The Iran-backed Lebanese armed group Hezbollah says two of its fighters and a girl have been killed after handheld pagers used to communicate exploded.

Iran’s ambassador to Lebanon was among hundreds of people reportedly injured by what Hezbollah called “mysterious” blasts which happened simultaneously in southern Beirut and several other areas of Lebanon on Tuesday afternoon.

CCTV footage appeared to show an explosion in a man’s trouser pocket as he stood at a shop till.

Hezbollah said it was investigating the cause of the blasts and did not directly accuse Israel of being behind them.

There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military, which has been exchanging fire with Hezbollah since last October in parallel with the Gaza war.

But the events come hours after Israel’s security cabinet made the safe return of 60,000 residents displaced in the north by Hezbollah attacks an official war goal.

“The security cabinet has updated the objectives of the war to include the following: Returning the residents of the north securely to their homes,” the prime minister’s office said. “Israel will continue to act to implement this objective.”

On Monday, Israeli defence minister Yoav Gallant said the only way to return Israel’s northern residents was through “military action”, during a meeting with US envoy Amos Hochstein.

“The possibility for an agreement is running out as Hezbollah continues to ‘tie itself’ to Hamas, and refuses to end the conflict,” a statement from his office said.

Israel has repeatedly warned it could launch a military operation to drive Hezbollah away from the border.

There have been almost daily exchanges of fire across the frontier since the day after the start of the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza on 7 October.

Hezbollah has said it is acting in support of the Palestinian group. Both are backed by Iran and proscribed as terrorist organisations by Israel, the UK and other countries.

Since October, at least 589 people have been killed – the vast majority of them Hezbollah fighters – according to Lebanon’s health ministry.

On the Israeli side, 25 civilians and 21 members of security forces have been killed, the Israeli government says.

Dominique Pelicot, the 71-year-old man accused of drugging his wife to sleep and recruiting dozens of men to abuse her for over 10 years, has admitted to all the charges against him in his first testimony since the trial opened on 2 September.

Referring to the 50 co-defendants who are accused of raping his now ex-wife Gisèle, Mr Pelicot said: “I am a rapist like the others in this room.”

“They all knew, they cannot say the contrary,” he said. Only 15 of the 50 defendants admit rape, with most saying they only took part in sexual acts.

Of his ex-wife, Mr Pelicot said: “She did not deserve this.”

“I was very happy with her,” he told the court.

Gisèle, who was given the chance to respond shortly after, said: “It is difficult for me to listen to this. For 50 years, I lived with a man who I would’ve never imagined could be capable of this. I trusted him completely.”

Although no cameras are allowed in court, the trial is open to the public at the request of Gisèle Pelicot, who waived her right to anonymity at the beginning of the proceedings. Her legal team said opening up the trial would shift the “shame” back on to the accused.

As she stepped out of the courtroom during a pause in the hearing on Tuesday, Gisèle was met by applause from onlookers, and she smiled as she accepted a bouquet of flowers.

Since the trial began, Gisèle has become a symbol of resilience and courage. Last weekend, thousands of people gathered in cities across France to show their support to her and other victims of rape, and the trial has ignited a national conversation on marital rape, consent and chemical submission.

Mr Pelicot, who is a father and grandfather, began his testimony by telling the court of traumatic childhood experiences and said he was abused by a male nurse when he was nine years old.

When asked about his marriage to Gisèle, Mr Pelicot said he considered suicide when he found out she was having an affair.

Throughout his testimony on Tuesday morning, Mr Pelicot repeatedly assured the court that he never “hated” his wife and was in fact “crazy about [her]… I loved her immensely and I still do.”

“I loved her well for 40 years and badly for 10,” he added, apparently referring to the decade during which he drugged her and abused her.

Mr Pelicot was then questioned by Stéphane Babonneau, one of Gisèle’s lawyers, who asked him why he had been unable to find the will to stop abusing her, even when she started presenting medical problems.

In previous sessions of the trial, Gisèle said she had been worried she was developing Alzheimer’s or a brain tumour because of hair and weight loss and large memory gaps. These were, in fact, side-effects of the drugs her husband was giving her.

“I tried to stop, but my addiction was stronger, the need was growing,” he said.

“I was trying to reassure her, I betrayed her trust. I should’ve stopped sooner, in fact I should’ve never started at all.”

Mr Pelicot is also accused of drugging and abusing his daughter, Caroline, after semi-naked photos of her were found on his laptop. He has previously denied this and on Tuesday he also stated he had never touched his grandchildren. “I can look my family in the eyes and tell them that nothing else occurred,” he said.

Mr Pelicot also said he “became perverted” when, in 2010, he met a male nurse on the internet who suggested he drug his wife with a sedative, explained how to administer it and shared photos of drugged women. “That’s when it all clicked,” Mr Pelicot said. “Everything started then.”

In one section of Tuesday’s hearing, Mr Pelicot was also asked about the thousands of videos he filmed of men abusing his unconscious wife. These were found by investigators and were instrumental in tracking down the 50 men who are now accused of rape.

Mr Pelicot recognised he had filmed the men partly for “pleasure,” but also “as insurance”.

Throughout the morning, Mr Pelicot appeared determined to rebut one of the main lines of defence of several of the accused, which hinges on the premise they did not “know” they were raping Gisèle – in other words, that they thought they were having consensual intercourse with her.

Mr Pelicot met the defendants on a chat room called “Without her knowledge” on a now-closed website which hosted pornographic material.

“I didn’t force anyone, they came to look for me,” he said on Tuesday. “They asked me if they could come, and I said yes. I never handcuffed and dragged anyone.”

Some have said they were “manipulated” by Mr Pelicot into believing they were taking part in an erotic game in which Gisèle was only pretending to be asleep because she was shy, and several denied they knew they were being filmed.

But Mr Pelicot said the only person he ever “manipulated” was his wife, and also said that the men must have known they were being filmed: “There was a tripod and a screen attached to it, everyone could see it as soon as they walked into the room.”

Mr Pelicot said he wanted to prove that his wife “was a victim and not an accomplice. To prove that everything happened without her knowledge. I’m aware many [defendants] have disputed this.”

Béatrice Zavarro, Mr Pelicot’s lawyer, told French TV that she did not know what people would think of her client, but that he was “sharing his truth”.

She added that Mr Pelicot was “very downtrodden” and that although she did not know what his wife would make of his request for forgiveness, “the confession is now under way and he will continue.”

She said: “We will get to the end of this trial and we will know everything about Dominique Pelicot.”

Mr Pelicot, who was diagnosed with a kidney infection and kidney stones, was absent from court for nearly a week because of illness. He is set to give his testimony throughout the day, although he will be allowed frequent breaks.

Starvation in war-stricken Sudan “is almost everywhere”, the head of the World Health Organization (WHO) has told the BBC’s Today programme after visiting the country.

“The situation in Sudan is very alarming… the massive displacement – it’s now the largest in the world, and, of course, famine,” director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said.

He said 12 million people were already displaced, adding that attention in the global community to Sudan was “really low” and race was a factor.

Thousands of people have been killed since a civil war broke out in April 2023 between Sudan’s army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).

“Imagine: destruction, displacement, diseases everywhere, and now famine,” Dr Tedros told the BBC.

He said he had recently visited a camp for the internally displaced people and a hospital in Sudan.

“You see there many children skin and bone, emaciated.”

Close to 25 million people – half of Sudan’s population – “need support”, Dr Tedros said.

He stressed that Sudan “is not getting the attention it deserves”, and that was the case with other recent conflicts in Africa.

“I think race is in the play here. That’s what I feel now. We see the pattern now.”

Dr Tedros – who grew up during war in Ethiopia – said: “Especially in Africa, I think the attention is really, really low.”

“That’s the sad part, because you see it repeatedly, not just in Sudan,” he added.

“I know the smell of war, the image of war, the sound of war,” the WHO chief said.

“From that, I can understand how it impacts others, and I remember my mother praying I survive a day at a time – growing up, survival of the day was a big thing, I see the same thing is Sudan and Gaza.”

Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Dr Tedros said the world did not give “equal attention to black and white lives”.

At the time, he elaborated by saying only a fraction of the aid given to Ukraine was given to other humanitarian crises, with Tigray in Ethiopia, Yemen, Afghanistan and Syria not receiving the same treatment.

Dr Tedros urged mainstream media to give more attention to Sudan, describing the situation there as a “tragedy”.

In August, a UN-backed committee of experts declared a famine at a camp housing about 500,000 displaced people near the besieged city of el-Fasher in Darfur, one of the regions worst affected by the conflict.

The leader of Sudan’s army, Gen Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, and the head of the RSF, Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, had jointly staged a coup in 2021, but then fell out eventually plunging Sudan into a civil war last year.

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) is accused of supporting the RSF with money and guns – which it denies – while Saudi Arabia is said to have close ties with the Sudanese government.

Various mediation efforts, brokered by Saudi Arabia and the US, have failed to end the conflict.

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Prominent opposition leader and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal has resigned from his post, days after getting bail in a corruption case.

Kejriwal spent five months in jail in connection with a now-scrapped alcohol sales policy. He has denied the allegations against him.

He has said that he will take up the post only if people re-elect his Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) in the upcoming assembly elections.

Kejriwal’s colleague and senior Delhi minister Atishi will replace him as the leader of the government, the party announced on Tuesday.

AAP made its poll debut in 2013 Delhi assembly elections and has governed the capital city since, focussing on welfare measures such as affordable electricity and water for residents.

In 2020, the party won 62 seats in the 70-seat assembly – in almost a repeat of its performance in the previous election when it won 67 seats.

Kejriwal had announced his intention to resign over the weekend, saying he would sit on the chief minister’s chair only if the people of Delhi gave him a “certificate of honesty”.

“I got justice from the legal court, now I will get justice from the people’s court,” he told reporters.

Kejriwal has called for advancing the Delhi elections, which are scheduled for February next year, to November, aligning them with the upcoming polls in Maharashtra state.

Experts, however, say that is unlikely to happen.

Indian laws stipulate that elections cannot be scheduled less than six months before an assembly term’s end unless the assembly is dissolved early. Additionally, the Election Commission considers factors like weather, festivals, and electoral roll revisions before announcing elections.

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Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which is the AAP’s main opposition in Delhi, has called Kejriwal’s resignation a “publicity stunt” to galvanise public sympathy.

An anti-corruption crusader, Kejriwal was the third AAP leader to be arrested over alleged irregularities in the now-scrapped alcohol sales policy.

Manish Sisodia, a former deputy chief minister, and AAP leader Sanjay Singh were also arrested in the case. Sisodia was granted bail in August after spending 17 months in jail and Singh was released on bail in April.

The policy was introduced by AAP in 2021, saying it would curb black market sales, increase revenues and ensure even distribution of liquor licences.

It was withdrawn a few months later after Delhi’s Lieutenant-Governor Vinai Kumar Saxena accused AAP of exploiting rules to benefit private liquor barons.

The AAP denies the charges and has accused the BJP of using investigating agencies to unjustly target opposition leaders, a charge it denies.

At 43, Atishi has become the youngest and third woman to serve as chief minister of Delhi.

She currently holds important portfolios such as water, finance, power and education in Delhi’s cabinet.

In the absence of senior AAP leaders, who were jailed until recently, she served as the face of the party and swiftly gained prominence as a powerful leader.

Born to professors with Marxist leanings, Atishi studied at Delhi University and went to the University of Oxford for her master’s degree.

After spending a few years in teaching at a school in Karnataka, she was involved with alternative farming and education reforms in Madhya Pradesh.

She joined AAP in 2013 and has significantly contributed to overhauling Delhi’s public schools as an advisor to former Deputy Chief Minister Sisodia.

Riding on her reputation as an education reformer, she was elected to the Delhi assembly in 2020.

She had contested the 2019 parliamentary elections, but lost to former cricketer Gautam Gambhir.

Earlier this year, she made headlines after she went on an indefinite hunger strike to highlight Delhi’s water crisis during its peak summer months.

The Indian state of West Bengal has agreed to remove the police chief of its capital, Kolkata, following a meeting with doctors protesting the rape and murder of their colleague.

Two other senior officials – the director of medical education and the director of health services – will also be removed, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee said.

Thousands of junior doctors in the state have been on a strike since 9 August, when the body of the 31-year-old woman was found at the state-run hospital where she worked.

The crime sparked nationwide outrage and concerns about the safety of health workers in India.

A hospital volunteer was arrested in connection with the case, which is now being investigated by a federal agency.

The protesting doctors have voiced five key changes: justice for the victim, the removal of senior police officials, and enhanced security for health workers, among them.

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On Monday, Banerjee announced the government had accepted some of their demands.

“The commissioner of Kolkata Police will be removed on Tuesday evening and there will be some more changes,” she said at a midnight press conference, held after a five-hour meeting with a delegation of protesters.

The decision has raised hopes for junior doctors resuming work – but protesters have said they would decide their next steps only after the promises made by the government are fulfilled.

The woman’s murder has sparked an outpouring of anger, especially in West Bengal.

A series of protests have taken place since the killing. The largest saw tens of thousands of women across West Bengal participating in the Reclaim the Night march on 14 August to demand “independence to live in freedom and without fear”.

While protests died down in other parts of India, doctors in Kolkata refused to back down till all their demands are met.

Thousands of them have set up camp outside the state’s health department headquarters, defying a Supreme Court order for them to return to work, which was passed last week.

Authorities had earlier invited the protesters for a meeting with the chief minister but the doctors insisted on livestreaming the meeting, which the government declined.

The protests have put the West Bengal government on the back foot.

Courts criticised the local administration and police for lapses in the handling of the case, which they have denied.

The state government has said that 23 people have died after not accessing medical services during the strike. But the protesting doctors say they have ensured that emergency services are not affected.

On Monday, Banerjee announced that no action will be taken against protesting doctors for abstaining from work.

India’s Supreme Court has said the incident had “shocked the conscience of the nation” and criticised authorities for their handling of the investigation.

Banerjee’s government has announced a slew of measures for women’s safety at workplaces, including designated retiring rooms and CCTV-monitored “safe zones” at state-run hospitals.

The number of people in Myanmar who have died in the wake of Typhoon Yagi rose to more than 220, with nearly 80 others still missing, the military government said.

The storm swept through northern Vietnam, Laos, Thailand and Myanmar in early September and has killed more than 500 people across the region so far, according to official figures.

It triggered severe floods and mudslides in Myanmar, leaving at least 226 dead as whole villages were wrecked.

With hundreds of thousands of acres of crops destroyed, the UN also warned that more than half a million people in the war-torn country are in urgent need of food as well as drinking water, shelter and clothes.

The UN said the storm’s devastation spanned nine states and regions, including the the country’s capital Naypyidaw in the interior, as well as Mandalay to the north, Magway to the west, and Bago to the south – regions that lie along the Irrawady, Myanmar’s largest river.

Also hit were Shan State in the north-east and Mon, Kayah and Kayin states, which lie to its south.

A civil war has engulfed the country since early 2021, when the army sized power after ousting the democratically-elected government.

Since then thousands have been killed and millions forced from their homes as various armed resistance groups battle the ruling military junta.

In the last year or so, the army has lost control of large parts of the country, creating an unstable patchwork of governance.

That, coupled with poor communication in remote areas, has meant information about casualties has been slow to emerge.

The United Nations said the floods are among the worst in Myanmar’s recent history. Its disaster response agency estimated that some 630,000 people have been affected by the flooding with blocked roads, damaged bridges and severed communication lines, all of which have severely hampered relief efforts.

Aid agencies also have little or no access to many parts of the country, including Shan State, one of the worst-hit by the flooding, which is now largely controlled by a rebel army.

A volunteer rescuer in the state’s south told BBC Burmese that entire homes had been buried under mudslides.

“We have collected over 100 dead bodies so far, including children and elderly people. We’re still searching for over 200 more,” he added.

“This flooding is the worst I have ever seen in my life,” said a resident in the east of Shan State.

The situaiton is just as dire more than 500 miles away, in the south-east: “People are in urgent need of food,” Khon Matia, a senior official in rebel-controlled Kayin State (formerly Karen State) told BBC Burmese.

“There is no offer of international aid. People are in a more difficult position here because everything is blocked because of the floods and the war. So it is very difficult to reach us.”

The ruling military junta issued a rare appeal for help at the weekend, with neighbouring India so far the only country to respond. It sent aid, including food, clothes and medicine.

Typhoon Yagi also caused 10 deaths in Thailand and one in Laos.

In Vietnam, the death toll stands at 292, with 38 missing, more than 230,000 homes damaged, 280,000 hectares of crops destroyed and major manufacturing hubs heavily damaged, according to authorities.

Facebook owner Meta says it is banning several Russian state media networks, alleging they use deceptive tactics to conduct influence operations and avoid detection on its platforms.

