Polls have closed in Sri Lanka’s election, where voters are choosing a new president for the first time since mass protests unseated the country’s leader in 2022.

Saturday’s vote is widely regarded as a referendum on economic reforms meant to put the country on the road to recovery after its worst ever financial crisis.

But many people are still struggling to make ends meet because of tax hikes, and cuts to subsidies and welfare.

Multiple analysts predict that economic concerns will be front of mind for voters in what is shaping up to be a close race.

Counting began with postal votes at 17:00 local time (11:30 GMT), but results are not expected to become clear until Sunday morning.

“The country’s soaring inflation, skyrocketing cost-of-living and poverty have left the electorate desperate for solutions to stabilise prices and improve livelihoods,” Soumya Bhowmick, an associate fellow at India-based think tank the Observer Research Foundation, told the BBC.

“With the country seeking to emerge from its economic collapse, this election serves as a crucial moment for shaping Sri Lanka’s recovery trajectory and restoring both domestic and international confidence in its governance.”

President Ranil Wickremesinghe, who was charged with the monumental task of leading Sri Lanka out of its economic collapse, is seeking another term.

The 75-year-old was appointed by parliament a week after former president Gotabaya Rajapaksa was chased out of power.

Shortly after taking office, Wickremesinghe crushed what was left of the protest movement. He has also been accused of shielding the Rajapaksa family from prosecution and allowing them to regroup – allegations he has denied.

Another strong contender is leftist politician Anura Kumara Dissanayake, whose anti-corruption platform has seen him draw increasing public support.

More candidates are running in Saturday’s election than any other in Sri Lanka’s history. But of more than three dozen, four are dominating the limelight.

Other than Wickremesinghe and Dissanayake, there is also the leader of the opposition, Sajith Premadasa, and the 38-year-old nephew of the ousted president, Namal Rajapaksa.

The “Aragalaya” (struggle) uprising that deposed former president Gotabaya Rajapaksa was sparked by an economic meltdown.

Years of under-taxation, weak exports and major policy errors, combined with the Covid-19 pandemic dried up the country’s foreign exchange reserves. Public debt reached more than $83 billion and inflation soared to 70%.

While the country’s social and political elite were largely insulated against the fallout, basics like food, cooking gas and medicine became scarce for ordinary people, fuelling resentment and unrest.

Then-president Rajapaksa and his government were blamed for the crisis, leading to months-long protests calling for his resignation.

On 13 July 2022, in dramatic scenes that were broadcast around the world, crowds overran the presidential palace, jumping into the swimming pool and ransacking the house.

In the wake of Rajapaksa’s flight from the country – an exile that lasted 50 days – the interim government of President Wickremesinghe imposed strict austerity measures to salvage the economy.

Although the economic reforms have successfully brought down inflation and strengthened the Sri Lankan rupee, everyday Sri Lankans continue to feel the pinch.

“Jobs are the hardest thing to find,” says 32-year-old Yeshan Jayalath. “Even with an accounting degree, I can’t find a permanent job.” Instead, he has been doing temporary or part-time jobs.

Many small businesses across the country are also still reeling from the crisis.

Norbet Fernando, who was forced to shut his roof tile factory north of Colombo in 2022, told the BBC that raw materials such as clay, wood and kerosene are three times more costly than they were two years ago. Very few people are building homes or buying roof tiles, he added.

“After 35 years, it hurts to see my factory in ruins,” Fernando told the BBC, adding that of the 800 tile factories in the area, only 42 have remained functional since 2022.

Central bank data on business sentiments shows depressed demand in 2022 and 2023 – and though the situation is improving in 2024, it’s still not back to pre-crisis levels.

“The Sri Lankan economy may for now have been put back on its feet, but many citizens still need to be convinced the price is worth paying,” Alan Keenan, the International Crisis Group’s (ICG) senior consultant on Sri Lanka, told the BBC.

Ranil Wickremesinghe: Having previously lost twice at the presidential polls, Saturday marks his third chance to be elected by the Sri Lankan people, rather than parliament

Anura Kumara Dissanayake: The candidate of the leftist National People’s Party alliance promises tough anti-corruption measures and good governance

Sajith Premadasa: The opposition leader is representing the Samagi Jana Balawegaya party – his father served as the second executive president of Sri Lanka before he was assassinated in 1993

Namal Rajapaksa: The son of Mahinda Rajapaksa, who led the country between 2005 and 2015, he hails from a powerful political lineage, but will need to win over voters who blame his family for the economic crisis

Voters in Sri Lanka elect a single winner by ranking up to three candidates in order of preference.

If a candidate receives an absolute majority, they will be declared the winner. If not, a second round of counting will commence, with second and third-choice votes then taken into account.

No election in Sri Lanka has ever progressed to the second round of counting, as single candidates have always emerged as clear winners based on first-preference votes.

This year could be different.

“Opinion polls and initial campaigning suggest the vote is likely, for the first time ever, to produce a winner who fails to gain a majority of votes,” said Mr Keenan, of ICG.

“Candidates, party leaders and election officials should be prepared to handle any possible disputes calmly and according to established procedures.”

Eighty years after hundreds of allied soldiers parachuted from military aircraft into Nazi-occupied Netherlands as part of a daring World War Two offensive, their modern equivalents will on Saturday repeat the jump in commemoration.

In an airborne spectacular, 700 paratroopers from eight Nato nations – including the Netherlands, Germany, UK and US – will parachute from 12 aircraft.

The jump will be done in two waves and those involved will land at the same location at Ginkel Heath, near the Dutch town of Ede.

Among them will be members of the parachute display team, the British Red Devils.

The airdrop is one of several events organised to mark the anniversary of Operation Market Garden, an ambitious military offensive designed to speed up the invasion of Nazi Germany and shorten the war in Europe.

Among those who parachuted into the Netherlands were 1,900 allied airborne soldiers from Britain’s 4th Parachute Brigade.

It combined one of the largest airborne assaults in history, known as “Market”, with a ground offensive, “Garden”, aimed at swiftly capturing key bridges over the Rhine River.

Immortalised by the everyday phrase “a bridge too far”, the failure to secure a final bridge at Arnhem was the result of stronger-than-anticipated German resistance, logistical setbacks and tactical decisions by Allied commanders.

Two British soldiers killed in Operation Market Garden were laid to rest earlier this week with full military honours in the Oosterbeek war graves cemetery, close to Ginkel Heath.

Their coffins were dressed in Union Flags and carried by military bearer parties.

Private Henry Moon, 7th Battalion, The Green Howards, was part of the ground offensive and was killed at the age of 21. His remains were identified through a DNA match.

It was a humbling moment, his great-nephew David Snowdon told the BBC, to see hundreds of people turn out to pay their respects.

Lieutenant Dermod Green Anderson, a glider pilot who landed with his troops in a village northwest of Arnhem, was killed when an enemy shell exploded near his trench just hours before the evacuation order came.

His great-nephew, Lieutenant Colonel Julian Anderson, watched as his wooden coffin was gently lowered into a freshly dug grave – stunned to discover his great-uncle’s body had lain undetected for decades nearby.

Many of the thatched roof villas and apartments around Arnhem display the merlot flag decorated with a leaping pegasus, dedicated to the British Airborne forces, to ensure the sacrifices made for their freedom are not forgotten.

