quite depressed and anxious, but they also have big ideas and say, ‘I want to be this’ or ‘I’m going to do that’, which is fantastic but this story shows that you need to have a plan B or C.”

The former children’s laureate is also using the book as a way to highlight how “choice is the best thing in modern life”.

Ellie, Magda and Nadine aren’t in relationships that society would expect from middle-aged women.

“There’s not just one path nowadays,” Wilson says. “In my generation we were told you either get married and have children or have a career but why can’t you do both?

“Getting married young wasn’t a sensible idea for me and women now are more sensible and work out what they want. It’s finding it that’s the difficult part!”

Wilson’s books have explored all manner of themes, but it’s only recently she’s started writing about LGBT issues with her gay heroine appearing in her 2020 novel, Love Frankie.

She says that she could have written a gay character in her earlier work but “there would have been far more ‘oh my gosh Jacqueline has written about someone who is gay’ whereas now it’s not a big deal”.

In Think Again, Ellie finds herself unexpectedly falling in love with a woman, much like Jacqueline’s own life as she began a relationship with a woman after a divorce with her husband.

“I’m aware that people will think that there are parallels but that’s not the intention, I was just being imaginative when I wrote the book,” she says.

She also doesn’t think that society should view sexuality in such a binary way.

“We don’t need to just think that everyone is either straight or gay. Of course I’m not suggesting we chop and change all the time, but for my generation it didn’t occur that you could be attracted to all sorts of people, so we’ve definitely become much more grown up.”

Wilson, who was made a dame in 2008, has never shied away from writing about difficult and dark issues.

Most of her books, some of which explore suicide, mental health and domestic violence, are aimed at children aged between seven and 12.

As a result, her storylines have often caused controversy, but Wilson defends them.

“People say there is sex and drugs in my books, but there isn’t any,” she says, adding that her stories come from the fact she “wants to show what life is like for children who are a bit outside the system and feel they don’t belong and are unhappy for some reason”.

She says these stories “would be comforting for those children, but also help all the other kids understand why these kids might be a little bit difficult or whatever”.

While the characters in Think Again haven’t been influenced by Wilson’s own life, some of her earlier characters go through similar things she did as a child.

“‘I didn’t have that happy a life as a child – I was brought up on a council estate and I did used to think that the children in books were nothing like me and my friends.

“Parents never seemed to have any ugly rows in children’s books, which in my experience, they certainly did.”

Wilson also says she promised herself as a child that she would write about these issues if she ever got a chance.

“When I was 12 I wrote in a diary that if I ever wrote children’s books I would put all that in because I thought it’s very much part of life.”

A woman has been paid an out-of-court settlement from a council after her adoption of a two-year-old boy broke down.

Karen Maguire won the six-figure payout from South Lanarkshire Council last year after her lawyer argued it failed to provide her with enough background information on the child and did not support her during the placement.

Ms Maguire told BBC Scotland the child barely slept, hated being cuddled and self-harmed by banging his head. It later transpired he had a serious underlying medical condition which she was not told about.

South Lanarkshire Council said it aimed to provide full support to any prospective adoptive parents.

Ms Maguire said she was speaking out for the first time to raise awareness of the lack of support for adoptive families.

The adoption took place in 2013, and broke down after just four months, but Ms Maguire has been fighting for years to get the council to recognise its role in the failure.

Ms Maguire told the BBC she had applied to adopt a child as a lone parent and the approval process – which makes sure a prospective parent can provide a stable and loving home – took six months.

She said she went into the process with her “eyes wide open”.

Ms Maguire knew that many children in local authority care had social and emotional difficulties and she told social workers she was fine with a child with mild additional support needs.

However, she said she would find it hard to cope on her own with a child with severe difficulties.

A two-year-old boy was identified as being suitable. The social worker who came to tell Ms Maguire the news stressed how lucky she was.

“At the time she said she didn’t know a lot about him, but said that he was relatively uncomplicated,” she said.

“In fact she used the words ‘you’ve won a watch’.”

Later, Ms Maguire said she was told the child had a developmental delay.

She said she knew things were not going to be easy but felt she had good support from her wider family to help her cope.

Social workers told her the forms with more information on the boy had not been written yet and that they could only provide verbal information at that time.

But Ms Maguire said she “knew something was wrong” as soon as the child came to live with her.

“When he came to me, he was covered in bruises and his face was cut from self-harming,” she said.

“He came to me with a helmet that he was supposed to wear, such was the severity of the head-banging.”

Ms Maguire said daily life was a struggle. “He had rages,” she said.

“For hours on end he was inconsolable. It was horrific to watch.

“He would be hanging from my hair or he would hit me about the head, the nose, the mouth.”

Ms Maguire said her pleas for help were dismissed and she felt let down.

“I got absolutely no support whatsoever,” she said.

“They kept insisting there was absolutely nothing wrong and that it was me, imagining it. I needed immediate help.”

Family and friends helped her but eventually Ms Maguire told South Lanarkshire Council she was not coping.

She said social work help was provided but she needed specialist support – a child psychologist or paediatrician – as she suspected there was more to the child’s problems than developmental delay.

She said her health visitor and a therapist wrote to the council supporting her need for extra help.

“I felt social workers could not see there were serious problems despite being advised by other professionals who had seen him,” she said.

“They didn’t seem to believe me until the situation was completely out of hand.”