“After careful consideration, we expanded our ongoing enforcement against Russian state media outlets. Rossiya Segodnya, RT and other related entities are now banned from our apps globally for foreign interference activity,” Meta said.

In a news bulletin, RT newsreader Eunan O’Neill said the broadcaster “and Russia as a whole denies the accusations that have been coming en masse against this channel and others in the past number of days”.

The bans are expected to come into effect in the next few days.

The Russian embassy in Washington and the owner of the Sputnik news agency, Rossiya Segodnya, did not immediately respond to BBC requests for comment.

Russian state media outlets have come under increased scrutiny over claims they have tried to influence politics in Western countries.

As well as Facebook, social media giant Meta owns Instagram, WhatsApp and Threads.

In a statement to the BBC, RT said: “It’s cute how there’s a competition in the West — who can try to spank RT the hardest, in order to make themselves look better.

“Don’t worry, where they close a door, and then a window, our ‘partisans’ (or in your parlance, guerrilla fighters) will find the cracks to crawl through — as by your own admission we are apt at doing.”

Meta’s move marks an escalation in the world’s biggest social media firm’s stance towards Russian state media companies.

Two years ago, Meta took more limited measures to restrict the spread of Russian state-controlled media, including stopping the outlets from running adverts on its platforms and limiting the reach of their content.

After the start of the war in Ukraine, Meta – like other social media platforms – complied with requests from the EU, UK and Ukraine to block some Russian state media in those regions.

Earlier this month, the US accused state broadcaster RT of paying a Tennessee firm $10m (£7.6m) to “create and distribute content to US audiences with hidden Russian government messaging”.

An indictment said videos – which often promoted right-wing narratives on issues such as immigration, gender and the economy – were secretly “edited, posted, and directed” by two RT employees.

Last week, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced new sanctions against RT, accusing it of being a “de facto arm of Russia’s intelligence apparatus”.

The top US diplomat told reporters on Friday that RT was part of a network of Russian-backed media outlets which have sought to covertly “undermine democracy in the United States”.

He added that the Russian government has “embedded within RT, a unit with cyber-operational capabilities and ties to Russian intelligence”.

RT livestreamed Mr Blinken’s remarks on X and declared it the “US’s latest conspiracy theory”.

Israel has made the safe return of residents to the north of the country an official war goal, the prime minister’s office has said.

The decision was taken by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s security cabinet late on Monday.

About 60,000 people have been evacuated from northern Israel because of near-daily attacks by Iran-backed Hezbollah in neighbouring Lebanon.

Cross-border fighting escalated on 8 October 2023 – a day after the deadly attack on Israel by Hamas gunmen from the Gaza Strip – when Hezbollah fired at Israeli positions, in solidarity with the Palestinians.

“The Security Cabinet has updated the objectives of the war to include the following: Returning the residents of the north securely to their homes,” a statement from the prime minister’s office said.

“Israel will continue to act to implement this objective,” it added.

Earlier on Monday, Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said the only way to return Israel’s northern residents to their homes was through “military action”, during a meeting with US envoy Amos Hochstein.

“The possibility for an agreement is running out as Hezbollah continues to ‘tie itself’ to Hamas, and refuses to end the conflict,” a statement from his office said.

“Therefore, the only way left to ensure the return of Israel’s northern communities to their homes, will be via military action.”

Gallant’s comments came as speculation grew that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wanted to replace him amid differences between the two men over the war in Gaza.

US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin warned of the devastating consequences of further escalation.

In a statement from the US defence department, his office said he “reaffirmed the necessity of a ceasefire and hostage deal, and that Israel should give diplomatic negotiations time to succeed, noting the devastating consequences that escalation would have on the people of Israel, Lebanon, and the broader region.”

Israel has repeatedly warned it could launch a military operation to drive Hezbollah away from the border.

Hezbollah is a Shia Muslim organisation which is politically influential and in control of the most powerful armed force in Lebanon.

The group has so far made no public comments on the issue.

The latest Israeli move marks an expansion of the country’s previously stated war goals:

• The elimination of Hamas and its military capabilities
• The return of all the hostages taken during the 7 October attack
• Ensuring that the Gaza Strip no longer poses a threat to Israel

Israeli forces launched a campaign to destroy Hamas in response to the group’s unprecedented attack, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 others were taken back to Gaza as hostages.

More than 41,220 people have been killed in Gaza since then, according to the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry.

Intense storms battering central Europe are now reaching Italy, where warnings for heavy rain, strong winds and floods have been issued for much of the country.

Floods are already reported in the central city of Pescara, while the Italian meteorological service’s weather alerts apply from the northern coast of Emilia-Romagna to the far-south.

The warnings come as flooding has devastated parts of Poland, the Czech Republic, Romania and Austria this week, leaving at least 21 people dead.

Authorities in Croatia, Hungary and Slovakia are also warning of flooding in the coming days.

The significant flooding has been caused by Storm Boris, which brought vast amounts of rain and snow at the weekend.

More than 5,000 soldiers have been deployed to help people in southern Poland, including the 40,000 residents evacuated from the town of Nysa.

The flood waters are receding in some places in the region and spreading in others, with the extent of the damage revealed in places like Glucholazy.

The town’s main bridge has collapsed after being damaged by the swollen river, while many of its streets are covered in a thick layer of mud.

Polish police confirmed at least six people have died, cautioning against against “false information” following media reports that have put the total number of people killed at more than a dozen.

The country’s prime minister, Donald Tusk, has declared a month-long state of natural disaster – with the worst flooding expected to hit the city of Wroclaw on Wednesday.

Areas along the Czech-Polish border are among the worst-hit, where 15,000 people have been evacuated in Czech Republic as well.

The country has experienced the worst flooding in over 27 years, according to local NGO Člověk v tísn.

Ostrava has been one of the most-affected towns, after the river Oder burst its banks following heavy downpours on Tuesday.

Water levels are continuing to rise fast on the River Danube in Slovakia and Hungary, with the Slovak capital Bratislava and its Hungarian counterpart Budapest preparing for possible flooding.

Emergency services and volunteers, in some places backed up by the army, are also working round the clock to protect low-lying settlements in the region.

Austrian authorities have closed sections of the Danube to shipping traffic over the elevated water levels along the vital waterway, according to reports in local media.

The Croatian Meteorological and Hydrological Service has warned the river could experience an “extremely rare” water increase – and confirmed plans are in place to put up flood barriers if necessary.

In Italy, the country’s National Civil Protection Service has also issued yellow alerts for nearly 50 regions tomorrow, warning there is a risk of storms, landslides and floods.

BBC Weather forecasts are pinpointing the Emilia-Romagna and Marche regions as an area of greatest concern.

The region could see one or two months’ worth of rain fall in the next three days alone, and there are major concerns over the prospect of flooding.

Red weather warnings have already been issued by the Italian Air Force Meteorological Service for Wednesday.

Firefighters in Pescara, Abruzzo say they have already received more than 200 calls for help after heavy rainfall triggered flooding.

In Romania, more rain is forecast in the eastern Carpathians, endangering towns and villages in Galati and Vaslui counties, which have already been hard hit.

Extreme rainfall is becoming more frequent and more intense across central Europe, as across much of the world.

While events in central Europe fit with expectations of more extreme rainfall in a warming world, it is not yet possible to quantify exactly how much of a role climate change has played.

To know for certain, that requires a full scientific analysis of the natural and human influences – which can take weeks or months.

But climate scientists have been warning for years about extreme rainfall events like these occurring as the planet warms.

A warmer atmosphere holds more moisture, leading to more intense rainfall.

Warmer oceans also lead to more evaporation, feeding storm systems.

For every 1C rise in the global average temperature, the atmosphere is able to hold about 7% more moisture.

Ghislaine Maxwell’s appeal against her sex trafficking conviction has been rejected by a US court.

Maxwell, 62, was found guilty in December 2021 of helping disgraced financier Jeffery Epstein sexually abuse young girls.

She was sentenced to 20 years in prison in June 2022.

Judges at Manhattan’s Second US Circuit Court of Appeals upheld Maxwell’s five convictions and said her sentence was “procedurally reasonable”.

Epstein, a former boyfriend of Maxwell’s, died by suicide in 2019 in a Manhattan jail cell, five weeks after he was arrested and charged with sex trafficking.

Maxwell had claimed that she should be set free under the terms of a 2008 deal between Epstein and federal prosecutors in Florida.

Under the agreement, prosecutors agreed not to pursue his alleged co-conspirators.

Maxwell’s lawyers argued in March that the British socialite “should never have been prosecuted”, because of the “weird” agreement.

But three judges dismissed her arguments, saying Epstein’s non-prosecution deal was intended to bind only prosecutors in southern Florida.

The judgment also dismissed Maxwell’s claims that she did not have a fair trial because one of the jurors did not disclose that he had been sexually abused as a child.

Throughout the course of Maxwell’s 2022 trial, four women testified that they had been abused as minors at Epstein’s homes in Florida, New York, New Mexico and the Virgin Islands.

They recounted how Maxwell, who is the daughter of former Daily Mirror owner Robert Maxwell, had talked them into giving Epstein massages which turned sexual.

They claimed they were lured with gifts and promises about how Epstein could use his money and connections to help them.

During her trial, a judge rejected attempts to throw out the case, including an argument by Maxwell’s lawyers that she had not been allowed to prepare adequately for her trial and that prosecutors had waited too long to bring their case against her.

Instagram is overhauling the way it works for teenagers, promising more “built-in protections” for young people and added controls and reassurance for parents.

The new “teen accounts” are being introduced from Tuesday in the UK, US, Canada and Australia.

They will turn many privacy settings on by default for all under 18s, including making their content unviewable to people who don’t follow them, and making them actively approve all new followers.

But children aged 13 to 15 will only be able to adjust the settings by adding a parent or guardian to their account.

Social media companies are under pressure worldwide to make their platforms safer, with concerns that not enough is being done to shield young people from harmful content.

UK children’s charity the NSPCC said Instagram’s announcement was a “step in the right direction”.

But it added that account settings can “put the emphasis on children and parents needing to keep themselves safe.”

Rani Govender, the NSPCC’s online child safety policy manager, said they “must be backed up by proactive measures that prevent harmful content and sexual abuse from proliferating Instagram in the first place”.

Meta describes the changes as a “new experience for teens, guided by parents”.

It says they will “better support parents, and give them peace of mind that their teens are safe with the right protections in place.”

Ian Russell, whose daughter Molly viewed content about self-harm and suicide on Instagram before taking her life aged 14, told the BBC it was important to wait and see how the new policy was implemented.

“Whether it works or not we’ll only find out when the measures come into place,” he said.

“Meta is very good at drumming up PR and making these big announcements, but what they also have to be good at is being transparent and sharing how well their measures are working.”

Teen accounts will mostly change the way Instagram works for users between the ages of 13 and 15, with a number of settings turned on by default.

These include strict controls on sensitive content to prevent recommendations of potentially harmful material, and muted notifications overnight.

Accounts will also be set to private rather than public – meaning teenagers will have to actively accept new followers and their content cannot be viewed by people who don’t follow them.

Parents who choose to supervise their child’s account will be able to see who they message and the topics they have said they are interested in – though they will not be able to view the content of messages.

However, media regulator Ofcom raised concerns in April over parents’ willingness to intervene to keep their children safe online.

In a talk last week, senior Meta executive Sir Nick Clegg said: “One of the things we do find… is that even when we build these controls, parents don’t use them.”

The system will primarily rely on users being honest about their ages, but Instagram already uses tools to verify a user’s age if they are suspected to be lying about their age.

From January, in the US, it will use artificial intelligence (AI) tools to proactively detect teens using adult accounts, to put them back into a teen account.

The UK’s Online Safety Act, passed earlier this year, requires online platforms to take action to keep children safe, or face huge fines.

Ofcom warned social media sites in May they could be named, shamed or banned for under-18s if they fail to comply with its new rules.

Social media industry analyst Matt Navarra said Instagram’s changes were significant, but hinged on enforcement.

“As we’ve seen with teens throughout history, in these sorts of scenarios, they will find a way around the blocks, if they can,” he told the BBC.

Instagram is not the first platform to introduce such tools for parents – and already claims to have more than 50 tools aimed at keeping teens safe.

In 2022 it introduced a family centre and supervision tools for parents, letting them see accounts their child follows and who follows them, among other features.

Snapchat also introduced its own family centre allowing parents over the age of 25 see who their child is messaging and limit their ability to view certain content.

YouTube said in September it would limit recommendations of certain health and fitness videos to teenagers, such as those which “idealise” certain body types.

Instagram’s new measures raises the question of why, despite the large number of protections on the platform, young people are still exposed to harmful content.

An Ofcom study earlier this year found that every single child it spoke to had seen violent material online, with Instagram, WhatsApp and Snapchat being the most frequently named services they found it on.

Under the Online Safety Act, platforms will have to show they are committed to removing illegal content, including child sexual abuse material (CSAM) or content that promotes suicide or self-harm.

But the rules are not expected to fully take effect until 2025.

• What is the Online Safety Act and how can you keep children safe online?

In Australia, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese recently announced plans to ban social media for children by bringing in a new age limit for kids to use platforms.

Instagram’s latest tools put more control in the hands of parents, who will now take even more direct responsibility for deciding whether to allow their child greater freedom on Instagram, and supervising their activity and interactions.

They will also need to have their own Instagram account.

But parents cannot control the algorithms which push content towards their children, or what is shared by its billions of users around the world.

Social media expert Paolo Pescatore said it was an “important step in safeguarding children’s access to the world of social media and fake news.”

“The smartphone has opened up to a world of disinformation, inappropriate content fuelling a change in behaviour among children,” he said.

“More needs to be done to improve children’s digital wellbeing and it starts by giving control back to parents.”

Exuberant young men splashing around in a pool with one theatrically soaping himself as a crowd cheered. Sri Lankans dancing in an opulent hallway as the iconic bands played festive tunes with trumpets and drums.

These scenes beamed across the world on 13 July 2022 in the hours after crowds overran the presidential palace, forcing then-leader Gotabaya Rajapaksa to flee the country.

It was a moment of triumph for them.

Hundreds of thousands of people from across Sri Lanka had defied a national curfew – they braved tear gas shells and water cannons to march peacefully to the presidential palace, calling on Rajapaksa to step down.

For weeks, he had resisted calls to resign, even though his elder brother Mahinda Rajapaksa had already quit as prime minister to try to defuse public fury.

Months of protests – called the “aragalaya” (struggle) in Sinhala – had culminated in the events of July 2022, leading to Mr Rajapaksa’s humiliating, hurried exit.

Just a few months earlier, such events would have been unthinkable.

For years, the Rajapaksa family – led by Mahinda – held a vice-like grip over Sri Lankan politics.

In his first term, Mahinda Rajapaksa presided over the bloody end to Sri Lanka’s civil war against Tamil Tiger rebels. That victory helped him establish himself as a national “saviour” among the island’s majority Sinhalese – his most ardent supporters compared him to an emperor.

As he grew more powerful, so did his family. He appointed his younger brother, Gotabaya, as defence secretary – a position he wielded ruthlessly, critics say. Two other brothers – Basil and Chamal – rose to the jobs of finance minister and parliamentary speaker respectively.

The family appealed to a majority-Sinhalese nationalist base. So, for years, they survived allegations of corruption, economic misrule, widespread human rights abuses and suppression of dissent.

That changed in 2022, when a slew of policies set off the country’s worst-ever economic crisis.

Seventeen years after Mahinda first became president, Sri Lankan crowds celebrated the Rajapaksas’ fall, certain the family was finished.

But was it?

Cut to two years later, and Mahinda Rajapaksa’s son, Namal, has thrown his hat into the ring for the presidential election to be held on 21 September.

“It is bad enough that the people who were driven out after the aragalaya [mass protests] are contesting these polls,” Lakshan Sandaruwan, a university student who took part in the demonstrations, told BBC Sinhala. “What is even worse is that some may actually vote for a member of that family.”

Namal is not the only Rajapaksa who is back on the scene.

Gotabaya Rajapaksa himself – the man angry protesters chased out of the country – did not stay away for long.

He returned just 50 days after his inglorious departure, first to Singapore and then Thailand. On his return, he was given the privileges of a former president: a plush bungalow and security, all of it paid for by the government.

Ranil Wickremesinghe, an opposition politician, was appointed as president for the remaining two years of Rajapaksa’s tenure. The family-led Sri Lanka Podu Jana Peramuna Party (SLPP), which has a two-thirds majority in parliament, threw their support behind him.

Before his unexpected elevation, Wickremesinghe, a six-time former prime minister, was the only MP from his United National Party after their abysmal showing in the 2020 parliamentary elections.