Some of the most ferocious fighting took place on these tranquil, tree-lined streets during the eight-day battle.

The battles were so incongruously bloody that those who witnessed war on their doorsteps recalled taking refuge from the relentless gunfire and described the paratroopers dropping like “stars falling from the sky’”

The area was eventually swarmed by victorious Nazi soldiers and became one of the last places to be liberated from the Nazis.

This eastern Dutch region has long maintained its traditions as a heartland of Allied remembrance.

So, why do the Dutch still put such great emphasis on remembering the failed Allied effort?

Earlier this month, the BBC sought answers from walkers on ‘Wandeltocht’ – the world’s largest one-day commemorative march that follows the footsteps of the Allied forces, passing key historical landmarks.

Thirty-four thousand people armed only with water bottles took part in the annual tribute, which encourages young and old to engage with history in a meaningful way.

As living memory passes with the remaining veterans, the Dutch feel a responsibility to share these stories and ensure their legacy is maintained.

Mattijs van Gessel’s sons Koen and Tom are hiding shyly behind his shorts. Their mother Sary told the BBC it was an opportunity to educate them.

“Wars take place everywhere and we tell them our safety is not something that you can take for granted,” she said.

That morning, during breakfast, Sary said the family had discussed why all the military personnel were in the village.

“If this wasn’t happening then we wouldn’t be talking about it.”

One gentleman, Geert, told me he had goosebumps on the walk. His adopted grandfather was wounded by a piece of shrapnel and was tended to by two Dutch nurses. The shrapnel and his beret are on display in the Oosterbeek museum.

“We would like to take it back for the family but it is more important for the world to see the evidence. It’s most important for kids to know it was real,” Geert said.

Another participant, Amanda Juanita Diemel, told the BBC that they were “walking with history”.

“It makes it very concrete, very tangible,” she said.

“It’s important to keep it alive, to learn from the past, especially with everything going on in the world today.”

As weeks of commemorations to mark the 80th anniversary of Operation Market Garden draw to a close, these moments have caused people to pause and remember the price paid to restore peace in Europe.

Witness History – Operation Market Garden

Thousands of Allied troops parachuted into Nazi-occupied Holland in September 1944. It was the most ambitious Allied airborne offensive of World War Two. The BBC World Service hears from Hetty Bischoff van Heemskerck, a young Dutch woman from the city of Arnhem, who watched the Allied paratroopers come down.

One person has died and seven others are missing, officials said, after “unprecedented” rains caused floods and landslides in the coastal quake-hit region of Ishikawa in northern Japan.

Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) on Saturday issued its highest “life-threatening” alert level for the Ishikawa region, following torrential rains which are expected to last until midday on Sunday.

More than 40,000 people across four cities have been ordered to evacuate after at least a dozen rivers in the region burst their banks.

Two of the missing were carried away by strong river currents, according to Japan’s public service broadcaster NHK.

Meanwhile, another four workers carrying out road repairs following a deadly New Year’s Day earthquake are also unaccounted for.

More than 120mm (4.7in) of rain was recorded in Wajima on Saturday morning, NHK reported, the heaviest downpour in the region since records began.

JMA forecaster Sugimoto Satoshi told reporters: “This level of downpours has never been experienced in this region before. Residents must secure their safety immediately. The risk to their lives is imminent.”

Footage aired by NHK showed an entire street in Wajima submerged under water.

Government official Koji Yamamoto told AFP that 60 people had been working to restore a road hit by the quake in the city of Wajima, but were hit by a landslide on Saturday morning.

“I asked [contractors] to check the safety of workers… but we are still unable to contact four people,” Mr Yamamoto said.

Rescue workers who had tried to gain access to the site, he said, were “blocked by landslides”.

A further two people have been seriously injured, according to government officials.

Some 6,000 households have been left without power, with an unknown number of households without running water, AFP agency reported.

The cities of Wajima and Suzu and the town of Noto have ordered some 44,000 residents to evacuate and seek shelter in Ishikawa prefecture, Honshu island.

Meanwhile, another 16,000 residents in the Niigata and Yamagata prefectures north of Ishikawa were also told to evacuate, the AFP news agency said.

Wajima and Suzu, in central Japan’s Noto peninsula, were among the areas hardest hit by a huge 7.5 magnitude earthquake on New Years Day that killed at least 236 people.

The region is still recovering from the powerful quake which had toppled buildings, ripped up roads and sparked a major fire.

Japan has seen unprecedented rainfall in parts of the country in recent years, with floods and landslides sometimes causing casualties.

Maria Ivashchenko’s husband Pavlo volunteered to fight the very same day Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022.

Six months later, he was killed as Ukrainian forces went on a counter-offensive in the region of Kherson – making Maria one of the hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians who have lost loved ones in the war.

To cope with her grief, Maria has been attending therapy classes organised by a volunteer group called Alive. True Love Stories.

In the sessions, the widows and mothers of fallen fighters express their feelings, and seek solace and closure by painting. They then accompany their paintings with written stories of their love.

Maria says that painting helps externalise and process memories and moments that people can be afraid to re-live.

“There’s total trust. No one will judge you, whether you laugh or cry,” she adds. “They understand you unconditionally. There’s no need to explain anything.”

“There’s a reason why it’s called Alive. We came back to life. This project has pulled many of us out of the abyss.”

The founder of Alive, Olena Sokalska, says more than 250 women have become involved in her project so far, and there is a waiting list of about 3,000.

Olena says that the paintings generally depict scenes that remind the women of the times they spent with their loved ones or of dreams they had. Some paint themselves or their husbands, Olena adds.

“Very often they paint angels, their families or children are depicted as angels,” she says. “These paintings mark the end of the life they had and the beginning of a new life.”

In addition to the trauma of bereavement, the dangers and insecurities of war have affected millions of Ukrainians.

Anna Stativka, a Ukrainian psychotherapist, explains that when wars start people lose safety and stability – basic human needs.

“When these two basic resources are gone very suddenly, this creates a lot of stress.”

In situations where war is sustained, this can also turn chronic, with symptoms such as anxiety, depression, apathy, insomnia, lack of concentration and difficulties with memory.

“You can’t stay in this hyper alert state for so long,” Ms Stativka says, adding that this has consequences on people’s mental and physical health.

“So this is generally what is happening to Ukrainian society,” she says.

Research and statistics suggest that the share of Ukrainians who are experiencing mental health issues is huge, and it is growing.

According to the Ukrainian Health Ministry, the number of patients complaining of mental health problems this year has doubled since 2023, and market research data shows antidepressant sales have jumped by almost 50% since 2021.

A study published in the medical journal The Lancet suggests that 54% of Ukrainians (including refugees) have PTSD. Severe anxiety is prevalent among 21%, and high levels of stress among 18%.

Another study carried out in 2023 showed that 27% of Ukrainians felt depressed or very sad, up from 20% in 2021, the year before Russia’s full-scale invasion.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) estimates that the majority of Ukraine’s population may be experiencing distress caused by war.

“It may have different symptoms. Some feel sadness, some feel anxiety, some have difficulties with sleep, some feel fatigue. Some are getting more angry. Some people have unexplained somatic syndromes, be it just pain or feeling bad,” the WHO representative in Ukraine, Jarno Habicht, told the BBC.