Ms Maguire said it reached crisis point with an incident when the boy threw a heavy paperweight at her head.

“If that had hit me full on it would have been catastrophic as it would have knocked me out and left him alone in the house,” she said.

“At that moment I thought, ‘I can’t keep this child safe’.”

Social workers visited that day and seeing her bruises suggested the placement should end.

“In that moment I agreed,” Ms Maguire said.

“However, I didn’t think it would happen.”

She said “adoption disruption”, as it is called, should be a long road and efforts should be made to stop it happening.

Although the boy was in Ms Maguire’s care, legally the adoption hadn’t yet been approved by the courts.

After further meetings and assessments Ms Maguire said she was asked to make the “life-changing” decision about whether to keep him.

“I believe there was a fine line between my desperate cry for help and them taking him,” she said.

“I was under pressure and fighting an uphill battle.”

The boy returned to local authority care four months after being placed with Ms Maguire.

She said she felt misled over the adoption.

It was only later that Ms Maguire found out about the boy’s underlying medical condition.

“Everything I had thought from the very outset was correct, and yet I was made to feel that wasn’t the case throughout it all,” she said.

Ms Maguire said “adoption disruption” is not often discussed and she feels a stigma about what happened.

“I am consumed by guilt because I tried so hard to keep him,” she said.

“The stigma is that you’ve given your child back and people don’t understand the situation.”

Ms Maguire said she lost friends over the decision.

“People made judgements about me,” she said.

“You would walk into rooms at work and people would stop talking.

“Somebody actually said I’d given him back like a pair of trousers at Marks & Spencers”.

While dealing with the devastation of the adoption breaking down, and losing what she still describes as “her little boy”, Ms Maguire sought legal advice.

Elizabeth Rose, from L&M Medilaw, acknowledged that in law a council does not generally owe an adoptive parent a duty of care.

However, she felt the lack of information provided to Karen prior to the boy being placed in her care, and lack of support during the placement, meant there was scope for the law to be tested.

“It was an unusual case,” she told BBC Scotland News.

“In this certain situation there were issues with the matching and assessment period prior to placement and I think it was time that the law challenged this.

“Essentially insufficient information was given to my client and as a result she wasn’t able to make an informed decision, and even when the placement started there was insufficient support given.”

South Lanarkshire Council paid Ms Maguire an undisclosed sum to settle the case, understood to be more than £100,000.

Polly Cowan, from the charity Scottish Adoption, has looked at how often adoptions break down and the reasons why.

She analysed UK and international figures and estimates the rate to be between 2% and 25%, but said it is hard to get definite figures, because the way they are gathered in Scotland varies.

“There is a real need for support for families,” Ms Cowan said.

“That is the real issue that needs to be talked about and thought about.”

She would like to see more funded support from the Scottish government, national guidelines for adoption and better monitoring of the number of adoption breakdowns.

South Lanarkshire Council told BBC Scotland it always aims to provide adoptive parents with full support.

A spokeswoman said: “It would be inappropriate for us to comment on individual cases.

“Our policy for practice reflects national standards and regulatory requirements.

“Support is offered following adoption which we endeavour to tailor to the needs of the child.”

The Scottish government said it was committed to ensuring adoptees and adoptive families could access the support they need.

A spokeswoman said: “This includes funding to Adoption UK to provide a national helpline and support for adoptive families to help minimise adoption breakdowns.”

It has been almost a decade since Ms Maguire’s adoption process came to an end but she said she still thinks about the child involved.

“I live every day with what happened. I miss him every day,” she said.

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.”

Rapper Kendrick Lamar will headline the Super Bowl half-time show, the National Football League and Apple Music announced on Sunday.

It will be the second time the Grammy and Pulitzer Prize-winning artist will perform in one of the most coveted events in music – but will be the first time he is the main act.

“Rap music is still the most impactful genre to date. And I’ll be there to remind the world why,” Lamar said in a statement. “They got the right one.”

The Super Bowl will be held on 9 February in New Orleans, Louisiana.

Lamar performed alongside Dr Dre, Snoop Dogg, Eminem and Mary J Blige at the 2022 Super Bowl show.

The show earned an Emmy Award for the category Outstanding Variety Special (Live).

The Compton-born rapper, 37, is known for being one of the most inventive lyricists in the hip-hop genre. In 2018, he became the first hip-hop artist to win the Pulitzer Prize for music.

“Time and time again, Kendrick has proven his unique ability to craft moments that resonate, redefine, and ultimately shake the very foundation of hip-hop,” said NFL’s Head of Music Seth Dudowsky in a statement.

Lamar made headlines this year for a public feud with Canadian rapper Drake, with the two stars releasing a series of diss tracks earlier this year.

Two of the tracks with contributions from Lamar became major hits, including Future and Metro Boomin’s Like That and Lamar’s own Not Like Us.

Artists like Rihanna, Usher, Beyonce, the Rolling Stones and Bruce Springsteen are among the other major artists to have performed at the sports event.

The Super Bowl is the biggest sports event in the US, drawing tens of millions of viewers, as well as being broadcast around the world.

A southern cassowary chick, one of the world’s largest and deadliest birds, has been successfully hatched for the first time at a bird park in the Cotswolds.

Keepers at Birdland in Bourton-on-the-Water, Gloucestershire, have been trying to breed the giant, flightless birds for more than 25 years.

The chick is only the fourth to hatch in Europe this year and the first born in the UK since 2021.