He has focused on rebuilding the economy. But he has been accused of protecting the Rajapaksa family, allowing them to regroup, while shielding them from prosecution – allegations he has denied.

Hours after Wickremesinghe became president, the military was deployed to clear the crowds at Galle Face in Colombo, which had been the epicentre of the protests.

Dozens of soldiers swooped on the site, dismantling tents and other belongings of demonstrators. In the following months, those who had stormed the presidential palace and were seen walking out with “souvenirs” – such as bed sheets or the odd keepsake to remember a historic day – have been jailed.

“Ranil protected the Rajapaksa family from the wrath of the people, ensuring the continuity of the SLPP-led parliament, cabinet and the government, and not doing anything to stop corruption, and even suppressing the progress of any investigation against the Rajapaksa family members,” said political scientist Jayadeva Uyangoda.

“He also protected them from international pressure for holding them accountable to serious human rights violations and war-related allegations.”

This has angered many Sri Lankans who are living through a cost-of-living crisis, and enduring more hardships because of reforms intended to revive a stagnant economy.

Although there are no shortages or power cuts, prices have sky-rocketed. The government has also scrapped subsidies on essentials such as electricity, and cut welfare spending.

Taxes, meanwhile, have gone up as Wickremesinghe has sharply increased tax rates and widened the net to shore up public revenue.

Some economists say the painful measures are necessary to restore Sri Lanka’s macro-economic stability as it attempts to restructure its international debt and stick to the terms of the bailout agreed with the International Monetary Fund.

The country’s foreign reserves have risen to around $6bn from a mere $20m at the height of the crisis, and inflation is around 0.5%.

But the real-world impact on millions of ordinary Sri Lankans has been devastating.

A study from policy research organisation Lirne Asia, which surveyed 10,000 households, estimated that as many as three million people fell below the poverty line in 2023, pushing the number of poor from four million to seven million.

These families are going hungry and, desperate for more money, they are pulling their children out of school.

The Rajapaksas have denied any wrongdoing but in 2023, the country’s Supreme Court ruled that the family – including Gotabaya and Mahinda – was directly responsible for economic mismanagement between 2019 and 2022, which triggered the crisis.

Nimesha Hansini, a university student in Colombo, told BBC Sinhala she felt the Rajapaksas were “directly responsible for the economic crisis due to the financial frauds carried out under the guise of development projects during their reign”.

“But nothing has changed for them – only their political power has decreased,” she added.

“I don’t have much to say about them,” says Rashmi, a farmer in the traditional Rajapaksa stronghold of Hambantota. “We are suffering because of what they have done. We voted for them before, but that will never happen again.”

These are the minds that Namal Rajapaksa is hoping to change – he wants to win back the base.

His campaign has centred around the legacy of his father Mahinda, who is still seen as a hero by some Sri Lankans.

This is despite some international calls to prosecute him for war crimes. The UN estimates that 100,000 people including 40,000 Tamil civilians were killed by Sri Lankan armed forces in the final stages of the conflict, but Mahinda Rajapaksa has never been convicted of any wrongdoing and rejects such allegations.

Mahinda’s images adorn Namal’s campaign rallies and his social media posts feature illustrations showing him alongside his father when he was younger.

He has even tried to highlight their resemblence to each other, growing out his moustache and wearing Mahinda’s trademark red shawl.

Many of his campaign posts strike a note of defiance: “We do not fear challenges; in fact, we welcome them. That’s something I learned from my father.”

Another post refers to him as “patriotic, courageous and forward-thinking”.

“It seems to me that Namal Rajapaksa thinks, not incorrectly, that representing the legacy of his father will enable him to protect his father’s vote base and benefit from it,” Prof Uyangoda said.

“It is one way to rebuild the shattered electoral bases of the SLPP.”

But many voters don’t appear to be buying it – and polls don’t suggest Namal is a serious contender for the top job.

One comment on a campaign post on Namal’s Instagram account was scathing: “The latest heir of the Rajapaksa family taking a shot at the presidency? Quite the family business isn’t it?”

Reactions on the ground were more vitriolic. “I will never vote for Namal Rajapaksa. The years of hardship we have lived are a curse on that family,” HM Sepalika, a villager who’s been resettled in Vavuniya in the north, told BBC Sinhala.

“The people of this country got together and staged this struggle because they didn’t want the Rajapaksas. But they still have so much greed and lust for power that they are trying to come back and ask people to vote for them,” said Nishanthi Harapitiya, a shop assistant in Hambantota.

Others say they cannot take Namal seriously.

“Why should he ask for our vote? He is a child with no experience. Who will vote for him? Unless someone votes for him out of pity for his father, he cannot be elected president,” said Mohammed Haladeen, a trader from Kathankudy in eastern Sri Lanka.

Attention is now largely focused on three candidates: opposition leader Sajith Premadasa, the leftist National People’s Party alliance’s Anura Kumara Dissanayake and Wickremesinghe, who is running as an independent candidate.

But Namal Rajapaksa could be playing a longer game.

Recent elections have shown that families or allies of once-unpopular strongmen do make big political comebacks – such as Bongbong Marcos in the Philippines or even Prabowo Subianto of Indonesia.

“He wants to remain politically relevant, protect the SLPP’s voter base, and be politically active till 2029,” Prof Uyangoda said.

Lakshan Sandaruwan, the university student who took part in the demonstrations, agrees.

“Namal is contesting the polls to prepare the necessary background for 2029, not to become the president this time,” he said.

“But if the people do not act intelligently, the people themselves will create a Rajapaksa president again.”

Is your success because of who you are, or who you know?

Nepotism – giving work opportunities and advantages to your friends and family – has been the subject of debate in showbiz around the world for a number of years.

Some feel “nepo babies” – those who’ve been given a boost because of their parents – don’t deserve their success, while Gwyneth Paltrow called that term “ugly”.

But it’s not just a Hollywood thing.

Bollywood actress Ananya Panday has been criticised and heavily trolled over nepotism because her father Suyash “Chunky” Panday was a successful actor in the late 1980s.

While accepting her privilege, Ananya has often disputed how much of an impact his success had on her career.

But now the 25-year-old says she wants her work to do the talking.

“I was always the first person to be like: I know I come from a [film] family, my father’s an actor and obviously that’s given me more access [to opportunities].

“I’ve never fought it. But I realised that there is so much conversation about it and people are not going to stop asking about nepotism,” she tells BBC Asian Network’s Haroon Rashid.

“You think it’s over but people will keep talking about it. I realised it’s better to just not say anything any more and let your work speak.”

In her new show Call Me Bae, Ananya plays a character which some feel has real-life similarities to her.

Bae, aka Bella Chowdhary, comes from a privileged and elite background but is soon kicked out of her life of luxury and forced to try to make it on her own.

“It’s a riches to rags and almost underdog story,” Ananya says.

But she says real-life experiences did not impact her decision to take the role, instead she “just went with the story and script”.

“I think the lovely thing about this is that it’s very self-aware.

“It speaks about the privilege, wealth and the bubble that the character is living in, which breaks in the first episode.

“A lot of people say I’m very similar to Bae. I think once people watch it, they’ll see more differences than similarities,” she says.

The humour in the show is quite “tongue-in-cheek with a lot of pop culture references”, she says, and that includes a real-life interaction Ananya had on the topic of privilege and nepotism.

During a roundtable discussion with other actors in 2020, Ananya was saying she’d make no apologies for being her famous father’s daughter and that she was “so proud of him”.

After a long, impassioned speech from Ananya, Siddhant Chaturvedi, who does not come from a famous family, chipped in to support her.

“Everybody has their own struggle,” he said, before switching to Hindi and uttering a line that earned nods and noises of approval from his fellow actors.

“The difference is, where our dreams come true, their struggle begins (jahan humare sapne pure hote hai wahan inka struggle shuru hota hai).”

It was a line that went viral, and was included in the script for Call Me Bae.

Ananya says it’s not the first time someone tried to put this real-world line into scripted fiction.

“But in this situation it worked well because it went with the character of Bae.

“When you watch it in the scene, it’s not completely jarring that the conversation happens.”

As a result, she says she “felt safe in the environment”.

“It wasn’t the only cultural reference. I feel we don’t have that enough in our films and shows.”

Despite highlighting their differences, Ananya says she does identify strongly with her character, who she feels has “a human side with vulnerability”.

“I actually liked that she looks a certain way, but then turns the audience on their head. It makes you rethink everything about people who you maybe judge on a first glance.”

As an actress, she says “you have to set apart the person that you are and the characters you play on screen”.

“But I think it’s lovely when you can bring yourself to certain characters.

“If there is a tone that I understand, that I can bring to the characters I play which make it more relatable, then I think that’s more of a strength than a disadvantage.”

And she hopes the character of Bae “becomes synonymous” with her.

“There are certain characters that stay with actors and people remember them for roles and I feel like she has that memorable quality about her.”

While the show itself has had mixed reviews, there has been a largely positive reaction to Ananya’s performance, with the Times of India saying she delivers a “relatable performance that anchors the show”.

Ananya has previously received praise for her roles in films such as her debut Student of the Year 2, Pati Patni Aur Woh and Gehraiyaan.

But it does not take long for accusations of privilege to return, with comments such as “nepo” often found on posts to her 25 million Instagram followers.

Repeatedly having to prove yourself might feel frustrating, but Ananya says she is now in a different head space.

“I don’t know if I’m in that zone to cry about it or complain about it anymore.

“I think that’s a tag and conversation that will always stay,” she says.

She adds every film acts as “a reset button” for every actor.

“No matter what you’ve done in the past, the audience is going to judge you on your next [film].

“What is important at this point is just to put my head down and work and make sure that every time I bowl people over with my work.

“Because that’s the best that I can do.

“I have seen a shift and I do feel like it’s getting better. I feel there are good times ahead.”

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

In a Muslim graveyard in Delhi, a tombstone stands out.

It has an inscription written in the Urdu language, but beneath it lies the name of a German-born Jewish woman – Gerda Philipsborn – followed by the epithet ‘Aapajaan’ or ‘elder sister’.

This is an unusual sight as the graves of the founders of Jamia Millia Islamia – a top Muslim university rooted in India’s independence movement – rest here. Its students have upheld this legacy of political activism, including protests against a controversial citizenship law introduced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government in 2019.

So, how did a German Jew come to be invested in a place so distant and disconnected from her homeland?

The answer lies somewhere between friendship and a woman’s search for meaning, says Margrit Pernau, author of Jamia’s Aapa Jaan: The Many Lifeworlds of Gerda Philipsborn.

Pernau, who has spent a decade researching Jamia, says that though she had come across Philipsborn’s name several times during her research, her life was shrouded in mystery.

Even today, not many students know about Philipsborn and her contribution to the university. Syeda Hameed, a prominent activist and historian, says there’s a need for writings on her to be translated and made available to students “for their benefit and the benefit of future generations”.

Philipsborn’s journey from being a German a term of respect for white European women in colonial India – to becoming Jamia’s began in 1933 when she traveled to India after forging an unlikely friendship with three Indian men, Zakir Husain, Muhammad Mujeeb, and Abid Husain, who had gone to Berlin to study.

The men would go on to become the main founders of Jamia and also play important roles in India’s political history, with Zakir Husain becoming the country’s third president in 1967.

In the 1920s and 30s, it was uncommon to find cross-national friendships, let alone close, platonic relationships between three men and a woman.

The men, who were involved in the freedom movement, often spoke to Philipsborn about their plans to build an institution that would contribute towards India’s fight for freedom.

At the time, there were very few universities in British India, and even fewer ones that were not funded by the government. The men wanted Jamia to be a place where Muslim boys and girls could educate themselves, so that they could take up an active role in India’s freedom struggle. They also wanted the institution to promote unity between Hindus and Muslims and love for the motherland.

These altruistic plans had a deep impact on Philipsborn. Born into a wealthy family in 1895, she had seen her life, and the world around her, change due to war, industrialisation and a wave of anti-Semitism. She understood what it felt like to be oppressed, to long for freedom and to be driven by the desire to become an instrument of change, Pernau writes.

And so, shortly after her friends left Berlin to dedicate their lives to building Jamia, Philipsborn followed them to India. But moving from a bustling, modernised Berlin to a country mired in poverty was not an easy decision. Pernau sheds light on the many times Zakir Husain forbade Philipsborn from making the journey.

“More than once she had offered to join him [in India], and more than once he had proffered ‘advice, warnings, and admonitions not to come’,” Pernau writes.

Meanwhile, Muhammad Mujeeb wondered how a “still young, unmarried and unaccompanied woman would fit into Jamia, whose women at this time still observed purdah [the seclusion of women from the sight of men or strangers, practiced by some Muslims and Hindus],” she writes.

But Philipsborn made the journey despite these calls for caution.

Within months, she managed to make friends with the people of Jamia and even began teaching in the university’s primary school. Like the rest of the teaches there, she worked for minimal wage and agreed to dedicate her life to serving the institution.

She used the knowledge she had gained teaching at kindergartens in Germany to make education enjoyable and approachable for her students. When she was appointed the warden of a hostel for children, she took on the role of an for them, Pernau writes.

She did menial tasks like washing and oiling their hair and kept them close to her, emotionally and physically. “When the little children under her care fell sick, she attended to them with such devotion that they didn’t miss their mother,” Pernau says.

Philipsborn also encouraged Jamia’s girls and women to play a more active role in society. When she joined the editorial team of Payam-e Ta’lim, Jamia’s children’s journal, she contributed articles that spotlighted the hobbies and interests of women and encouraged girls to write for the journal.

Apart from her work with the children of Jamia, Gerda also helped its founders raise funds for the university, prepare speeches and often acted as their sounding board for all matters related to teaching and politics.

But seven years after she arrived in India, her work hit a roadblock.

Amid Britain’s war with Germany, German citizens in British India were viewed with suspicion, leading to their arrest and internment in camps where they endured harsh conditions, including inadequate water, blankets and food.

Philipsborn was taken to one such camp in 1940. Her internment made her fearful for her life as there was the possibility of authorities deporting her to Germany, where Hitler was persecuting the Jews. But even in the camp, she did her best to serve her inmates by organising small events to cheer them up and looking after those who had taken ill.

But a couple of months after being brought to the camp, Philipsborn developed a gastric ulcer. She was taken to a hospital for treatment and then moved back to the camp, where she stayed for a whole year.

After being released, she went back to Jamia and continued her work, but struggled to perform with the same gusto as her ulcer turned cancerous. She became increasingly weak, but tried to connect with children through her articles in the Payam-e Ta’lim.

In April 1943, Philipsborn died and was buried in the graveyard for Jamia families. “She died miles away from her family, but was surrounded by the people who loved her,” says Hameed about Gerda’s death.

And long after her death, her legacy as “Aapa Jaan” lives on in the corridors of Jamia, with a hostel and day care centre named after her.

On a bright September afternoon, a caravan of colourful cars, festooned with flags, arrives at a village in Indian-administered Kashmir for an election rally.

Iltija Mufti, a politician from the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), slowly rises from the sunroof of one of the cars.

“Yeli ye Mufti (When Mufti will be in power),” she shouts at a crowd that has gathered to hear the third-generation leader of one of the most influential political dynasties of the region.

“Teli Tch’le Sakhti (Then the repression will end),” they respond in unison.

From a distance, army personnel in bulletproof jackets, armed with automatic rifles, stand watch, tracking every movement.

For the first time in a decade, elections are being held in 47 assembly seats of Kashmir, long marked by violence and unrest. The region, claimed by both India and Pakistan, has been the cause of three wars between the nuclear-armed neighbours. Since the 1990s, an armed insurgency against Indian rule has claimed thousands of lives, including civilians and security forces.

The three-phase polls will also extend to the 43 seats in the neighbouring Hindu-majority Jammu region.

The election is the first since 2019, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government revoked Jammu and Kashmir’s autonomy, stripped its statehood, and split it into two federally-administered territories. Since then, the region has been governed by a federal administrator.

• Article 370: What happened with Kashmir and why it matters

In the fray are 13 main parties vying for a majority in the 90-seat assembly.

The major players are the two main regional parties – the PDP led by Mehbooba Mufti and the National Conference (NC) which is headed by Omar Abdullah. Both Mufti and Abdullah are former chief ministers of the region.

The NC has formed an alliance with India’s main opposition party Congress.

Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is also contesting but not many are betting on the party, which has a stronghold in Jammu but a weak political base in the valley.

In the last elections in 2014, the BJP had formed a government in alliance with PDP after sweeping Jammu. The alliance fell apart in 2018 after years of disagreements.

Also in the picture, this time, is Engineer Rashid – a controversial politician who has spent five years in jail accused in a terror case and was released on bail this week. Rashid came to limelight earlier this year when he pulled off a stunning victory in the general election over Abdullah. He fought the election from jail, with his sons leading an emotional campaign on the ground.