But, Mr Habicht says, Ukraine has made strides in dealing with the acute crisis and battling the Soviet-era stigma associated with mental health.

He says mental health was prioritised during the first months of the war. “Ukraine started to talk about mental health, and I think that’s something unique which we have not seen in many places,” Mr Habicht says.

Ukraine’s first lady Olena Zelenska spearheads a mental health campaign called How are you? and she also held the Third Summit of First Ladies and Gentlemen focusing on mental health in times of war. It was co-hosted by the British broadcaster, author and mental health campaigner Stephen Fry.

In an interview with the BBC’s Ukrainecast, Mr Fry described the mental health challenges facing Ukraine as an “urgent crisis”, but said he was also impressed by what Ukraine is doing to address it.

“It’s extraordinary to me that in Ukraine this is being talked about,” Mr Fry said. “It is certainly a strength of Ukraine. The day Russians start to talk about the mental health of their soldiers and the crises amongst them will be the day that it’s moved away from some of the totalitarian horror in which it seems to be mired at the moment.”

According to psychotherapist Anna Stativka, one of the ways in which Ukrainian society has responded to the trauma of war is by coming together.

She says that people have generally become much more ready to help to each other and are much more polite, even in public places. “People talk to neighbours more. So many are volunteering, donating, trying to help each other. This is a very stabilising factor. We see much more trust towards each other, much more empathy,” she says.

Maria Ivashchenko is now raising four children on her own. But she is smiling again, even if through tears sometimes. He message to those who are struggling with their loss is: “Don’t be afraid to talk to people. Get out of your bubble. Don’t be alone.”

“The most important thing is not to give up and not to think that you’re alone in this world, or that nobody cares. Oh yes, they do,” she says.

“Our husbands did not go to war so that we can sit around crying, but so that we keep moving on, so that we keep living.”

The impact of this war will be felt by generations to come, but Ukrainians are working hard to deal with the trauma now.

Controversy swirling around a North Carolina Republican candidate for governor is causing political turbulence in a must-win swing state for Donald Trump. The BBC asked conservatives there what they make of the alleged scandal.

It was during a regular meeting of the Johnston County Republican Women’s committee that they heard the news.

All around North Carolina on Thursday, Republicans and Democrats alike had been waiting for what was billed as a bombshell exposé about Republican Lt Gov Mark Robinson.

The furniture maker-turned-politician, who is running to be the state’s first black governor, had called himself a “black Nazi” on a porn website more than a decade ago, according to a report by CNN.

Robinson, who identifies as an evangelical Christian, branded the report “tabloid lies”. The BBC has not independently verified CNN’s claims.

But when the news finally did break, it barely caused a stir, at least not among this polite gathering of women in Johnston County.

“If the accusations are accurate, it’s something for him and his wife to deal with. It’s not my business. It’s a marital issue,” said Adele Walker, 52.

Soon afterwards, the group discussed their planned $200 donation to his campaign, in which he is already trailing the Democratic candidate Josh Stein, the state’s attorney general.

“What we decided is that we’re going to donate even more money to Mr Robinson,” she said.

The opinions of conservative women like Walker are being closely watched this election, not just in North Carolina, but across the US. The Tar Heel State has one of the closest races in the country with November’s election looming.

Trump had previously offered a glowing endorsement of Robinson, calling him “Martin Luther King on steroids”.

Even before the CNN exposé was published, Robinson was under scrutiny.

He has faced backlash over 2019 comments in a Facebook video about abortion on demand, when he said women should be “responsible enough to keep your skirt down”.

In 2021, he said children in schools should not be learning about “transgenderism, homosexuality, any of that filth”, and later rejected calls to apologise.

“I think it’s fair to call the Robinson campaign a dumpster fire at this point,” said North Carolina State University political scientist Steven Greene.

There are fears among some Republicans that Robinson could be a political albatross, causing their voters to stay home, or driving Democratic turnout.

North Carolina has remained “stubbornly Republican”, said Greene. Barack Obama was the only Democrat to win the state in 44 years, and he could only succeed once, in 2008.

But the state’s growing urban centres have tilted the political scales towards Democrats, who hope this is the year they can turn North Carolina blue.

An Emerson College Polling/The Hill survey released on Thursday, before the CNN report about Robinson was published, showed Harris leading Trump by one percentage point.

That is still well within the margin of error, which means the race is very much up in the air.

This state is essential for the Republican White House candidate, Greene said.

“It’s a lot harder to see Donald Trump getting to 270 without North Carolina than Kamala Harris,” he said, referring to the number of electoral college votes needed to clinch the US presidency.

Scott Lassiter, a Republican running for state Senate, expressed disappointment that Robinson did not drop out before a state deadline on Thursday, allowing another candidate from the party to take his place.

Lassiter said Robinson is a gift to Democrats, who “would love for every race on the ballot to be about Mark Robinson at this point”.

Once a regular at Trump’s campaign events in the state, Robinson will not attend the former president’s rally in Wilmington on Saturday, according to reports.

• US election polls: Who is ahead – Harris or Trump?
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But those close to Robinson are sticking by him.

Guilford County chairman Chris Meadows, a Republican, said he’s known Robinson, who’s from the area, for years.

“Our position is that these are unsubstantiated allegations, accusations,” he said.

“In the age of the improvement of AI, I really don’t put any credibility in any of this until he admits it.

“CNN has a great deal of credibility problems and they have for several years.”

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In the end, Greene said the presidential race will all come down to voter turnout, and it’s unclear how Robinson will affect that.

He was already known for outlandish statements. People’s minds are probably largely made up, he said.

It certainly seemed that way in Johnston County.

One Republican voter, who did not want to be named, said he would not vote for Robinson, who he said “had a loud mouth”.

But he has no problem voting for Trump.

“I don’t know what Trump knew about Robinson. The news of Robinson has no effect on me,” he said.

Evelyn Costelloe, 66, who has voted for Republicans in the past but not recently, said she will back the Democrats because of their stance on abortion. And Robinson’s comments didn’t help either, she said.

“I don’t know about all these accusations, but I do know the stuff he’s said. Stuff like that makes me want to vote for sure,” she told the BBC.

Given that Trump only won North Carolina by about 75,000 votes in 2020, even a little bit of political damage spilling over from Robinson could make a difference.

For now, however, North Carolina remains a deep shade of purple.

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.

An Israeli air strike on a school in Gaza City has killed at least 22 Palestinians, mostly women and children, according to Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said it targeted a Hamas command centre at al-Falah school, which Israel said the militant group was using to “plan and carry out terrorist attacks against IDF troops and the State of Israel”.

The school, closed during the war, was housing displaced people, the health ministry said.

The IDF said it took steps to mitigate the risk of harming civilians and accused Hamas of exploiting civilian infrastructure.

The IDF said it used precise munitions and aerial surveillance to reduce civilian risk. It alleged that Hamas “systematically violates international law by operating from inside civilian infrastructure in the Gaza Strip and exploiting the Gazan civilian population for its terrorist activities”.

Hamas has denied using schools and other civilian sites for military purposes.

The Hamas-run government media office said the people killed in Saturday’s strike in the al-Zaytoun area included several children and six women.

Gaza’s civil defence agency reported the same death toll and added that one of the women was pregnant.