“When we caught our first glimpse of the tiny chick it was a very special moment indeed,” said keeper Alistair Keen.

“Cassowaries have a reputation as one of the world’s most dangerous birds and their size, speed and power combined with their dagger-like, 10cm claws mean we have to take looking after them extremely seriously.”

The Cassowary, which is related to the emu and native to the tropical forests of New Guinea and northern Australia, is considered so dangerous because of its powerful legs, a sharp claw and aggressive behaviour when threatened.

There have been documented cases of people being killed by cassowaries, with one of the most recent in 2019, when Marvin Hajos, 75, died after he was attacked by one of his pet cassowaries.

The proud parents of the new chick, a male from Avifauna in Alphen, Netherlands, and a female from Frankfurt, Germany, have been at Birdland since 2012 and are part of the European Endangered Species Programme.

Before 2021, the hatching of Cassowary chicks in the UK was relatively rare.

Cassowaries are challenging to breed in captivity due to their specific environmental and behavioural needs.

The male incubates the eggs for up to two months and looks after the hatchlings.

Once the chicks hatch, the male leads them to his regular feeding grounds, protecting them for up to 16 months.

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.

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”.

A spokesperson from the Department for Business described the UK’s auto sector as “thriving”.

“While we cannot speculate on commercial investment decisions, we welcome Chery International’s Omoda launch in the UK and would positively view any new investment in the UK,” they said.

But 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.

Super typhoon Yagi, Asia’s most powerful storm this year, has killed at least 21 people and injured 229 others in northern Vietnam, according to state media.

It has been downgraded to a tropical depression, but authorities have warned of more flooding and landslides as the storm moves westwards.

Among the victims were four family members, who died after parts of a hill collapsed onto their house in the mountainous Hoa Binh province on Sunday at around midnight local time (Saturday 17:00 GMT).

A 51-year-old man was able to escape while his wife, daughter and two grandchildren were buried. Their bodies were recovered later, AFP news agency reported.

State media reported that a landslide in Sa Pa, in the northern mountainous Lao Cai province, occurred around noon on Sunday, burying 17 people. Six of them have since been found dead, with nine others left injured.

A 68-year-old woman, a one-year-old boy and a newborn baby were among those said to be killed.

After Yagi made landfall in northern Vietnam on Saturday, the storm hit Hai Phong and Quang Ninh provinces with winds of up to 203 km/h (126 mph), the Indo-Pacific Tropical Cyclone Warning Centre said.

It lifted roofs from buildings and uprooted trees, leading to power outages across the region, including in the capital, Hanoi.

Videos online showed car drivers slowing down to shield motorbike riders trapped on the roads due to strong winds.

State media said four people died in the northern Quang Ninh province, with another killed in Hai Duong, near Hanoi.

Search and rescue found 27 people drifting at sea after a dozen fishermen were reported missing. Some 41 fishing boats are among vessels sunk or adrift in the wake of the storm.

In the port city of Hai Phong, several areas were under half a metre (1.6 feet) of flood waters on Sunday, with power lines and electrical poles damaged, according to AFP.

Metal roof sheets and commercial sign boards were seen flying across the city of two million, which faced the brunt of the storm.

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

At the Hai Au boat lock on Tuan Chau island, north of Hai Phong, at least 23 boats were seriously damaged or sunk, according to local residents.

51-year-old sailor Pham Van Thanh told AFP he had never experienced such a strong and violent typhoon.

He said all the crew had remained on board his tourist boat since Friday to stop it from sinking.

“The wind was pushing from our back, with so much pressure that no boat could stand,” he told AFP.

“Then the first one sank. Then one after another.”

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

Schools were temporarily closed in 12 northern provinces, including Hanoi.

Duong The Hung, a restaurant owner in Ha Long Bay, a Unesco world Heritage site, said his business’s signs had all fallen off.

“The ceiling has collapsed. The metal roof needs repairs. The damage is severe.”

The storm is expected to move into northernmost Laos by Sunday evening.

Before hitting Vietnam on Saturday, the typhoon brought devastation to the Chinese island of Hainan – a popular tourist destination dubbed China’s Hawaii – and to the Philippines, killing at least 24 people and injuring dozens of others, AFP reported.

On Friday, China evacuated some 400,000 people in Hainan island. 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.

A super typhoon is equivalent to a Category 5 hurricane.

Scientists say typhoons and hurricanes are becoming stronger, more frequent and staying over land for longer due to 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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office spokesperson said: “We are supporting the families of a British man and woman following their deaths in Majorca and are in contact with local authorities.”

We asked our readers to send in their best pictures on the theme of “still life”. Here is a selection of the photographs we received from around the world.

The next theme is “railways” and the deadline for entries is 17 September 2024.

The pictures will be published later that week and you will be able to find them, along with other galleries, on the In Pictures section of the BBC News website.

You can upload your entries directly here or email them to yourpics@bbc.co.uk.

Terms and conditions apply.

Further details and themes are at: We set the theme, you take the pictures.

All photographs subject to copyright.

Two women who say they were raped and strangled by the controversial social media influencer, Andrew Tate, have spoken to the BBC about their experiences.

Another woman has alleged, for the first time, she was raped by Mr Tate’s younger brother, Tristan – also an influencer with millions of followers.

The Tate brothers, aged 37 and 36, currently face charges in Romania of human trafficking and forming an organised group to sexually exploit women. Andrew Tate is also charged with rape.