Elections in Kashmir have long been contentious, with residents and separatist leaders often boycotting them, viewing the process as Delhi’s attempt to legitimise its control.

Since 1947, Kashmir has held 12 assembly elections, but voter turnout has often been low and marked by violence. Militants have attacked polling stations, and security forces have been accused of forcing voters to come out and vote. Since the 1990s, hundreds of political workers have been kidnapped or killed by militant groups.

But for the first time in decades, even separatist leaders are contesting in several seats.

The most keenly watched of these is the outlawed Jamaat-e-Islami (JEI) party, which has joined hands with Rashid’s Awami Ittehad Party (AIP).

Residents will vote to elect a local assembly, led by a chief minister and council of ministers. Though the assembly will have limited powers under Delhi’s rule, it has sparked hopes for a political change in the valley.

Almost all opposition parties have pledged to restore statehood and the region’s special status. The BJP has ruled out restoring autonomy but has promised to reinstate statehood to Jammu and Kashmir “at an appropriate time after the elections”.

Most residents appeared to be reconciled to the loss of their region’s autonomy.

“I don’t think Article 370 will come back unless any miracle happens,” said Suheel Mir, a research scholar, adding that parties were making promises about restoring autonomy in a “politically charged” atmosphere to get votes.

Several young men and women said they were more concerned about issues like political instability, corruption and most of all, unemployment – also a major concern in Jammu.

“We want to cast our vote to resolve our day-to-day issues. It has nothing to do with the Kashmir dispute,” said a man who did not wish to be named.

But others said they didn’t want to give the impression that they had accepted the events of 2019 and would participate in the election solely to vote against the BJP.

“We want to send a message to the government that the revocation is unacceptable to us no matter what,” said 38-year-old Zameer Ahmad.

Five years ago when Modi’s government abrogated Article 370, the 70-year-old constitutional provision that gave the region its autonomy, the government said it was necessary to restore normalcy in India’s only Muslim-majority region.

The move triggered a severe security clampdown, mass detentions, curfews and a months-long internet blackout, stripping residents of rights to jobs and land.

Since then, Modi and his ministers have extensively talked about a new era of peace and development in Kashmir, announcing projects worth hundreds of millions of dollars that they say are part of a plan to integrate the region’s economy with the rest of India. (Until Jammu and Kashmir’s special status was removed, outsiders could not buy land to do business there).

But locals say they have yet to see the benefits of such projects and continue to struggle with violence and high levels of unemployment.

Thousands of Indian army troops continue to be perpetually deployed there, with powers that have led to decades of allegations of human rights violations.

“There is an absence of democracy and freedoms in Kashmir and many political activists remain in jail,” said political scientist Noor Ahmad Baba.

“The election allows people to give their verdict for or against these changes.”

The change in mood is visible everywhere.

Across Jammu and Kashmir, streets are adorned with posters, party flags, and billboards and men at local bakeries freely discuss election outcomes over chai.

“There has been a complete overhaul of traditional political narratives,” said Tooba Punjabi, a researcher.

“Earlier, public boycotts defined elections. But now, it’s a means of putting the right party in place to undo damage.”

The shift in political attitudes was also evident earlier this year, when Kashmir registered a historic 58.46% voter turnout in the parliamentary election.

Many residents are now pinning their hopes on regional parties to raise their demands.

“These parties have acted as a shield between Delhi and Kashmir,” said businessman Tahir Hussain,” adding that “it didn’t matter who will form the government as long as it’s a local one”.

Analysts say the BJP’s performance could also receive a significant blow in Jammu this time, where internal discord and infighting has derailed its ambitions.

There’s also growing anger among the residents who are unhappy with the party’s policies.

Until now, the BJP’s push for development has resonated with people in Jammu who hope it would bring in more economic opportunities for them.

But many say they are yet to see any signs of change. “In fact, now that Article 370 has been scrapped, people from other states are coming to Jammu. Our rights on jobs and land are being taken away from us,” said Gulchain Singh Charak, a local politician.

Sunil Sethi, BJP’s chief spokesperson in the region, rejected the allegations.

“We have done massive infrastructure developments, build roads and brought foreign investors here,” he said.

Open your wardrobe, and there’s a good chance you’ll find garments made in Leicester.

The city was once the engine of England’s clothing industry, with companies including retail giant Next keeping tens of thousands of people in work.

Then, after many years of factory closures, a profitable new industry arose – fast fashion.

Sub-contractors supplying companies such as Boohoo offered the flexibility to deliver large orders to tight deadlines, piling the stock high and selling it cheap.

But then the coronavirus pandemic lifted the lid on how intense competition had created widespread exploitation in Leicester’s supply chain.

Now the city is fighting to save its garment manufacturing industry once again.

Paramjit Kaur, 61, worked as a sewing machine operator at several Leicester companies after moving from India to join her husband Harvinder Singh.

By the time she arrived in 2015, there was already growing concern about garment factories paying well below the living wage.

Paramjit says she could not speak English and struggled to find work, so she spent years working in factories that paid her between £3 and £5 an hour.

She says some employers covered their tracks by creating a paper trail, which appeared to show she earned the National Living Wage.

Speaking in a mixture of Hindi and Punjabi, Paramjit described how one company asked her to work for a £5 hourly rate, adding others did not give her holiday or sick pay.

“They would show ‘full pay’ on the payslip but once the money was in my bank, I was told to return it,” she said.

“I used to give it back in cash. Three or four factories used to do this.”

When asked why she returned the money, Paramjit said: “It felt dirty and bad but I needed to work. No-one was paying more.

“We were desperate. We had to pay council tax, the gas bill, rent. The bills kept coming.

“It felt horrible. ‘Keep working, keep working’, is what they would say.”

Paramjit is one of several workers from India who told the BBC they earned £5 an hour or less in different clothing factories in Leicester.

That is well below the National Living Wage, which now stands at £11.44 an hour for adults over 21.

A woman in her 50s, who asked not to be identified for fear of repercussions, told the BBC she was paid £4 an hour to work as a “packer” in various garment factories.

“I thought it was reasonable and it was the going rate,” she said.

“It was what most people were getting. I was desperate to work and save because I have to support my parents, my sister and nieces back in India.”

The workers have been supported by the Fashion-workers Advice Bureau Leicester (FAB-L), which is funded by retail brands.

These brands insist that factories making their clothes allow FAB-L to go into their sites and support workers.

Tarek Islam, from FAB-L, says the group helps exploited garment workers who often struggle because of poor English language skills.

Tarek says Leicester’s garment workers sometimes accept such low wages because they are afraid of losing Universal Credit if they do not take action to get paid work.

Employers also convince workers they are doing them “a favour” by giving them the experience to find minimum wage jobs, Tarek adds.

Tarek says some firms demand unpaid hours, or cash refunds, so their audits record the payment of “full wages”.

“They [employers] may make a payslip for 18 hours, so on the system people are getting paid for 18 hours, but they’ll make them work for 36 hours,” Tarek says.

“So when you check the paperwork, everything seems fine. Another thing they’ll do is say, ‘I’ll pay the full wages in your account, so on paper we can pass all the audits, however we agreed only £5 to £6 an hour, so that extra money you need to give back to me’.”

Tarek says exploitation in the industry has been the “absolute norm”.

However, he adds: “Because the brands have increased their auditing process, and become tighter, the workers we’ve spoken to mostly say they’re being paid the minimum wage.”

Tarek says FAB-L has helped 90 garment workers recover a total of £180,000 of unpaid wages since its launch in early 2022.

But he believes that is the tip of the iceberg.

Tarek says one woman burst into tears as she explained how she was owed £5,000 – and too afraid to tell her husband in case he accused her of spending it.

Tarek discovered that her factory had not paid 60 workers for three months.

It then emerged that factory was also waiting for late payments, and FAB-L helped everyone recover their money.

Tarek says he has previously persuaded garment businesses to pay up by offering to “mediate” complaints with the fashion brands they supply.

“As soon as I say, ‘do you want me to raise it with the brand?’ They’ll say ‘maybe we can resolve it between ourselves’,” he said.

FAB-L has been funded by eight brands – including Asos, River Island and Next – and two trade unions.

The group was set up in response to damning headlines about exploitation in Leicester’s clothing supply chain during the pandemic.

The tipping point came after barrister Alison Levitt published a scathing report about factories supplying the online fashion retailer, Boohoo.

Tarek says UK fashion brands are now “trying to be reputable”, and now most garment workers still employed in Leicester say they are receiving the National Living Wage.

But many workers have lost their jobs as some suppliers shifted contracts overseas.

Several estimates seen by the BBC suggest the vast majority of Leicester’s garment factories have closed since the crackdown began.

The Apparel and Textile Manufacturers Federation believes about 700 were operating five years ago, compared to only 60 to 100 now.

Saeed Khilji, from the Textile Manufacturer Association of Leicestershire, believes the scandal in the city did “huge damage” to legitimate clothing businesses that were already struggling to make a profit.

He says that persuaded many retailers to avoid production in Leicester.

The pandemic also drove a rise in online shopping.

Another manufacturer, Alkesh Kapadia, believes that was an even more serious blow to Leicester’s business model.

He says the previous model relied on retailers ordering large quantities of each design to fill their stores across the country, whereas online brands need much smaller quantities of each design.

Alkesh used to export clothes from his Leicester factories as far afield as the US, Canada and India.

But he says he has lost £2.5m the past 12 to 18 months because retailers have demanded ever-lower prices at a time when costs have risen.

Now his company has moved production to factories in Morocco, Turkey and Tunisia, where manufacturing is cheaper.

“Fashion was my passion,” he says. “My surname is Kapadia. Kapadia means fabric.

“For 200 years we used to make fabrics. My father up there would be really upset that I have stopped this business.”

Meanwhile, Saaed used six Leicester factories to make his garments, but now he says he only runs an import-export business because the UK is impossible to afford.

“As a factory owner, we not only pay the minimum wage,” he says. “There’s also national insurance, rent, the electricity bill. Nothing has gone down.”

The catalyst for change was two-fold, he says.

“Mainly the price issue. Living costs were rising, but retailers didn’t want to pay the price, and secondly, we had sweatshops in Leicester, [but] 95% of factories were good but struggling, because we got this bad name because of this 5%,” Saeed adds.

Saeed’s factory, in Nottingham Road, never reopened after orders were cancelled during Covid.

“All orders we had stopped,” he says. “All fabrics we had, we can’t use it. Retailers cancelled orders because they can’t sell. When they cancelled, they didn’t pay us.”

He says that has left him with stock that he cannot sell and will donate to charity.

Saeed says he “cannot see any future” for garment production in Leicester, and Alkesh agrees.

“We are thinking that Leicester will die if you don’t do anything now. Even if you do something now, it’s very hard to save this industry,” Alkesh says.

Alkesh and Saeed are still based in Leicester, but both have set up their own online retail brands to sell imported clothes to customers directly.

However, the non-profit organisation Labour Behind the Label is now campaigning for fashion brands to support the city’s ailing manufacturing industry.

It wants brands to commit to ordering at least 1% of their products from Leicester’s factories.

Tarek, from FAB-L, says brands also need to consider more serious exploitation overseas.

“Imagine what exploitation is happening there,” he says. “Child labour. Trade unions being killed in factories.

“A brand producing in the UK, even with exploitation in their chain, is better than a brand that is producing out of the UK.”

Prof Rachel Granger, from the city’s De Montfort University, is an industry expert.

She believes Leicester’s garment industry will only survive if there is significant investment in new robot technology and a focus on quality.

“Germany had the same problem a decade earlier and invested in robots,” she says.

“There just are not the resources to invest, that is the crux of the problem.”

Former BBC News presenter Huw Edwards has been given a suspended prison term after he admitted making indecent images of children. Westminster Magistrates’ Court heard he received more than 40 images over several months from convicted sex offender Alex Williams. Here are four things we learned from the sentencing hearing.

When Huw Edwards pleaded guilty in July, we knew that he had communicated with Alex Williams, the man who supplied the indecent images, from at the very least December 2020.

That’s when Williams, convicted earlier this year, sent Edwards the first images that count as “indecent”, the archaic legalese for depictions of abuse.

The online relationship in fact began two years before that and it was of a sexual nature. According to the evidence, it coincided with a period when Edwards was struggling with both his mental health and sexual identity.

Williams said he had contacted Edwards because he was hoping to get a response.

He did – and the online relationship lasted four years on and off – and Edwards began receiving legal pornographic images and a smaller number of illegal abuse images.

Prosecutor Ian Hope told the sentencing hearing they met once in person, and there was evidence of a solitary video-call too.

The only evidence of this relationship comes from Williams’s phone as the handset used by Edwards at the time was not found.

The bulk of the 377 images sent by Williams were legal pornography featuring young adult men. So they were not part of the prosecution. But 41 of them depicted children. That is the material that Edwards admitted “making” – the legal term for a phone or computer receiving the data for an image or video and therefore creating the file in its memory.

Edwards would have been aware of what he was being sent, because he discussed it with Williams.

“In December 2020 Alex Williams said that he had ‘a file of vids and pics for you of someone special’,” prosecutor Ian Hope told the court.

“Mr Edwards immediately queried who the subject was and was then sent three images of seemingly the same person.”

That person was aged between 14 and 16 and the images were “Category C” in the table of severity of abuse, the lowest of the three tiers.

Williams then asked Edwards whether he wanted the “full file”.

Edwards responded: “Yes xxx…”

Williams then sent further and more severe images of abuse and a final video file of a Category A incident involving abuse of a boy aged between 13 and 15. Edwards and Williams wished each other a Happy Christmas.

When Williams said he had “hot” files that were big to send, Edwards recommended Dropbox. In time, the former newsreader referred to some of the material as “amazing” but it is not clear whether that meant the legal or illegal images.

We heard in court that Edwards had paid Williams. But this was not taken by the sentencing chief magistrate to mean that he had been paid for the indecent images. It was more a case of “thank you” for whatever was going on between them – in effect gifts.

For instance, Williams asked for “a Christmas gift after all the hot videos”.

Edwards sent him £200 for some Nike Air Force 1 trainers.

And in total, Williams received between £1,000 and £1,500, which helped pay his way at university.

• Watch: Huw Edwards: Fall from Grace
• Timeline: How the Huw Edwards scandal unfolded
• Shock, anger and damage limitation in the BBC

This on and off exchange continued through to 2021. Edwards ultimately received seven files of the worst type of abuse.

There’s no evidence as to what Edwards thought about those files – but a crucial part of the case shows that he did respond to questions Williams asked him about the subject matter. That shows that it was Williams who was leading the conversation about the nature of the images, rather than Edwards.

“Is the stuff I’m sending too young for you?” asked Williams on 19 February 2021. Three days later Edwards replies: “Don’t send underage.”

But when in August Williams offered Edwards more files, and said they involve people who were “yng”, the former newsreader said: “Go on.” This was the second of two videos featuring a child aged between seven and nine.

Prosecutor Ian Hope said: “Alex Williams says the subject is ‘quite yng looking’ to which Mr Edwards responds it ‘can be deceptive’ and asks if he has ‘any more?’ Alex Williams says he has but he is not sure if Mr Edwards would like them as they are illegal. Mr Edwards says ‘Ah ok don’t’.”

The evidence in the case shows that Edwards had been struggling with mental ill health for many years and had fragile self-esteem. The court heard he had what appears to have been unresolved feelings about his sexuality dating back to 1994.

Confusion about sexuality is not the same as an interest in images of child abuse – far from it. So what led to him receiving the images from Williams, even if he later regretted it?

A forensic psychotherapist wrote in a report for the court that the people Edwards was meeting via social media helped boost his low mood – but then created a “perfect storm” leading to the offending.

That decision making, the court heard, was linked to Edwards’ mental ill health and the wider picture of his complex character.

One expert who analysed Edwards said he grew up in a puritanical but hypocritical environment with a father described in court as “monstrous”. Edwards entered adulthood feeling inferior – and that was compounded, the expert concluded, by working in an organisation that he had perceived as being full of Oxford graduates (Note to readers: it isn’t).

In time he developed clinical depression leading to therapy at times – but his situation worsened from 2018 – and then more so during the first awful year of the pandemic, which coincides with the majority of the offending. The conclusion of the experts was that Edwards was sufficiently unwell that it affected his decision-making – a situation exacerbated by alcohol, a heart problem and a breakdown of relationships within his own family.

All of this could sound to some like a sob story – but the court accepted that there was evidence that Edwards’ mental health had improved – and therefore his understanding of his crimes – thanks to help. And that sign of improvement was a key factor in what the chief magistrate decided to do.

The burning question for many tonight is why was Huw Edwards not sent to prison? The simple answer is … there is no simple and uniform solution for dealing with offenders.