Also on Saturday, the health ministry said that four of its workers were killed and six injured in an Israeli “targeting” of a health ministry warehouse in the Musabah area of southern Gaza. The ministry did not specify whether the incident was an air strike.

The BBC has approached the IDF for comment on the report of health workers killed.

Other schools have been hit, some several times, by Israeli air strikes since the latest conflict with Hamas began on 7 October.

Earlier this month, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (Unrwa) said six of its employees were killed in an Israeli air strike on al-Jaouni school in Nuseirat refugee camp, which is being used as a shelter by thousands of displaced Palestinians.

Unrwa said it was the fifth time the school had been hit since 7 October.

Israel’s military said it carried out a “precise strike on terrorists” planning attacks from the school. The military alleged that nine of those killed were members of Hamas’s armed wing and that three of them were Unrwa staff.

Hamas gunmen attacked Israel on 7 October last year, killing about 1,200 people and taking 251 others as hostages.

Israel responded with a military campaign in Gaza that has killed more than 41,000 people, according to the health ministry.

In just eight months, Chappell Roan has gone from being a relative unknown to suddenly topping charts as one of the biggest new pop stars on the planet.

But as the Missouri-born 26-year-old concludes a sold-out UK tour, the dark matter of mega-fame, and its invasive superfandom, threatens to cast a shadow over her success.

In August, she posted two TikToks, now collectively viewed over 30 million times, calling out the “creepy behaviour” she’s experienced and telling fans to respect her boundaries.

And on Instagram, she wrote “women don’t owe” anything, after one fan grabbed and kissed her in a bar. Elsewhere, police had to intervene when an autograph hunter wouldn’t take no for an answer.

This week, she went a step further, telling The Face magazine she “might quit” the music industry if the harassment towards her and those closest doesn’t subside.

Fame, she concluded, has the “vibe of an abusive ex-husband”.

Some see Roan’s comments – and similar remarks from other artists – as evidence that the relationships between stars and their fans is dramatically changing.

Chappell Roan is the drag alter ego of Kayleigh Amstutz, and she has tried to keep the two identities separate.

Even with the stage persona, her authenticity is key to her appeal. But being relatable has drawbacks for a modern-day pop star.

“It’s such an interesting world we live in where everyone wants to see who you really are on social media. But there’s this delusion that they know you and that they can tell you anything,” she told Glamour magazine last year.

At meet-and-greets, LGBT fans dump their difficult coming-out experiences on her. “My music has helped a lot of people through that trauma, and I love that,” she added.

“But personally, as Kayleigh, I can’t handle that responsibility.”

Roan’s attempts to set boundaries and redefine modern-day fan-artist relationships have, unsurprisingly, led to a backlash.

On their podcast, Perez Hilton and Chris Booker supported Roan’s calls for more healthy fan relationships, but warned that her repetitive criticisms of fame – all while courting media attention – left her open to accusations of being a “sourpuss”.

Online critics see Roan’s remarks as entitled, saying any negative sides to the attention are part and parcel of fame and fortune.

However, most fans support Roan. Lily Waite, a trans woman aged 29, tells BBC News she found the star’s openness groundbreaking and empowering, but understands her request for more considerate reactions.

“The majority of fans are wonderful and earnest and respectful, but those aren’t the fans she’s addressing or referring to in her videos asserting boundaries,” says Waite, who feels misogyny lies behind much of the backlash.

Rebecca Clark, 35, who identifies as queer, suggests Roan’s background in the drag/queer scene – which Clark argues is more understanding of mental health – has left her more “exposed on the worldwide stage”.

Still, Clark backs her, particularly as she challenges the superficiality of those only supporting star authenticity when it is positive. “She is self-aware enough to have seen what’s happened in the past to other pop stars and actively set a boundary for her fans.

“As the first massively out female pop star since Lady Gaga, she’s amazing. But again, that doesn’t mean she’s owes fans a personal one-on-one. She’s just a person too.”

If Roan is making the most high-profile and perhaps intense attempt to impose boundaries, she is certainly not alone in speaking up.

Paramore singer Hayley Williams publicly backed the remarks. “This happens to every woman I know from this business, myself included,” she wrote. “Social media has made this worse. I’m really thankful Chappell is willing to address it in a real way, in real time. It’s brave and unfortunately necessary.”

Mitski welcomed her to “the club where strangers think you belong to them and they find and harass your family members”.

Indie band Muna also chastised “toxic” elements of their own fanbase, and Billie Eilish’s song The Diner similarly discussed being stalked.

For Sarah Ditum, author of Toxic, a book exploring female superstardom over recent decades, this year has marked “a tipping point” in celebs openly saying fans are crossing a line.

She believes it’s easier for this generation of stars to talk about because they’ve grown up with the language of mental health and boundaries as “pop culture has been reassessing the treatment of stars in the noughties” – in particular Britney Spears.

As the millennial pop princess, Spears’ arc serves as a warning to all who follow. She symbolises both the era’s exploitation – marketed to the masses as a teen sex kitten aged just 16 – and the shift in the pressures of fame brought about by a changing media.

Experiencing the height of fame in the pre-social media age, Spears’ tightly controlled career saw her suffocated by the paparazzi and male executives until a very public breakdown.

For Roan, the attention now comes from fans who, thanks to social media, can form parasocial relationships – the psychological term to describe the illusion of a friendship or bond with a star they’ve never met.

This makes fame particularly intense for this generation, says Ditum.

“In one sense, social media is an incredible power in their hands. They don’t have to go through a potentially hostile press and can speak direct to their audience on their own terms.

“But it also gives incredible power to the audience.”

A New Zealand pilot who has been freed more than 19 months after being taken hostage by separatists in Indonesia says he is “very happy” to be going home to his family.

Philip Mehrtens was kidnapped by West Papua National Liberation Army fighters in February 2023 and was released after lengthy negotiations into the care of Indonesian officials on Saturday.

He appeared before cameras looking thin and with a full beard but is said to be in good health.

The 38-year-old was kidnapped after he landed a small commercial plane in the remote, mountainous area of Nduga.

“Today I have been freed. I am very happy that shortly I will be able to go home and meet my family,” Mr Mehrtens, speaking in Indonesian, told reporters in Timika.

“Thank you for everybody who helped me today, so I can get out safely in a healthy condition.”

His release follows months of “critical” diplomatic efforts by authorities in Wellington and Jakarta.

New Zealand Prime Minister Christopher Luxon welcomed the release and New Zealand foreign minister Winston Peters added: “His family will be absolutely over the moon”.

Indonesian police spokesperson Bayu Suseno said Mr Mehrtens was released and then picked up in a village called Yuguru in the Maibarok district before being flown to the city of Timika.

Several days before the release, rebels told the BBC Indonesian service they would free Mr Mehrtens “safely and in accordance with international standards for the protection of human rights”.

“We the West Papua National Liberation Army (TPNPB), remain committed to upholding the values of peace, respect and dignity in this situation,” spokesman Sebby Sambom said.

The pilot, a father-of-one, is being flown to Jakarta to be reunited with his family.

He was kidnapped after his small passenger plane – which belongs to Indonesia’s Susi Air – landed in Nduga in February last year.

He was meant to return a few hours later after dropping off five passengers but shortly after landing, rebels targeted the single-engine plane and seized him.

The five other passengers, who were indigenous Papuans, were released.