If found guilty, the two men could be jailed for more than 10 years. They strongly deny the charges against them.

Andrew Tate, is currently under house arrest in Romania. In addition to the charges he already faces, prosecutors are considering new allegations against him, including having sex with a minor and trafficking underage persons. Both brothers are also being investigated for trafficking 34 more women.

Now, two British women not involved with the Romanian case against the Tate brothers, have given detailed first-hand accounts to the BBC, against Andrew Tate, of alleged rape and sexual violence. The allegations date back at least 10 years, to when Mr Tate was living in Luton.

Another British woman has made a new allegation of rape against Tristan Tate, saying he put his put his hands around her throat as he did so.

Anna (not her real name) told us she went out with Andrew Tate in Luton in 2013. After a few dates, she says she went back to his house.

“He started kissing me… and he just looked up at the ceiling and said, ‘I’m just debating whether I should rape you or not. Out of the blue he just grabbed me by the throat, smashed me to the back of the bed, strangling me extremely hard.”

Anna says he then raped her.

She says after the attack, Mr Tate sent her disturbing text messages and voice notes about rape and sexual violence.

“Am I a bad person? Because the more you didn’t like it, the more I enjoyed it,” he said in a voice note.

In a text he wrote: “I love raping you.”

Anna says he also tried to pass the strangulation episode off as a joke: “Are you seriously so offended I strangled you a little bit?”

When the BBC asked him about the messages, Mr Tate declined to comment.

In 2014, Anna told Bedfordshire Police about the alleged attack. Two other women made similar allegations, and a police investigation started.

In 2019, a file was sent to the Crown Prosecution Service, but it was decided there was not enough evidence to bring charges.

Another woman, who we are calling Sienna, describes a similar story.

She says she first met Andrew Tate a decade ago in Luton: “We got on really well and we had a few drinks.”

She says they had what she describes as “a standard one-night stand”.

A few months later, Sienna says she met Mr Tate again.

She claims that on this occasion he attacked her.

“We went to my bedroom… and we started having sex,” she says. “That was when he put his hands around my throat.”

Sienna says she struggled for air, and then lost consciousness. When she came to, she says he was still having sex with her.

“I was absolutely terrified,” she says. “I just remember gasping for air… It was rape.”

In the morning, she says she had a bloodshot eye.

“One of the whites of my eyes had just gone completely red – apparently it’s quite common in domestic abuse cases where there’s been strangulation.”

A friend of Sienna has confirmed to the BBC that she told him about the incident at the time. He also says he saw her eye injury.

Sienna didn’t go to the police and says she regrets it.

BBC Panorama is aware of a total of five women in the UK who say they were strangled by Mr Tate during sex.

When we interviewed him in June last year, he denied ever having strangled or having had sex with a woman without her consent.

“I know I’ve never hurt anybody. It’s not in my nature to hurt people,” he said.

In the second half of the last decade, Andrew Tate began his rise to online fame.

The self-proclaimed misogynist’s videos on YouTube and TikTok, and posts on Twitter, gained him millions of followers and a worldwide profile.

He preached a message aimed at boys and young men that women should be dominated.

In one video, he said women were “intrinsically lazy” and added: “There’s no way you can be rooted in reality and not be sexist.”

Panorama – Andrew Tate: accused

Oana Marocico returns to her home country to investigate Andrew and Tristan Tate’s Romanian webcam business and speaks to women who claim they’ve been abused by the brothers.

Watch on Monday 9 September on BBC One at 20:00 BST (20:30 in Wales) or on BBC iPlayer (UK only) from 20:00 BST

Mr Tate has been singled out by authorities in the UK for the effect he has had in spreading misogyny online.

His videos also showed off the high-rolling lifestyle he claimed to lead in Romania.

Andrew and Tristan Tate are thought to have moved to the country around 2016.

They had been running a webcamming business in Luton – where women chat and strip online for money.

Romania has one of the largest webcam industries in the world, with over half a million employees in the sector. The brothers’ move there apparently saw the business taking off.

At one point, Andrew Tate claimed he was making £400,000 per month from webcamming and that “75 women worked for him at the peak of it all”.

However, when he spoke to the BBC last year, he downplayed these boasts, claiming they had been exaggerations and lies.

The adult entertainment business is central to the criminal case brought against them in Romania.

Prosecutors allege the brothers were trafficking women into the country – in other words, recruiting them, arranging their transport and providing accommodation in Bucharest for the purpose of exploitation. Two of the women named in the case file were brought to Romania from the UK.

Another British woman, not involved in any of the legal proceedings, told Panorama about her experience of working for the Tates. It is the first time she has spoken publicly.

Daisy (not her real name) says that in 2017 she had been dating Tristan Tate in the UK, when he encouraged her to work for the brothers’ webcam business in Bucharest. We have seen evidence that Tristan booked her flight to Bucharest.

Daisy went of her own accord, knowing and agreeing to be involved in the webcamming business. She describes a controlling environment where she and other webcammers lived and worked together.

“The girls had their own rooms, but it wasn’t their personal space. Everything was Tristan’s and Andrew’s, the bedrooms that the girls worked in were also the bedrooms that the brothers would sleep in.”

There were strict rules for all the women, says Daisy with almost every aspect of their lives monitored.

This description is echoed by a Romanian webcam model, who has also spoken to us.