The offence he committed could in theory lead to 10 years in jail.

But, in practice, detailed sentencing guidelines, developed over years of comparing varying cases, save that severe punishment for the worst of the worst people who are producing the images that Williams scooped up and went on to share.

Edwards, by receiving them, was at the bottom of that chain of abuse.

So his sentence was always going to be well short of that maximum 10 years – and, likely to be shorter than the 12 months suspended sentence given to Alex Williams in March.

The guidelines say that for someone in Edwards’ position, the starting point is a year in jail with a range of between six months and three years.

Chief Magistrate Paul Goldspring began his sentencing calculation with a year. He knocked three months off to take into account the mental health evidence and the fact that this was a first offence. This is absolutely standard procedure.

He then discounted the sentence by a third, bringing it down to six months, to credit the earliest possible guilty plea.

Again, this discount for an admission is a standard feature of sentencing law. It is an offer to focus an offender’s mind on pleading guilty early and accepting their crimes.

It saves a huge amount of public money by not tying up the criminal justice system with a jury trial. And it means, if the offender is willing, they can get on with the long and hard process of rehabilitation as soon as possible.

The next question was whether Edwards needed to be jailed to protect the public. The chief magistrate concluded not, because he accepted evidence that the offender before him had already understood the gravity of what he had done – and was responding to therapy.

And so he moved down a notch from immediate jail to a suspended six month sentence. That means that if Edwards were to commit another offence in the next two years, he would be likely to go to jail immediately. But if he stays on the road to reform, he won’t.

The prosecution had argued that Edwards needed to be subject to restrictions on his liberties through a Sexual Harm Prevention Order. That would have allowed agencies to monitor or curtail his communications and movements – including knowing his entire internet history on every device he uses.

The court heard that probation experts had used a “predictor tool” to estimate the likelihood of Edwards reoffending. It had found his risk of indirect internet-based offending – meaning viewing more images – to be medium.

But his lawyers argued that risk was diminishing because he was on the mend and had shown genuine remorse.

The chief magistrate said that it was not necessary to subject Edwards to the additional SHPO conditions, given the progress towards rehabilitation already underway.

Edwards must complete a 40-day Sex Offender Treatment Programme and 25 rehabilitation sessions aimed at helping him to fix his mental health and use of alcohol.

Even if all that is successful, there is a sting in the sentencing tail.

For the next seven years Edwards will be on the sex offender register – meaning he has to keep the police informed of his whereabouts. It will be difficult for him to travel abroad on holiday and some countries may never let him in at all.

He’s free from prison – but he is not free in the true sense of the word. His life choices will be watched on and off for years to come.

Seventy years after he first fronted a wildlife programme, Sir David Attenborough is keenly aware of the impact they can have.

“The world would be in a far, far worse situation now had there been no broadcasting of natural history,” he said.

“People have found it a source of fascination and beauty and interest, and this has become key to looking after the world.”

In September 2024, the BBC is marking 90 years of broadcasting from Bristol. We spoke exclusively to Sir David, who has presented many of the programmes made at BBC Bristol’s Natural History Unit.

When Sir David’s broadcasting career began in 1954, just 3.2 million people had television licences in the UK.

The goal of programmes like Zoo Quest was to capture wild animals for zoo collections, the accepted practice at the time.

Now, Sir David’s programmes all carry a strong message – that the natural world is at risk more than ever before.

“People are aware of the problems of conservation in a way which could not exist without broadcasting,” he said.

“The perilous state that the natural world is in at the moment, these things are apparent to people all around the world.

“You don’t watch a natural history programme, I hope, because you think it’s going to be good for the natural world; you do so because it is rivetingly interesting, and complicated, and beautiful.

“The awareness of people around the world about ecological damage, that is due to natural history,” he added.

Bristol’s association with wildlife programming goes back to the mid 1940s, when The Naturalist was produced on the Home Service by Desmond Hawkins from the city.

“Desmond was the king of natural history broadcasting and an accomplished naturalist,” said Sir David.

Ten years later, in 1955, wildlife programme Look, presented by Peter Scott, featured pioneering German filmmaker, Heinz Sielmann, the first person to film inside a woodpecker’s nest.

“This was sensational, everyone in Britain was blown away by this, and because there was only one television network, it was all you talked about at the bus stop when you were going into work,” recalls Sir David.

The switchboard at the Lime Grove studios was jammed with viewers ringing in to find out more, and it gave the BBC the nudge to set up the Natural History Unit in Bristol in 1957.

In 1979, Sir David presented Life on Earth, a landmark television programme made in Bristol, which attracted around 15 million viewers.

“Bristol led the world to be truthful,” he said.

“It started this with radio, and when television came along, Peter Scott and Desmond Hawkins continued that tradition.

“The other big mega power in broadcasting was the United States, and in the 1970s, viewers there thought natural history was just lions attacking antelopes.

“Bristol’s programmes taught them that termites could be just as interesting.

“When we first started trying to get the subscriptions to finance the plans I had, I remember making the mistake in pitching this to an American network controller.

“I waxed very eloquently about how the programme would be the history of life from the microscopic beginning, and the executive turned to me and said ‘you mean it’s going to be about green slime?’

“I replied ‘more or less,’ but we managed to flog it in the end.”

Sir David’s programmes have gone from being shot on 16mm film stock with clockwork cameras in 1954 to ultra high definition 4k in the present day.

When he was making Zoo Quest, cameras would only film for 40 seconds before the clockwork motor ran out.

Today, filmmakers gather hundreds of hours of video just to capture one special moment which may only last for seconds.

“When we started, the film people in London were very derisory about 16mm, they called it ‘bootlace’.

“We couldn’t film on 35mm because we couldn’t drag around those enormous great big cameras.

“Almost every year, we had better facilities. The film became smaller, the recording apparatus became more sensitive.

“I’ve tried to film Orangutan, and they do absolutely nothing – they just sit in the trees, and they’re very difficult to see.

“Now along comes a drone, and you can film things that you couldn’t possibly ever see from the ground,” Sir David said.

Sir David was awarded Freedom of the City of Bristol in 2013, to mark his connections with the programmes made there.

He almost became a Bristolian, but family life and work pressures intervened.

“In 1955, I was told I was to be made head of the Natural History Unit in Bristol, and I said I would prefer not to do so because I had just bought a house in London, my son and daughter were fixed in schools.

“I also had responsibility for Prime Ministerial broadcasts with Anthony Eden, which I wasn’t all that interested in, but nonetheless I had the responsibilities.

“Had it happened three years earlier I probably would have been there.

“It is always a joy to visit Bristol, the city has a regional personality.

“If you’re a broadcaster, particularly a natural history broadcaster, there is nowhere else like Bristol in the world.”

In his 98th year, Sir David’s next programme is a seven-part series called Asia, which will premiere later in 2024.

But despite the global acclaim his career has earned him, he remains very modest about his role in the shows he presents.

“I’m given huge credit for things that have nothing to do with me, because I speak the words and that’s the easiest business part of the entire outfit,” he said.

“A lot of people think that I’m there recording the programme, working the camera, working out the travel and putting in the expertise, whereas all of these things are part of the team.

“People are aware of the problems of conservation in a way that could not exist without broadcasting, and the BBC can claim that we’re leading that,” he added.

One of the final messages from the five-person crew of the Titan submersible before it imploded, killing all inside, was “all good here”, a hearing has revealed.

Investigators with the US Coast Guard said the message was among the final communications between the Titan and its mother ship, before they lost contact for good.

Also shown at the hearing for the first time was an image, taken by a remotely operated vehicle, of Titan’s tail cone sitting on the sea floor following the implosion.

The deep-sea vessel was less than two hours into its descent towards the wreck of the Titanic when it imploded in June 2023.

Coast Guard officials began a two-week inquiry on Monday, aiming to uncover the facts of the incident and offer recommendations to prevent similar tragedies.

Investigators presented a recreation of the journey, including text messages between Titan and its mother ship, the Polar Prince.

Titan began its dive at 09:17 local time and support staff aboard the mother ship asked about the submersible’s depth and weight, as well as whether it could still see the ship on its onboard display.

Communications were patchy, but about an hour into the dive, Titan messaged “all good here”.

Its last message was sent at 10:47 local time, at a depth of 3,346m, to say it had dropped two weights. After that, communication was lost.

Officials presented a historical overview of the Titan, noting that its hull had never been subject to third-party testing and had been left exposed to weather and other elements while in storage.

In addition, they laid out serious problems experienced by the submersible on expeditions carried out before the disaster. In 2021 and 2022, over the course of 13 dives to the Titanic, it had 118 equipment issues.

These included the front dome falling off when it was brought out of the sea, its thrusters failing at 3,500m down and, on one dive, its batteries dying and leaving passengers stuck inside for 27 hours.

OceanGate, the manufacturer behind the craft, has previously faced questions over its design choices, its safety record and its adherence to regulations.

Tony Nissen, the company’s former engineering director, said the evidence he had seen was “disturbing… professionally and personally”.

Mr Nissen claimed that Stockton Rush, OceanGate’s late CEO who was on board Titan, had the last word on most engineering decisions and was difficult to work with.

“Stockton would fight for what he wanted and, even if it changed from day to day, he wouldn’t give an inch,” he said.

“Most people would eventually back down to Stockton, it was death by a thousand cuts.”

OceanGate suspended all exploration and commercial operations following the incident.

The company currently has no full-time staff but will be represented by a lawyer at the inquiry, it said.

Monday saw the start of the first public phase of an already 15-month investigation.

Unanswered questions over the Titan’s ill-fated dive have fuelled a lingering debate over safety and the regulation of private undersea exploration.

The Coast Guard’s Marine Board of Investigations (MBI) is expected to hear from as many as 10 former OceanGate employees, including co-founder Guillermo Sohnlein, and experts in marine safety and undersea exploration.

An MBI is the highest available level of inquiry into US marine casualties and convenes roughly one hearing per year, its chairman said on Sunday.

“Out of thousands of investigations conducted, less than one rise to this level,” Jason Neubauer said.

“We hope that this hearing will help shed light on the cause of the tragedy and prevent anything like this from happening again.”

The board of top Coast Guard and National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) officials has the authority to recommend civil penalties or make referrals for criminal prosecution to the US Department of Justice.

A search mission involving four governments unfolded after the submersible lost contact with its mother ship, the Polar Prince, on the morning of 18 June 2023 and never resurfaced.

As well as Rush, on board were British explorer Hamish Harding, veteran French diver Paul Henri Nargeolet, the British-Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood and his 19-year-old son Suleman.

Rescuers in Sierra Leone are continuing to search for more survivors after a seven-storey building collapsed in the capital Freetown, killing at least 10 people.

The West African country’s National Disaster Management Agency (NDMA) said seven people had been rescued from the rubble on Shell New Road so far, but “more people remain trapped”.

It added that some of those in the rubble had been “able to communicate their locations” to the rescuers.

The building in eastern Freetown collapsed between 11:00 and 12:00 local time (12:00 and 13:00 BST) on Monday, the NDMA said. Two girls and a boy – all aged under five – are among the victims.

Two cranes have been brought in to help the rescue teams, who were earlier seen using picks and their bare hands to try to clear the wreckage.

Local resident Mohamed Camara wept as he told AFP news agency that his wife and three children were trapped in the rubble.

The cause of the collapse is being investigated.

The building was used for both residential and commercial purposes, according to initial assessments conducted by the NDMA.

The agency’s head Brima Sesay stressed the need to raise “public awareness about the risks associated with using unqualified contractors and substandard building materials”.

He also said his agency “will continue conducting vulnerability assessments to help reduce the frequency of building collapses across the country”.

Sierra Leone is one of the world’s poorest countries, and buildings are often built with substandard materials.

At least seven people, including three firefighters, have died as wildfires continue to rage across Portugal, according to local news outlets.

Parts of the country have been ablaze since the weekend, with temperatures in some areas topping 30C (86F). The northern and central parts have been worst affected.

The firefighters – two women and a man – died while tackling a blaze in Tábua in Coimbra, central Portugal, the country’s civil protection authority said.

More than 5,000 firefighters have been tackling the wildfires that Portuguese Prime Minister Luís Montenegro said are “raging across the country”.

Ten thousand hectares (37 sq miles) have already been burned between Porto and Aveiro in the north, the Portuguese news agency Lusa said on Monday.

André Fernandes, Portugal’s national civil protection commander, said that there were 65 fires in progress at 13:00 local time (13:00 BST) on Tuesday.

Local media reported that hospitals in affected areas have received people with burns, breathing difficulties and other injuries from the fires. At least 12 firefighters have been injured, two seriously, reports say.

Police have shut motorways, including the main road between the capital, Lisbon, and Porto, and dozens of houses have been destroyed by the fire. Many schools in Gondomar, an area near central Porto, closed on Tuesday, its mayor said.

Portugal’s civil protection authority named the three firefighters who died as Sonia Cláudia Melo, Paulo Jorge Santos, and Susana Cristina Carvalho.

The president of Portugal, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, said that he was “deeply saddened” by the deaths and Montenegro issued a note of condolence.

Mr Fernandes said the vehicle caught fire but that it wasn’t clear whether it had crashed beforehand, according to the news agency, AP.

Two more firefighters were injured during the incident, he added.

Montenegro had previously said that firefighter João Silva had died of “a sudden illness” while battling a blaze in Oliveira de Azeméis.

The EU said it would send eight firefighting planes to Portugal to help it tackle the severe blazes.

EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said the bloc was “urgently mobilising” and urged other member states to send further assistance.

Montenegro also thanked France, Greece, Italy and Spain for their “rapid and essential help in combating this scourge” in a post on X.

Portugal already owns 30 water bombers – and has deployed over 1,500 fire engines – but authorities said the complex situation required additional support.

Several fires that broke out in the Aveiro region over the weekend forced about 70 residents to flee, the civil protection authority has said.

“The situation is not out of control, but it is very complex,” Fernandes said.

Portugal and neighbouring Spain have recorded fewer wildfires this year, largely due to a wet and rainy start to the year. But they remain vulnerable to blazes due to hot and dry conditions.

Climate change increases the risk of the hot, dry weather that is likely to fuel wildfires.

The world has already warmed by about 1.1C since the industrial era began and temperatures will keep rising unless rapid efforts to curb greenhouse gas emissions are made.

Amazon is ordering staff back to the office five days a week as it ends its hybrid work policy.

The change will come into force from January, Amazon’s chief executive Andy Jassy said in a memo to staff.

“We’ve decided that we’re going to return to being in the office the way we were before the onset of Covid,” he said, adding that it would help staff be “better set up to invent, collaborate, and be connected enough to each other”.

Mr Jassy has long been known as a sceptic of remote work, but Amazon staff were previously allowed to work from home two days a week.

Amazon’s push to get corporate staff back into the office has been a source of tension within the firm which employs more than 1.5 million people globally in full-time and part-time roles.

Staff at its Seattle headquarters staged a protest last year as the company tightened the full remote work allowance that was put in place during the pandemic.

Amazon subsequently fired the organiser of the protest, prompting claims of unfair retaliation, a dispute that has been taken up with labour officials.

In his message on Monday, Mr Jassy said he was worried that Amazon – which has long prided itself on preserving the intensity of a start-up while growing to become a tech giant – was seeing its corporate culture diluted by flexible work and too many bureaucratic layers.

Mr Jassy, who replaced founder Jeff Bezos as chief executive in 2021, said he had created a “bureaucracy mailbox” for staff to make complaints about unnecessary rules and the company was asking managers to reorganise so that managers are overseeing more people.

Amazon said those changes could lead to job cuts.

In addition to returning to the office five days a week, Amazon said it would end hot-desking in the US, although it will continue in most of Europe.

The company said staff could still work from home in unusual circumstances, such as a sick child or house emergency, as was the case before the pandemic.

But unless they have been granted an exemption, Mr Jassy said: “Our expectation is that people will be in the office outside of extenuating circumstances.”

Amazon’s stance contrasts with the UK government’s approach, which has promised to make flexible working a default right from day one as part of a new employment rights bill due to be published next month.

Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds told the Times newspaper that the government wants to end the “culture of presenteeism”, and said there were “real economic benefits” to people working from home.

He said there was a balance to be struck, but flexible working arrangements could help businesses recruit from a wider pool of people.

Graeme from Northumberland, who didn’t want us to use his surname, mainly works from home and believes “you just get so much more done”.

The difference between that and office work was “night and day” in terms of productivity, he said.

In the office people can come over for a chat, or to make requests, and then it can be more difficult to get back into a work flow, he said.

However, he added that the socialising aspect of working in an office was also important.

Remote work peaked during the pandemic. Many companies started recalling staff in 2022, but the return has been incomplete.