The kidnapping was part of a long-running, often brutally violent conflict between the Indonesian government and West Papua’s indigenous people.

In April, at least one Indonesian soldier was killed after being ambushed by rebels while searching for the kidnapped New Zealander in the Papua region.

Last month another New Zealand pilot, 50-year-old Glen Malcolm Conning, was shot dead by a pro-independence group known as Free Papua Organisation (OPM) after landing in the region with two Indonesian health workers and two children, all of whom survived.

Authorities said the group responsible for Mr Conning’s death is the same that was holding Mr Mehrtens.

A spokesperson from the West Papua National Liberation Army previously told the BBC Indonesian service they wanted to hold Mr Mehrtens captive until countries “like New Zealand and Australia” took responsibility for their alleged role in violence in Papua.

Indonesian President Joko Widodo said on Saturday that Jakarta had been able to secure Mr Mehrtens’ safety through ongoing negotiation, and not force.

Speaking to reporters he said: “We prioritised the safety of the pilot who was held hostage. It took a long process”.

The region is a former Dutch colony divided into two provinces, Papua and West Papua. It is separate from Papua New Guinea, which secured independence from Australia in 1975.

Papuan rebels seeking independence from Indonesia have previously issued threats and attacked aircraft they believe to be carrying personnel and supplies for Jakarta.

The resource-rich region has been caught in a battle for independence since it was brought under Indonesia’s control in a disputed UN-supervised vote in 1969.

Conflicts between indigenous Papuans and the Indonesian authorities have been common since, with pro-independence fighters mounting more frequent attacks since 2018.

On Sunday, voters in the eastern German state of Brandenburg will vote for a new regional parliament. The anti-migrant far-right Alternative for Germany, or AfD, could win the most votes. On 1 September the AfD won a major German election for the first time, coming first in the eastern state of Thuringia. In Brandenburg polls show the AfD leading with 28%.

To undermine support for the AfD, Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s left wing-led government on Monday introduced checks for migrants on all of Germany’s borders. He also wants to increase deportations of people whose application for asylum is unsuccessful. Opposition conservatives meanwhile want the borders closed to asylum seekers altogether.

This is a very different country to the Germany of Angela Merkel. Almost a decade ago the then-chancellor refused to shut the borders to hundreds of thousands of people fleeing war and persecution in Syria and Afghanistan. “Wir schaffen das”, or “We can do it”, she famously said.

In 2015 and 2016 Germany took in around 1.5 million refugees and migrants, mostly from the Middle East. They were greeted at train stations with signs saying “welcome” and smiling volunteers handing out food and toys. A new German word was invented, “Willkommenskultur” or “welcome culture”, and many Germans were suddenly proud of the country’s new-found identity as a safe haven for refugees.

Today, many of those refugees are becoming German themselves. A record 200,000 people became German citizens in 2023. The largest group came from Syria. These are the New Germans.

The “2015 generation” is described as highly motivated by experts. Many could have stayed in Lebanon and Turkey, but pushed themselves on to Germany to make a new life. They are on average younger than the native-born population – 26 years old compared to the German average of 47 – and statistically more likely to be in work: 84% of the Syrian men who arrived in 2015 are in employment, compared to 81% of German-born men.

But with the rise of the AfD and an ever harsher tone towards migrants in mainstream politics, the 2015 “welcome culture” is hard to find today.

Fewer refugees are now coming to Germany, with new arrivals down this year by 22% compared to the same period in 2023. But overall 3.48 million refugees are now living in the country — more than at any time since the 1950s. A third are from Ukraine.

Some local councils say they are struggling to cope logistically and financially. Right-wingers and the AfD say numbers are too high. Left-wingers blame the finance ministry’s obsession with balancing the books and refusal to take on new debt. Add that to an enormous boost in military spending after Russia’s full invasion of Ukraine, and there is a nervousness in Germany that money and resources are tight. Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s argumentative and divided coalition government has not helped voters feel more secure in the country’s leadership.

So how do the New Germans feel about this shift in mood in Germany?

Parvin was one of those who arrived in 2015, travelling for months, mostly walking, from Afghanistan to Germany with her three-year old son and disabled nephew. They were shot at by border guards and she feared for her life when the overcrowded dinghy they were in starting sinking in the Mediterranean.

She has now just received her German citizenship and this summer qualified as a social worker. A refugee success story, you might think. But she says the atmosphere has got worse for migrants since 2015. “I don’t feel welcome here,” she tells me.

“The rise of the far right and the hate towards refugees is mostly because of the bad picture of refugees in German media,” she says. “When one refugee does something bad, the media makes it really big. And then of course people think that all refugees are bad.”

The latest political debate over migration started in August, after a stabbing in the town of Solingen, in which three people were killed. The suspect is a Syrian asylum seeker who the authorities had wanted to deport. The following week saw multiple knife attacks across Germany not involving refugees — including two separate stabbings in Berlin in which women were killed by their ex-partners. These cases did not hit headlines.

The far-right AfD immediately used the Solingen stabbing as part of its election campaign for September’s regional election in Thuringia. Two hours after the attack AfD regional leader Björn Höcke, who has been legally defined by German courts as a fascist and fined for using a Nazi slogan at rallies, posted on X “vote for change on 1.9” alongside the hashtag Solingen.

In Erfurt, the capital of Thuringia, I meet Sultana, as she organises a protest against the far right. She fled to Germany a decade ago from Afghanistan, when she was 10 years old. She is now about to go to university to study law, speaks German to mother-tongue level and is politically active, often addressing large demonstrations. But she can’t vote. She has applied for German citizenship but is still waiting for an answer.

Sultana’s mother Latifa tells me that she is terrified that, after rebuilding their lives here in Germany, the family might have to flee again. This time, to escape the far right.

“We are incredibly afraid and we know we are being threatened. But you have to understand that this has been the reality for years,” Sultana says, and adds that the problem is not just the AfD, but the racism that she, and many others, regularly experience.

“I speak German, I dream German, my whole life revolves around being German. I ask myself what more do I have to do, to be recognised as German,” she tells me with tears in her eyes.

For Sultana the answer is to get even more politically active. “We have no choice. Many of the migrants have no citizenship, and so have no right to vote. But we have voices and we want to take these voices out onto the streets and say: we are here and we are staying here!”

But other New Germans are thinking about leaving altogether. As soon as she got her German passport, Parvin was finally able to visit her sister in London for the first time, in August. Now that she is a qualified social worker, she is even thinking about moving to the UK. She tells me she felt more welcome there.

A study published last week by DeZIM, an institute that researches migration, found that almost a quarter of people with a migration background, many of them German citizens, are considering emigrating because of the rise of the far-right. Almost 10 percent say they have concrete plans to leave Germany.

The paradox is that the government is desperate to attract workers to Germany. But the increasingly hostile rhetoric over migration may not only put people off coming, but also push away those go-getting New Germans who are already leading successful lives here.

Popstar Kylie Minogue has announced her biggest world tour in more than a decade, and a sequel to her comeback album Tension.

The 13 tracks on Tension II will be released on 18 October, with the global tour kicking off in her home country Australia in February, before swinging through Asia and the UK.

In a statement, the pop icon said she is “beyond excited” to be “celebrating the Tension era and more” with fans.