“Raluca” says she was on the Tates’ books in 2021. She claims that “control and manipulation” played a primary role in their business model.

Most of the models working for the Tates “were dating them”, according to Raluca. She adds that some of them were women brought over from the UK.

The Romanian prosecutors say they have statements from three women who describe feeling “controlled” by the brothers. In the case file, some of the women say they were not allowed to leave the house “on their own”.

When Andrew Tate spoke to the BBC last year, he denied such allegations and claimed the women worked for themselves. He said that his role was simply to “help them find a cameraman”.

A few days after arriving in Romania, Daisy says she broke up with Tristan Tate, but she claims it did not stop him trying to have sex with her.

“I told him, ‘no’ 10 to 15 times that I didn’t want to.”

He put his hands around her throat and raped her, she says.

Daisy has not reported her allegation to police.

The BBC has spoken to one of her friends who says that after Daisy returned to the UK she was upset and told him that Tristan Tate had been forceful with her sexually.

We asked Tristan Tate about all the allegations against him – he did not comment.

The Tates’ legal troubles have deepened this year.

As well as the existing charges in Romania, and the new investigation announced last month, they face a number of legal threats elsewhere.

In the UK, Bedfordshire Police have begun extradition proceedings against both brothers on allegations of rape and human trafficking, dating back to 2012-2015. None of these are connected to the women we spoke to.

And in a civil case brought by Devon and Cornwall Police, a magistrate is expected to rule next month on whether the Tates owe millions in unpaid tax on their online businesses.

Sienna and Anna are now suing Andrew Tate, and their case is due to be heard in the High Court in London. Along with two other women, they accuse him of rape and sexual assault. He intends to contest the claims.

We asked Mr Tate about all the latest allegations – he has declined to comment.

Last year he told us: “I look forward to the truth coming out. I look forward to the truth being blasted all over the BBC that Andrew Tate was found not guilty because I’ve never done anything wrong.”

Actress Kate Winslet has told the BBC that women should celebrate “being a real [body] shape” after being told on a recent film set to sit up straighter to hide her belly rolls.

Speaking about her upcoming film Lee, on Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg, Winslet said it was her job to be like her character – the fashion model turned acclaimed World War Two photographer Elizabeth ‘Lee’ Miller.

“She wasn’t lifting weights or doing Pilates. She was eating cheese, bread and drinking wine, and not making a big deal of it. So of course, her body would be soft,” Winslet said.

She said women should celebrate “being a real shape, being soft and maybe having a few extra rolls”.

“We’re so used to perhaps not necessarily seeing that and enjoying it. The instinct weirdly is to see it and criticise it,” she said. “It’s interesting how much people do like labels for women.”

Winslet said the topic is a conversation that needs to be had.

“Life is too short,” she added. “I don’t want to look back and go ‘why did I worry about that thing’ and so guess what – I don’t worry anymore.”

Winslet, 48, has been a champion for women and has openly spoken out against body shaming in the past.

In a recent interview with Harper’s Bazaar UK, Winslet spoke of being told to sit up straighter to hide her “belly rolls” while on set filming Lee.

“There’s a bit where Lee’s sitting on a bench in a bikini,” Winslet said. “And one of the crew came up between takes and said ‘You might want to sit up straighter.’ So you can’t see my belly rolls? Not on your life! It was deliberate.”

Winslet was asked if she minded looking “less-than-perfect” on screen, to which she replied: “The opposite. I take pride in it because it is my life on my face, and that matters. It wouldn’t occur to me to cover that up.”

“I’m more comfortable in myself as each year passes. It enables me to allow the opinions of others to evaporate,” she added.

The mother of the suspect in last week’s Georgia shooting contacted his school to warn of an “extreme emergency” and asked them to check on her son the day of the attack, US media reports.

Both the suspect’s mother and grandmother were in contact with the school prior to the shooting, according to reports.

Colt Gray, 14, is accused of carrying out a shooting at Apalachee High School that left four people dead and nine injured. He faces four counts of first-degree murder.

The revelations come after authorities also charged the suspect’s father, Colin Gray, with second degree murder, manslaughter, and child cruelty.

Officials accuse him of allowing his son to possess an AR-15 style rifle.

Both father and son appeared in court on Friday but neither entered a plea.

The Washington Post obtained text messages sent by the boy’s mother, Marcee Gray, to her sister, explaining that she had asked school officials to check on her son the morning of the shooting.

“I was the one that notified the school counsellor at the high school,” Ms Gray wrote.

“I told them it was an extreme emergency and for them to go immediately and find [my son] to check on him.”

The suspect’s aunt, Annie Brown, provided the text messages and call logs to the Post. The suspect’s mother later confirmed the records to the newspaper.

Ms Brown also confirmed the text exchanges to other US media outlets.

It is not clear what caused the mother to contact the school, though CNN reported on Sunday that she did so after her son sent her a text saying: “I’m sorry”.

The phone records show Ms Gray called the school about a half an hour before the shooting began.

According to the Post, there appears to have been some confusion when a school administrator went to look for the boy, as another child had a similar name.

Separately, Charlie Polhamus, Colt Gray’s grandfather, told CBS News, the BBC’s US partner, that the boy’s grandmother had spoken with school officials that week.

“My wife had gone up there… the day before and met with the teachers to get him some, they were having some problems with him not going to school, and this kind of thing,” he said.

