Israel has scored a significant tactical triumph in this operation – the sort of spectacular coup you would read about in a thriller.

Undoubtedly it’s a humiliation for Hezbollah, which will increase their insecurity and be bad for their morale.

However there is a potentially serious strategic downside for Israel, because while this humiliates the powerful Lebanese militia and political movement, it doesn’t deter them.

And it doesn’t get closer to Israel’s strategic aim of stopping Hezbollah’s attacks and allowing the more than 60,000 Israelis on the northern border who haven’t been in their houses for nearly a year to return home.

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The Israelis have used an important, audacious weapon, which is clearly very effective in their terms.

But reports in Al Monitor, a respected Middle East newsletter, say that they were not able to use it in the way they hoped.

The original plan, it says, was for Israel to follow up with devastating attacks while Hezbollah was still reeling. The pager attack, the reports say, was to be the opening salvo in a big escalation – as part of an offensive or perhaps an invasion of southern Lebanon.

But these same reports say that Hezbollah was getting suspicious – forcing Israel to trigger this attack early. So the Israelis have shown they can get into Hezbollah’s communications and shown they can humiliate them, but this attack does not take the region one inch further back from all out war. Instead it pushes it closer.

Everything at the moment in terms of de-escalation in the Middle East depends on Gaza.

While that war continues, whether it’s conflict with Lebanon, whether it’s attacks in the Red Sea from the Houthis, whether it’s tensions with Iraq; nothing is going to de-escalate.

The US envoy to Lebanon Amos Hochstein has been working assiduously for months now – talking to the Lebanese, and indirectly to Hezbollah and to the Israelis, about trying to find a way to deescalate this diplomatically. And reportedly, the Israelis didn’t tell the US about what they were doing with this plan until last moments – so this won’t help his efforts either.

American predictions that a ceasefire in Gaza is close have come up again against two seemingly immovable objects.

One is the Hamas leader, Yahya Sinwar, who wants Israel out of the Gaza Strip permanently, as well as a big release of Palestinian prisoners in exchange for the remaining Israeli hostages in Gaza.

The other is Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, who has stuck to his insistence that Israel can and will win a total victory over Hamas.

The consensus in Israel is that he benefits from prolonging the war, despite pressure from hostage families and their supporters for a deal to get their people home.

The prime minister’s ultranationalist allies in his coalition have also threatened to bring down the government if he makes a deal.

Israel and its allies insist that taking the war to its old enemies in Lebanese Hezbollah is an entirely legitimate act of self-defence.

Once again though, there are serious question marks about the way an Israeli attack has wounded and killed civilian bystanders.

CCTV footage showed a pager exploding in a crowded market as its owner shopped for food. Reports in Lebanon say a young girl was killed when her father’s pager exploded.

Hezbollah will be reeling from the attack, but it will rapidly compose itself as an organisation and will find another way to communicate. Lebanon is a small country and messages can easily be carried by hand.

Undoubtedly Hezbollah and its allies in Iran, whose ambassador to Beirut was wounded in the attack, will be licking their wounds at the moment.

But once again the region has been pushed right to the brink of an all-out war.

Sooner or later, if this continues, they will fall over the cliff.

US brand Tupperware has filed for bankruptcy as it struggles to survive in the face of sliding sales.

The food storage container firm said it will ask for court permission to start a sale of the business and that it aimed to continue operating.

The 78-year-old firm has become so synonymous with food storage that many people use its name when referring to any old plastic container.

Despite attempts to freshen up its products in recent years and reposition itself to a younger audience, it has failed to stand out from competitors.

Last year, the firm warned that it may go bust unless it could quickly raise new funds.

The company’s shares have fallen by more 50% this week after reports that it was planning to file for bankruptcy.

After a brief surge in sales during the pandemic, as more people cooked at home, the firm saw demand continue to slide.

The rising cost of raw materials, higher wages and transportation costs have also eaten into its profit margins.

“Over the last several years, the company’s financial position has been severely impacted by the challenging macroeconomic environment,” Tupperware’s chief executive Laurie Ann Goldman said in a statement to investors.

Tupperware was founded in 1946 by Earl Tupper, who patented the containers’ flexible airtight seal.

Tupperware was a major innovation, as it utilised new plastics to keep food fresh for longer, which was invaluable when refrigerators were still too expensive for many families.

However, it was not an immediate success.

It was the pioneering saleswoman Brownie Wise who helped turn the brand into a household name, literally.

She developed an approach in which salespeople, who were mostly women, sold Tupperware to other women in their homes, better known as “Tupperware parties”.

According to the company, Tupperware is now sold in 70 countries around the world.

“The party has been over for some time for Tupperware,” said Susannah Streeter, head of money and markets at Hargreaves Lansdown.

“Shifts in buyer behaviour pushed its containers out of fashion, as consumers have started to wean themselves off addictions to plastics and find more environmentally conscious ways of storing food.”

Ms Streeter added that “serious hiccups” in Tupperware’s financial reporting also had a negative impact on the company, including the mis-stating of results in 2021 and 2022.

The tobacco giant that makes Marlboro cigarettes has sold a UK inhaler company for a knock-down price due to what it calls an “unwarranted” backlash.

Philip Morris International (PMI) has offloaded Vectura Group for £150m ($198m) just three years after buying it in a deal worth more than £1bn.

PMI’s decision to buy Vectura, which makes inhalers to treat lung conditions such as asthma, was criticised as being hypocritical.

However, PMI defended the move as part of its strategy to away from cigarettes and towards “smoke free” businesses like vaping.

PMI announced the sale to electronics firm Molex Asia Holdings on Wednesday, saying it releases Vectura “from the unreasonable burden of external constraints and criticism related to our ownership”.

The deal, which still needs regulatory approval, will see Molex pay an up-front fee of £150m and “potential deferred payments of up to £148m” if certain requirements are met.

PMI’s boss Jacek Olczak also said the company remains “committed to driving innovation in this space over the long-term”, suggesting it has not moved on entirely from the inhaler sector.

The Vectura purchase was part of PMI’s push towards a “smoke free world”. PMI has said it wants two thirds of its sales to come from non-cigarette sales by 2030.

However, health charities have voiced scepticism about the sincerity of PMI’s pledge considering the billions of pounds it still makes from cigarette sales.

Its latest financial results for the three months to the end of June showed that more than 60% of its $9.47bn (£7.19bn) sales came from cigarettes.

Over that period, PMI accounted for 23.6% of the global cigarette market by revenue.

The news comes as the new Labour government has said it is considering an outdoor smoking ban at pubs.

Health experts have welcomed the plans, but many pub owners have told the BBC that they were worried about the impact on their businesses.

The Lebanese government says 12 people, including two children, were killed after thousands of pagers used by the armed group Hezbollah exploded.

BBC Verify has been looking into a firm called BAC Consulting, which has been linked to the production of the pagers – despite the devices bearing a different manufacturer’s name.

A short while after the explosions took place on Tuesday, unverified images of two damaged pagers surfaced on social media. In the photos, the word “Gold” and a serial number starting either “AP” or “AR” was visible. This indicated that a Taiwanese company – Gold Apollo – could have been involved in the pagers’ manufacture.

However, the firm put out a strongly worded statement denying any involvement, saying: “This model is produced and sold by BAC.”

BAC Consulting is a Hungarian-based company which Gold Apollo says had permission to use its brand through a licensing agreement.

BBC Verify has accessed BAC’s company records, which reveal it was first incorporated in 2022 and has a single shareholder. It is registered to a building in Budapest’s 14th district.

As well as BAC, a further 13 companies and one person are registered at the same building.

However, our search of a financial information database does not reveal that BAC has any connections to other companies or people.

The same database shows no trading information about BAC. For example, there are no records of any shipments between it and any other firms.

However, BAC’s website, which is now inaccessible, previously said it was scaling up its business in Asia, and had a goal to “develop international technology co-operation among countries for the sale of telecommunication products”.

The website listed one person as BAC’s chief executive and founder – Cristiana Bársony-Arcidiacono – and does not appear to mention other employees.

BBC Verify has learned she graduated from the University of Catania with a physics degree in 2001. According to her LinkedIn profile, she also holds PhDs from two London universities.

We have made several attempts to contact her, but have been unable to reach her.

NBC has reported it had spoken to Ms Bársony-Arcidiacono, who confirmed her company worked with Gold Apollo. However, when asked about the pagers and the explosions, she said: “I don’t make the pagers. I am just the intermediate. I think you got it wrong.”

The BBC has called BAC a number of times, but there is no answer.

A spokesperson for Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has said the exploding pagers were “never” in Hungary.

“Authorities have confirmed that the company in question is a trading intermediary, with no manufacturing or operational site in Hungary,” government spokesperson Zoltán Kovács said in a post on X (formerly Twitter).

What do you want BBC Verify to investigate?

Radio waves from Elon Musk’s growing network of satellites are blocking scientists’ ability to peer into the universe, according to researchers in the Netherlands.

The new generation of Starlink satellites, which provide fast internet around the world, are interfering more with radio telescopes than earlier versions, they say.

The thousands of orbiting satellites are “blinding” radio telescopes and may be hindering astronomical research, according to Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy (ASTRON).

SpaceX, which owns Starlink, has not replied to a request from BBC News for comment.

The satellites provide broadband internet around the world, often to remote places, including challenging environments like Ukraine and Yemen.

They are also used to connect remote areas of the UK to fast internet. In 2022 tests showed that Starlink could deliver internet speeds four times faster than the average, according to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport.

But astronomers say this comes at a cost.

“Every time more of these are launched with these kinds of emission levels, we see less and less of the sky,” Professor Jessica Dempsey, director of ASTRON, told BBC News.

“We’re trying to look at things like the jets, which are emitted from black holes in the centre of galaxies. We also look at some of the earliest galaxies, millions and millions of light years away, as well as exoplanets,” she said, highlighting the areas the satellite radiation is affecting.

Interference from the second generation, or V2, satellites was found by ASTRON to be 32 times stronger than the first generation.

The amount of radiation emitted exceeds regulations set by the industry body the International Telecommunications Union, Prof Dempsey added.

One estimate suggests there are 6,402 Starlink satellites currently in orbit at around 342 miles (550km) above Earth, making it the largest provider by far.

The satellites are relatively large – with 3m flat panels and an 8m solar array for power.

SpaceX’s main competitor, OneWeb, has fewer than 1,000. But it is a growing business area. Amazon is developing its own network and hopes to launch at least 3,000 in the next few years.

By 2030 the number of satellites in orbit is expected to surpass 100,000.

The study was done using the LOFAR radio telescope in the Netherlands on a single day in July earlier this year.

Many objects in space, including distant galaxies and planets, emit light on the electromagnetic spectrum.

This radiation travels like waves and radio telescopes can pick up on those waves, allowing us to get a picture of things we can’t see with our eyes.

But those waves are being disturbed by satellites.

The scientists found unintended electromagnetic radiation from almost all the V2 Starlink satellites observed.

It was about 10 million times brighter than from the weakest sources of light identified, they say.

Lead author Cees Bassa said it was like comparing the “faintest stars visible to the naked eye and the brightness of the full Moon.”

“Since SpaceX is launching about 40 second-generation Starlink satellites every week, this problem is becoming increasingly worse,” he added.

Robert Massey, Deputy Executive Director of the Royal Astronomical Society in the UK, said: “it’s very clear that if you have something this bright that is compromising a major radio observatory this much, then we need to do something and we need to do it quickly.”

Asked about the value of the astronomy research, he said: “it’s wrong to say that there is some science that you can simply dismiss. The applications may be decades or even longer in the future but they can be very fundamental and very important.”

Scientists are also worried about light pollution from the satellites, and fear it is also interfering with optical telescopes.

Astronomers say they talked to SpaceX about radiation from the first generation of satellites and the company listened to their concerns.

But ASTRON now say the V2 have been found to be even more powerful.

“Turning LOFAR back up and seeing these booming signals from these new generation of V2 Mini SpaceX satellites was a bit shocking,” says Prof Dempsey.

“This is actually threatening the entirety of ground based astronomy in every wavelength and in different ways. If it continues, without the sort of mitigation to make these satellites quiet, then it does become an existential threat for the kinds of astronomy we do,” Prof Dempsey added.

The researchers stress that more regulation of space and how satellites operate is needed to avoid scientific work being compromised.

They said that as the largest provider of satellites, SpaceX could set a standard for limiting pollution.

Prof Dempsey said that simple actions like shielding the battery on the satellite could make a big difference and reduce the radiation emitted.

Some interference comes from faulty electronics, so this could prevent that happening.

But without action, “very soon the only constellations we will see will be human-made,” she added.

The findings are published in the scientific journal Astronomy and Astrophysics.

Last week, the Indian government announced that Russia had discharged dozens of the 91 Indians who were duped into fighting for Russian forces in the country’s war with Ukraine. Several of them have since returned home, while the process to bring others back is under way. The BBC’s Neyaz Farooquee spoke to some of the men about their struggles.

“I am in panic. I am not sure if I will return safely or in a box. Please save me.”

This is the message Urgen Tamang, a former Indian soldier, sent to the BBC from outside a southern Ukrainian city, a few days before he was discharged from the frontlines in Russia’s war against Ukraine, which entered its third year this February.

Mr Tamang is among the 91 Indians who were forced into fighting in the war. Most of them are from poor families and were lured by agents with the promise of money and jobs, sometimes as “helpers” in the Russian army.

Instead, they were sent to the war zone. Many of them said they were stationed in parts of Ukraine under Russian control, where they had to navigate landmines, drones, missiles and sniper attacks with little to no military training.

Nine Indians have died in the conflict so far and Indian authorities say they have arrested 19 people for human trafficking.

In July, Russia promised an early release of all Indians fighting in its army, following a visit by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to Moscow, during which he raised the issue with President Vladimir Putin. The two countries have traditionally shared a warm relationship.

Forty-five of them have been discharged since then. Some have safely returned home, while others like Mr Tamang are on their way.

“I can’t believe I am out of there,” said Sunil Karwa, an electrician from Rajasthan who joined the Russian army in February. Posted near Bakhmut, an eastern Ukraine city that has seen intense fighting, he was at the Moscow airport waiting to board his flight when he spoke to the BBC.

Mr Karwa described scenes of deaths and destruction, a reality which hit him the hardest when a man from his neighbouring village was shot on the battlefield.

“They sent him back on the frontline 15 days after the injury and he fainted in the field. He is paralysed now,” he said.

Like him, most of the other recruits were also blue-collar workers aged between 19 and 35, who were hired by agents based in India, Dubai and Russia.

• Ukraine war: The Indian men traumatised by fighting for Russia
• Ukraine war: Indians ‘duped’ by agents into fighting for Russia

They say their contracts were in Russian, a language they didn’t understand. Yet they signed it in the hope of getting better opportunities.

“The process was so quick – just a few signatures and photos and we were in [the army],” Mr Karwa said.

Raja Pathan joined the army as a last resort in February, after an education consultant deceived him into enrolling in a non-existent college.

“When I got there, I saw banners advertising recruitments for the army. By then, I had spent so much time and money that I decided to join anyway,” he said.

It was the death of two friends, which eventually pushed Mr Pathan to leave. He was released in August with the help of a sympathetic Russian commander who facilitated his exit.

Now based in Moscow, he helps other Indians escape from there.

Mohammad Sufyan from the southern state of Telangana returned to India on 12 September with five other men.

Safe in his home, he carries the trauma of surviving on the frontline. “There was little rest there and in the beginning, I couldn’t speak to my family for 25 days,” he said.