As of this summer, about 12% of full-time employees in the US were fully remote and another 27% reported having hybrid work policies in place, according to a monthly survey by economists Jose Maria Barrero, Nicholas Bloom, and Steven J Davis.

Bank bosses such as JP Morgan’s Jamie Dimon have been among the most high-profile figures critical of remote work and likely to demand full-time office attendance.

But the attitude has also spread to other industries, with UPS and Dell recalling staff to the office full-time this year.

In his memo, Mr Jassy said that Amazon’s experience with its move to a hybrid policy had “strengthened our conviction about the benefits” of working in person.

But Prof Bloom, from Stanford University, said he did not think the announcements were a sign of a wider shift in work policies, noting that his data has found time spent at the office has been fairly stable for more than a year.

“For every high-profile company cancelling work-from-home, there’s others that seem to be expanding it – they just don’t get picked up in the media,” he said.

A shy yellow-eyed penguin has come out on top of one of New Zealand’s most contested competitions to win Bird of the Year.

More than 50,000 people voted in the competition – which has in the past seen its fair share of scandal – including claims of foreign interference and allegations of cheating.

Last year, the pūteketeke won the competition after comedian John Oliver threw his weight behind it, launching a campaign that involved him dressing up as the bird, complete with a striking burnt-orange mullet.

Thought to be one of the world’s rarest penguin species, the hoiho can be found only in New Zealand.

According to Forest & Bird, the organisation that runs the competition, the hoiho secured a victory with 6,328 votes – ahead of the Karure Chatham Island black robin with more than 5,000 votes.

This is the second time the hoiho has swooped in to win the competition, having also come in first in 2019 – the same year where allegations arose that the hoiho had only won after Russian interference.

Hundreds of votes for the bird were found to have come from Russia, though Forest & Bird said these were likely not fradulent votes, but those from Russian ornithologists.

In 2018, there were also claims that Australians tried to rig the contest in favour of the shag – a species of cormorant.

The hoiho, whose Maori name means “noise shouter”, is notoriously shy despite its loud, shrill call, says the organisation, who said the win would raise conservation efforts for the species.

It is an endangered species or three steps away from extinction and its numbers are decreasing, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources.

“This spotlight couldn’t have come at a better time,” said Forest & Bird’s chief executive Nicola Toki. “This iconic penguin is disappearing from mainland Aotearoa (New Zealand) before our eyes.”

Conservation efforts are taking place on land but Ms Toki says they are also needed at sea.

“They’re drowning in set nets and can’t find enough food,” she said. “Our hoiho urgently need marine protected areas to give them a shot at survival.”

A series of shootouts between rival tribes over a disputed gold mine has left at least 30 people dead in Papua New Guinea, police said on Monday.

Security forces have been given emergency powers to stop the fighting – including the use of “lethal force” – according to the country’s police commissioner.

Alcohol sales have been banned and an overnight curfew is in place, he added.

Unrest had been brewing near the Porgera gold mine in the country’s central highlands ever since members of the Sakar clan settled on land owned by their rivals, the Piande, sometime in August.

Police say that on Sunday alone, more than 300 shots were fired by tribesmen, after peace talks between the clans had failed.

“This deteriorating situation has been caused by illegal miners and settlers who are using violence to terrorise local communities and victimise traditional landowners,” said Papua New Guinea’s police commissioner David Manning.

“Put simply, if you raise a weapon in a public place or to threaten another person, you will be shot,” he added.

There were reports in local media that the Canadian-owned mine – the second largest in Papua New Guinea – was briefly forced to cease operations as the fighting intensified.

Buildings were set on fire and schools, hospitals and government offices in the region have been closed, according to the Papua New Guinea Post-Courier.

Tribal conflicts are a frequent occurrence in Papua New Guinea’s highlands, but an influx of automatic weapons has “turbocharged” the most recent bout of violence, according to police.

The Porgera gold mine once accounted for around 10 percent of Papua New Guinea’s yearly export earnings, but tribal violence and a slow government takeover have stalled production in recent years.

A witness, speaking to Radio New Zealand, described the recent levels of violence as “unprecedented”.

At least 26 people were killed, including 16 children, when three villages in East Sepik province were attacked earlier this year.

In 2022, gunfights between rival clans living near the mine killed at least 17 people.

Security teams have been posted along the highway leading to the mine, using loudhailers to broadcast messages of peace.

Pope Francis urged Papua New Guinea to “stop the spiral” of violence during a visit earlier this month.

“It is my particular hope that tribal violence will come to an end,” he said.

“It causes many victims, prevents people from living in peace and hinders development.”

The BBC has reached out to PNG Police for comment.

Hundreds of thousands of people were evacuated as a powerful typhoon made landfall near China’s financial hub, Shanghai.

Typhoon Bebinca hit at about 07:30 local time (23:30 GMT) on Monday in the coastal area of Lingang New City in Shanghai’s east, the China Meteorological Administration said.

It is the strongest storm to hit Shanghai in 75 years, according to Chinese state media.

As a precaution, more than 400,000 people in the Shanghai Metropolitan area were relocated by Sunday evening, according to local officials.

A further 9,000 people were evacuated from the Chongming District, an island at the mouth of the Yangtze River that is also part of Shanghai.

Hundreds of flights were cancelled as the city’s two main airports grounded all flights. Train services were also cancelled and highways closed. A 40km/h (25mph) speed limit was imposed on roads inside the city.

Shanghai’s 25 million residents had been advised to stay home as the storm batters the city.

Authorities have issued a red alert for Bebinca, the highest level, as wind speeds of up to 151km/h (94 mph) were recorded at the typhoon’s eye. It is expected to weaken as it moves inland.

Videos posted online showed large trees toppled and people dragging their bicycles and motorcycles through flooded streets. A clip shared by Shanghai Daily showed a bus braking abruptly along Huaihai Road in a major shopping district as billboards blown by fierce winds collapsed onto the ground.

The storm was one of the most-discussed topics on Chinese social media platform Weibo on Monday, with some users sharing their fears that it would worsen.

“This is the kind of thing you’d only see on television,” wrote one Weibo user, who posted a video of trees swaying violently in a car park.

Another user advised others to make sure their doors and windows are properly locked and not to leave their homes unnecessarily.

It is rare for Shanghai to get a direct hit from strong typhoons, which tend to make landfall further south in China.

The city’s flood control headquarters said they received dozens of reports of incidents related to the typhoon – mostly fallen trees and billboards.

Resorts in Shanghai, including Shanghai Disney Resort, Jinjiang Amusement Park and Shanghai Wild Animal Park, have been temporarily closed and many ferries halted.

Another typhoon, Yagi, killed at least four people and injured 95 when it passed through China’s southern Hainan island this month, according to national weather authorities.

Yagi also caused severe flooding in Southeast Asia, killing hundreds of people in Vietnam and Myanmar.

Typhoon Bebinca also passed through Japan and the central and southern Philippines, where falling trees killed six people.

Chinese state media said Bebinca was expected to move north-west, causing heavy rain and high winds in Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Anhui provinces.

The Iran-backed Lebanese armed group Hezbollah says two of its fighters and a girl have been killed after handheld pagers used to communicate exploded.

Iran’s ambassador to Lebanon was among hundreds of people reportedly injured by what Hezbollah called “mysterious” blasts which happened simultaneously in southern Beirut and several other areas of Lebanon on Tuesday afternoon.

CCTV footage appeared to show an explosion in a man’s trouser pocket as he stood at a shop till.

Hezbollah said it was investigating the cause of the blasts and did not directly accuse Israel of being behind them.

There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military, which has been exchanging fire with Hezbollah since last October in parallel with the Gaza war.

But the events come hours after Israel’s security cabinet made the safe return of 60,000 residents displaced in the north by Hezbollah attacks an official war goal.

“The security cabinet has updated the objectives of the war to include the following: Returning the residents of the north securely to their homes,” the prime minister’s office said. “Israel will continue to act to implement this objective.”

On Monday, Israeli defence minister Yoav Gallant said the only way to return Israel’s northern residents was through “military action”, during a meeting with US envoy Amos Hochstein.

“The possibility for an agreement is running out as Hezbollah continues to ‘tie itself’ to Hamas, and refuses to end the conflict,” a statement from his office said.

Israel has repeatedly warned it could launch a military operation to drive Hezbollah away from the border.

There have been almost daily exchanges of fire across the frontier since the day after the start of the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza on 7 October.

Hezbollah has said it is acting in support of the Palestinian group. Both are backed by Iran and proscribed as terrorist organisations by Israel, the UK and other countries.

Since October, at least 589 people have been killed – the vast majority of them Hezbollah fighters – according to Lebanon’s health ministry.

On the Israeli side, 25 civilians and 21 members of security forces have been killed, the Israeli government says.

Dominique Pelicot, the 71-year-old man accused of drugging his wife to sleep and recruiting dozens of men to abuse her for over 10 years, has admitted to all the charges against him in his first testimony since the trial opened on 2 September.

Referring to the 50 co-defendants who are accused of raping his now ex-wife Gisèle, Mr Pelicot said: “I am a rapist like the others in this room.”

“They all knew, they cannot say the contrary,” he said. Only 15 of the 50 defendants admit rape, with most saying they only took part in sexual acts.

Of his ex-wife, Mr Pelicot said: “She did not deserve this.”

“I was very happy with her,” he told the court.

Gisèle, who was given the chance to respond shortly after, said: “It is difficult for me to listen to this. For 50 years, I lived with a man who I would’ve never imagined could be capable of this. I trusted him completely.”

Although no cameras are allowed in court, the trial is open to the public at the request of Gisèle Pelicot, who waived her right to anonymity at the beginning of the proceedings. Her legal team said opening up the trial would shift the “shame” back on to the accused.

As she stepped out of the courtroom during a pause in the hearing on Tuesday, Gisèle was met by applause from onlookers, and she smiled as she accepted a bouquet of flowers.

Since the trial began, Gisèle has become a symbol of resilience and courage. Last weekend, thousands of people gathered in cities across France to show their support to her and other victims of rape, and the trial has ignited a national conversation on marital rape, consent and chemical submission.

Mr Pelicot, who is a father and grandfather, began his testimony by telling the court of traumatic childhood experiences and said he was abused by a male nurse when he was nine years old.

When asked about his marriage to Gisèle, Mr Pelicot said he considered suicide when he found out she was having an affair.

Throughout his testimony on Tuesday morning, Mr Pelicot repeatedly assured the court that he never “hated” his wife and was in fact “crazy about [her]… I loved her immensely and I still do.”

“I loved her well for 40 years and badly for 10,” he added, apparently referring to the decade during which he drugged her and abused her.

Mr Pelicot was then questioned by Stéphane Babonneau, one of Gisèle’s lawyers, who asked him why he had been unable to find the will to stop abusing her, even when she started presenting medical problems.

In previous sessions of the trial, Gisèle said she had been worried she was developing Alzheimer’s or a brain tumour because of hair and weight loss and large memory gaps. These were, in fact, side-effects of the drugs her husband was giving her.

“I tried to stop, but my addiction was stronger, the need was growing,” he said.

“I was trying to reassure her, I betrayed her trust. I should’ve stopped sooner, in fact I should’ve never started at all.”

Mr Pelicot is also accused of drugging and abusing his daughter, Caroline, after semi-naked photos of her were found on his laptop. He has previously denied this and on Tuesday he also stated he had never touched his grandchildren. “I can look my family in the eyes and tell them that nothing else occurred,” he said.

Mr Pelicot also said he “became perverted” when, in 2010, he met a male nurse on the internet who suggested he drug his wife with a sedative, explained how to administer it and shared photos of drugged women. “That’s when it all clicked,” Mr Pelicot said. “Everything started then.”

In one section of Tuesday’s hearing, Mr Pelicot was also asked about the thousands of videos he filmed of men abusing his unconscious wife. These were found by investigators and were instrumental in tracking down the 50 men who are now accused of rape.

Mr Pelicot recognised he had filmed the men partly for “pleasure,” but also “as insurance”.

Throughout the morning, Mr Pelicot appeared determined to rebut one of the main lines of defence of several of the accused, which hinges on the premise they did not “know” they were raping Gisèle – in other words, that they thought they were having consensual intercourse with her.

Mr Pelicot met the defendants on a chat room called “Without her knowledge” on a now-closed website which hosted pornographic material.

“I didn’t force anyone, they came to look for me,” he said on Tuesday. “They asked me if they could come, and I said yes. I never handcuffed and dragged anyone.”

Some have said they were “manipulated” by Mr Pelicot into believing they were taking part in an erotic game in which Gisèle was only pretending to be asleep because she was shy, and several denied they knew they were being filmed.

But Mr Pelicot said the only person he ever “manipulated” was his wife, and also said that the men must have known they were being filmed: “There was a tripod and a screen attached to it, everyone could see it as soon as they walked into the room.”

Mr Pelicot said he wanted to prove that his wife “was a victim and not an accomplice. To prove that everything happened without her knowledge. I’m aware many [defendants] have disputed this.”

Béatrice Zavarro, Mr Pelicot’s lawyer, told French TV that she did not know what people would think of her client, but that he was “sharing his truth”.

She added that Mr Pelicot was “very downtrodden” and that although she did not know what his wife would make of his request for forgiveness, “the confession is now under way and he will continue.”

She said: “We will get to the end of this trial and we will know everything about Dominique Pelicot.”

Mr Pelicot, who was diagnosed with a kidney infection and kidney stones, was absent from court for nearly a week because of illness. He is set to give his testimony throughout the day, although he will be allowed frequent breaks.

Prominent opposition leader and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal has resigned from his post, days after getting bail in a corruption case.

Kejriwal spent five months in jail in connection with a now-scrapped alcohol sales policy. He has denied the allegations against him.

He has said that he will take up the post only if people re-elect his Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) in the upcoming assembly elections.

Kejriwal’s colleague and senior Delhi minister Atishi will replace him as the leader of the government, the party announced on Tuesday.

AAP made its poll debut in 2013 Delhi assembly elections and has governed the capital city since, focussing on welfare measures such as affordable electricity and water for residents.

In 2020, the party won 62 seats in the 70-seat assembly – in almost a repeat of its performance in the previous election when it won 67 seats.

Kejriwal had announced his intention to resign over the weekend, saying he would sit on the chief minister’s chair only if the people of Delhi gave him a “certificate of honesty”.

“I got justice from the legal court, now I will get justice from the people’s court,” he told reporters.

Kejriwal has called for advancing the Delhi elections, which are scheduled for February next year, to November, aligning them with the upcoming polls in Maharashtra state.

Experts, however, say that is unlikely to happen.

Indian laws stipulate that elections cannot be scheduled less than six months before an assembly term’s end unless the assembly is dissolved early. Additionally, the Election Commission considers factors like weather, festivals, and electoral roll revisions before announcing elections.

• Arvind Kejriwal: The maverick leader who took on India’s Modi

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which is the AAP’s main opposition in Delhi, has called Kejriwal’s resignation a “publicity stunt” to galvanise public sympathy.

An anti-corruption crusader, Kejriwal was the third AAP leader to be arrested over alleged irregularities in the now-scrapped alcohol sales policy.

Manish Sisodia, a former deputy chief minister, and AAP leader Sanjay Singh were also arrested in the case. Sisodia was granted bail in August after spending 17 months in jail and Singh was released on bail in April.

The policy was introduced by AAP in 2021, saying it would curb black market sales, increase revenues and ensure even distribution of liquor licences.

It was withdrawn a few months later after Delhi’s Lieutenant-Governor Vinai Kumar Saxena accused AAP of exploiting rules to benefit private liquor barons.

The AAP denies the charges and has accused the BJP of using investigating agencies to unjustly target opposition leaders, a charge it denies.

At 43, Atishi has become the youngest and third woman to serve as chief minister of Delhi.

She currently holds important portfolios such as water, finance, power and education in Delhi’s cabinet.

In the absence of senior AAP leaders, who were jailed until recently, she served as the face of the party and swiftly gained prominence as a powerful leader.

Born to professors with Marxist leanings, Atishi studied at Delhi University and went to the University of Oxford for her master’s degree.

After spending a few years in teaching at a school in Karnataka, she was involved with alternative farming and education reforms in Madhya Pradesh.

She joined AAP in 2013 and has significantly contributed to overhauling Delhi’s public schools as an advisor to former Deputy Chief Minister Sisodia.

Riding on her reputation as an education reformer, she was elected to the Delhi assembly in 2020.

She had contested the 2019 parliamentary elections, but lost to former cricketer Gautam Gambhir.

Earlier this year, she made headlines after she went on an indefinite hunger strike to highlight Delhi’s water crisis during its peak summer months.

Exuberant young men splashing around in a pool with one theatrically soaping himself as a crowd cheered. Sri Lankans dancing in an opulent hallway as the iconic bands played festive tunes with trumpets and drums.