The Georgia Bureau of Investigation, which is handling the case, did not immediately return a request for comment.

The Barrow County School System has also not commented to media on the reports.

Colt Gray is accused of shooting and killing two 14-year-olds, Mason Schermerhorn and Christian Angulo, and teachers Richard Aspinwall, 39, and Cristina Irimie, 53.

In the months leading up to the shooting, he had faced mental health struggles and difficulties at home, Ms Brown told the Washington Post.

The FBI also said that police interviewed the boy in May 2023 about anonymous online threats to commit a school shooting. He denied to police he was behind them.

Vigils have been held to commemorate the victims and mourners have created a memorial of flowers, candles, and balloons outside Apalachee High School.

A British prisoner is among five inmates who have escaped from a high-security prison in Portugal.

A search is continuing for Mark Cameron Roscaleer and four other prisoners after they broke out of the Vale de Judeus jail about 43 miles (70km) north of the capital Lisbon on Saturday.

They escaped by scaling the wall with a ladder and had “external help”, the Portuguese prison service said, according to Reuters news agency.

Roscaleer is serving a nine-year prison sentence for kidnap and robbery, Portuguese media report.

Vale de Judeus is a high-security prison with a capacity of 560 inmates, according to its website.

The prison service said the escape happened on Saturday morning, at 10:00 local time (09:00 GMT).

As well as Roscaleer, the five inmates included two Portuguese men, an Argentinian and a Georgian, Portuguese media say.

The two Portuguese escapees were serving 25-year sentences for offences including drug trafficking, criminal association, theft, robbery and kidnapping, Portugal’s prison service told Reuters.

The other three had been convicted of offences such as theft, kidnapping and robbery.

Portugal’s national union for prison guards – the Sindicato Nacional do Corpo da Guarda Prisional (SNCGP) – shared mugshots of the five on social media.

Frederico Morais, the head of SNCGP, told Portugal’s SIC Noticias news channel that the inmates were extremely dangerous and the public should not approach them.

Mr Morais also said the escape happened due to a lack of prison guards, which meant the surveillance towers were not manned, the Portuguese news site Diario de Noticias reported.

The prison service said the men escaped “with external help through the launch of a ladder, which allowed the inmates to scale the wall and access the outside”.

Portuguese police have reportedly asked for international cooperation to capture the five inmates.

The BBC has contacted the UK Foreign Office.

Venezuelan opposition candidate Edmundo González has vowed to “continue to fight” for democracy in his own country, after being granted asylum in Spain.

Mr González left Venezuela on Saturday, having spent weeks in hiding at the Spanish embassy in Caracas – arriving at the Torrejón de Ardoz military air base in Madrid with his wife at about 16:00 local time (14:00 GMT).

The departure of the 75-year-old from the country followed turmoil in the wake of the 28 July elections, in which President Nicolás Maduro claimed victory – something which was disputed by Mr González, and many sections of the international community.

In an audio message distributed by his press team, he said he was “confident that soon we will continue the fight to achieve freedom and the recovery of democracy in Venezuela”.

Prior to his departure, an arrest warrant had been issued in Venezuela, with the government accusing him of conspiracy and of forging documents, among other “serious crimes”.

Thanking his supporters for expressions of solidarity and confirming his arrival in Spain, Mr González said: “My departure from Caracas was surrounded by episodes of pressure, coercion and threats that I wouldn’t be allowed to leave.”

Earlier, the country’s opposition leader Maria Corina Machado wrote on social media that he had made the decision to leave the country because “his life was in danger”, citing a “brutal wave of repression” in the election aftermath.

Ms Machado, a popular candidate in the country, had been expected to run as the candidate against Mr Maduro, but was prevented from doing so at the last minute by institutions loyal to the president.

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.

The US, the EU and the majority of foreign governments have refused to accept Mr Maduro as the winner without Caracas releasing detailed voting data to prove the result.

In a statement on Sunday, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Mr Gonzalez’s departure from Venezuela “is the direct result of the anti-democratic measures that Nicolás Maduro has unleashed on the Venezuelan people, including [Edmundo] González Urrutia and other opposition leaders, since the election.”

He added: “The election results and the will of the people cannot be merely swept aside by Maduro and the Venezuelan electoral authorities. We stand with González Urrutia in his call to continue the struggle for liberty and the restoration of democracy in Venezuela.”

Earlier on Sunday, the Vice-President of the European Commission Josep Borrell said: “Today is a sad day for democracy in Venezuela.” He added that “in a democracy, no political leader should be forced to seek asylum in another country”.

He said Venezuela needed to end its oppression of opposition leaders and free all political prisoners.

Speaking at a socialist party meeting on Saturday, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez described Mr González as “a hero who Spain will not abandon.”

The country’s Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares said Madrid would grant Mr González asylum as it was “committed to the political rights” of all Venezuelans.

Mr González’s departure came as security forces in Venezuela surrounded the Argentine embassy in the capital, Caracas, where six opposition figures have been sheltering.

The country’s foreign ministry alleged that terrorist acts were being plotted inside.

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.”

Super typhoon Yagi, Asia’s most powerful storm this year, has killed at least 21 people and injured 229 others in northern Vietnam, according to state media.

It has been downgraded to a tropical depression, but authorities have warned of more flooding and landslides as the storm moves westwards.