The most scarring moment came in February when his friend Hemil Mangukiya – an Indian man from Gujarat state – was killed right before his eyes.

“He was merely 15 metres from me, digging a trench near Krynky [in Kherson], when a missile landed,” recalled Mr Sufyan. “I put his dead body in the truck with my own hands.”

“After seeing the dead body of my friend, I didn’t have the strength for anything,” he added.

After the death, Mr Sufyan and other Indians stuck there released a video pleading for help, which reached Indian MP Asaduddin Owaisi, who raised the matter with the foreign ministry. Families of the men had also appealed to the Indian government for help in bringing them back.

“It is a miracle I got back home,” said Azad Yusuf Kumar, a resident of Indian-administered Kashmir, who was part of Mr Sufyan’s group in the army.

“One minute you are digging a trench, and the next, an artillery falls and burns everything down. It was all a matter of luck if it fell on you or someone else.”

In February, Mr Kumar had told the BBC how he had shot his foot by mistake during training. “My commander kept saying, use your right hand to shoot, use your left hand to shoot, shoot above, shoot down,” he had said. “I had never touched a gun. It was extremely cold, and with the gun in my left hand, I ended up shooting my foot.”

Now back in Kashmir, he talks about how his commander had accused him of deliberately shooting himself to avoid going to the frontline.

“But I am lucky I did not go to fight. Four men from my camp died in an attack at that time. I could’ve been one of them,” he said.

Though recent discharges brought relief to many, those still in Russia face growing desperation as their release is delayed.

Mr Tamang, who joined the Russian army in January, had earlier told The Indian Express newspaper through his local councillor, Rabi Pradhan, that 13 out of 15 non-Russian members of his unit had died.

The fact that he was sent to the frontline at least twice after signing his discharge letter in August heightened his fears – and mistrust in the process.

On 15 September, he was on his way to Moscow but still doubtful if he was truly heading home. “I am out, but I will keep sending you my location,” he said.

When he last texted, he had left Ukraine, hoping to continue his journey home.

“I thought I’d spend my whole life here, fighting a corrupt government – but the younger generation did something.”

Samadhi Paramitha Brahmananayake is looking at the field where she spent months camped out with thousands of other demonstrators in Sri Lanka’s capital in 2022.

She can’t quite believe that luscious green grass has replaced the hundreds of protester tents that filled the field opposite the presidential secretariat.

“I feel we’re now more energetic, more powerful,” says Ms Brahmananayake, a 33-year-old banker based in Colombo.

Two years ago, huge crowds forced the country’s deeply unpopular leader from office – now voters are just days away from choosing who they want for president.

It’s the first election since the mass protests – called the “aragalaya”, Sinhalese for struggle – which were sparked by Sri Lanka’s worst economic crisis. Inflation was at 70%. Basics like food, cooking gas and medicine were scarce.

Gotabaya Rajapaksa, the president at the time, and his government were blamed for the mess. He fled the country just before crowds stormed his residence. Euphoric protesters leapt into the presidential pool, taking victory laps.

Mithun Jayawardana, 28, was one of those swimmers. “It was awesome,” he said thinking back. Jobless, with no gas or electricity at home, he says he joined the aragalaya for a lark.

Today, he recognises how crucial the elections on Saturday are: “We need a president who is elected by the people. The people didn’t elect the current president.”

Ranil Wickremesinghe, the man who currently holds the job, was appointed to the position after Gotabaya Rajapaksa resigned. Mr Wickremesinghe, who’s been tasked with steering Sri Lanka through a period of painful economic reform, is running for re-election as an independent.

He’s stood for president twice before but never succeeded, and his political future appears uncertain.

Many associate Wickremesinghe with the Rajapaksas, a political dynasty who have dominated Sri Lankan politics for decades. Many blame them for the years of financial mismanagement that led to Sri Lanka’s economic woes.

Even the country’s top court ruled that Gotabaya Rajapaksa and his brother Mahinda, another former president, were among 13 former leaders responsible for the financial crisis.

Despite the political baggage that comes with the name, a Rajapaksa has entered the political fray in these elections – there are still places the family enjoys a lot of support.

One such district is just over an hour outside Colombo. Music, fireworks and the cheers of supporters greeted Namal Rajapaksa as he approached the podium to address the hundreds that had come to hear him speak on Monday in the town of Minuwangoda. Even his father, Mahinda joined him on stage.

Namal Rajapaksa denied his family’s role in Sri Lanka’s economic collapse.

“We know our hands are clean, we know we have not done anything wrong to the people or this country,” he told the BBC.

“We are willing to face the people, let the public decide what they want and who to vote for.”

In all, a record 38 candidates are contesting the 21 September election, none of them women. In 2019, Sajid Premadasa, leader of the country’s main opposition party, won 42% of the popular vote, losing to Gotabaya Rajapaksa. This time around he is thought to be in with a chance too.

For people looking for change, many are looking to Anura Kumara Dissanayake. The candidate of the leftist National People’s Party alliance has emerged as an unlikely frontrunner.

Thousands of people flocked to a field in the small town of Mirigama, two hours north-west from Colombo, to hear Mr Dissanayake speak last Saturday, many wearing bright pink hats or T-shirts with his face.

“Yes 100% sure, okay,” he tells the BBC, when asked if he can win. Campaigning as the voice of the working class, he is hoping to disrupt Sri Lanka’s political establishment.

Unlike past elections in Sri Lanka, the economy is front and centre in this one.

Holding her four-year-old son Nehan, Rangika Munasinghe laments the higher taxes she now pays.

“It’s very difficult. Salaries are being reduced, taxes on products and food are high. Kids meals, milk powder, all more expensive. Taxes are so high, we can’t manage it,” the 35-year-old told the BBC at a busy market in Colombo.

Sri Lanka was able to stave off bankruptcy in 2022 thanks to loans from the International Monetary Fund, and countries like China and India. But now everyone is feeling the pressure from the country’s enormous $92bn (£69bn) debt burden, which includes both foreign and national debt.

“I’m doing two jobs,” says Mohamed Rajabdeen, who’s in his 70s. He is selling spoons from a stall off a busy street. Once this is done, he will travel to his second job, working in security.

“We should get good salaries, university students should get jobs, and people should be able to live in peace and harmony. We expect our government to fulfil all of that.”

Being that vocal about their expectations from elected officials is something new for many people in Sri Lanka. That change has been brought about by the protest movement, says Buwanaka Perera, a youth political activist.

“People are more gutsy in confronting the state or in confronting what’s wrong,” the 28-year-old said. “It’s not just the state, it’s trickled down to everyday things – it can be in your household, it can be in your streets. To make a stand to voice out and to look out for one another.”

Ms Brahmananayake agrees, calling it a lasting impact of her efforts and the thousands of others who participated in the uprising two years ago.

“People are talking about politics now. They are asking questions. I think people have the power in their hands. They can vote.”

Like her, climate and political activist Melani Gunathilaka, 37, knows the path forward will not be easy for Sri Lanka, but they have hope.

“There hasn’t been a change in the political and economic culture – but there has been a massive change in terms of society,” she says.

“For the first time people took charge, people exercised their democratic rights to do what’s right for the country.”

Ranil Wickremesinghe, a six-time former prime minister, was appointed president after Gotabaya Rajapaksa was ousted in 2022.

The 75-year-old, who faced the monumental task of trying to lead Sri Lanka out of economic collapse, has been accused of protecting the Rajapaksa family, allowing them to regroup, while shielding them from prosecution – allegations he has denied.

Anura Kumara Dissanayake is the candidate of the leftist National People’s Party alliance.

His promises of tough anti-corruption measures and good governance have boosted his candidacy, positioning the 55-year-old as a serious contender.

Sajith Premadasa, the runner-up last time, is the leader of the country’s main opposition Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB).

Earlier this week, he told news agency AP that he would ensure that the rich would pay more taxes and the poor would see their conditions improve if he won.

Namal Rajapaksa comes from a powerful political clan that produced two presidents.

The 38-year-old’s campaign has centred around the legacy of his father, who is still seen as a hero by some Sri Lankans for presiding over the bloody end to the civil war against Tamil Tiger rebels. But he needs to win over voters who blame the Rajapaksas for the economic crisis.

Thirteen people have been injured in Russia’s Tver region after a large Ukrainian drone attack sparked a fire there, according to the country’s health ministry.

Unverified footage has emerged purportedly showing a massive blast in the town. Video footage circulating on social media showed detonations and smoke covering a large stretch of sky.

A partial evacuation of the region was ordered after the strike in the early hours of Wednesday morning. The regional governor later encouraged residents to return, saying that all infrastructure in the town was working normally again.

AFP and Reuters news agencies have quoted Ukrainian sources as saying an ammunitions warehouse had been struck.

The military site reportedly housed fuel tanks, as well as artillery shells, ballistic missiles, and explosives, in a series of warehouses. These are all weapons that have been used in Russia’s relentless full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

This latest attack by Ukraine is the kind it has been wanting to carry out with missiles supplied by its western allies. However, in the absence of approval from the US and UK, it has once again hit Russian targets with drones it has made itself.

The target this time, though, is significant. A military arsenal, worth almost £30m ($39m), has seemingly gone up in a series of explosions. NASA reported a series of heat sources from satellite imagery.

A light-magnitude earthquake was even reported in the surrounding Tver region.

The head of Ukraine’s Centre for Countering Disinformation, Andriy Kovalenko, said on Telegram that in addition to its own ammunition, including Grad rockets, Russia had also started to store North Korean missiles in Toropets.

None of these claims have been verified by the BBC.

Toropets lies about 380km (236 miles) north-west of Russia’s capital Moscow, and some 470km north of the border with Ukraine.

Over the past few months, Kyiv has grown in confidence and ambition as it has ramped up drone attacks inside Russia. It’s struck as far as 1,800km (1,118 miles) in the past, when a long-range radar was hit in the city of Orsk.

In the early hours of Wednesday morning, the authorities in Toropets said buses had already been prepared for the evacuation.

They also claimed the situation was “under control” in the town of about 13,000 residents.

The authorities did not say how many people were being evacuated.

Meanwhile, Russia’s state media reported that regional schools and kindergartens would be closed on Wednesday.

The level of destruction in Toropets will give Ukrainian forces a much-needed morale boost. It is also hoped it sends the West a political message – that targeting sites inside Russia helps Ukraine defend itself, and will not cause an escalation with Moscow.

Russia’s defence ministry reported on Wednesday that it had destroyed a total of 54 drones in overnight attacks across five Russian regions – Bryansk, Kursk, Oryol, Smolensk and Belgorod.

Belgorod Region Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said four civilians were injured in a “drone attack on a minibus” in the city of Shebekino.

Ukraine has not commented on the reported attacks.

Also overnight, Ukrainian air defences were engaged against oncoming Russian drones near the capital Kyiv, city military administration head Serhiy Popko said.

There were also reports of blasts in Ukraine’s north-eastern city of Sumy, near the Russian border, and the regional authorities later 16 drones were shot down. However, the authorities were forced to use back-up power systems after energy infrastructure repeatedly come under fire.

In total, the Ukrainian air force said it had shot down 46 of 52 drones launched by Moscow over the country overnight. Local authorities said one person was killed in the central region of Kirovohrad, while a 90-year-old woman was wounded in Kropyvnytskyi.

The claims by both Russian and Ukrainian officials have not been independently verified.

Russian President Vladimir Putin launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

YouTuber MrBeast has been named in court documents which allege contestants were “shamelessly exploited” in his upcoming series Beast Games.

People who took part have sued the production companies involved in the show, which include MrB2024 and Amazon.

The series, first announced in March, offered 1,000 participants the chance to win a cash prize of $5m (£3.5m) and promised to be the biggest live game show in the world.

But in a case filed at a Los Angeles court on Monday, participants allege they weren’t paid, were subjected to unsafe conditions and experienced sexual harassment.

Documents say MrB2024 is “believed to be owned in whole or part, directly or indirectly”, by MrBeast – real name Jimmy Donaldson – who is the biggest YouTuber in the world with more than 300m subscribers.

BBC Newsbeat has contacted MrBeast and Amazon for comment.

In the legal papers, parts of which have been redacted, five anonymous contestants have brought claims on behalf of everyone who took part.

They claim the production team kept them under surveillance, controlled when they slept, what they wore and denied them privacy and access to the outside world.

They were “underfed and overtired”, it claims, with meals provided “sporadically and sparsely” which “endangered the health and welfare” of the contestants.

The 54-page document also details allegations of an unsafe environment with contestants being penned into small areas, dangerous sets and insufficient background checks allowing convicted criminals to participate.

Some, it claims, were physically injured and were not given adequate access to medical care.

The set was also said to have “fostered a culture of misogyny and sexism”, creating a “hostile environment” for women which included sexual harassment.

“This was not only noticed but allowed,” the document says. “And apparently this was allowed because of marching orders from the top.”

The contestants’ lawyers say they should be compensated for their time which they say was “essential labour” for the production, arguing they were “not working for free” and should have been classed as employees.

All the claimants are seeking thousands of dollars for everyone who took part to cover “unpaid wages”.

Two of the listed claimants who are women are also seeking further compensation for the allegations of a hostile workplace.

Earlier this year, MrBeast announced he had hired private investigators to look into allegations that a co-host on his channel had groomed a minor.

Ava Kris Tyson was accused by other YouTubers of sending inappropriate messages to the minor when she was 20. She denied accusations of grooming.

MrBeast removed her from the channel and said he did not “condone or support any of the inappropriate actions”.

Representatives for MrBeast and Amazon have not responded to Newsbeat’s request for comment. Also named in the papers is a production company, Off One’s Base LLP, which BBC Newsbeat has been unable to contact.

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

Water levels in many of the rivers in the Amazon basin have reached their lowest on record amid a continuing drought, the Brazilian Geological Service (SGB) says.

The Madeira river, a major tributary to the Amazon, had fallen to just 48cm in the city of Porto Velho on Tuesday, down from an average of 3.32m for this day, official data showed.

The Solimões river has also fallen to its lowest level on record in Tabatinga, on Brazil’s border with Colombia.

Brazil’s natural disaster monitoring agency Cemaden has described the current drought as the “most intense and widespread” it has ever recorded.

It is particularly concerning because it has worsened relatively early in the Amazon’s dry season, which typically runs from June to November.

That suggests the situation in the Amazon may not significantly improve for some months in a region which is critical in the fight against climate change, as well as being a rich source of biodiversity.

The links between drought and global warming are complicated, but climate change can play a role in worsening dry conditions in two main ways.

Firstly, the Amazon basin is typically receiving less rainfall than it used to between June and November as climate patterns change.

Secondly, hotter temperatures increase the evaporation from plants and soils, so they lose more water.

In 2023, the Amazon basin suffered its most severe drought in at least 45 years – which scientists at the World Weather Attribution group found had been made many times more likely by climate change.

Last year, the drought was also worsened by the natural weather pattern known as El Niño, which tends to make the Amazon warmer and drier than normal as well.

El Niño has since ended, but the dry conditions have persisted.

Another factor in Amazon droughts is deforestation. Around one-fifth of the rainforest has been lost over the last 50 years, for example to make way for agriculture.

These trees provide resilience against drought because they help to increase rainfall by releasing moisture back into the air from their leaves. Without them, the Amazon is more vulnerable.

President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has pledged to halt deforestation completely by 2030.

But the current drought – which has helped fires to spread – highlights some of the challenges of limiting further forest loss.

The low water levels in the region’s main rivers are also severely impacting the lives of local people, who rely on them for navigation.