These scenes beamed across the world on 13 July 2022 in the hours after crowds overran the presidential palace, forcing then-leader Gotabaya Rajapaksa to flee the country.

It was a moment of triumph for them.

Hundreds of thousands of people from across Sri Lanka had defied a national curfew – they braved tear gas shells and water cannons to march peacefully to the presidential palace, calling on Rajapaksa to step down.

For weeks, he had resisted calls to resign, even though his elder brother Mahinda Rajapaksa had already quit as prime minister to try to defuse public fury.

Months of protests – called the “aragalaya” (struggle) in Sinhala – had culminated in the events of July 2022, leading to Mr Rajapaksa’s humiliating, hurried exit.

Just a few months earlier, such events would have been unthinkable.

For years, the Rajapaksa family – led by Mahinda – held a vice-like grip over Sri Lankan politics.

In his first term, Mahinda Rajapaksa presided over the bloody end to Sri Lanka’s civil war against Tamil Tiger rebels. That victory helped him establish himself as a national “saviour” among the island’s majority Sinhalese – his most ardent supporters compared him to an emperor.

As he grew more powerful, so did his family. He appointed his younger brother, Gotabaya, as defence secretary – a position he wielded ruthlessly, critics say. Two other brothers – Basil and Chamal – rose to the jobs of finance minister and parliamentary speaker respectively.

The family appealed to a majority-Sinhalese nationalist base. So, for years, they survived allegations of corruption, economic misrule, widespread human rights abuses and suppression of dissent.

That changed in 2022, when a slew of policies set off the country’s worst-ever economic crisis.

Seventeen years after Mahinda first became president, Sri Lankan crowds celebrated the Rajapaksas’ fall, certain the family was finished.

But was it?

Cut to two years later, and Mahinda Rajapaksa’s son, Namal, has thrown his hat into the ring for the presidential election to be held on 21 September.

“It is bad enough that the people who were driven out after the aragalaya [mass protests] are contesting these polls,” Lakshan Sandaruwan, a university student who took part in the demonstrations, told BBC Sinhala. “What is even worse is that some may actually vote for a member of that family.”

Namal is not the only Rajapaksa who is back on the scene.

Gotabaya Rajapaksa himself – the man angry protesters chased out of the country – did not stay away for long.

He returned just 50 days after his inglorious departure, first to Singapore and then Thailand. On his return, he was given the privileges of a former president: a plush bungalow and security, all of it paid for by the government.

Ranil Wickremesinghe, an opposition politician, was appointed as president for the remaining two years of Rajapaksa’s tenure. The family-led Sri Lanka Podu Jana Peramuna Party (SLPP), which has a two-thirds majority in parliament, threw their support behind him.

Before his unexpected elevation, Wickremesinghe, a six-time former prime minister, was the only MP from his United National Party after their abysmal showing in the 2020 parliamentary elections.

He has focused on rebuilding the economy. But he has been accused of protecting the Rajapaksa family, allowing them to regroup, while shielding them from prosecution – allegations he has denied.

Hours after Wickremesinghe became president, the military was deployed to clear the crowds at Galle Face in Colombo, which had been the epicentre of the protests.

Dozens of soldiers swooped on the site, dismantling tents and other belongings of demonstrators. In the following months, those who had stormed the presidential palace and were seen walking out with “souvenirs” – such as bed sheets or the odd keepsake to remember a historic day – have been jailed.

“Ranil protected the Rajapaksa family from the wrath of the people, ensuring the continuity of the SLPP-led parliament, cabinet and the government, and not doing anything to stop corruption, and even suppressing the progress of any investigation against the Rajapaksa family members,” said political scientist Jayadeva Uyangoda.

“He also protected them from international pressure for holding them accountable to serious human rights violations and war-related allegations.”

This has angered many Sri Lankans who are living through a cost-of-living crisis, and enduring more hardships because of reforms intended to revive a stagnant economy.

Although there are no shortages or power cuts, prices have sky-rocketed. The government has also scrapped subsidies on essentials such as electricity, and cut welfare spending.

Taxes, meanwhile, have gone up as Wickremesinghe has sharply increased tax rates and widened the net to shore up public revenue.

Some economists say the painful measures are necessary to restore Sri Lanka’s macro-economic stability as it attempts to restructure its international debt and stick to the terms of the bailout agreed with the International Monetary Fund.

The country’s foreign reserves have risen to around $6bn from a mere $20m at the height of the crisis, and inflation is around 0.5%.

But the real-world impact on millions of ordinary Sri Lankans has been devastating.

A study from policy research organisation Lirne Asia, which surveyed 10,000 households, estimated that as many as three million people fell below the poverty line in 2023, pushing the number of poor from four million to seven million.

These families are going hungry and, desperate for more money, they are pulling their children out of school.

The Rajapaksas have denied any wrongdoing but in 2023, the country’s Supreme Court ruled that the family – including Gotabaya and Mahinda – was directly responsible for economic mismanagement between 2019 and 2022, which triggered the crisis.

Nimesha Hansini, a university student in Colombo, told BBC Sinhala she felt the Rajapaksas were “directly responsible for the economic crisis due to the financial frauds carried out under the guise of development projects during their reign”.

“But nothing has changed for them – only their political power has decreased,” she added.

“I don’t have much to say about them,” says Rashmi, a farmer in the traditional Rajapaksa stronghold of Hambantota. “We are suffering because of what they have done. We voted for them before, but that will never happen again.”

These are the minds that Namal Rajapaksa is hoping to change – he wants to win back the base.

His campaign has centred around the legacy of his father Mahinda, who is still seen as a hero by some Sri Lankans.

This is despite some international calls to prosecute him for war crimes. The UN estimates that 100,000 people including 40,000 Tamil civilians were killed by Sri Lankan armed forces in the final stages of the conflict, but Mahinda Rajapaksa has never been convicted of any wrongdoing and rejects such allegations.

Mahinda’s images adorn Namal’s campaign rallies and his social media posts feature illustrations showing him alongside his father when he was younger.

He has even tried to highlight their resemblence to each other, growing out his moustache and wearing Mahinda’s trademark red shawl.

Many of his campaign posts strike a note of defiance: “We do not fear challenges; in fact, we welcome them. That’s something I learned from my father.”

Another post refers to him as “patriotic, courageous and forward-thinking”.

“It seems to me that Namal Rajapaksa thinks, not incorrectly, that representing the legacy of his father will enable him to protect his father’s vote base and benefit from it,” Prof Uyangoda said.

“It is one way to rebuild the shattered electoral bases of the SLPP.”

But many voters don’t appear to be buying it – and polls don’t suggest Namal is a serious contender for the top job.

One comment on a campaign post on Namal’s Instagram account was scathing: “The latest heir of the Rajapaksa family taking a shot at the presidency? Quite the family business isn’t it?”

Reactions on the ground were more vitriolic. “I will never vote for Namal Rajapaksa. The years of hardship we have lived are a curse on that family,” HM Sepalika, a villager who’s been resettled in Vavuniya in the north, told BBC Sinhala.

“The people of this country got together and staged this struggle because they didn’t want the Rajapaksas. But they still have so much greed and lust for power that they are trying to come back and ask people to vote for them,” said Nishanthi Harapitiya, a shop assistant in Hambantota.

Others say they cannot take Namal seriously.

“Why should he ask for our vote? He is a child with no experience. Who will vote for him? Unless someone votes for him out of pity for his father, he cannot be elected president,” said Mohammed Haladeen, a trader from Kathankudy in eastern Sri Lanka.

Attention is now largely focused on three candidates: opposition leader Sajith Premadasa, the leftist National People’s Party alliance’s Anura Kumara Dissanayake and Wickremesinghe, who is running as an independent candidate.

But Namal Rajapaksa could be playing a longer game.

Recent elections have shown that families or allies of once-unpopular strongmen do make big political comebacks – such as Bongbong Marcos in the Philippines or even Prabowo Subianto of Indonesia.

“He wants to remain politically relevant, protect the SLPP’s voter base, and be politically active till 2029,” Prof Uyangoda said.

Lakshan Sandaruwan, the university student who took part in the demonstrations, agrees.

“Namal is contesting the polls to prepare the necessary background for 2029, not to become the president this time,” he said.

“But if the people do not act intelligently, the people themselves will create a Rajapaksa president again.”

In a Muslim graveyard in Delhi, a tombstone stands out.

It has an inscription written in the Urdu language, but beneath it lies the name of a German-born Jewish woman – Gerda Philipsborn – followed by the epithet ‘Aapajaan’ or ‘elder sister’.

This is an unusual sight as the graves of the founders of Jamia Millia Islamia – a top Muslim university rooted in India’s independence movement – rest here. Its students have upheld this legacy of political activism, including protests against a controversial citizenship law introduced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government in 2019.

So, how did a German Jew come to be invested in a place so distant and disconnected from her homeland?

The answer lies somewhere between friendship and a woman’s search for meaning, says Margrit Pernau, author of Jamia’s Aapa Jaan: The Many Lifeworlds of Gerda Philipsborn.

Pernau, who has spent a decade researching Jamia, says that though she had come across Philipsborn’s name several times during her research, her life was shrouded in mystery.

Even today, not many students know about Philipsborn and her contribution to the university. Syeda Hameed, a prominent activist and historian, says there’s a need for writings on her to be translated and made available to students “for their benefit and the benefit of future generations”.

Philipsborn’s journey from being a German a term of respect for white European women in colonial India – to becoming Jamia’s began in 1933 when she traveled to India after forging an unlikely friendship with three Indian men, Zakir Husain, Muhammad Mujeeb, and Abid Husain, who had gone to Berlin to study.

The men would go on to become the main founders of Jamia and also play important roles in India’s political history, with Zakir Husain becoming the country’s third president in 1967.

In the 1920s and 30s, it was uncommon to find cross-national friendships, let alone close, platonic relationships between three men and a woman.

The men, who were involved in the freedom movement, often spoke to Philipsborn about their plans to build an institution that would contribute towards India’s fight for freedom.

At the time, there were very few universities in British India, and even fewer ones that were not funded by the government. The men wanted Jamia to be a place where Muslim boys and girls could educate themselves, so that they could take up an active role in India’s freedom struggle. They also wanted the institution to promote unity between Hindus and Muslims and love for the motherland.

These altruistic plans had a deep impact on Philipsborn. Born into a wealthy family in 1895, she had seen her life, and the world around her, change due to war, industrialisation and a wave of anti-Semitism. She understood what it felt like to be oppressed, to long for freedom and to be driven by the desire to become an instrument of change, Pernau writes.

And so, shortly after her friends left Berlin to dedicate their lives to building Jamia, Philipsborn followed them to India. But moving from a bustling, modernised Berlin to a country mired in poverty was not an easy decision. Pernau sheds light on the many times Zakir Husain forbade Philipsborn from making the journey.

“More than once she had offered to join him [in India], and more than once he had proffered ‘advice, warnings, and admonitions not to come’,” Pernau writes.

Meanwhile, Muhammad Mujeeb wondered how a “still young, unmarried and unaccompanied woman would fit into Jamia, whose women at this time still observed purdah [the seclusion of women from the sight of men or strangers, practiced by some Muslims and Hindus],” she writes.

But Philipsborn made the journey despite these calls for caution.

Within months, she managed to make friends with the people of Jamia and even began teaching in the university’s primary school. Like the rest of the teaches there, she worked for minimal wage and agreed to dedicate her life to serving the institution.

She used the knowledge she had gained teaching at kindergartens in Germany to make education enjoyable and approachable for her students. When she was appointed the warden of a hostel for children, she took on the role of an for them, Pernau writes.

She did menial tasks like washing and oiling their hair and kept them close to her, emotionally and physically. “When the little children under her care fell sick, she attended to them with such devotion that they didn’t miss their mother,” Pernau says.

Philipsborn also encouraged Jamia’s girls and women to play a more active role in society. When she joined the editorial team of Payam-e Ta’lim, Jamia’s children’s journal, she contributed articles that spotlighted the hobbies and interests of women and encouraged girls to write for the journal.

Apart from her work with the children of Jamia, Gerda also helped its founders raise funds for the university, prepare speeches and often acted as their sounding board for all matters related to teaching and politics.

But seven years after she arrived in India, her work hit a roadblock.

Amid Britain’s war with Germany, German citizens in British India were viewed with suspicion, leading to their arrest and internment in camps where they endured harsh conditions, including inadequate water, blankets and food.

Philipsborn was taken to one such camp in 1940. Her internment made her fearful for her life as there was the possibility of authorities deporting her to Germany, where Hitler was persecuting the Jews. But even in the camp, she did her best to serve her inmates by organising small events to cheer them up and looking after those who had taken ill.

But a couple of months after being brought to the camp, Philipsborn developed a gastric ulcer. She was taken to a hospital for treatment and then moved back to the camp, where she stayed for a whole year.

After being released, she went back to Jamia and continued her work, but struggled to perform with the same gusto as her ulcer turned cancerous. She became increasingly weak, but tried to connect with children through her articles in the Payam-e Ta’lim.

In April 1943, Philipsborn died and was buried in the graveyard for Jamia families. “She died miles away from her family, but was surrounded by the people who loved her,” says Hameed about Gerda’s death.

And long after her death, her legacy as “Aapa Jaan” lives on in the corridors of Jamia, with a hostel and day care centre named after her.

Amazon is ordering staff back to the office five days a week as it ends its hybrid work policy.

The change will come into force from January, Amazon’s chief executive Andy Jassy said in a memo to staff.

“We’ve decided that we’re going to return to being in the office the way we were before the onset of Covid,” he said, adding that it would help staff be “better set up to invent, collaborate, and be connected enough to each other”.

Mr Jassy has long been known as a sceptic of remote work, but Amazon staff were previously allowed to work from home two days a week.

Amazon’s push to get corporate staff back into the office has been a source of tension within the firm which employs more than 1.5 million people globally in full-time and part-time roles.

Staff at its Seattle headquarters staged a protest last year as the company tightened the full remote work allowance that was put in place during the pandemic.

Amazon subsequently fired the organiser of the protest, prompting claims of unfair retaliation, a dispute that has been taken up with labour officials.

In his message on Monday, Mr Jassy said he was worried that Amazon – which has long prided itself on preserving the intensity of a start-up while growing to become a tech giant – was seeing its corporate culture diluted by flexible work and too many bureaucratic layers.

Mr Jassy, who replaced founder Jeff Bezos as chief executive in 2021, said he had created a “bureaucracy mailbox” for staff to make complaints about unnecessary rules and the company was asking managers to reorganise so that managers are overseeing more people.

Amazon said those changes could lead to job cuts.

In addition to returning to the office five days a week, Amazon said it would end hot-desking in the US, although it will continue in most of Europe.

The company said staff could still work from home in unusual circumstances, such as a sick child or house emergency, as was the case before the pandemic.

But unless they have been granted an exemption, Mr Jassy said: “Our expectation is that people will be in the office outside of extenuating circumstances.”

Amazon’s stance contrasts with the UK government’s approach, which has promised to make flexible working a default right from day one as part of a new employment rights bill due to be published next month.

Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds told the Times newspaper that the government wants to end the “culture of presenteeism”, and said there were “real economic benefits” to people working from home.

He said there was a balance to be struck, but flexible working arrangements could help businesses recruit from a wider pool of people.

Graeme from Northumberland, who didn’t want us to use his surname, mainly works from home and believes “you just get so much more done”.

The difference between that and office work was “night and day” in terms of productivity, he said.

In the office people can come over for a chat, or to make requests, and then it can be more difficult to get back into a work flow, he said.

However, he added that the socialising aspect of working in an office was also important.

Remote work peaked during the pandemic. Many companies started recalling staff in 2022, but the return has been incomplete.

As of this summer, about 12% of full-time employees in the US were fully remote and another 27% reported having hybrid work policies in place, according to a monthly survey by economists Jose Maria Barrero, Nicholas Bloom, and Steven J Davis.

Bank bosses such as JP Morgan’s Jamie Dimon have been among the most high-profile figures critical of remote work and likely to demand full-time office attendance.

But the attitude has also spread to other industries, with UPS and Dell recalling staff to the office full-time this year.

In his memo, Mr Jassy said that Amazon’s experience with its move to a hybrid policy had “strengthened our conviction about the benefits” of working in person.

But Prof Bloom, from Stanford University, said he did not think the announcements were a sign of a wider shift in work policies, noting that his data has found time spent at the office has been fairly stable for more than a year.

“For every high-profile company cancelling work-from-home, there’s others that seem to be expanding it – they just don’t get picked up in the media,” he said.

One of the final messages from the five-person crew of the Titan submersible before it imploded, killing all inside, was “all good here”, a hearing has revealed.

Investigators with the US Coast Guard said the message was among the final communications between the Titan and its mother ship, before they lost contact for good.