“There will be a whole lot of Padaming,” she said, a reference to her viral, Grammy-winning 2023 single Padam Padam.

Twenty dates have been announced so far, but Minogue said more are coming.

The 56-year-old is in the middle of a career renaissance, off the back of Tension and Padam Padam.

In February she picked up her second Grammy – 20 years after her first – and the following month received the Brits’ Global Icon Award.

Since popping up as plucky car mechanic Charlene on soap opera Neighbours in 1986, she’s racked up dozens of hit singles and a trophy cabinet full of awards.

She’s also performed at the Sydney Olympics, been made an OBE, and starred in several films.

The tour and album has been met with excitement – and some stress.

The concert dates in Newcastle clash with Eurovision which is being held in Switzerland in May.

Meanwhile, her shows in Sydney are happening at the same time as the annual Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras parade – prompting many of her Australian fans to weigh up a difficult dilemma. Minogue has a large following in the LGBT community.

“What should we do… On a Night Like This?!” one online commenter said.

After thousands of pagers and radio devices exploded in two separate incidents in Lebanon – injuring thousands of people and killing at least 37 – details are still being pieced together as to how such an operation was carried out.

Lebanon and Hezbollah, whose members and communication systems were targeted, have blamed Israel – though Israel is yet to comment.

The BBC has followed a trail from Taiwan, to Japan, Hungary, Israel and back to Lebanon.

Here are the unanswered questions.

Some early speculation suggested that the pagers could have been targeted by a complex hack that caused them to explode. But that theory was quickly dismissed by experts.

To cause damage on the scale that they did, it is probable they were rigged with explosives before they entered Hezbollah’s possession, experts say.

Images of the broken remains of the pagers show the logo of a small Taiwanese electronics manufacturer: Gold Apollo.

The BBC visited the company’s offices, situated on a large business park in a nondescript suburb of Taipei.

The company’s founder, Hsu Ching-Kuang, seemed shocked. He denied the business had anything to do with the operation.

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

Instead – he pointed to a Hungarian company: BAC Consulting.

Mr Hsu said that three years ago he had licensed Gold Apollo’s trademark to BAC, allowing them to use Gold Apollo’s name on their own pagers.

He said the money transfers from BAC had been “very strange” – and that there had been problems with the payments, which had come from the Middle East.

• Taiwan pager maker stunned by link to Lebanon attacks

The BBC went to the registered office of BAC Consulting, situated in a residential area of the Hungarian capital, Budapest.

The address appeared to be shared by 12 other companies – and no-one in the building could tell us anything about BAC Consulting at all.

Officials in Hungary say the firm, which was first incorporated in 2022, was merely a “trading intermediary with no manufacturing or operational site” in the country.

A brochure for BAC, published on LinkedIn, lists eight organisations it claims to have worked with – including the UK Department for International Development (DfID).

The UK Foreign Office – which has taken on DfID’s responsibilities – told the BBC it was in the process of investigating. But based on initial conversations, it said it did not have any involvement with BAC.

BAC’s website listed one person as its chief executive and founder – Cristiana Bársony-Arcidiacono.

The BBC made several attempts to contact Ms Bársony-Arcidiacono, but were unable to reach her.

However, she did reportedly speak to NBC News, saying: “I don’t make the pagers. I am just the intermediate.”

So who is really behind BAC Consulting?

The New York Times has reported that the company was in fact a front for Israeli intelligence.

The newspaper, citing three Israeli officials, said that two other shell companies were created to help hide the identities of the people who were really producing the pagers: Israeli intelligence officers.

The BBC has not been able to independently verify these reports – but we do know that Bulgarian authorities have now begun investigating another company linked to BAC.

Bulgarian broadcaster bTV reported on Thursday that 1.6 million euros ($1.8m; £1.3m) connected to the device attacks in Lebanon passed through Bulgaria and was later sent to Hungary.

• What we know about firm linked to Lebanon pagers

The origins of the radio devices, which exploded in the second wave of attacks, are less clear.

We know that at least some of those that exploded were the IC-V82 model produced by the Japanese company, ICOM.

Those devices were purchased by Hezbollah five months ago, according to a security source speaking to Reuters news agency.

Earlier, a sales executive at the US subsidiary of Icom told the Associated Press news agency that the exploded radio devices in Lebanon appeared to be knockoff products that were not made by the company – adding that it was easy to find counterfeit versions online.

It took the BBC a matter of seconds to find Icom IC-V82s listed for sale in online marketplaces.

ICOM said in a statement it had stopped manufacturing and selling the model almost a decade ago, in October 2014 – and said it had also discontinued production of the batteries needed to operate it.

The company said it does not outsource manufacturing overseas – and all its radios are produced at a factory in Western Japan.

According to Kyodo news agency, Icom director Yoshiki Enomoyo suggested that photos of the damage around the battery compartment of the exploded walkie-talkies suggest they may have been retrofitted with explosives.

• Japan firm says it stopped making walkie-talkies used in Lebanon blasts

Videos show victims reaching into their pockets in the seconds before the devices detonated, causing chaos in streets, shops and homes across the country.

Lebanese authorities have concluded that the devices were detonated by “electronic messages” sent to them, according to a letter by the Lebanese mission to the UN, seen by Reuters news agency.

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.

We do not yet know what kind of message was sent to the radio devices.

This is the question many in Lebanon are now asking – paranoid that other devices, cameras, phones or laptops could have also been rigged with explosives.

The Lebanese Army has been on the streets of Beirut using a remote-controlled bomb disposal robot to carry out controlled explosions.

BBC crews in Lebanon have been stopped and told not to use their phones or cameras.

“Everyone is just panicking… We don’t know if we can stay next to our laptops, our phones. Everything seems like a danger at this point, and no-one knows what to do,” one woman, Ghida, told a BBC correspondent.

• ‘We don’t know if our phones are safe’: Lebanon on edge after exploding device attacks

There are several theories as to why the devices were triggered to explode this week.

One is that Israel chose this moment to send a devastating message to Hezbollah, following almost a year of escalating cross-border hostilities after Hezbollah fired rockets at or around northern Israel a day after the Hamas attack of 7 October.

The other is that Israel did not intend to put its plan in motion at this moment, but was forced to after fearing the plot was about to be exposed.

According to US outlet Axios, the original plan was for the pager attack to be the opening salvo of an all-out war as a way to try to cripple Hezbollah’s fighters.

But, it says, after Israel learned that Hezbollah had become suspicious, it chose to carry out the attack early.

A Lebanese surgeon has described how the sheer volume of severe wounds from two days of exploding device attacks forced him to act “robotic” just to be able to keep working.

Surgeon Elias Jaradeh said he treated women and children but most of the patients he saw were young men. The surgeon said a large proportion were “severely injured” and many had lost the sight in both eyes.

The dead and injured in Lebanon include fighters from Hezbollah – the Iranian backed armed group which has been trading cross-border fire with Israel for months and is classed as a terrorist organisation by the UK and the US.

But members of their families have also been killed or wounded, along with innocent bystanders. Elias Jaradeh described the wounded he treated as looking “mostly civilian”.

The bomb attacks – which killed 37 people including two children – have been widely blamed on Israel, which has not claimed responsibility.

Dr Jaradeh, who is also an MP for the Change parliamentary bloc, was working at a specialist eye and ear hospital where some of the most severely wounded people were sent. He said it had taken a toll on the medical teams, himself included.