According to Cemaden, as of last week there were more than 100 municipalities which had not seen any rain for more than 150 days.

Residents of Manacapuru, on the banks of the Solimões river, said they were struggling to get vital supplies, including food and drinking water, to the city.

“We anchored the boat here, and it was stuck on dry land the next day. We had no way to move it,” fisherman Josué Oliveira told Reuters news agency.

“Nothing will get through,” another fisherman explained.

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Google has won its challenge against a €1.49bn (£1.26bn) fine from the EU for blocking rival online search advertisers.

The bloc accused Google of abusing its market dominance by restricting third-party rivals from displaying search ads between 2006 and 2016.

Europe’s second-top court ruled the European Commission – which levied the fine – “committed errors in its assessment”.

The Commission said it would “reflect on possible next steps”, which could include an appeal to the EU’s top court.

Google welcomed the ruling: “We are pleased that the court has recognised errors in the original decision and annulled the fine,” it said in a statement.

“We will review the full decision closely,” it added.

It is a rare win for the tech giant, which was hit with fines worth a total of 8.2 billion euros between 2017 and 2019 over antitrust violations.

It failed in its attempt to have one of those fines overturned last week.

It is not just in under Europe where it is under pressure over its highly lucrative ad tech business.

Earlier this month, the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) provisionally found it used anti-competitive practices to dominate the market.

The US government is also taking the tech giant to court over the same issue, with prosecutors alleging its parent company, Alphabet, illegally operates a monopoly in the market.

Alphabet has argued its market dominance is due to the effectiveness of its products.

This case revolved around Google’s AdSense product, which delivers adverts to websites – making Google almost like a broker for ads.

The Commission concluded Google had abused its dominance to prevent websites from using brokers other than AdSense when they were seeking adverts for their web pages.

It said the firm then added other “restrictive” clauses to its contracts to reinforce its market dominance – and levied a €1.49bn fine as a penalty.

In its ruling, the EU’s General Court upheld the majority of the Commission’s findings – but annulled the decision by which the Commission imposed the fine

It said the Commission had not considered “all the relevant circumstances” concerning the contract clauses and how it defined the market.

Because of this, it ruled the Commission did not establish “an abuse of dominant position.”

More than 50 people have been arrested as part of a major international investigation which dismantled an encrypted communication platform.

The platform, known as Ghost, was used to facilitate a wide range of criminal activities, including large-scale drug trafficking, money laundering, instances of extreme violence and other forms of serious and organised crime.

Europol and Eurojust, together with international law enforcement, worked together to carry out the operation.

Over the course of the investigation, 51 suspects were arrested, including 38 in Australia, 11 in Ireland, one in Canada and one in Italy belonging to the Italian Sacra Corona Unita mafia group.

Europol also said a number of threats to life were prevented and a drug laboratory in Australia was dismantled.

Weapons, drugs and over €1m (£842,270) in cash were also seized globally so far, the body added.

In Ireland, Gardaí (Irish police) seized a total of €15.2m (£12.8m) worth of cocaine and 42 suspected encrypted devices.

They had been investigating four identified organised crime groups and support networks based in the Dublin and eastern region.

On Monday, more than 300 gardaí searched 27 premises.

Representatives from Europol, Australian Federal Police and the US Federal Bureau of Investigation were also in Ireland in support of the ongoing operation.

During these searches, investigating gardaí seized:

• €300,000 (£252,795) in cash
• Two cryptocurrency keys (contents under investigation)
• 42 suspected Ghost ECC encrypted devices
• 126 other mobile devices
• 27 laptops
• 200 plus SIM cards
• Six Rolex watches
• One 2021 Range Rover Jeep

They also intercepted an articulated truck in the south-east of the country on Monday.

Following a search of the truck, gardaí recovered 100kg of cocaine in a deep concealment.

This cocaine, subject to analysis by Forensic Science Ireland, is valued at €7m (£5.8m).

Five men, aged in their 30s, 40s and 50s, have been arrested in relation to this part of the operation.

In a statement on Wednesday, An Garda Síochána said the Ghost platform had gained traction among criminal organisations due to its advanced security features.

Users could purchase the solution without any personal information.

The solution used three encryption standards and offered the option to send a message followed by a specific code that results in self-destruction of all messages on the target phone.

This allowed criminal networks to communicate securely, evade detection, counter forensic measures, and coordinate their illegal operations across borders.

Worldwide, several thousands of individuals used the tool, which has its own infrastructure and applications with a network of resellers based in several countries.

On a global scale, around a thousand messages are being exchanged each day via Ghost.

As servers were found in France and Iceland, the company owners were located in Australia, and financial assets were located in the United States, a global operation against the phone service started.

Further arrests to the 51 already made are anticipated in the global investigation.

Europol’s executive director Catherine De Bolle said that the organisation has “made it clear that no matter how hidden criminal networks think they are, they can’t evade our collective effort”.

“Law enforcement from nine countries, together with Europol, have dismantled a tool which was a lifeline for serious organised crime,” Ms De Bolle said.

Speaking at Europol Headquarters in The Hague, An Garda Síochána Assistant Commissioner Justin Kelly, said his officers’ involvement “demonstrates Ireland’s ongoing commitment and capacity to operate at an international level targeting transnational organised crime groups which cause so much harm and misery not just in Ireland but in countries across the world”.

“Transnational organised crime group networks know no boundaries and do not respect any international borders or rules of law,” he said.

“It takes a network to defeat a network and today’s announcement is clear indication of the power of law enforcement networks in degrading and dismantling the activities of these criminal networks.”

When asked, on BBC Radio Ulster’s Evening Extra programme, about how Northern Ireland may be affected by this Justin Kelly said ”So far our investigations have only identified four criminal organisations all of which are based between Dublin and the east coast of Ireland and the network facilitators are all based in the Dublin area.”

“The fact such devices have not surfaced in the UK or NI is something to be thankful for, as there is no doubt they would have appeared very shortly,” he added.

In terms of these crimes extending into NI and the rest of the UK, he said the activity would “definitely” impact NI.

”People involved in drug trafficking don’t recognise any borders…drug trafficking does occur on an all-island basis. Drugs will be imported through NI for the southern market just as much as they’re imported through Ireland for the NI market.”

If we assume, as virtually all observers do, that Israel was behind Tuesday’s astonishing mass pager attack on the ranks of Hezbollah, what does it tell us about what Israel is thinking?

In the absence of any official Israeli comment, a certain amount of reading between the lines is needed.

One former Israeli intelligence official I contacted explained his reluctance to comment with a saying from the Talmud: “And at this very time the smart ones keep silent.”

Given the astonishingly audacious scope of yesterday’s attack, it seems it was designed to cause massive physical, psychological and technical damage to one of Israel’s most formidable opponents.

But reports from Lebanon suggest that Israel may not have intended to use this doomsday weapon just now.

The “shock and awe” engendered by such an attack was probably being held in reserve for a moment of maximum need: either when Israel was about to launch a major assault on Lebanon or when it felt Hezbollah might be about to act first.

Neither of these appear to be the case, lending credence to reports that Israel triggered the explosive pagers because it believed its plot had been, or was in the process of being uncovered.

Whatever the truth of the matter, the episode comes at a time when Israel is taking action, overt and covert, to address the threat posed by Hezbollah and its reputed arsenal of 150,000 precision-guided missiles and rockets.

Away from the daily air-strikes on Hezbollah targets, each documented for the media by the Israeli military, a murky shadow war is raging.

Ten days ago, Israeli special forces mounted an audacious raid against an Iranian-built military facility in Syria, where it’s believed ballistic missiles were being developed.

Commandos rappelled from helicopters, planted explosives inside the underground facility and removed sensitive information.

Some reports suggested they even captured individuals, possibly Iranian, working there.

Six weeks earlier, Israel assassinated Fuad Shukr, one of Hezbollah’s top military commanders.

A report in the Wall Street Journal said that just before the attack, Shukr received a message asking him to go to his seventh floor apartment, where he was easier to hit.

Hezbollah furiously denied the report, but as yesterday’s dramatic events proved, Hezbollah’s networks – their supply chains and communications – appear to be badly compromised.

The Iranian-backed group is, of course, doing its utmost to fight back, firing rockets across Israel’s northern border and, occasionally, trying its own covert operations.

On Tuesday morning, Israel said it had foiled an attempt to assassinate a former Israeli security official using a remotely-activated explosive device.

Hezbollah has vowed to retaliate for Tuesday’s mass attack. Given the physical mutilation wrought on huge numbers of its members and the militia’s urgent need to identify and deal with this catastrophic security breach, revenge may have to wait – but it is surely bound to come.

Which brings us to a fundamental question: what, if anything, has really changed? Israel’s war with Hezbollah, overt and covert, goes on.

Israel’s newly declared war aim – bringing displaced citizens back to evacuated communities along the northern border – has not been advanced.

Despite a lot of heated speculation here in Israel, the military does not appear to be poised to invade southern Lebanon.

That may eventually happen. Israelis are thoroughly fed up with almost a year of insecurity in the north.

But Israel is still fighting in Gaza – the death of four more soldiers was announced on Tuesday – and the prospect of another major ground operation is not universally welcome.

An opinion poll by Channel 13 News found that 52% of Israelis favoured a “broad scale war in Lebanon,” with 30% against and 18% undecided.

For all Israel’s displays of tactical ingenuity, when it comes to dealing with Hezbollah, it’s hard to see exactly where this simmering conflict is heading next.

At least 12 people including two children were killed and thousands more injured, many seriously, after pagers used by the armed group Hezbollah to communicate dramatically exploded across the country on Tuesday.

It is unclear how the highly sophisticated attack occurred, though Hezbollah has blamed its adversary Israel. Israeli officials have so far declined to comment.

Analysis of fragments from the pagers suggested they were made by the Taiwanese firm Gold Apollo, but the CEO denied this and said they had been made under licence by a company in Hungary. BBC calls to the company went unanswered.

On Wednesday afternoon there were reports of further explosions involving walkie-talkies in southern Beirut.

Here is what we know so far.

The blasts began in Lebanon’s capital Beirut and several other areas of the country at about 15:45 local time (13:45 BST) on Tuesday.

Witnesses reported seeing smoke coming from people’s pockets, before seeing small explosions that sounded like fireworks and gunshots.

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

Citing US officials, the New York Times said that the pagers received messages that appeared to be coming from Hezbollah’s leadership before detonating. The messages instead appeared to trigger the devices, the outlet reported.

Explosions continued for around an hour after the initial blasts, the Reuters news agency reported.

Soon after, scores of people began arriving at hospitals across Lebanon, with witnesses reporting scenes of mass confusion.

Analysts said the most likely explanation was a supply chain attack that saw the pagers tampered with during manufacture or transit.

Reuters quoted a Lebanese security source as saying that a small quantity of explosives had been placed inside the devices months ago.

Speaking to the BBC, one ex-British Army munitions expert, who asked not to be named, speculated that the devices could have then been triggered by a remote signal.

• LIVE: Latest updates on the Hezbollah pager explosions
• Watch: Video appears to show explosion at supermarket
• Bowen: Tactical triumph for Israel, but Hezbollah won’t be deterred
• What is Hezbollah in Lebanon and why is it fighting with Israel?

One Hezbollah operative told the AP news agency that the pagers were a new brand that the group had not used before. A Lebanese security official told the Reuters news agency that around 5,000 pagers were brought into the country about five months ago.

Labels seen on fragments of exploded pagers point to a pager model called the Rugged Pager AR-924. But its Taiwanese manufacturer Gold Apollo has denied any involvement with the explosions. When the BBC visited Gold Apollo on Wednesday local police were swarming the company’s offices, inspecting documents and questioning staff.

• Taiwan pager maker stunned by link to Lebanon attacks

The founder, Hsu Ching-Kuang, said his company had signed an agreement with a Hungarian-based company – BAC – to manufacture the devices and use his company’s name. He added that money transfers from them had been “very strange”, without elaborating.

BBC Verify has accessed BAC’s company records, which reveal it was first incorporated in 2022. Its registered address reveals a nondescript building in a Budapest suburb, and repeated calls to its offices by the BBC on Wednesday went unanswered.

However its CEO Cristiana Bársony-Arcidiacono told NBC that she knew nothing about the explosions. “I don’t make the pagers. I am just the intermediate. I think you got it wrong,” she said.

Unnamed US and Israeli officials told Axios that detonating the pagers all at once was initially planned as the opening move in an “all-out” offensive against Hezbollah. But in recent days Israel became concerned Hezbollah had become aware of the plan – so they were set off early.

Israeli officials have not commented on the allegations, but most analysts agree that it seems likely it is behind the attack.

Prof Simon Mabon, chair in International Relations at Lancaster University, told the BBC: “We know that Israel has a precedent of using technology to track its target” – but he called the scale of this attack “unprecedented”.

Lina Khatib, from the UK-based Chatham House, said the attack suggested that Israel has “deeply” infiltrated Hezbollah’s “communications network”.

Prime Minister Najib Mikati said the explosions represented a “serious violation of Lebanese sovereignty and a crime by all standards”.

In its statement accusing Israel of being behind the attacks, Hezbollah said it held the country “fully responsible for this criminal aggression that also targeted civilians”.

Hezbollah has relied heavily on pagers as a low-tech means of communications to try to evade location-tracking by Israel. Pagers are wireless telecommunications devices that receive and display alphanumeric or voice messages.

They are much harder to track than mobile phones, which have long since been abandoned as simply too vulnerable, as Israel’s assassination of the Hamas bomb-maker Yahya Ayyash demonstrated as long ago as 1996, when his phone exploded in his hand.

In February, Hassan Nasrallah directed Hezbollah fighters to get rid of their phones, saying they had been infiltrated by Israeli intelligence. He told his forces to break, bury or lock their phones in an iron box.

Experts now say the directive, issued during a live televised address, may have forewarned Israeli intelligence operatives that the group would be seeking a new – likely lower tech – method of communications.

A source close to Hezbollah told AFP that two of those killed were the sons of two Hezbollah MPs. They also said the daughter of a Hezbollah member was killed.

Among the injured was Iran’s ambassador to Lebanon, Mojtaba Amani. Reports in Iranian media said his injuries were minor.

Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah was not hurt in the explosions, Reuters reported quoting a source.

Lebanese Public Health Minister Firass Abiad said damage to the hands and face made up the majority of injuries.

Speaking to the BBC’s Newshour programme, he said: “Most of the injuries appear to be to the face and especially to the eyes and also the hand with some amputations, whether it’s in the hands or the fingers, and some of them have injuries to their flank.”

He added: “The vast majority of the people who are presenting to the emergency rooms are in civilian clothes, so it’s very difficult to discern whether they belong to a certain entity like Hezbollah or others…

“But we are seeing among them people who are old or people who are very young, like the child who unfortunately died… and there are some of them who are healthcare workers,” the minister said.

Outside of Lebanon, 14 people were injured in similar blasts in neighbouring Syria, according to UK-based campaign group the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Hezbollah is allied with Israel’s arch-nemesis in the region, Iran. The group is part of Tehran’s Axis of Resistance and has been engaged in a low-level war with Israel for months, frequently exchanging rocket and missile fire across Israel’s northern border. Entire communities have been displaced from both sides.

The blasts came just hours after Israel’s security cabinet made the safe return of residents to the north of the country an official war goal.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told a visiting US official that Israel would “do what is necessary to ensure its security”.

Earlier on Monday, Israel’s domestic security agency said it had thwarted a Hezbollah attempt to assassinate a former official.