Among the victims were four family members, who died after parts of a hill collapsed onto their house in the mountainous Hoa Binh province on Sunday at around midnight local time (Saturday 17:00 GMT).

A 51-year-old man was able to escape while his wife, daughter and two grandchildren were buried. Their bodies were recovered later, AFP news agency reported.

State media reported that a landslide in Sa Pa, in the northern mountainous Lao Cai province, occurred around noon on Sunday, burying 17 people. Six of them have since been found dead, with nine others left injured.

A 68-year-old woman, a one-year-old boy and a newborn baby were among those said to be killed.

After Yagi made landfall in northern Vietnam on Saturday, the storm hit Hai Phong and Quang Ninh provinces with winds of up to 203 km/h (126 mph), the Indo-Pacific Tropical Cyclone Warning Centre said.

It lifted roofs from buildings and uprooted trees, leading to power outages across the region, including in the capital, Hanoi.

Videos online showed car drivers slowing down to shield motorbike riders trapped on the roads due to strong winds.

State media said four people died in the northern Quang Ninh province, with another killed in Hai Duong, near Hanoi.

Search and rescue found 27 people drifting at sea after a dozen fishermen were reported missing. Some 41 fishing boats are among vessels sunk or adrift in the wake of the storm.

In the port city of Hai Phong, several areas were under half a metre (1.6 feet) of flood waters on Sunday, with power lines and electrical poles damaged, according to AFP.

Metal roof sheets and commercial sign boards were seen flying across the city of two million, which faced the brunt of the storm.

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

At the Hai Au boat lock on Tuan Chau island, north of Hai Phong, at least 23 boats were seriously damaged or sunk, according to local residents.

51-year-old sailor Pham Van Thanh told AFP he had never experienced such a strong and violent typhoon.

He said all the crew had remained on board his tourist boat since Friday to stop it from sinking.

“The wind was pushing from our back, with so much pressure that no boat could stand,” he told AFP.

“Then the first one sank. Then one after another.”

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

Schools were temporarily closed in 12 northern provinces, including Hanoi.

Duong The Hung, a restaurant owner in Ha Long Bay, a Unesco world Heritage site, said his business’s signs had all fallen off.

“The ceiling has collapsed. The metal roof needs repairs. The damage is severe.”

The storm is expected to move into northernmost Laos by Sunday evening.

Before hitting Vietnam on Saturday, the typhoon brought devastation to the Chinese island of Hainan – a popular tourist destination dubbed China’s Hawaii – and to the Philippines, killing at least 24 people and injuring dozens of others, AFP reported.

On Friday, China evacuated some 400,000 people in Hainan island. 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.

A super typhoon is equivalent to a Category 5 hurricane.

Scientists say typhoons and hurricanes are becoming stronger, more frequent and staying over land for longer due to 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.

A southern cassowary chick, one of the world’s largest and deadliest birds, has been successfully hatched for the first time at a bird park in the Cotswolds.

Keepers at Birdland in Bourton-on-the-Water, Gloucestershire, have been trying to breed the giant, flightless birds for more than 25 years.

The chick is only the fourth to hatch in Europe this year and the first born in the UK since 2021.

“When we caught our first glimpse of the tiny chick it was a very special moment indeed,” said keeper Alistair Keen.

“Cassowaries have a reputation as one of the world’s most dangerous birds and their size, speed and power combined with their dagger-like, 10cm claws mean we have to take looking after them extremely seriously.”

The Cassowary, which is related to the emu and native to the tropical forests of New Guinea and northern Australia, is considered so dangerous because of its powerful legs, a sharp claw and aggressive behaviour when threatened.

There have been documented cases of people being killed by cassowaries, with one of the most recent in 2019, when Marvin Hajos, 75, died after he was attacked by one of his pet cassowaries.

The proud parents of the new chick, a male from Avifauna in Alphen, Netherlands, and a female from Frankfurt, Germany, have been at Birdland since 2012 and are part of the European Endangered Species Programme.

Before 2021, the hatching of Cassowary chicks in the UK was relatively rare.

Cassowaries are challenging to breed in captivity due to their specific environmental and behavioural needs.

The male incubates the eggs for up to two months and looks after the hatchlings.

Once the chicks hatch, the male leads them to his regular feeding grounds, protecting them for up to 16 months.

The last time US presidential candidates met on stage, they traded barbs and personal takedowns in a debate that upended the 2024 campaign.

President Joe Biden’s performance forced him to drop out of the race. So now Kamala Harris, his replacement as the Democratic nominee, will face off against former President Donald Trump in the second debate on 10 September.

The event represents an opportunity for a do-over for both parties and the consensus among voters is clear: they want more policy and less political sparring.

The BBC spoke to voters from across the political spectrum. Here’s what seven of them are hoping to see unfold.

I’m curious to see what they’re both going to do. Kamala Harris has been knocked recently for not doing a lot of interviews and for being underground versus Donald Trump, who usually gets knocked for his style in terms of how he conducts himself during debates and just his loudness.

I’ve decided I’m going to vote for Trump this time, but I would like to see what the vice-president has to say. I’d like to see how she performs more off the cuff and without an ability to read from the prompter. I want to see how she does with those fast questions interacting with Trump.

Even though I’m voting for him, it’s not because I’m comfortable with it necessarily. It’s really just a style thing. I hope Trump can just stand there and not go all crazy and whatever – just minimise the attacks and focus on policies.