“And, yes, it’s very hard,” the surgeon said. “You have to dissociate yourself. More or less, you are robotic. This is the way you have to behave, but inside, you are deeply injured. You are seeing the nation injured.”

Surgeons like Dr Jaradeh worked for almost 24 hours continuously on the wounded, many of whom have lost their eyesight or the use of their hands, the country’s health minister told the BBC.

Eye specialist Prof Elias Warrak told BBC Arabic that in one night he extracted more damaged eyes than he had previously in his entire career.

“It was very hard,” he said. “Most of the patients were young men in their twenties and in some cases I had to remove both eyes. In my whole life I had not seen scenes similar to what I saw yesterday.”

Health Minister Firass Abiad told the BBC the victims’ injuries would prove life-changing.

“This is something that unfortunately will require a lot of rehabilitation,” he said.

About 3,200 people were injured, most of them in Tuesday’s attack which saw thousands of pagers detonated.

Wednesday’s attack, which detonated two-way radio devices, wounded about 450 people but was responsible for 25 deaths, twice as many as in Tuesday’s blasts.

Abiad told the BBC the attacks constituted a war crime.

“The whole world could see that these attacks occurred in markets,” he said.

“These were not people who were at the battleground fighting. They were in civilian areas with their families.”

Witnesses described seeing people with severe wounds to their faces and hands after the attacks.

Journalist Sally Abou al-Joud says she saw patients “covered in blood” at hospitals, where ambulances were arriving “one after the other within the minute”. Most injuries she saw were “in the faces and the eyes”.

“We’re talking about hands injured, severely injured fingers torn, I’ve heard some doctors say we need to perform amputation surgeries to remove hands… they need to perform surgeries for eyes to remove them,” she said.

One woman told BBC Arabic on Thursday that what they had seen was a “massacre in every sense of the world”.

“Young men were walking in the street with injuries to their hands, waist and eyes… they were unable to see anything,” she said.

In the aftermath of Tuesday’s blasts, writer and politician Tracy Chamoun said she saw one man with his eye blown out and another “had half of his face ripped off”. She had been driving in southern Beirut – a Hezbollah stronghold – at the time.

Many Lebanese in Beirut say the device attacks have reignited their trauma from the Beirut port explosion four years ago.

At least 200 people were killed and 5,000 injured when thousands of tonnes of ammonium nitrate stored unsafely at a warehouse in the port blew up, sending a mushroom cloud into the air and a supersonic blastwave tearing through the city.

“We remembered such painful scenes… it is something truly terrifying,” one woman told BBC Arabic. “A state of confusion, discomfort and anxiety is dominating all Lebanon… what happened to us four years ago is being repeated now.”

In the aftermath of the exploding pagers and radio devices the Lebanese army has been destroying suspicious devices with controlled detonations, while walkie-talkies and pagers have now been banned onboard all flights operating at Beirut’s Rafic Hariri Airport – the only operational commercial airport in Lebanon.

More than 90 of those injured are now in Iran receiving further treatment, according to Tehran’s embassy in Lebanon.

That includes Iran’s ambassador, Mojtaba Amani, whose condition has been described as “very good” by the embassy in its statement.

Officials didn’t elaborate on how serious the injuries suffered by the other transferees were.

Abiad said the “weaponisation of technology” was something very serious, he said, not only for Lebanon but also for the rest of the world, and for other conflicts.

“Now we have to think twice before using technology,” he said.

On Thursday Hezbollah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah described the device attacks as a “massacre” and a “declaration of war” as Israel carried out air strikes on southern Lebanon and jets flew over the capital at low altitude, creating a deafening noise.

The Shia Muslim organisation is a major political presence and controls the most powerful armed force in Lebanon.

It has been trading near-daily cross border fire with Israel since Israel began its retaliation against Hamas in the Gaza Strip after the Palestinian group attacked southern Israel last October. Hezbollah says it is acting in solidarity with the Palestinians.

Israel has said it is changing its military focus to its border with Lebanon, with the aim of returning tens of thousands of displaced residents to their homes. Hezbollah has previously said it would stop firing if there is a ceasefire in Gaza.

Both Dr Jaradeh and Health Minister Abiad are pessimistic about the chances of peace any time soon. Dr Jaradeh described the escalation in Lebanon as a “rebound effect”.

“I think whatever happens, it doesn’t matter how you end up the world, but if you don’t reach a peace, permanent peace process, that protecting everyone and giving the right to everyone, so we are preparing to another war,” he said.

Abiad said Lebanon needed to prepare for the “worst-case scenario”.

“The two attacks in the last day, show that their intent (Israel) is not towards a diplomatic solution,” he said.

“What I know is the position of my government is clear. From day one, we believe that Lebanon does not want war.”

The Taiwanese government has said none of the components in thousands of pagers used by the armed group Hezbollah that exploded in Lebanon earlier this week were made on the island.

Fragments of the pagers that blew up had labels which pointed to Taiwanese manufacturer Gold Apollo. But the firm denied making the devices used in the attack.

The Lebanese government says 12 people, including two children, were killed and nearly 3,000 injured in the explosions on Tuesday.

The incident, along with another attack involving exploding walkie-talkies, was blamed on Israel and marked a major escalation in the conflict between the two sides.

“The components for Hezbollah’s pagers were not produced by us,” Taiwan’s economy minister Kuo Jyh-huei told reporters on Friday.

He added that a judicial investigation is already under way.

“I want to unearth the truth, because Taiwan has never exported this particular pager model,” Taiwan foreign minister, Lin Chia-lung said.

Earlier this week, Gold Apollo boss Hsu Ching-Kuang denied his business had anything to do with the attacks.

He said he licensed his trade mark to a company in Hungary called BAC Consulting to use the Gold Apollo name on their own pagers.

The BBC’s attempts to contact BAC have so far been unsuccessful. Its CEO Cristiana Bársony-Arcidiacono told the US news outlet NBC that she knew nothing and denied her company made the pagers.

The Hungarian government has said BAC had “no manufacturing or operational site” in the country.

But a New York Times report said that BAC was a shell company that acted as a front for Israel, citing Israeli intelligence officers.

In another round of blasts on Wednesday, exploding walkie-talkies killed 20 people and injured at least 450, Lebanon’s health ministry said.

Japanese handheld radio manufacturer Icom has distanced itself from the walkie-talkies that bear its logo, saying it discontinued production of the devices a decade ago.

Iran-backed Hezbollah has blamed Israel for what it called “this criminal aggression” and vowed that it would get “just retribution”.

The Israeli military has declined to comment.

The two sides have been engaged in cross-border warfare since the Gaza conflict erupted last October.

The difficulty in identifying the makers of the devices has highlighted how complicated the global electronics supply chain has become.

“I am walking around feeling terrified of somebody who is dead,” explains Gemma, who has been reliving the moment when she says Mohamed Al Fayed raped her.

“He just had that power – I am petrified of someone who is no longer alive”.

She is among more than 20 women who told us the former Harrods owner sexually assaulted or raped them while they worked at the luxury London department store.

Many of them describe being imprisoned by a similar sense of fear; it is what kept them from coming forward for so many years.