Despite the ongoing tensions, observers say that until now both sides have aimed to contain hostilities without crossing the line into full-scale war. But there are fears that the situation could spiral out of control.

The race to find the maker of the pagers that exploded in Lebanon has taken an unexpected turn – towards a Taiwanese company few had heard of until this morning.

At least 12 people were killed and nearly 3,000 injured in Tuesday’s explosions targeting members of the armed group Hezbollah, which set off a geopolitical storm in the Middle East.

Caught in the crisis, Taiwanese firm Gold Apollo’s founder Hsu Ching-Kuang flatly denied his company had anything to do with the attacks.

Instead, Mr Hsu has said he licensed his trade mark to a company in Hungary called BAC Consulting to use the Gold Apollo name on their own pagers. BBC attempts to contact BAC have so far been unsuccessful.

• LIVE: Latest updates on the Hezbollah pager explosions
• What we know about the attack in Lebanon
• Watch: Video appears to show explosion at supermarket
• Bowen: Tactical triumph for Israel, but Hezbollah won’t be deterred
• What is Hezbollah in Lebanon and why is it fighting with Israel?

“You look at the pictures from Lebanon,” Mr Hsu told reporters outside his firm’s offices on Wednesday. “They don’t have any mark saying Made in Taiwan on them, we did not make those pagers!”

The offices of Gold Apollo are in a large new business park in a non-descript suburb of Taiwan’s capital, Taipei.

They look the same as any of the thousands of small trading companies and manufacturers that make up a huge chunk of the island’s economy – except for the two police officers posted at the entrance, ready to fend off the large gaggle of reporters and TV crews squatting outside.

On the walls of Gold Apollo’s office are posters of the company’s products – a montage of small boxy plastic devices with little grey LCD screens. They are all pagers.

Until this morning the company’s website had a page devoted to each, extolling its virtues and practicalities. But as soon as news broke that Gold Apollo was the alleged source of the devices used in the attacks in Lebanon, the website went offline.

Mr Hsu said it was pagers made by BAC Consulting that were used in the Lebanon attacks. He told reporters that his company had signed an agreement with BAC Consulting three years ago.

The money transfers from BAC had been “very strange”, he added. There had been problems with the payments, which had come through the Middle East, he told reporters, but he did not go into detail.

Initially, he said, BAC wanted to buy pagers from Gold Apollo to sell in Europe. But after about a year they came up with a new plan to make their own pagers and licensed Gold Apollo’s name.

“We only provide brand trademark authorisation and have no involvement in the design or manufacturing of this product,” a statement from Gold Apollo said.

But the fact there is now a team from the Taipei investigation bureau inside his office – with large numbers of cardboard boxes – suggests the Taiwanese authorities are not entirely reassured.

Nevertheless, Mr Hsu’s statement that his company didn’t make the devices is plausible.

Taiwan’s manufacturing system is a complex maze of small companies, many of which do not actually make the products they sell. They may own the brand name, the intellectual property and have research and design departments. But most of the actual manufacturing is farmed out to factories in China or Southeast Asia.

Pagers are also hardly cutting-edge technology – there are many companies across the world capable of making them.

They are small radio receivers with LED screens that can receive and display messages. In the 1980s and 1990s electronic pagers were considered to be the latest tech, used by tens of millions of people. Before mobile phones, companies used pagers to send short text messages to employees in the field.

But in the last two decades the rise of the smart phone has pushed pagers to the brink of extinction. They are now a niche device holding on in places like hospitals – where they remain a cheap and reliable method for messaging doctors and nurses, even when other communication lines are disrupted.

Starting in the late 2000s, Gold Apollo too started moving away from making electronic pagers and started manufacturing other short-range radio devices – particularly for restaurants. The company’s most successful product now is a round disc that is handed to customers in food courts and restaurants once they place an order – it lights up and vibrates when their order is ready.

It’s likely that Gold Apollo’s brand name – as a reliable pager manufacturer – was useful in selling the pagers that ended up with Hezbollah.

But there are still more questions than answers in this extraordinary story.

We know almost nothing about BAC Consulting – who is or was behind it?

If Gold Apollo did not make the pagers used in the attack in Lebanon, then who did and where?

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.”

Have you ever wished a character from your favourite book would leap off the page?

Imagine if they actually could.

That’s the concept behind The Plucky Squire, a new video game set inside – and outside – a storybook.

The game follows title character Jot, and his quest to save the Land of Mojo from evil wizard Humgrump.

It’s a classic fairy tale setup, but the tongue-in-cheek adventure, heavily influenced by classics like The Legend of Zelda, has a trick up its sleeve.

Jot has the ability to jump between the 2D world of its pages and the 3D world outside – a cluttered desktop where everyday objects become towering obstacles for the tiny character to navigate.

The Plucky Squire is one of this year’s most anticipated independently developed games, and has landed to favourable reviews from critics.

And its release marks the end of a four-year quest for one of its lead designers, James Turner.

James has a fairy tale story of his own.

A keen artist, he studied computer graphics at university and got a job at a London game studio.

During a holiday to Japan, he tells BBC Newsbeat, friends encouraged him to send his portfolio to games companies and he got an interview with Pokémon spin-off developer Genius Sonority.

There was just one problem – James didn’t speak Japanese.

He turned up anyway, bringing a friend who translated, and he got the job.

“The good thing about being an artist is that your work can speak for itself,” he says.

“And then I was moving to Japan the next month to work on Pokémon Colosseum.”

James’s work was eventually noticed by Game Freak – the makers of the mainline Pokémon titles – and he ended up credited on about 20 games, working his way up to art director on 2019 Nintendo Switch titles Pokémon Sword and Shield.

James speaks fondly of his time in Japan but says he’s “always had a passion for doing, building things from scratch”.

He was looking to return to the UK, and had long wanted to set up his own studio, and discussed the idea with longtime friend Jonathan Biddle, who’s based in Australia.

Despite being on opposite sides of the world, they took the plunge and founded All Possible Futures.

Now they just needed a game to make.

James says the idea for The Plucky Squire came from picture books he’d been reading to his young son.

“I thought that could be a fun new twist on an action adventure where you’re walking around inside the pages,” he says.

After landing on the idea of a game set inside a book, James says he and Jonathan discussed putting “a surprise on every page”.

This got them thinking: “What would be the ultimate surprise?”

“We thought the ultimate surprise would be if you could actually jump out of the book and into the 3D world,” says James.

“That could be really kind of jaw-dropping, Matrix-style twist where you think you know the world but suddenly it’s completely different.

“And that caught our imagination.”

It also caught the public’s imagination.

The first glimpse of The Plucky Squire was a trailer seen during a showcase at 2022’s Summer Game Fest.

The 90-second clip ends with hero Jot popping out of the storybook’s pages and emerging into the 3D world outside.

There was a huge, positive response, with comments describing the moment as “mind-boggling”.

James and Jonathan had talked about keeping the dimensional switch under wraps until release, watching word-of-mouth spread as people discovered the secret.

“But you do want to get people excited and interested,” he says.

“And so it made sense to reveal that surprise.”

The reaction showed the team it was the right decision, says James, and also reassured him they were on to something.

“The more people are excited for what you’re making, and the greater the amount of people excited for what you’re doing, the more energy that feeds into the project,” he says.

“And it’s quite a positive reinforcement.”

But with excitement comes expectation, and The Plucky Squire was pushed back from its original 2023 release date to allow the team to polish it.

James admits the decision led to a “difficult conversation” with publisher Devolver Digital – the indie-focused company that’s released hits including Cult of the Lamb and Enter the Gungeon.

“And then it’s uncomfortable, but so what?” says James.

“Discomfort is just something you have to deal with in any walk of life and in development.

“You just have to do what’s right each step of the way and then hopefully you can work things out, and in this case we did.”

Throughout development, James and Jonathan worked from their homes in the UK and Australia, recruiting other team members based around the world as the project grew.

James says things have worked well despite the geographical spread, though he admits time differences did make things trickier once deadlines started looming.

Delaying The Plucky Squire had another, probably unplanned benefit.

The recent release of Astro Bot and the announcement of Sony’s upgraded £699 PlayStation 5 Pro has reignited some long-running debates among gamers.

Do people value games over graphics? And have blockbuster games lost their sense of fun as big companies race to create a new multiplayer hit or cinematic narrative adventure?

These are less pressing questions in the more creative indie space where James operates these days, but he agrees that people see a gap in the market.

“I think the desire for those kind of games are definitely there as an alternative to those kind of AAA more serious, darker kind of games,” he says.

“It’s nice to have a broader palette.

“Some people can enjoy that kind of game, other people might enjoy this one.

“And I am glad that we’re there – this bright and breezy console game to hand to those people.”

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

A second apparent assassination attempt on Donald Trump has spotlighted several issues facing the agency tasked with protecting one of the world’s most high-profile men.

Trump’s public profile has posed a unique security and funding challenge for the Secret Service, a former agent told BBC News.

“It’s dialled up,” said Paul Eckloff, a Secret Service agent of 20 years who protected Trump during his presidency.

“The amount of time he spends outside, the exuberance of his fan base, the number and size of rallies, and the lack of military support, does make it more difficult.”

The Secret Service, which protects presidents and other top US officials, was central to both incidents that threatened Trump’s life.

The agency has recently raised concerns about the resources needed to fund the former president’s protection detail.

Earlier this week, a Secret Service agent spotted a gunman hiding in the bushes near the former president’s West Palm Beach, Florida, golf course.

The agent fired on the suspect, who sped away in a car before being arrested a short time later.

This follows a July assassination attempt at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, where another gunman opened fire and struck Trump’s ear. The episode brought intense scrutiny to the Secret Service.

The agency’s leadership has been hauled before Congress since then, its director resigned after intense pressure, and lawmakers have since set up a task force to examine this summer’s threats to the Republican candidate’s life.

The most recent incident, meanwhile, has led to calls for new funding for the Secret Service to ensure it can adequately protect presidential candidates in a political climate that many fear could lead to more violence.

As details of the apparent assassination attempt emerged, President Joe Biden told reporters on Monday that the Secret Service “needs more help” and Congress should respond.

The agency has scaled up its efforts since July, but the calendar could prove a challenge for expediting new funding for the agency.

There are fewer than 50 days until the 5 November election, and a politically split Capitol Hill is unable to agree on the next budget, which means the US could face a government shutdown on 1 October.

More money for the Secret Service could be a hard sell given those political realities.

House of Representatives Speaker Mike Johnson, the Republican leader at the centre of the congressional budget fight, dismissed the need for the Secret Service to receive budget help.

“I don’t think it’s a funding issue,” he said on Fox News. “President Trump needs the most coverage of anyone. He’s the most attacked; he’s the most threatened.”

But Acting Secret Service Director Ronald Rowe wrote in a letter to Congress last week that “increased mission requirements of the Secret Service necessitate additional resources”.

The Secret Service has long worried about protecting Trump at his golf courses, the Washington Post reported, and had even tried to warn the former president about the opportunities it could provide to a would-be assailant.

In 2022, then-US Secret Service Director James Murray warned US lawmakers that the agency was scrambling to keep up with the pace and scale of Trump’s rallies.

He noted that the loss of the military support that a sitting president receives had put a greater strain on the agents assigned to protecting Trump after he left the White House.

The Secret Service had protected presidents at rallies before. But with Trump, “the nature is different, and we’re seeing sometimes two, three, four, of these rallies every month”, Mr Murray told the House Appropriations Committee at the time.

Trump’s pastime of golf adds a different challenge.

“The hobby of golf is particularly problematic: You’re outside, an outdoor venue, for hours at a time,” said Mr Eckloff.

Palm Beach County Sheriff Ric Bradshaw said on Monday that if Trump had been a sitting president, “we would have had this entire golf course surrounded”.

Other presidents, including Barack Obama, also had a penchant for playing golf while in office. But the former president frequently played on a military base, where security was easier to manage, according to Mr Eckloff, the former Secret Service agent.

This week, lawmakers called for presidential candidates from both parties to receive the same level of protection as a sitting US president.

The acting head of the US Secret Service said this week that Trump’s security was now at its “highest level”.

Trump’s existing protection is as “near as possible to presidential-level security that can be done”, said Mr Eckloff.

But, he acknowledged, “that’s not to say you couldn’t do more”.

Last week, the Indian government announced that Russia had discharged dozens of the 91 Indians who were duped into fighting for Russian forces in the country’s war with Ukraine. Several of them have since returned home, while the process to bring others back is under way. The BBC’s Neyaz Farooquee spoke to some of the men about their struggles.

“I am in panic. I am not sure if I will return safely or in a box. Please save me.”

This is the message Urgen Tamang, a former Indian soldier, sent to the BBC from outside a southern Ukrainian city, a few days before he was discharged from the frontlines in Russia’s war against Ukraine, which entered its third year this February.

Mr Tamang is among the 91 Indians who were forced into fighting in the war. Most of them are from poor families and were lured by agents with the promise of money and jobs, sometimes as “helpers” in the Russian army.

Instead, they were sent to the war zone. Many of them said they were stationed in parts of Ukraine under Russian control, where they had to navigate landmines, drones, missiles and sniper attacks with little to no military training.

Nine Indians have died in the conflict so far and Indian authorities say they have arrested 19 people for human trafficking.

In July, Russia promised an early release of all Indians fighting in its army, following a visit by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to Moscow, during which he raised the issue with President Vladimir Putin. The two countries have traditionally shared a warm relationship.

Forty-five of them have been discharged since then. Some have safely returned home, while others like Mr Tamang are on their way.

“I can’t believe I am out of there,” said Sunil Karwa, an electrician from Rajasthan who joined the Russian army in February. Posted near Bakhmut, an eastern Ukraine city that has seen intense fighting, he was at the Moscow airport waiting to board his flight when he spoke to the BBC.

Mr Karwa described scenes of deaths and destruction, a reality which hit him the hardest when a man from his neighbouring village was shot on the battlefield.

“They sent him back on the frontline 15 days after the injury and he fainted in the field. He is paralysed now,” he said.

Like him, most of the other recruits were also blue-collar workers aged between 19 and 35, who were hired by agents based in India, Dubai and Russia.

• Ukraine war: The Indian men traumatised by fighting for Russia
• Ukraine war: Indians ‘duped’ by agents into fighting for Russia

They say their contracts were in Russian, a language they didn’t understand. Yet they signed it in the hope of getting better opportunities.

“The process was so quick – just a few signatures and photos and we were in [the army],” Mr Karwa said.

Raja Pathan joined the army as a last resort in February, after an education consultant deceived him into enrolling in a non-existent college.

“When I got there, I saw banners advertising recruitments for the army. By then, I had spent so much time and money that I decided to join anyway,” he said.

It was the death of two friends, which eventually pushed Mr Pathan to leave. He was released in August with the help of a sympathetic Russian commander who facilitated his exit.

Now based in Moscow, he helps other Indians escape from there.

Mohammad Sufyan from the southern state of Telangana returned to India on 12 September with five other men.

Safe in his home, he carries the trauma of surviving on the frontline. “There was little rest there and in the beginning, I couldn’t speak to my family for 25 days,” he said.

The most scarring moment came in February when his friend Hemil Mangukiya – an Indian man from Gujarat state – was killed right before his eyes.

“He was merely 15 metres from me, digging a trench near Krynky [in Kherson], when a missile landed,” recalled Mr Sufyan. “I put his dead body in the truck with my own hands.”

“After seeing the dead body of my friend, I didn’t have the strength for anything,” he added.