Also shown at the hearing for the first time was an image, taken by a remotely operated vehicle, of Titan’s tail cone sitting on the sea floor following the implosion.

The deep-sea vessel was less than two hours into its descent towards the wreck of the Titanic when it imploded in June 2023.

Coast Guard officials began a two-week inquiry on Monday, aiming to uncover the facts of the incident and offer recommendations to prevent similar tragedies.

Investigators presented a recreation of the journey, including text messages between Titan and its mother ship, the Polar Prince.

Titan began its dive at 09:17 local time and support staff aboard the mother ship asked about the submersible’s depth and weight, as well as whether it could still see the ship on its onboard display.

Communications were patchy, but about an hour into the dive, Titan messaged “all good here”.

Its last message was sent at 10:47 local time, at a depth of 3,346m, to say it had dropped two weights. After that, communication was lost.

Officials presented a historical overview of the Titan, noting that its hull had never been subject to third-party testing and had been left exposed to weather and other elements while in storage.

In addition, they laid out serious problems experienced by the submersible on expeditions carried out before the disaster. In 2021 and 2022, over the course of 13 dives to the Titanic, it had 118 equipment issues.

These included the front dome falling off when it was brought out of the sea, its thrusters failing at 3,500m down and, on one dive, its batteries dying and leaving passengers stuck inside for 27 hours.

OceanGate, the manufacturer behind the craft, has previously faced questions over its design choices, its safety record and its adherence to regulations.

Tony Nissen, the company’s former engineering director, said the evidence he had seen was “disturbing… professionally and personally”.

Mr Nissen claimed that Stockton Rush, OceanGate’s late CEO who was on board Titan, had the last word on most engineering decisions and was difficult to work with.

“Stockton would fight for what he wanted and, even if it changed from day to day, he wouldn’t give an inch,” he said.

“Most people would eventually back down to Stockton, it was death by a thousand cuts.”

OceanGate suspended all exploration and commercial operations following the incident.

The company currently has no full-time staff but will be represented by a lawyer at the inquiry, it said.

Monday saw the start of the first public phase of an already 15-month investigation.

Unanswered questions over the Titan’s ill-fated dive have fuelled a lingering debate over safety and the regulation of private undersea exploration.

The Coast Guard’s Marine Board of Investigations (MBI) is expected to hear from as many as 10 former OceanGate employees, including co-founder Guillermo Sohnlein, and experts in marine safety and undersea exploration.

An MBI is the highest available level of inquiry into US marine casualties and convenes roughly one hearing per year, its chairman said on Sunday.

“Out of thousands of investigations conducted, less than one rise to this level,” Jason Neubauer said.

“We hope that this hearing will help shed light on the cause of the tragedy and prevent anything like this from happening again.”

The board of top Coast Guard and National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) officials has the authority to recommend civil penalties or make referrals for criminal prosecution to the US Department of Justice.

A search mission involving four governments unfolded after the submersible lost contact with its mother ship, the Polar Prince, on the morning of 18 June 2023 and never resurfaced.

As well as Rush, on board were British explorer Hamish Harding, veteran French diver Paul Henri Nargeolet, the British-Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood and his 19-year-old son Suleman.

The US Secret Service says it is “aware” of a social media post by Elon Musk in which he said that “no one is even trying” to assassinate President Joe Biden or Vice-President Kamala Harris.

Mr Musk has since deleted the post and said it was intended as a joke.

His post on X, formerly Twitter, came just hours after the suspected attempted assassination of Donald Trump at his golf course in Florida on Sunday.

The tech billionaire is a close ally of Trump, who has vowed to enlist Mr Musk to run a “government efficiency commission” if he wins a second term as US president.

Many X users criticised Mr Musk’s comments – which were accompanied by a raised eyebrow emoji – with some alleging that the post was a form of incitement against the US president and vice-president.

In a statement, the White House condemned the post, saying that “this rhetoric is irresponsible”.

“Violence should only be condemned, never encouraged or joked about,” the statement said, adding that there should be “no place for political violence or for any violence ever in our country”.

When contacted by the BBC, the US Secret Service said only that it is “aware” of the post.

“As a matter of practice we do not comment on matters involving protective intelligence,” the statement added. “We can say, however, that the Secret Service investigates all threats related to our protectees.”

After deleting the post, Mr Musk tweeted that “one lesson I’ve learned is that just because I say something to a group and they laugh doesn’t mean it’s going to be all that hilarious as a post on X.”

“Turns out that jokes are way less funny if people don’t know the context and the delivery is in plain text,” a subsequent post read.

The controversial tech mogul is considered a close ally of Trump and formally endorsed him in the aftermath of a separate assassination attempt against the former president that took place at a rally on 13 July in Butler, Pennsylvania.

In that attempt, the suspect fired multiple rounds, injuring Trump and killing an attendee at the rally.

Since then, Mr Musk has often tweeted or re-posted messages critical of both Biden and Harris and in support of Trump.

Donald Trump has recalled hearing shots fired by Secret Service agents at a would-be attacker hiding in the bushes at his Florida golf course on Sunday.

Speaking in a livestream on social media platform X, the Republican presidential candidate said he and a friend were “grabbed” by agents and bundled into golf carts as gunfire rang out.

Secret Service personnel several hundred metres away had spotted the barrel of a rifle poking out of foliage. After opening fire, agents pursued the suspect, who dropped his weapon and drove away, but was later arrested on a highway.

The suspect, 58-year-old Ryan Routh, did not fire any shots himself, the Secret Service has said.

• Gunman lurked for hours before Trump’s last-minute game of golf
• What do we know about the suspect, Ryan Routh?

Routh appeared briefly in a Florida court on Monday to face federal gun possession charges, as investigations by the FBI continue.

The FBI has said it is investigating the incident as “an attempted assassination” against Trump but did not formally charge Routh with related charges.

Florida prosecutors are also investigating the case with the possibility of adding additional, more severe, charges.

“I think this is an offence that should merit life in prison,” Florida Governor Ron Desantis said at a press briefing on Tuesday, announcing the state’s investigation.

“I think it’s really important for the people of Florida, but also for our country, that we pursue the most serious charges that are on the books to hold this guy accountable.”

Later on Tuesday, Trump is due to make his first in-person appearance since the incident at a “town hall” in Flint, Michigan, a crucial swing state where votes will help decide the presidential election.

His campaign schedule will not change, according to a source cited by the Reuters news agency.

In his account, Trump recalled that he and friend Steve Witkoff “heard shots being fired in the air, I guess probably four or five” as Secret Service agents on the course’s next hole spotted the rifle and fired at the suspect.

The agents with Trump “knew immediately it was bullets, and they grabbed me”, he said.

“We got into the carts and we moved along pretty, pretty good. I was with an agent, and the agent did a fantastic job,” he said during the X Spaces event.

In comments to the Washington Post, he insisted that the incident, as well as an attempt on his life during a rally in Pennsylvania on 13 July, had not affected him.

“But people ask me that question a lot, and I try not to think about it,” he said.

In a rare show of political unity, Trump also commended President Joe Biden for a “very nice” phone call after the apparent assassination attempt. The White House said Biden expressed his relief that Trump was safe.

Trump sought to blame the apparent attempt on “inflammatory language” from Democratic political rivals.

Authorities have not yet disclosed a potential motive for Routh, who has a history of legal problems and varied political affiliations.

• How much security does Donald Trump get?
• Secret Service ‘needs more help’, Biden says
• Secret Service ‘aware’ of Elon Musk post about Harris, Biden

Sunday’s events came weeks after Trump was injured by a 20-year-old gunman who shot at him at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, in July.

The incident, which left a rally attendee dead, led to the resignation of the Security Service’s director Kimberly Cheatle, and the beefing-up of Trump’s security detail.

In Monday’s remarks to the Washington Post, Trump said agents had taken a different approach during the second incident, choosing to evacuate him from the area with “rather quick golf carts”, rather than jumping on him.

The second apparent attempt on Trump’s life raised fresh questions from across the political spectrum about whether he is receiving enough protection. Biden has acknowledged that the agency “needs more help”.

The Secret Service’s acting head, Ronald Rowe, joined Trump in praising the actions of individual agents, and defended the level of security provided to the Republican.

In a news conference on Monday, he stressed that Trump had the “highest levels of protection” and that the agency’s plan worked as it should have done on Sunday.

Mr Rowe also said the ex-president’s trip to the golf course was not on his public schedule.

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Iran’s new president has said that morality police will no longer “bother” women over the wearing of the mandatory hijab headscarf, days after the UN warned women were still being violently punished for breaking the strict dress code.

Masoud Pezeshkian’s comments came on the second anniversary of the death in police custody of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini after she was arrested for allegedly not wearing the hijab properly, sparking nationwide protests.

The UN last week said Iran’s government had “intensified efforts” since that period to suppress women’s rights and crush any last vestiges of activism.

But on Monday, Pezeshkian said that the regime’s morality police should no longer be confronting women on the street.

Pezeshkian, who became president after his predecessor died in a helicopter crash, is seen as a potentially reformist leader.

He was responding to questions from a female reporter who said she had taken detours en route to the press conference to avoid police vans. She was wearing her head scarf loosely with some hair showing.

When asked by Pezeshkian if the police were still on the streets she confirmed that was the case.

In response he said: “The morality police were not supposed to confront [women]. I will follow up so they don’t bother [them]”.

His comments were broadcast live on major state TV networks, including rolling news channel IRINN. The clip of the conversation with the female journalist has since gone viral online.

It was Pezeshkian’s first press conference since coming into office in July, replacing the ultraconservative Ebrahim Raisi.

During his election campaign he pledged to oppose police patrols enforcing the mandatory hijab headscarf. He has also vowed to ease some of the country’s long-standing internet controls.

Iran stepped up surveillance of social media following the nationwide women-led anti-establishment protests in 2022.

• ‘Lashed for a social media photo’ in Iran

Signs of a potentially more relaxed attitude to the country’s strict dress code for women were present at Pezeshkian’s press conference on Monday, where some female journalists wore loose head coverings.

This was a noticeable departure from previous official events where female journalists are required to appear in full hijab, BBC Monitoring reported.

But the UN’s latest fact-finding mission in the country says women “still live in a system that relegates them to second class citizens”.

In its report released last week, the UN said: “State authorities have expanded repressive measures and policies to further deprive women and girls of their fundamental rights.”

It noted the government had “enhanced surveillance of hijab compliance” in both public and private environments while also endorsing an escalation in violence in punishing women and girls who break the rules.

“Security forces have further escalated pre-existing patterns of physical violence, including beating, kicking, and slapping women and girls who are perceived as failing to comply with the mandatory hijab laws and regulations,” the UN said.

It said authorities had also increasingly invoked the use of the death penalty against women activists and “scaled up” executions of those who had expressed solidarity with the 2022 protests known as the Woman, Life, Freedom movement.

The UN mission also noted that a “Hijab and Chastity” bill was in the final stages of approval before Iran’s Guardian Council and could be finalised imminently.

“The Bill provides for harsher penalties for women who do not wear the mandatory hijab, including exorbitant financial fines, longer prison sentences, restrictions on work and educational opportunities, and bans on travel,” the UN investigators said.

Glasgow is to host the 2026 Commonwealth Games after a deal was backed by the Scottish government.

A scaled-down version of the event, featuring fewer sports and athletes, will return to the city 12 years after it last hosted the Games.

The Australian state of Victoria was originally chosen to stage the multi-sport event but withdrew as host due to rising costs.

Australian authorities have promised “a multi-million pound investment” to help finalise the deal.

Health and Sport Minister Neil Gray held talks with Commonwealth Games Australia on Monday to discuss funding, and received the assurances the Scottish government were looking for.

It has now written to the Commonwealth Games Federation (CGF) to officially back a “a scaled back, but high-quality” event which will see see 10 sports take place across four venues in the city.

The compulsory sports of Athletics and Swimming will be held at Scotstoun Stadium and Tollcross International Swimming Centre but the additional venues, as well as the dates for the event, have not yet been confirmed.

Gray said the fact that the city was asked to step in and host the games was a “testament to Glasgow and Scotland’s fantastic reputation for hosting international events”.

He said: “In 2026 all eyes will once again be on Glasgow, and I have every confidence that Scotland’s largest city will provide a fitting platform for some of the world’s top athletes.”

The minister added that CGS would be responsible for the budget and delivery of the event.

He told BBC Scotland News: “If there is a situation where we go beyond a very substantial contingency, CGS will need to look at the way then Games are being delivered rather than calling on either the UK or Scottish government for resource.”

He added that he hoped a more “sustainable offering” would allow for a more “diverse mix of countries to host the games in the future”.

Scottish Secretary Ian Murray said this was a “positive outcome” for both Glasgow and the Commonwealth Games.

He said: “There are still a few hoops to jump through but I’m very much looking forward to an incredible celebration of sport and seeing Scottish athletes in action in front of a home crowd.”

CGF president Chris Jenkins said it would work closely with Commonwealth Games Scotland to formally announce Glasgow as the host city as soon a possible.

He said: “We believe Glasgow 2026 will be an important first step in our commitment to reset and reframe the Commonwealth Games as a co-created, sustainable model that minimises costs, inspires athletes, and excites hosts and International federations.”

He confirmed that Commonwealth Games Australia had contributed £2.3m to “enhance the event”.

Ian Reid, chairman of Commonwealth Games Scotland (CGS), said he was “delighted” at the confirmation.

He said: “We have been clear from the outset that our Games concept for Glasgow 2026 aligns with the CGF’s strategy to make the Games more accessible for future hosts, whilst ensuring that public funds are not required.

Mr Reid added: “Glasgow is one of the few cities in the Commonwealth that can deliver on time given its world-class facilities, experienced workforce and strong supply chain.

“This is a really exciting opportunity and we will be working hard over the coming days to bring the final pieces of the puzzle together.”

A final decision was taken at a cabinet meeting on Tuesday morning.

Organisers have stated the Games will come at no cost to the public purse, with funding coming from compensation paid to the CGF after the Australians pulled out.

The UK government will provide financial support in the event of any increased security threat but had refused to completely underwrite the Games.

Gray previously insisted that there was “a reputation risk as well as financial risk” for Scotland in taking on hosting duties again, and that no public funds could be used.

The total budget for the Games is expected to be about £114m.

Scottish Labour leader, Anas Sarwar said: “Glasgow is a great city, but it is in need of economic investment and renewal.

“By hosting the games, we can showcase Glasgow and Scotland on the international stage and bring investment and tourism here.

“This is our chance to complete the legacy of the 2014 games, show global leadership and deliver the change that Glasgow needs.”

Sandesh Gulhane, Scottish Conservatives’ health spokesman, welcomed the “fantastic news” that is set to be delivered at “no cost to hard-pressed taxpayers”.

“This will put Glasgow on the map around the world and is an ideal chance to promote everything that is great about it,” he said. “However, I hope by then that the state of our city is much improved compared to how it looks now.”

Glasgow last hosted the Games in 2014 at a cost of £543m, with 17 sports taking place in an event praised by organisers as the best ever.

The 2026 version will be a more modest affair, but it it is not yet clear which sports will be cut.

There will be no athlete’s village and any opening and closing ceremonies are expected to be scaled back.

Former Team Scotland athlete and swimmer, Hannah Miley told BBC Scotland News the Commonwealth Games was a “special event” for athletes.

She said: “There were so many great memories from 2014 so to have it again in 2026, I think will be a great opportunity.

“Being able to compete in front of a home nation is something not many athletes get to do. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.”

The retired swimmer added that while it was amazing that Glasgow would be hosting the Games again, she had “mixed emotions” that some sports would not be included.

In 2021, the CGF agreed that athletics and swimming would be made compulsory sports, while events such as Archery and Boxing would be made core sports.

It is not yet clear which sports will be excluded from the 2026 Games.

The Commonwealth Games Federation (CGF) has struggled to find hosts for the event in recent years.

Durban was supposed to be the first city in Africa to stage the Games in 2022, but were stripped of hosting rights in 2017 after running into money troubles.

Birmingham and the British government intervened to save the event, stumping up a combined $1bn for what became the best attended Games on record.

Victoria then dropped out in July 2023 after the projected cost for the event became “well and truly too much” for the state to bear, while other possible hosts such as Malaysia and Singapore declined to step in.

The 12-day competition was expected to cost more than A$6 bn (£3.13bn; $4.09bn).

Leon Thompson, executive director of UK Hospitality Scotland, said: “The Games will deliver an economic boost to Glasgow, as well as creating opportunities to promote the city’s attractions over the next few years as it prepares to welcome visitors from across the world.”

He added that hospitality businesses would benefit from increased footfall but called on Glasgow City Council to ensure “economic and reputational benefits” were maximised.