I feel like I know what’s going to happen. I know that Kamala Harris is an extremely competent debater. I still remember her and Mike Pence’s debate from four years ago and I’m really excited to see her go toe-to-toe with Trump. I’m happy to have somebody on stage who will be able to directly counter, really be an opposing force, to him on stage.

The biggest trap is that Donald Trump says so many things so quickly. It’s easy to get wrapped up in what he’s saying. I hope that Harris doesn’t sink to his level. I’d love to see her maintain her optimistic, upbeat message even in the face of Trump.

I honestly haven’t been planning on watching the debate, at least not live. I’m not excited about either candidate at all.

From what I’ve seen from our debates in the last few elections, they’re just platforms for who can yell the loudest and who’s got the best one liner that will catch a headline. I haven’t heard anything of substance.

If someone got up on stage and they were realistic about what they could achieve or could not achieve, then maybe that would change my mind. But I don’t think either of them are going to say anything like that.

I’m looking at it like it’s a job interview, it’s who I’m choosing for president.

Everyday, I talk to people at the poverty level and it seems like it’s getting worse. I personally think the economy was better under Trump. I want to hear what Kamala Harris is going to do.

What I’ve been hearing is mostly her vibes and you can’t run the United States of America on vibes only.

I am hoping for a great debate where both parties actually lay their policies out on the table.

I think it will be informative and entertaining at the very least.

I‘d like to know how our economy is going to get back on track. I’d also like to know about the candidates’ plans for reducing illegal immigration.

I believe Trump’s strengths are an actual laid out policy. I think Kamala Harris has kind of hidden her views or switched her views. He does a better job laying out his plans. But I think his biggest weakness is his demeanour.

I do plan on voting for Trump again and I hope he wins the debate, but I think there’s not a lot either of them can do or say to change people’s minds.

I am much happier that we’ll be having Kamala up there and I’m really happy that they’re going to be doing it muted [so they can’t interrupt each other].

[The candidates are] getting so personal about each other. Even in the last debate, I’m like: ‘Did you guys even answer the question? Or are you guys just defending yourself about what he said about you?’ They’re just personally attacking each other instead of answering any of the things that we want to hear.

I do plan on watching. I think Biden’s debate performance was pretty disappointing and so I’m way more excited to see what Harris is able to do and how she carries herself and presents herself.

A big issue for me is climate change and environmental policy and so I’d be curious to hear what she says on that.

However, the sad thing, at least for me, is that I would vote for anyone [over Trump]. I almost don’t care what your policy positions are. I just know what your policy positions aren’t and so therefore, I’m stuck with you come hell or high water.

• SIMPLE GUIDE: Everything you need to know about the vote
• ANALYSIS: Will Harris debate tactics work against Trump?
• EXPLAINER: Seven swing states that could decide election
• IMMIGRATION: Could Trump really deport a million migrants?
• FACT CHECK: Was US economy stronger or weaker under Trump?

Three Israeli men have been shot dead at a border point between Jordan and the occupied West Bank, Israeli officials say.

The gunman – identified by the Israeli military as Jordanian Maher Jazi – approached the Allenby Bridge crossing from the Jordanian side in a truck then got out and opened fire, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said.

Security personnel “eliminated” the gunman and the IDF checked the truck over for signs of explosives, a statement said.

Jordan says it is investigating the incident, which happened in an Israeli-controlled area where Jordanian vehicles offload goods entering the West Bank. The border point has now been closed from both sides.

Israeli media reported the victims were named Yohanan Shchori, 61, Yuri Birnbaum, 65, and Adrian Marcelo Podzamczer, whose age was not given.

The three men were said to be guards working at the border crossing, but were not military or police.

Kan News, Israel’s state broadcaster, reported that Jazi was a 39-year-old who had worked as a truck driver.

Video footage showed the attacker walking to the terminal and firing his weapon three times before he was shot dead.

A Jordanian border official told Reuters that at least two dozen Jordanian truck drivers in the offloading area had been detained by Israel’s military for interrogation.

All of Israel’s land crossings with Jordan have been closed after the incident, the Israel Airports Authority said.

The Allenby Bridge crossing, also known as the King Hussein Bridge, lies about halfway between Amman and Jerusalem and is the only official crossing point between the West Bank and Jordan. It is also the only entry point to the West Bank that does not go through Israel.

Jordan and Israel maintain security, trade and diplomatic ties – though Jordan is critical of Israel’s actions towards Palestinians.

Dozens of trucks cross from Jordan daily to supply goods for markets in both the West Bank and Israel.

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said it was a “hard day” and sent his condolences to the victims’ families at the start of a cabinet meeting.

He added: “A loathsome terrorist murdered three of our citizens in cold blood at the Allenby Bridge.”

Hamas officials did not claim responsibility for the attack, but described it as a “natural response” to the war in Gaza.

The Palestinian health ministry says more than 600 Palestinians have been killed in West Bank violence since Hamas’s 7 October attack on Israel and the ensuing war in Gaza.

During the same period, at least 18 Israelis were killed in West Bank violence, according to United Nations (UN) figures, which do not include deaths since 11 August.

Last week, Israeli forces withdrew from Jenin city and its refugee camp – an area in the West Bank – after a major nine-day operation there. The area is a stronghold of militants and has a civilian population of about 60,000.

Israel says it is trying to stem deadly Palestinian attacks on Israelis in the West Bank and Israel, and acting against terrorism.