After the death, Mr Sufyan and other Indians stuck there released a video pleading for help, which reached Indian MP Asaduddin Owaisi, who raised the matter with the foreign ministry. Families of the men had also appealed to the Indian government for help in bringing them back.

“It is a miracle I got back home,” said Azad Yusuf Kumar, a resident of Indian-administered Kashmir, who was part of Mr Sufyan’s group in the army.

“One minute you are digging a trench, and the next, an artillery falls and burns everything down. It was all a matter of luck if it fell on you or someone else.”

In February, Mr Kumar had told the BBC how he had shot his foot by mistake during training. “My commander kept saying, use your right hand to shoot, use your left hand to shoot, shoot above, shoot down,” he had said. “I had never touched a gun. It was extremely cold, and with the gun in my left hand, I ended up shooting my foot.”

Now back in Kashmir, he talks about how his commander had accused him of deliberately shooting himself to avoid going to the frontline.

“But I am lucky I did not go to fight. Four men from my camp died in an attack at that time. I could’ve been one of them,” he said.

Though recent discharges brought relief to many, those still in Russia face growing desperation as their release is delayed.

Mr Tamang, who joined the Russian army in January, had earlier told The Indian Express newspaper through his local councillor, Rabi Pradhan, that 13 out of 15 non-Russian members of his unit had died.

The fact that he was sent to the frontline at least twice after signing his discharge letter in August heightened his fears – and mistrust in the process.

On 15 September, he was on his way to Moscow but still doubtful if he was truly heading home. “I am out, but I will keep sending you my location,” he said.

When he last texted, he had left Ukraine, hoping to continue his journey home.

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.

Somalia may be one of the poorest countries in the world and beset by violence, but it is “fixable”, according to its top climate official.

The country has been torn apart by more than 30 years of overlapping conflicts – including an Islamist insurgency, a civil war, and a series of regional and clan confrontations. Yet Abdihakim Ainte, the Somali prime minister’s climate advisor, still regards his country as “as story of potential – of promise”.

What makes his optimism all the more surprising is the fact climate change is amplifying virtually all the challenges his country faces.

One commentator described climate change as a “chaos multiplier”, because it exacerbates existing tensions and entrenches conflict in fragile states like this.

The Climate Question

But Somalia, the easternmost country in continental Africa, can’t be held responsible for our changing climate. The figures are staggering. Somalia has emitted roughly as much carbon dioxide from fossil fuels since the 1950s as the US economy does in an average three days.

The most obvious effects of climate change here have been in agriculture. Somalia is still overwhelmingly an agricultural economy, with about two thirds of the population depending on farming and animal herding for most of their income.

In 2022 the country experienced its worst drought for 40 years – an event scientists estimate was made 100 times more likely by human-caused climate change.

The extent of the challenge Somalia faces became clear as the convoy of International Red Cross (ICRC) Land Cruisers we were travelling in rumbled into the dry scrub that covers most of the country. We were accompanied by three guards clutching AK47s – Somalia is the only country in the world where Red Cross staff travel with armed security as standard.

The camel herders and small-scale farmers we met are on the front line of climate change here. For thousands of years Somalis have been eking out a living moving their herds of camels and goats from one pasture to the next across this dry land.

But climate change is disrupting the patterns of rain that made this way of life possible.

Sheik Don Ismail told us he lost all his camels during the drought, when grazing grounds dried up and the fodder he grew on his small farm wasn’t enough to sustain them.

“The well became dry and there was no pasture, so the animals began to die,” he said, shaking his head. “The life we lead now is really bad – really bad.”

That drought left farmers and herders fighting for access to water and pasture. Sheik Don said he was sometimes forced to defend his land at gunpoint.

“There is no respect if you don’t have a gun,” he said. “The herders who lead their animals into the farm stay back when they see my weapon. They get scared.”

In a country divided into rival clan groups and already scarred by violence, these localised disputes can easily spiral into full-blown battles, said Cyril Jaurena, who runs the ICRC operation in Somalia.

“Access to boreholes and pastureland gets more and more difficult to find, and so the population in the area might end up fighting – competing for those resources, and sometimes it goes to people shooting at each other,” he warned.

And drought isn’t the only problem here. Last year Somalia experienced terrible floods as a result of rains scientists say were made twice as intense by human-caused global warming. The floodwater washed away precious soils killing hundreds of people and displacing one million others.

The effects of Somalia’s climate change “double whammy” are all too evident in the hunger clinic the Red Cross runs in a hospital in the port city of Kismayo on the south coast.

Every day a steady stream of mothers bring their malnourished babies here. Many have had to cross from territory controlled by al-Qaeda’s lethal affiliate, Islamist militants al-Shabab, to get here.

The UN estimates more than 1.5m children under the age of five are acutely malnourished in Somalia.

Around four million Somalis have been driven into vast makeshift refugee camps – about a fifth of the total population.

Displaced people make their homes out of anything they can get hold of – pieces of old fabric, plastic sheets and rusty corrugated iron – all draped over a web of dry sticks. Some people even unroll tin cans into strips to form parts of their walls.

There is little international support, if any. At the refugee camp I visited, just outside the city of Garowe in the north of Somalia, families have to pay for their food and water, as well as pay rent for the scraps of land where they build their shacks.

After more than three decades of war, Somalia has fallen way down the list of international priorities. Its problems have been eclipsed by what seem like more urgent conflicts, in places like Ukraine and Gaza. The UN calculates Somalia needs at least $1.6bn (about £1.2bn) to meet the basic humanitarian needs of the people this year, but so far just $600 million has been pledged by donor governments.

The entwined impacts of climate and conflict have created a huge reservoir of potential recruits for the country’s many conflicts.

Those in the camps are desperate for money, and the easiest work to come by – according to the people I spoke to – is as a paid fighter with one of the many rival armies.

One woman told me of her fears for her husband and four of her five sons after they became fighters with a local militia.

“They are rural people with no skills, so the only work they could get was in the army,” Halima Ibrahim Ali Mohamud said as we sat on carpets laid over the dirt floor of her hut.

“They were desperate, and when you are without food long enough, and your children are looking at you, you will do anything.”

As we went from shack to shack, mothers told us similar stories of husbands and sons who had left to become fighters, some of whom had been killed.

But many Somali people are taking action. The local power station in Garowe has been investing in wind and solar power, for example.

The decision wasn’t prompted by some international initiative, says the company CEO. Abdirazak Mohamed said he hasn’t received any grants or aid from abroad. The National Energy Corporation of Somalia (NECSOM), who he works for, is making the investments because renewables – energy derived from natural sources like the sun and the wind – are much better value than the diesel generators the power station used to rely on.

I met Somali entrepreneurs setting up businesses, including a woman who had arrived in the Garowe refugee camp with nothing, but who set up a thriving business.

Amina Osman Mohamed explained how she had borrowed food from a local stall, cooked it, and used the small profit she made to do the whole thing again the following day.

The small but busy café she created generates the extra cash she so desperately needs to care for her sick husband and 11 children – including those of her widowed daughter.

As I left Amina’s bustling café, I began to understand why the Somali prime minister’s climate advisor is optimistic about his country’s future.

There is hope. But with climate change turbo-charging the conflict here, this country will need continued international help to make peace and build resilience against our changing climate.

“We can’t say why we’re here, it’s top secret!”

I’d never asked what the drunk British man in strange military fatigues was doing in a Ukrainian cafe, but he was keen to tell me regardless.

It was the summer of 2022, and dotted across Kyiv’s main Khreshchatyk Street were similar types who all claimed they were joining Ukraine’s war effort against Russia.

“War attracts all sorts,” I thought.

We now know they included Ryan Routh, the suspect in an apparent attempted assassination of Donald Trump in the US on Sunday.

Routh “was an omnipresent dude” in the Ukrainian capital, remarks Chris Lutz, an aid worker who met him several times.

“I wouldn’t call him crazy,” he says. “He was trying his best to help Ukraine, but it was getting to an unhealthy level.”

• What we know about Ryan Routh so far
• Gunman lurked for hours before Trump’s last-minute game of golf
• Trump says he was bundled into golf cart after shots rang out
• BBC Verify: How much security does Trump get?

Ukrainian officials have firmly distanced themselves from the man accused of trying to assassinate Donald Trump at the former president’s Florida golf course.

Routh, 58, had repeatedly tried to recruit foreign soldiers for the Ukrainian military, but was unsuccessful.

“He has never served in Ukraine’s International Legion and has no relation to the unit,” said the legion’s spokesperson.

The American reportedly contacted the legion on a regular basis with ideas described by one Ukrainian soldier as “nonsensical” and “delusional”.

The suspect had also admitted to being turned down himself, claiming it was down to his age and lack of fighting experience.

In an online post reacting to the events in the US over the weekend, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said he was “glad” Donald Trump was unharmed.

There was no mention of the suspect who’d been a staunch supporter of Zelensky’s country – and for good reason.

Three days after Russia’s full-scale invasion, Zelensky called for “friends of peace and democracy” to join the fight from abroad, and they did so in their thousands.

Ukraine’s International Legion was born.

It was initially thought 20,000 volunteers were willing to sign up. Experts now think there are more than 4,000 foreign fighters in Ukraine.

Despite the fact Routh failed in his attempts to add to that number, his arrest in Florida has still given Kyiv a headache.

Lt Andriy Kovalenko, who’s from Ukraine’s National Security and Defence Council, warned Russia would use the assassination attempt for propaganda purposes.

“Playing with fire has its consequences,” was the response from Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov when asked whether Ukraine could have been behind the plot.

On Russian state TV, host Olga Skabeyeva called Routh a “crazed fan of Zelensky, walking around with a machine gun”.

“There has been another attempt on Donald’s life, and the attempt is officially linked to Ukraine,” she added, making reference to an earlier effort by a gunman in Pennsylvania to shoot Trump in July.

A popular pro-Russian Telegram channel in Ukraine claimed the Ukrainian intelligence service was behind the assassination attempt. A similar account said the American had travelled to Ukraine to “recruit American mercenaries”.

No evidence has accompanied these claims.

“Of course, all this is a lie,” said Lt Kovalenko. “But information confrontation is a component of the war.”

Sandra Andersen Eira, a Norwegian national fighting with the Ukrainian Marine Corps on the southern front line, says she is puzzled.

“My only question is: how did he get rejected by the International Foreign Legion?” she asks.

She says that until last May there was very little vetting. A minimum contract of six months and basic training have since been brought in.

Recruits still don’t have to have any military experience, though some consider this to be an advantage. “Routh was just another one of those types,” Ms Eira says.

“You had characters fundraising, scamming people, claiming to be in the front lines, with a unit, and then they’re not.

“Some volunteers have good intentions and really want to make a difference, but maybe they’re just not mentally or physically fit for it. Some of them are just delusional.”

Perhaps this applied to Ryan Routh.

He might not have helped Ukraine, but his time in the country has given it an unwelcome connection to an assassination attempt on a US presidential candidate.

“I thought I’d spend my whole life here, fighting a corrupt government – but the younger generation did something.”

Samadhi Paramitha Brahmananayake is looking at the field where she spent months camped out with thousands of other demonstrators in Sri Lanka’s capital in 2022.

She can’t quite believe that luscious green grass has replaced the hundreds of protester tents that filled the field opposite the presidential secretariat.

“I feel we’re now more energetic, more powerful,” says Ms Brahmananayake, a 33-year-old banker based in Colombo.

Two years ago, huge crowds forced the country’s deeply unpopular leader from office – now voters are just days away from choosing who they want for president.

It’s the first election since the mass protests – called the “aragalaya”, Sinhalese for struggle – which were sparked by Sri Lanka’s worst economic crisis. Inflation was at 70%. Basics like food, cooking gas and medicine were scarce.

Gotabaya Rajapaksa, the president at the time, and his government were blamed for the mess. He fled the country just before crowds stormed his residence. Euphoric protesters leapt into the presidential pool, taking victory laps.

Mithun Jayawardana, 28, was one of those swimmers. “It was awesome,” he said thinking back. Jobless, with no gas or electricity at home, he says he joined the aragalaya for a lark.

Today, he recognises how crucial the elections on Saturday are: “We need a president who is elected by the people. The people didn’t elect the current president.”

Ranil Wickremesinghe, the man who currently holds the job, was appointed to the position after Gotabaya Rajapaksa resigned. Mr Wickremesinghe, who’s been tasked with steering Sri Lanka through a period of painful economic reform, is running for re-election as an independent.

He’s stood for president twice before but never succeeded, and his political future appears uncertain.

Many associate Wickremesinghe with the Rajapaksas, a political dynasty who have dominated Sri Lankan politics for decades. Many blame them for the years of financial mismanagement that led to Sri Lanka’s economic woes.

Even the country’s top court ruled that Gotabaya Rajapaksa and his brother Mahinda, another former president, were among 13 former leaders responsible for the financial crisis.

Despite the political baggage that comes with the name, a Rajapaksa has entered the political fray in these elections – there are still places the family enjoys a lot of support.

One such district is just over an hour outside Colombo. Music, fireworks and the cheers of supporters greeted Namal Rajapaksa as he approached the podium to address the hundreds that had come to hear him speak on Monday in the town of Minuwangoda. Even his father, Mahinda joined him on stage.

Namal Rajapaksa denied his family’s role in Sri Lanka’s economic collapse.

“We know our hands are clean, we know we have not done anything wrong to the people or this country,” he told the BBC.

“We are willing to face the people, let the public decide what they want and who to vote for.”

In all, a record 38 candidates are contesting the 21 September election, none of them women. In 2019, Sajid Premadasa, leader of the country’s main opposition party, won 42% of the popular vote, losing to Gotabaya Rajapaksa. This time around he is thought to be in with a chance too.

For people looking for change, many are looking to Anura Kumara Dissanayake. The candidate of the leftist National People’s Party alliance has emerged as an unlikely frontrunner.

Thousands of people flocked to a field in the small town of Mirigama, two hours north-west from Colombo, to hear Mr Dissanayake speak last Saturday, many wearing bright pink hats or T-shirts with his face.

“Yes 100% sure, okay,” he tells the BBC, when asked if he can win. Campaigning as the voice of the working class, he is hoping to disrupt Sri Lanka’s political establishment.

Unlike past elections in Sri Lanka, the economy is front and centre in this one.

Holding her four-year-old son Nehan, Rangika Munasinghe laments the higher taxes she now pays.

“It’s very difficult. Salaries are being reduced, taxes on products and food are high. Kids meals, milk powder, all more expensive. Taxes are so high, we can’t manage it,” the 35-year-old told the BBC at a busy market in Colombo.

Sri Lanka was able to stave off bankruptcy in 2022 thanks to loans from the International Monetary Fund, and countries like China and India. But now everyone is feeling the pressure from the country’s enormous $92bn (£69bn) debt burden, which includes both foreign and national debt.

“I’m doing two jobs,” says Mohamed Rajabdeen, who’s in his 70s. He is selling spoons from a stall off a busy street. Once this is done, he will travel to his second job, working in security.

“We should get good salaries, university students should get jobs, and people should be able to live in peace and harmony. We expect our government to fulfil all of that.”

Being that vocal about their expectations from elected officials is something new for many people in Sri Lanka. That change has been brought about by the protest movement, says Buwanaka Perera, a youth political activist.

“People are more gutsy in confronting the state or in confronting what’s wrong,” the 28-year-old said. “It’s not just the state, it’s trickled down to everyday things – it can be in your household, it can be in your streets. To make a stand to voice out and to look out for one another.”

Ms Brahmananayake agrees, calling it a lasting impact of her efforts and the thousands of others who participated in the uprising two years ago.

“People are talking about politics now. They are asking questions. I think people have the power in their hands. They can vote.”

Like her, climate and political activist Melani Gunathilaka, 37, knows the path forward will not be easy for Sri Lanka, but they have hope.

“There hasn’t been a change in the political and economic culture – but there has been a massive change in terms of society,” she says.

“For the first time people took charge, people exercised their democratic rights to do what’s right for the country.”

Ranil Wickremesinghe, a six-time former prime minister, was appointed president after Gotabaya Rajapaksa was ousted in 2022.

The 75-year-old, who faced the monumental task of trying to lead Sri Lanka out of economic collapse, has been accused of protecting the Rajapaksa family, allowing them to regroup, while shielding them from prosecution – allegations he has denied.

Anura Kumara Dissanayake is the candidate of the leftist National People’s Party alliance.

His promises of tough anti-corruption measures and good governance have boosted his candidacy, positioning the 55-year-old as a serious contender.

Sajith Premadasa, the runner-up last time, is the leader of the country’s main opposition Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB).

Earlier this week, he told news agency AP that he would ensure that the rich would pay more taxes and the poor would see their conditions improve if he won.

Namal Rajapaksa comes from a powerful political clan that produced two presidents.

The 38-year-old’s campaign has centred around the legacy of his father, who is still seen as a hero by some Sri Lankans for presiding over the bloody end to the civil war against Tamil Tiger rebels. But he needs to win over voters who blame the Rajapaksas for the economic crisis.

As the sun was rising in Baltimore on 26 March, Maria del Carmen Castellón received news that she never expected: her husband, Miguel Angel Luna Gonzalez, was missing in the cold, dark waters of Maryland’s Patapsco river.

“I got a knock on the door from my husband’s son,” she recalls. “It’s news I wouldn’t wish on any wife. At that moment, I wished I had wings so I could fly and save him.”

Luna, a 49-year-old father of three originally from El Salvador, was one of eight workers fixing potholes on Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge when it was struck by a 948ft (289m) cargo ship – the M/V Dali – sending an estimated 3,000 to 4,000 tonnes of debris into the shipping channel below.

Six of the workers – all originally from Latin America – died in the bridge collapse.

It would be more than five weeks until Luna’s body was recovered in early May.

“That was the hardest day of my life,” Ms Castellón said. “It opened a wound in my heart that will never heal.”

Now, six months on from the disaster, the families of three of the dead workers are suing the shipping company, Grace Ocean Private Ltd, arguing that its “negligence” and actions directly led to the collapse of the bridge and the deaths of their loved ones.

“We’re fighting for justice,” added Ms Castellón, speaking in Spanish to reporters at the Baltimore offices of Casa, an advocacy organisation focused on immigrants. “Justice means preventing future tragedies.”

While a National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) investigation into the incident is ongoing, a preliminary report issued in May found that the Dali had lost electrical power four times in a span of less than 12 hours before colliding with the Key Bridge.

“There’s a lot that we still don’t know,” said Matthew Wessler, a lawyer working on behalf of the three families. “But in our view, that [the repeated loss of power] should have led the ship to fully assess what had gone wrong and fix the problem.”

In federal court earlier this year, Grace Ocean sought to limit its legal exposure from the disaster.

Contacted by the BBC, a spokesman for Grace Ocean said the filing of claims from the families “was anticipated”, but the company “will have no further comments on the merits of any claim” for the time being.

The lawsuit is one of several faced by Synergy and Grace Ocean in the wake of the accident.

The city of Baltimore and a collection of local business owners have also sued the firms, claiming that the ship was unseaworthy when it set off for its March voyage.

Speaking to reporters in Baltimore on Tuesday, Ms Castellón recalled that the day before the accident, the couple went to look at a rental property where they were hoping to open a small restaurant.

The two had already worked together on a food truck, with Luna helping when not at his construction job.

“As we looked through the windows, we spoke about a future in which he wouldn’t have to suffer at a dangerous job,” Ms Castellón said, crying. “Those moments were filled with laughter, and love,” she added.

“But those dreams were shattered that morning when I lost him,” Ms Castellón added.

That night as he left for work, he left her a letter which he signed off with “I love you”.

“I carry that in my heart now,” she added.

Lawyers and immigration advocates working with the families say they also hope the incident highlights the often dangerous – but crucial work – of immigrants in the US.

Lawyers for hip-hop mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs will appear in court on Wednesday to challenge a judge’s ruling that denied Mr Combs bail after he pleaded not guilty in a sex-trafficking case.

A New York federal judge remanded the musician in custody on Tuesday after prosecutors argued he was a “serious flight risk”.

Mr Combs, 54, was arrested on Monday evening, accused of running a criminal enterprise from at least 2008 that relied on drugs and violence to force women to “fulfill his sexual desires”, according to prosecutors.

A 14-page indictment charges him with racketeering, sex trafficking by force, and transportation to engage in prostitution.

If convicted on all three counts, the rapper and record producer faces a sentence of 15 years up to life in prison.

He was wearing a black T-shirt and grey sweatpants during Tuesday’s court appearance in Manhattan.

Asked by US Magistrate Judge Robyn Tarnofsky how he wished to plead, Mr Combs stood up and said: “not guilty”.

Mr Combs’s lawyer, Marc Agnifilo, said afterwards that the musician’s defence team already had launched an appeal of the judge’s bail decision.

“We believe him wholeheartedly,” Mr Agnifilo told reporters outside the Manhattan court. “He didn’t do these things.”

According to court documents, Mr Combs “wielded the power” of his status to “lure female victims… to engage in extended sex acts” called “Freak Offs”.

“During Freak Offs, Combs distributed a variety of controlled substances to victims, in part to keep the victims obedient and compliant,” the indictment said.

In a news briefing, US prosecutor Damian Williams said officials found firearms, ammunition and more than 1,000 bottles of lubricant during raids on Mr Combs’s homes in Miami and Los Angeles, about six months ago.

Mr Williams said federal agents also found three semi-automatic rifles with defaced serial numbers, and a drum magazine.

He told reporters that further charges were possible, without offering details.

Mr Agnifilo, the musician’s lawyer, maintained, “there’s no coercion and no crime.”

“He’s not afraid of the charges,” he said, adding that he believed Mr Combs was the target of “an unjust prosecution”.

In court documents, federal prosecutors said that Mr Combs had “abused, threatened, and coerced women and others around him to fulfill his sexual desires, protect his reputation, and conceal his conduct”.

Prosecutors accuse Mr Combs of “creating a criminal enterprise” whose members – under his direction – engaged in sex trafficking, forced labour, kidnapping, arson and bribery.

“On numerous occasions”, the documents said, Mr Combs assaulted women by “striking, punching, dragging, throwing objects at, and kicking them”.

The indictment did not specify how many women were alleged victims. It also does not accuse Mr Combs himself of engaging directly in unwanted sexual acts with women.

The Bad Boy records founder, who was also known during his career as P. Diddy and Puff Daddy, has faced many of the accusations before.

Last November, his ex-girlfriend, singer Casandra Elizabeth Ventura, filed a civil lawsuit against him that included graphic descriptions of violent abuse. He denied the accusations, but settled the case a day after it was filed.

In May, Mr Combs released a public apology after video footage from a Los Angeles hotel appeared to show him beating Ms Ventura in a hallway.

Tuesday’s indictment against Mr Combs accuses him of similar violence.

Ms Ventura’s lawyer, Douglas Wigdor​​​​, declined to comment on Mr Combs’s arrest.

The indictment follows a string of sexual assault allegations against Mr Combs, one of the most successful music moguls in the history of rap.

Four women, including Ms Ventura, have filed lawsuits accusing him of sexual and physical abuse.

In a statement issued last December, Mr Combs defended himself against what he described as “sickening allegations” made by “individuals looking for a quick payday”.

In June, he returned a ceremonial “Key to the City of New York” following a request from Mayor Eric Adams, who had bestowed the honour on him just nine months beforehand.

Days later, Howard University announced it was revoking Mr Combs’s 2014 honorary degree.

The musician is credited with helping turn rappers and R&B singers such as Usher, Mary J Blige and Notorious B.I.G. into stars in the 1990s and 2000s.

The Princess of Wales has carried out her first official work meeting since she began cancer treatment earlier this year.

In another small step on her return to public life, the princess had a meeting on Tuesday in Windsor Castle about her early childhood project.

It follows last week’s video message from Catherine where she revealed her relief that her chemotherapy had ended.

The princess said this year had been “incredibly tough” but she had gained a “renewed sense of hope and appreciation of life”.

This meeting in Windsor was recorded in the Court Circular, which lists royal engagements.

The princess has worked from home and had meetings at home before, but this was the first officially recorded work engagement since her treatment began.

This latest update is part of Catherine’s carefully managed return, which later this year could see her making a small number of public appearances, such as at Remembrance events in November and her annual Christmas carol concert.

This will send a positive message about her recovery. But there is still great caution about her health.

Catherine said in her video last week that her “path to healing and full recovery is long and I must continue to take each day as it comes”.

There are no details or photographs of the meeting, but one of Catherine’s flagship projects has been the Shaping Us campaign, raising awareness about the importance of early childhood, which she has described as her “life’s work”.

This tentative return to work follows a year of health problems.

In January she was in hospital for abdominal surgery and then in March it was revealed that she was undergoing cancer treatment.

There were a couple of public appearances, at Trooping the Colour and the Wimbledon tennis championship, but it has mostly been a year away from the public eye.

Last week’s highly personal video, filmed with her family in Norfolk, described her emotional journey during the months of her cancer treatment – saying that “out of darkness, can come light”.

The princess described the “stormy waters” of her experience of cancer and how it had felt “complex, scary and unpredictable”.

“With humility, it also brings you face to face with your own vulnerabilities in a way you have never considered before, and with that, a new perspective on everything,” she said.

A wildlife charity has declared a national “butterfly emergency” after its annual Big Butterfly Count recorded its lowest ever numbers.

The count has been running for 14 years. This year’s poor results are partly down to the wet weather but the long-term trend is hugely concerning, says Butterfly Conservation.

It is calling on the government to ban pesticides that can harm butterflies and bees “before it’s too late”.

Butterflies are at “their lowest ebb” on the back of 50 years of decline, said the charity’s head of science, Dr Richard Fox.

“Butterflies are a key indicator species; when they are in trouble we know that the wider environment is in trouble too,” he said.

Neonicotinoid pesticides were banned in the UK in 2018 but have been approved four times in a row in emergencies to tackle a virus that attacks sugar beet.

A spokesperson from the Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs said it was “committed to deliver for nature and will change existing policies, including banning the use of those neonicotinoid pesticides that threaten vital pollinators” – but has given no time scales for doing so.

The Nature Friendly Farming Network, which represents farmers working to improve nature, called for support for farmers and consumers wanting to step away from these products.

“This disastrous decline in butterfly numbers is deeply concerning, but changing the way we manage our farm landscapes can play a critical role in halting biodiversity decline,” said CEO, Martin Lines.

“It is essential to move away from the widespread use of pesticides in farming and instead embrace nature-friendly alternatives such as creating habitats for pollinators and predatory insects.”

The 2024 Big Butterfly Count took place in July and August across the UK when thousands of people recorded over a period of 15 minutes how many butterflies they saw, even if it was none.

Overall, participants spotted seven butterflies on average per count, the lowest in the scheme’s 14-year history. Last year’s average was 12.

Butterfly Conservation said it was the worst year recorded for the common blue, holly blue, green-veined white, small white, small tortoiseshell, painted lady and Scotch argus.

This year’s fall in butterfly numbers is thought to have been made worse by the wet spring coupled with the late arrival of summer heat.

Wider data from the UK Butterfly Monitoring Scheme – one of the longest running insect monitoring schemes in the world – shows yearly fluctuations in butterfly numbers in response to weather conditions amid a long-term picture of decline driven by climate change, habitat loss, pollution and pesticides.

Dr Marc Botham of the UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology said 33% of species had shown a significant decline in their abundance on monitored sites in the UK over the past 48 years.

“It’s quite simple really – there’s not enough habitat and what is there isn’t good quality,” he said.

“We need to be putting [measures] in place to increase the amount and quality of habitat so that [butterflies and other wildlife] can do better.”

The FBI and the US Postal Department are investigating suspicious packages received by election officials in 17 states.

Federal investigators said they were collecting the packages and that some contained “an unknown substance”, though there were no reports of injuries.

They were sent to secretaries of state and state election officials across a swathe of the country from New York to Alaska.

It comes amid reports of rising threats directed at election officials across the US and warnings of political violence as November’s presidential election approaches.

The FBI and US Postal Department said they were trying to determine how many letters were sent and who was behind them, as well as their motive.

“Some of the letters contained an unknown substance and we are working closely with our law enforcement partners to respond to each incident and safely collect the letters,” the agencies said in a statement to BBC’s US partner CBS News.

The Associated Press news agency reported that packages were sent to election officials in Alaska, Georgia, Connecticut, Indiana, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Missouri, New York, Rhode Island, Iowa, Mississippi, Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Wyoming.

• Election polls – is Harris or Trump winning?

Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold wrote in a post on X, formerly Twitter, that whoever posted the letters had called themselves as the “US Traitor Elimination Army”.

Officials in at least four of the states said there was no threat posed by the substances found in the packages. In Oklahoma, the Board of Elections said the substance was found to be flour.

In an interview with CBS, Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, a Democrat, said her office was receiving threats daily through voicemails, emails, social media or in person, adding that “it’s escalating”.

This is not the first time suspicious mail was mailed to US election offices.

Last November, offices in Georgia, Nevada, California, Oregon and Washington were sent envelopes with fentanyl or other substances.

Federal investigators are separately questioning a gunman who was found lurking in bushes on a Florida golf course where Trump was putting on Sunday.

• SIMPLE GUIDE: Everything you need to know about the vote
• EXPLAINER: Seven swing states that could decide election
• FACT CHECK: Was US economy stronger under Biden or Trump?
• POLICIES: What Harris or Trump would do in power
• POLLS: Who is winning the race for the White House?

North America correspondent Anthony Zurcher makes sense of the race for the White House in his weekly US Election Unspun newsletter.

Readers in the UK can sign up here. Those outside the UK can sign up here.

At least 12 people including two children were killed and thousands more injured, many seriously, after pagers used by the armed group Hezbollah to communicate dramatically exploded across the country on Tuesday.

It is unclear how the highly sophisticated attack occurred, though Hezbollah has blamed its adversary Israel. Israeli officials have so far declined to comment.

Analysis of fragments from the pagers suggested they were made by the Taiwanese firm Gold Apollo, but the CEO denied this and said they had been made under licence by a company in Hungary. BBC calls to the company went unanswered.

On Wednesday afternoon there were reports of further explosions involving walkie-talkies in southern Beirut.

Here is what we know so far.

The blasts began in Lebanon’s capital Beirut and several other areas of the country at about 15:45 local time (13:45 BST) on Tuesday.

Witnesses reported seeing smoke coming from people’s pockets, before seeing small explosions that sounded like fireworks and gunshots.

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

Citing US officials, the New York Times said that the pagers received messages that appeared to be coming from Hezbollah’s leadership before detonating. The messages instead appeared to trigger the devices, the outlet reported.

Explosions continued for around an hour after the initial blasts, the Reuters news agency reported.

Soon after, scores of people began arriving at hospitals across Lebanon, with witnesses reporting scenes of mass confusion.

Analysts said the most likely explanation was a supply chain attack that saw the pagers tampered with during manufacture or transit.

Reuters quoted a Lebanese security source as saying that a small quantity of explosives had been placed inside the devices months ago.

Speaking to the BBC, one ex-British Army munitions expert, who asked not to be named, speculated that the devices could have then been triggered by a remote signal.

• LIVE: Latest updates on the Hezbollah pager explosions
• Watch: Video appears to show explosion at supermarket
• Bowen: Tactical triumph for Israel, but Hezbollah won’t be deterred
• What is Hezbollah in Lebanon and why is it fighting with Israel?

One Hezbollah operative told the AP news agency that the pagers were a new brand that the group had not used before. A Lebanese security official told the Reuters news agency that around 5,000 pagers were brought into the country about five months ago.

Labels seen on fragments of exploded pagers point to a pager model called the Rugged Pager AR-924. But its Taiwanese manufacturer Gold Apollo has denied any involvement with the explosions. When the BBC visited Gold Apollo on Wednesday local police were swarming the company’s offices, inspecting documents and questioning staff.

• Taiwan pager maker stunned by link to Lebanon attacks

The founder, Hsu Ching-Kuang, said his company had signed an agreement with a Hungarian-based company – BAC – to manufacture the devices and use his company’s name. He added that money transfers from them had been “very strange”, without elaborating.

BBC Verify has accessed BAC’s company records, which reveal it was first incorporated in 2022. Its registered address reveals a nondescript building in a Budapest suburb, and repeated calls to its offices by the BBC on Wednesday went unanswered.

However its CEO Cristiana Bársony-Arcidiacono told NBC that she knew nothing about the explosions. “I don’t make the pagers. I am just the intermediate. I think you got it wrong,” she said.

Unnamed US and Israeli officials told Axios that detonating the pagers all at once was initially planned as the opening move in an “all-out” offensive against Hezbollah. But in recent days Israel became concerned Hezbollah had become aware of the plan – so they were set off early.

Israeli officials have not commented on the allegations, but most analysts agree that it seems likely it is behind the attack.

Prof Simon Mabon, chair in International Relations at Lancaster University, told the BBC: “We know that Israel has a precedent of using technology to track its target” – but he called the scale of this attack “unprecedented”.

Lina Khatib, from the UK-based Chatham House, said the attack suggested that Israel has “deeply” infiltrated Hezbollah’s “communications network”.

Prime Minister Najib Mikati said the explosions represented a “serious violation of Lebanese sovereignty and a crime by all standards”.

In its statement accusing Israel of being behind the attacks, Hezbollah said it held the country “fully responsible for this criminal aggression that also targeted civilians”.

Hezbollah has relied heavily on pagers as a low-tech means of communications to try to evade location-tracking by Israel. Pagers are wireless telecommunications devices that receive and display alphanumeric or voice messages.

They are much harder to track than mobile phones, which have long since been abandoned as simply too vulnerable, as Israel’s assassination of the Hamas bomb-maker Yahya Ayyash demonstrated as long ago as 1996, when his phone exploded in his hand.

In February, Hassan Nasrallah directed Hezbollah fighters to get rid of their phones, saying they had been infiltrated by Israeli intelligence. He told his forces to break, bury or lock their phones in an iron box.

Experts now say the directive, issued during a live televised address, may have forewarned Israeli intelligence operatives that the group would be seeking a new – likely lower tech – method of communications.

A source close to Hezbollah told AFP that two of those killed were the sons of two Hezbollah MPs. They also said the daughter of a Hezbollah member was killed.

Among the injured was Iran’s ambassador to Lebanon, Mojtaba Amani. Reports in Iranian media said his injuries were minor.

Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah was not hurt in the explosions, Reuters reported quoting a source.

Lebanese Public Health Minister Firass Abiad said damage to the hands and face made up the majority of injuries.

Speaking to the BBC’s Newshour programme, he said: “Most of the injuries appear to be to the face and especially to the eyes and also the hand with some amputations, whether it’s in the hands or the fingers, and some of them have injuries to their flank.”

He added: “The vast majority of the people who are presenting to the emergency rooms are in civilian clothes, so it’s very difficult to discern whether they belong to a certain entity like Hezbollah or others…

“But we are seeing among them people who are old or people who are very young, like the child who unfortunately died… and there are some of them who are healthcare workers,” the minister said.

Outside of Lebanon, 14 people were injured in similar blasts in neighbouring Syria, according to UK-based campaign group the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Hezbollah is allied with Israel’s arch-nemesis in the region, Iran. The group is part of Tehran’s Axis of Resistance and has been engaged in a low-level war with Israel for months, frequently exchanging rocket and missile fire across Israel’s northern border. Entire communities have been displaced from both sides.

The blasts came just hours after Israel’s security cabinet made the safe return of residents to the north of the country an official war goal.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told a visiting US official that Israel would “do what is necessary to ensure its security”.

Earlier on Monday, Israel’s domestic security agency said it had thwarted a Hezbollah attempt to assassinate a former official.

Despite the ongoing tensions, observers say that until now both sides have aimed to contain hostilities without crossing the line into full-scale war. But there are fears that the situation could spiral out of control.

Israel has scored a significant tactical triumph in this operation – the sort of spectacular coup you would read about in a thriller.

Undoubtedly it’s a humiliation for Hezbollah, which will increase their insecurity and be bad for their morale.

However there is a potentially serious strategic downside for Israel, because while this humiliates the powerful Lebanese militia and political movement, it doesn’t deter them.

And it doesn’t get closer to Israel’s strategic aim of stopping Hezbollah’s attacks and allowing the more than 60,000 Israelis on the northern border who haven’t been in their houses for nearly a year to return home.

• LIVE: Latest updates on the Hezbollah pager explosions
• What we know about the attack in Lebanon
• Watch: Video appears to show explosion at supermarket
• What is Hezbollah in Lebanon and why is it fighting with Israel?

The Israelis have used an important, audacious weapon, which is clearly very effective in their terms.

But reports in Al Monitor, a respected Middle East newsletter, say that they were not able to use it in the way they hoped.

The original plan, it says, was for Israel to follow up with devastating attacks while Hezbollah was still reeling. The pager attack, the reports say, was to be the opening salvo in a big escalation – as part of an offensive or perhaps an invasion of southern Lebanon.

But these same reports say that Hezbollah was getting suspicious – forcing Israel to trigger this attack early. So the Israelis have shown they can get into Hezbollah’s communications and shown they can humiliate them, but this attack does not take the region one inch further back from all out war. Instead it pushes it closer.

Everything at the moment in terms of de-escalation in the Middle East depends on Gaza.

While that war continues, whether it’s conflict with Lebanon, whether it’s attacks in the Red Sea from the Houthis, whether it’s tensions with Iraq; nothing is going to de-escalate.

The US envoy to Lebanon Amos Hochstein has been working assiduously for months now – talking to the Lebanese, and indirectly to Hezbollah and to the Israelis, about trying to find a way to deescalate this diplomatically. And reportedly, the Israelis didn’t tell the US about what they were doing with this plan until last moments – so this won’t help his efforts either.

American predictions that a ceasefire in Gaza is close have come up again against two seemingly immovable objects.

One is the Hamas leader, Yahya Sinwar, who wants Israel out of the Gaza Strip permanently, as well as a big release of Palestinian prisoners in exchange for the remaining Israeli hostages in Gaza.

The other is Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, who has stuck to his insistence that Israel can and will win a total victory over Hamas.

The consensus in Israel is that he benefits from prolonging the war, despite pressure from hostage families and their supporters for a deal to get their people home.

The prime minister’s ultranationalist allies in his coalition have also threatened to bring down the government if he makes a deal.

Israel and its allies insist that taking the war to its old enemies in Lebanese Hezbollah is an entirely legitimate act of self-defence.

Once again though, there are serious question marks about the way an Israeli attack has wounded and killed civilian bystanders.

CCTV footage showed a pager exploding in a crowded market as its owner shopped for food. Reports in Lebanon say a young girl was killed when her father’s pager exploded.

Hezbollah will be reeling from the attack, but it will rapidly compose itself as an organisation and will find another way to communicate. Lebanon is a small country and messages can easily be carried by hand.

Undoubtedly Hezbollah and its allies in Iran, whose ambassador to Beirut was wounded in the attack, will be licking their wounds at the moment.

But once again the region has been pushed right to the brink of an all-out war.

Sooner or later, if this continues, they will fall over the cliff.

The race to find the maker of the pagers that exploded in Lebanon has taken an unexpected turn – towards a Taiwanese company few had heard of until this morning.

At least 12 people were killed and nearly 3,000 injured in Tuesday’s explosions targeting members of the armed group Hezbollah, which set off a geopolitical storm in the Middle East.

Caught in the crisis, Taiwanese firm Gold Apollo’s founder Hsu Ching-Kuang flatly denied his company had anything to do with the attacks.

Instead, Mr Hsu has said he licensed his trade mark to a company in Hungary called BAC Consulting to use the Gold Apollo name on their own pagers. BBC attempts to contact BAC have so far been unsuccessful.

• LIVE: Latest updates on the Hezbollah pager explosions
• What we know about the attack in Lebanon
• Watch: Video appears to show explosion at supermarket
• Bowen: Tactical triumph for Israel, but Hezbollah won’t be deterred
• What is Hezbollah in Lebanon and why is it fighting with Israel?

“You look at the pictures from Lebanon,” Mr Hsu told reporters outside his firm’s offices on Wednesday. “They don’t have any mark saying Made in Taiwan on them, we did not make those pagers!”

The offices of Gold Apollo are in a large new business park in a non-descript suburb of Taiwan’s capital, Taipei.

They look the same as any of the thousands of small trading companies and manufacturers that make up a huge chunk of the island’s economy – except for the two police officers posted at the entrance, ready to fend off the large gaggle of reporters and TV crews squatting outside.

On the walls of Gold Apollo’s office are posters of the company’s products – a montage of small boxy plastic devices with little grey LCD screens. They are all pagers.

Until this morning the company’s website had a page devoted to each, extolling its virtues and practicalities. But as soon as news broke that Gold Apollo was the alleged source of the devices used in the attacks in Lebanon, the website went offline.

Mr Hsu said it was pagers made by BAC Consulting that were used in the Lebanon attacks. He told reporters that his company had signed an agreement with BAC Consulting three years ago.

The money transfers from BAC had been “very strange”, he added. There had been problems with the payments, which had come through the Middle East, he told reporters, but he did not go into detail.

Initially, he said, BAC wanted to buy pagers from Gold Apollo to sell in Europe. But after about a year they came up with a new plan to make their own pagers and licensed Gold Apollo’s name.

“We only provide brand trademark authorisation and have no involvement in the design or manufacturing of this product,” a statement from Gold Apollo said.

But the fact there is now a team from the Taipei investigation bureau inside his office – with large numbers of cardboard boxes – suggests the Taiwanese authorities are not entirely reassured.

Nevertheless, Mr Hsu’s statement that his company didn’t make the devices is plausible.

Taiwan’s manufacturing system is a complex maze of small companies, many of which do not actually make the products they sell. They may own the brand name, the intellectual property and have research and design departments. But most of the actual manufacturing is farmed out to factories in China or Southeast Asia.

Pagers are also hardly cutting-edge technology – there are many companies across the world capable of making them.

They are small radio receivers with LED screens that can receive and display messages. In the 1980s and 1990s electronic pagers were considered to be the latest tech, used by tens of millions of people. Before mobile phones, companies used pagers to send short text messages to employees in the field.

But in the last two decades the rise of the smart phone has pushed pagers to the brink of extinction. They are now a niche device holding on in places like hospitals – where they remain a cheap and reliable method for messaging doctors and nurses, even when other communication lines are disrupted.

Starting in the late 2000s, Gold Apollo too started moving away from making electronic pagers and started manufacturing other short-range radio devices – particularly for restaurants. The company’s most successful product now is a round disc that is handed to customers in food courts and restaurants once they place an order – it lights up and vibrates when their order is ready.

It’s likely that Gold Apollo’s brand name – as a reliable pager manufacturer – was useful in selling the pagers that ended up with Hezbollah.

But there are still more questions than answers in this extraordinary story.

We know almost nothing about BAC Consulting – who is or was behind it?

If Gold Apollo did not make the pagers used in the attack in Lebanon, then who did and where?

Thirteen people have been injured in Russia’s Tver region after a large Ukrainian drone attack sparked a fire there, according to the country’s health ministry.

Unverified footage has emerged purportedly showing a massive blast in the town. Video footage circulating on social media showed detonations and smoke covering a large stretch of sky.

A partial evacuation of the region was ordered after the strike in the early hours of Wednesday morning. The regional governor later encouraged residents to return, saying that all infrastructure in the town was working normally again.

AFP and Reuters news agencies have quoted Ukrainian sources as saying an ammunitions warehouse had been struck.

The military site reportedly housed fuel tanks, as well as artillery shells, ballistic missiles, and explosives, in a series of warehouses. These are all weapons that have been used in Russia’s relentless full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

This latest attack by Ukraine is the kind it has been wanting to carry out with missiles supplied by its western allies. However, in the absence of approval from the US and UK, it has once again hit Russian targets with drones it has made itself.

The target this time, though, is significant. A military arsenal, worth almost £30m ($39m), has seemingly gone up in a series of explosions. NASA reported a series of heat sources from satellite imagery.

A light-magnitude earthquake was even reported in the surrounding Tver region.

The head of Ukraine’s Centre for Countering Disinformation, Andriy Kovalenko, said on Telegram that in addition to its own ammunition, including Grad rockets, Russia had also started to store North Korean missiles in Toropets.

None of these claims have been verified by the BBC.

Toropets lies about 380km (236 miles) north-west of Russia’s capital Moscow, and some 470km north of the border with Ukraine.

Over the past few months, Kyiv has grown in confidence and ambition as it has ramped up drone attacks inside Russia. It’s struck as far as 1,800km (1,118 miles) in the past, when a long-range radar was hit in the city of Orsk.

In the early hours of Wednesday morning, the authorities in Toropets said buses had already been prepared for the evacuation.

They also claimed the situation was “under control” in the town of about 13,000 residents.

The authorities did not say how many people were being evacuated.

Meanwhile, Russia’s state media reported that regional schools and kindergartens would be closed on Wednesday.

The level of destruction in Toropets will give Ukrainian forces a much-needed morale boost. It is also hoped it sends the West a political message – that targeting sites inside Russia helps Ukraine defend itself, and will not cause an escalation with Moscow.

Russia’s defence ministry reported on Wednesday that it had destroyed a total of 54 drones in overnight attacks across five Russian regions – Bryansk, Kursk, Oryol, Smolensk and Belgorod.

Belgorod Region Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said four civilians were injured in a “drone attack on a minibus” in the city of Shebekino.

Ukraine has not commented on the reported attacks.

Also overnight, Ukrainian air defences were engaged against oncoming Russian drones near the capital Kyiv, city military administration head Serhiy Popko said.

There were also reports of blasts in Ukraine’s north-eastern city of Sumy, near the Russian border, and the regional authorities later 16 drones were shot down. However, the authorities were forced to use back-up power systems after energy infrastructure repeatedly come under fire.

In total, the Ukrainian air force said it had shot down 46 of 52 drones launched by Moscow over the country overnight. Local authorities said one person was killed in the central region of Kirovohrad, while a 90-year-old woman was wounded in Kropyvnytskyi.

The claims by both Russian and Ukrainian officials have not been independently verified.

Russian President Vladimir Putin launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

Voters in the US go to the polls on 5 November to elect their next president.

The election was initially a rematch of 2020 but it was upended in July when President Joe Biden ended his campaign and endorsed Vice-President Kamala Harris.

The big question now is – will America get its first woman president or a second Donald Trump term?

As election day approaches, we’ll be keeping track of the polls and seeing what effect the campaign has on the race for the White House.

Harris is ahead of Trump in the national polling averages as shown in the chart below, with the latest figures rounded to the nearest whole number.

In the months leading up to Biden’s decision to drop out, polls consistently showed him trailing former president Trump. But the race tightened when Harris hit the campaign trail and she developed a small lead that she has maintained since.

The two candidates went head to head in a televised debate in Pennsylvania on 10 September that just over 67 million people tuned in to watch. A couple of snap polls released immediately after the debate found that most viewers thought Harris had been the better performer.

• Anthony Zurcher analysis: Who won the Harris-Trump debate?
• Watch key moments from Harris-Trump clash

A majority of national polls carried out since then suggest that Harris has made some small gains and while her polling average hasn’t moved much, her lead increased slightly from 2.5 percentage points on the day of the debate to 2.9 points a week later.

That marginal boost was mostly down to Trump’s numbers though. His average had been rising ahead of the debate, but it fell by half a percentage point in the week afterwards.

You can see those small changes in the poll tracker chart below, with the trend lines showing how the averages have changed and the dots showing the individual poll results for each candidate.

While these national polls are a useful guide as to how popular a candidate is across the country as a whole, they’re not necessarily an accurate way to predict the result of the election.

That’s because the US uses an electoral college system, in which each state is given a number of votes roughly in line with the size of its population. A total of 538 electoral college votes are up for grabs, so a candidate needs to hit 270 to win.

There are 50 states in the US but because most of them nearly always vote for the same party, in reality there are just a handful where both candidates stand a chance of winning. These are the places where the election will be won and lost and are known as battleground states.

• What is the electoral college?

Right now, the polls are very tight in the seven battleground states, which makes it hard to know who is really leading the race. There are fewer state polls than national polls so we have less data to work with and every poll has a margin of error that means the numbers could be higher or lower.

As is stands, recent polls suggest there is less than one percentage point separating the two candidates in several states. That includes Pennsylvania, which is key as it has the highest number of electoral votes on offer and therefore makes it easier for the winner to reach the 270 votes needed.

Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin had all been Democratic strongholds before Trump turned them red on his path to winning the presidency in 2016. Biden retook them in 2020 and if Harris can do the same this year then she will be on course to win the election.

In a sign of how the race has changed since Harris became the Democratic nominee, on the day Joe Biden quit the race he was trailing Trump by nearly five percentage points on average in these seven battleground states.

The figures we have used in the graphics above are averages created by polling analysis website 538, which is part of American news network ABC News. To create them, 538 collect the data from individual polls carried out both nationally and in battleground states by lots of polling companies.

As part of their quality control, 538 only include polls from companies that meet certain criteria, like being transparent about how many people they polled, when the poll was carried out and how the poll was conducted (telephone calls, text message, online, etc).

You can read more about the 538 methodology here.

At the moment, the polls suggest that Kamala Harris and Donald Trump are within a couple of percentage points of each other both nationally and in battleground states – and when the race is that close, it’s very hard to predict winners.

Polls underestimated support for Trump in both 2016 and 2020. Polling companies will be trying to fix that problem in a number of ways, including how to make their results reflect the make-up of the voting population.

Those adjustments are difficult to get right and pollsters still have to make educated guesses about other factors like who will actually turn up to vote on 5 November.

• SIMPLE GUIDE: Everything you need to know about the vote
• ANALYSIS: Harris goads Trump into flustered performance
• EXPLAINER: Seven swing states that could decide election
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• FACT CHECK: Was US economy stronger or weaker under Trump?
• Read more about: Kamala Harris | Donald Trump | US election

Last week, the Indian government announced that Russia had discharged dozens of the 91 Indians who were duped into fighting for Russian forces in the country’s war with Ukraine. Several of them have since returned home, while the process to bring others back is under way. The BBC’s Neyaz Farooquee spoke to some of the men about their struggles.

“I am in panic. I am not sure if I will return safely or in a box. Please save me.”

This is the message Urgen Tamang, a former Indian soldier, sent to the BBC from outside a southern Ukrainian city, a few days before he was discharged from the frontlines in Russia’s war against Ukraine, which entered its third year this February.

Mr Tamang is among the 91 Indians who were forced into fighting in the war. Most of them are from poor families and were lured by agents with the promise of money and jobs, sometimes as “helpers” in the Russian army.

Instead, they were sent to the war zone. Many of them said they were stationed in parts of Ukraine under Russian control, where they had to navigate landmines, drones, missiles and sniper attacks with little to no military training.

Nine Indians have died in the conflict so far and Indian authorities say they have arrested 19 people for human trafficking.

In July, Russia promised an early release of all Indians fighting in its army, following a visit by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to Moscow, during which he raised the issue with President Vladimir Putin. The two countries have traditionally shared a warm relationship.

Forty-five of them have been discharged since then. Some have safely returned home, while others like Mr Tamang are on their way.

“I can’t believe I am out of there,” said Sunil Karwa, an electrician from Rajasthan who joined the Russian army in February. Posted near Bakhmut, an eastern Ukraine city that has seen intense fighting, he was at the Moscow airport waiting to board his flight when he spoke to the BBC.

Mr Karwa described scenes of deaths and destruction, a reality which hit him the hardest when a man from his neighbouring village was shot on the battlefield.

“They sent him back on the frontline 15 days after the injury and he fainted in the field. He is paralysed now,” he said.

Like him, most of the other recruits were also blue-collar workers aged between 19 and 35, who were hired by agents based in India, Dubai and Russia.

• Ukraine war: The Indian men traumatised by fighting for Russia
• Ukraine war: Indians ‘duped’ by agents into fighting for Russia

They say their contracts were in Russian, a language they didn’t understand. Yet they signed it in the hope of getting better opportunities.

“The process was so quick – just a few signatures and photos and we were in [the army],” Mr Karwa said.

Raja Pathan joined the army as a last resort in February, after an education consultant deceived him into enrolling in a non-existent college.

“When I got there, I saw banners advertising recruitments for the army. By then, I had spent so much time and money that I decided to join anyway,” he said.

It was the death of two friends, which eventually pushed Mr Pathan to leave. He was released in August with the help of a sympathetic Russian commander who facilitated his exit.

Now based in Moscow, he helps other Indians escape from there.

Mohammad Sufyan from the southern state of Telangana returned to India on 12 September with five other men.

Safe in his home, he carries the trauma of surviving on the frontline. “There was little rest there and in the beginning, I couldn’t speak to my family for 25 days,” he said.

The most scarring moment came in February when his friend Hemil Mangukiya – an Indian man from Gujarat state – was killed right before his eyes.

“He was merely 15 metres from me, digging a trench near Krynky [in Kherson], when a missile landed,” recalled Mr Sufyan. “I put his dead body in the truck with my own hands.”

“After seeing the dead body of my friend, I didn’t have the strength for anything,” he added.

After the death, Mr Sufyan and other Indians stuck there released a video pleading for help, which reached Indian MP Asaduddin Owaisi, who raised the matter with the foreign ministry. Families of the men had also appealed to the Indian government for help in bringing them back.

“It is a miracle I got back home,” said Azad Yusuf Kumar, a resident of Indian-administered Kashmir, who was part of Mr Sufyan’s group in the army.

“One minute you are digging a trench, and the next, an artillery falls and burns everything down. It was all a matter of luck if it fell on you or someone else.”

In February, Mr Kumar had told the BBC how he had shot his foot by mistake during training. “My commander kept saying, use your right hand to shoot, use your left hand to shoot, shoot above, shoot down,” he had said. “I had never touched a gun. It was extremely cold, and with the gun in my left hand, I ended up shooting my foot.”

Now back in Kashmir, he talks about how his commander had accused him of deliberately shooting himself to avoid going to the frontline.

“But I am lucky I did not go to fight. Four men from my camp died in an attack at that time. I could’ve been one of them,” he said.

Though recent discharges brought relief to many, those still in Russia face growing desperation as their release is delayed.

Mr Tamang, who joined the Russian army in January, had earlier told The Indian Express newspaper through his local councillor, Rabi Pradhan, that 13 out of 15 non-Russian members of his unit had died.

The fact that he was sent to the frontline at least twice after signing his discharge letter in August heightened his fears – and mistrust in the process.

On 15 September, he was on his way to Moscow but still doubtful if he was truly heading home. “I am out, but I will keep sending you my location,” he said.

When he last texted, he had left Ukraine, hoping to continue his journey home.

US brand Tupperware has filed for bankruptcy as it struggles to survive in the face of sliding sales.

The food storage container firm said it will ask for court permission to start a sale of the business and that it aimed to continue operating.

The 78-year-old firm has become so synonymous with food storage that many people use its name when referring to any old plastic container.

Despite attempts to freshen up its products in recent years and reposition itself to a younger audience, it has failed to stand out from competitors.

Last year, the firm warned that it may go bust unless it could quickly raise new funds.

The company’s shares have fallen by more 50% this week after reports that it was planning to file for bankruptcy.

After a brief surge in sales during the pandemic, as more people cooked at home, the firm saw demand continue to slide.

The rising cost of raw materials, higher wages and transportation costs have also eaten into its profit margins.

“Over the last several years, the company’s financial position has been severely impacted by the challenging macroeconomic environment,” Tupperware’s chief executive Laurie Ann Goldman said in a statement to investors.

Tupperware was founded in 1946 by Earl Tupper, who patented the containers’ flexible airtight seal.

Tupperware was a major innovation, as it utilised new plastics to keep food fresh for longer, which was invaluable when refrigerators were still too expensive for many families.

However, it was not an immediate success.

It was the pioneering saleswoman Brownie Wise who helped turn the brand into a household name, literally.

She developed an approach in which salespeople, who were mostly women, sold Tupperware to other women in their homes, better known as “Tupperware parties”.

According to the company, Tupperware is now sold in 70 countries around the world.

“The party has been over for some time for Tupperware,” said Susannah Streeter, head of money and markets at Hargreaves Lansdown.

“Shifts in buyer behaviour pushed its containers out of fashion, as consumers have started to wean themselves off addictions to plastics and find more environmentally conscious ways of storing food.”

Ms Streeter added that “serious hiccups” in Tupperware’s financial reporting also had a negative impact on the company, including the mis-stating of results in 2021 and 2022.

The US government has filed a $100m (£75.6m) lawsuit against the owner and operator of a cargo ship that crashed into and destroyed a Baltimore bridge.

Justice Department officials said the companies, Synergy and Grace Ocean, were “well aware” of the issues with the Dali before it lost power and crashed into the Francis Key Scott bridge in March, leading to the deaths of six people.

The government said it cost more than $100m to clear the estimated 3,000 to 4,000 tonnes of debris caused by the crash and enable the Port of Baltimore to reopen.

Attorney General Merrick Garland said he wanted to ensure that the costs of the disaster were “borne by the companies that caused the crash, not by the American taxpayer”.

Six workers repairing pot holes were killed in the crash. The families of three of those killed said on Monday they were suing Grace Ocean.

The Justice Department’s lawsuit, filed in district court in Maryland, alleges that the ship’s electrical and mechanical systems were improperly maintained and that the crash was “entirely avoidable”.

A preliminary report in into the March 26 crash by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) found that the Dali had lost electrical power four times in less than 12 hours before colliding with the bridge.

The damage took months to repair and stalled commercial shipping into the port, one of the busiest in the US.

The disaster is considered the most expensive marine casualty case in US history.

Grace Ocean filed a motion earlier this year in a federal court to limit its legal liability.

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.

Radio waves from Elon Musk’s growing network of satellites are blocking scientists’ ability to peer into the universe, according to researchers in the Netherlands.

The new generation of Starlink satellites, which provide fast internet around the world, are interfering more with radio telescopes than earlier versions, they say.

The thousands of orbiting satellites are “blinding” radio telescopes and may be hindering astronomical research, according to Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy (ASTRON).

SpaceX, which owns Starlink, has not replied to a request from BBC News for comment.

The satellites provide broadband internet around the world, often to remote places, including challenging environments like Ukraine and Yemen.

They are also used to connect remote areas of the UK to fast internet. In 2022 tests showed that Starlink could deliver internet speeds four times faster than the average, according to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport.

But astronomers say this comes at a cost.

“Every time more of these are launched with these kinds of emission levels, we see less and less of the sky,” Professor Jessica Dempsey, director of ASTRON, told BBC News.

“We’re trying to look at things like the jets, which are emitted from black holes in the centre of galaxies. We also look at some of the earliest galaxies, millions and millions of light years away, as well as exoplanets,” she said, highlighting the areas the satellite radiation is affecting.

Interference from the second generation, or V2, satellites was found by ASTRON to be 32 times stronger than the first generation.

The amount of radiation emitted exceeds regulations set by the industry body the International Telecommunications Union, Prof Dempsey added.

One estimate suggests there are 6,402 Starlink satellites currently in orbit at around 342 miles (550km) above Earth, making it the largest provider by far.

The satellites are relatively large – with 3m flat panels and an 8m solar array for power.

SpaceX’s main competitor, OneWeb, has fewer than 1,000. But it is a growing business area. Amazon is developing its own network and hopes to launch at least 3,000 in the next few years.

By 2030 the number of satellites in orbit is expected to surpass 100,000.

The study was done using the LOFAR radio telescope in the Netherlands on a single day in July earlier this year.

Many objects in space, including distant galaxies and planets, emit light on the electromagnetic spectrum.

This radiation travels like waves and radio telescopes can pick up on those waves, allowing us to get a picture of things we can’t see with our eyes.

But those waves are being disturbed by satellites.

The scientists found unintended electromagnetic radiation from almost all the V2 Starlink satellites observed.

It was about 10 million times brighter than from the weakest sources of light identified, they say.

Lead author Cees Bassa said it was like comparing the “faintest stars visible to the naked eye and the brightness of the full Moon.”

“Since SpaceX is launching about 40 second-generation Starlink satellites every week, this problem is becoming increasingly worse,” he added.

Robert Massey, Deputy Executive Director of the Royal Astronomical Society in the UK, said: “it’s very clear that if you have something this bright that is compromising a major radio observatory this much, then we need to do something and we need to do it quickly.”

Asked about the value of the astronomy research, he said: “it’s wrong to say that there is some science that you can simply dismiss. The applications may be decades or even longer in the future but they can be very fundamental and very important.”

Scientists are also worried about light pollution from the satellites, and fear it is also interfering with optical telescopes.

Astronomers say they talked to SpaceX about radiation from the first generation of satellites and the company listened to their concerns.

But ASTRON now say the V2 have been found to be even more powerful.

“Turning LOFAR back up and seeing these booming signals from these new generation of V2 Mini SpaceX satellites was a bit shocking,” says Prof Dempsey.

“This is actually threatening the entirety of ground based astronomy in every wavelength and in different ways. If it continues, without the sort of mitigation to make these satellites quiet, then it does become an existential threat for the kinds of astronomy we do,” Prof Dempsey added.

The researchers stress that more regulation of space and how satellites operate is needed to avoid scientific work being compromised.

They said that as the largest provider of satellites, SpaceX could set a standard for limiting pollution.

Prof Dempsey said that simple actions like shielding the battery on the satellite could make a big difference and reduce the radiation emitted.

Some interference comes from faulty electronics, so this could prevent that happening.

But without action, “very soon the only constellations we will see will be human-made,” she added.

The findings are published in the scientific journal Astronomy and Astrophysics.