• Watch BBC documentary in full – Al Fayed: Predator at Harrods

Some were worried our documentary team might have been secretly working for the businessman’s associates when we first contacted them after his death last August.

Even after we provided assurances, they were concerned about how those close to him might react. There were lots of conversations about what might happen if our meetings were discovered.

We could sense their paranoia about the consequences of speaking out and the fear engendered in them by Fayed and the people who worked for him. In these circumstances, the bravery of these women is to be applauded even more.

Fayed was a man who used money and power throughout his life to bully and intimidate his way into getting what he wanted.

In the early 1990s, a government investigation concluded he had lied when he bought Harrods. He deployed dirty tricks against Tiny Rowland, his rival in buying the business, and was even accused of stealing items from his safety deposit box at the store.

A few years later, he caused the downfall of Tory politicians when he went public about bribing them to ask questions for him in parliament. He was not a man to be crossed.

At Harrods, his personal fiefdom, he created an intimidating atmosphere where a phalanx of bodyguards protected him around the clock and where surveillance equipment was installed in backroom offices.

Alice, not her real name, said she received a phone call from Fayed’s head of security after, in 1995, he found out she had spoken to a journalist about their boss’s behaviour. She says she was 16 years old when Fayed sexually assaulted her.

“He said that I wasn’t to be involved in the article and that, if I went against his advice, I should be aware that he knew where my parents lived – It turned me cold.”

Alice didn’t speak about her experiences again until she gave an interview to the BBC recently.

Fayed also corrupted the store’s HR department, which played a role in promoting young women from the shop floor to work in his executive suite – aware of his interest in them.

“We all watched each other walk through that door thinking, ‘you poor girl, it’s you today’ and feeling utterly powerless to stop it,” recalls Alice.

We now know that in Gemma’s case a senior member of the Harrods HR department was present in 2009 when lawyers destroyed evidence of his sexual misconduct against her. This included messages he had sent her and tapes of nasty voicemails.

Gemma began working as one of Fayed’s personal assistants in 2007. She says Fayed raped her at his villa in France after she woke to find him next to her bed.

After it was over, she cried while he got up and told her aggressively to wash herself with Dettol. “Obviously he wanted me to erase any trace of him being anywhere near me,” she explains.

Many of the women raped and sexually assaulted by Fayed decided to speak out only after his death because they felt it was finally safe enough to do so.

But that wasn’t the only reason. Some were angered by the positive way he was portrayed in the Netflix series The Crown.

They thought this was a rewriting of history and the truth about him needed to be revealed.

“It feels good to change the legacy of a man who really was a monster,” says Natacha, another women subjected to Fayed’s behaviour. “I don’t think we really comprehended that at the time.”

Speaking at a press conference on Friday, the morning after our documentary was broadcast, she said: “I finally have the opportunity and freedom to speak up. I no longer feel afraid so I speak for my daughters, my nieces … and all the survivors of sexual abuse in this room today who were silenced for so many years.”

Around 20 of Fayed’s victims had gathered at the event to listen to lawyers lay out the details of his alleged crimes. Others were still too afraid to come.

A BBC investigation into allegations of rape and attempted rape by Mohamed Al Fayed, the former owner of Harrods. Did the luxury store protect a billionaire predator?

Watch Al-Fayed: Predator at Harrods on BBC iPlayer now.

Listen to World of Secrets, Season 4: Al Fayed, Predator at Harrods on BBC Sounds. If you’re outside the UK, you can listen wherever you get your podcasts, external.

“One village, two countries” used to be the tagline for Yinjing on China’s south-western edge.

An old tourist sign boasts of a border with Myanmar made of just “bamboo fences, ditches and earth ridges” – a sign of the easy economic relationship Beijing had sought to build with its neighbour.

Now the border the BBC visited is marked by a high, metal fence running through the county of Ruili in Yunnan province. Topped by barbed wire and surveillance cameras in some places, it cuts through rice fields and carves up once-adjoined streets.

China’s tough pandemic lockdowns forced the separation initially. But it has since been cemented by the intractable civil war in Myanmar, triggered by a bloody coup in 2021. The military regime is now fighting for control in large swathes of the country, including Shan State along China’s border, where it has suffered some of its biggest losses.

The crisis at its doorstep – a nearly 2,000km (1,240-mile) border – is becoming costly for China, which has invested millions of dollars in Myanmar for a critical trade corridor.

The ambitious plan aims to connect China’s landlocked south-west to the Indian Ocean via Myanmar. But the corridor has become a battleground between Myanmar rebels and the country’s army.

Beijing has sway over both sides but the ceasefire it brokered in January fell apart. It has now turned to military exercises along the border and stern words. Foreign Minister Wang Yi was the latest diplomat to visit Myanmar’s capital Nay Pyi Taw and is thought to have delivered a warning to the country’s ruler Min Aung Hlaing.

Conflict is not new to impoverished Shan State. Myanmar’s biggest state is a major source of the world’s opium and and methamphetamine, and home to ethnic armies long opposed to centralised rule.

But the vibrant economic zones created by Chinese investment managed to thrive – until the civil war.

A loudspeaker now warns people in Ruili not to get too close to the fence – but that doesn’t stop a Chinese tourist from sticking his arm between the bars of a gate to take a selfie.

Two girls in Disney T-shirts shout through the bars – “hey grandpa, hello, look over here!” – as they lick pink scoops of ice cream. The elderly man shuffling barefoot on the other side barely looks up before he turns away.

“Burmese people live like dogs,” says Li Mianzhen. Her corner stall sells food and drinks from Myanmar – like milk tea – in a small market just steps from the border checkpoint in Ruili city.

Li, who looks to be in her 60s, used to sell Chinese clothes across the border in Muse, a major source of trade with China. But she says almost no-one in her town has enough money any more.

Myanmar’s military junta still controls the town, one of its last remaining holdouts in Shan State. But rebel forces have taken other border crossings and a key trading zone on the road to Muse.

The situation has made people desperate, Li says. She knows of some who have crossed the border to earn as little as 10 yuan – about one pound and not much more than a dollar – so that they can go back to Myanmar and “feed their families”.

The war has severely restricted travel in and out of Myanmar, and most accounts now come from those who have fled or have found ways to move across the borders, such as Li.

Unable to get the work passes that would allow them into China, Li’s family is stuck in Mandalay, as rebel forces edge closer to Myanmar’s second-largest city.

“I feel like I am dying from anxiety,” Li says. “This war has brought us so much misfortune. At what point will all of this end?”

Thirty-one-year-old Zin Aung (name changed) is among those who made it out. He works in an industrial park on the outskirts of Ruili, which produces clothes, electronics and vehicle parts that are shipped across the world.

Workers like him are recruited in large numbers from Myanmar and flown here by Chinese government-backed firms eager for cheap labour. Estimates suggest they earn about 2,400 yuan ($450; £340) a month, which is less than their Chinese colleagues.

“There is nothing for us to do in Myanmar because of the war,” Zin Aung says. “Everything is expensive. Rice, cooking oil. Intensive fighting is going on everywhere. Everyone has to run.”

His parents are too old to run, so he did. He sends home money whenever he can.

The men live and work on the few square kilometres of the government-run compound in Ruili. Zin Aung says it is a sanctuary, compared with what they left behind: “The situation in Myanmar is not good, so we are taking refuge here.”

He also escaped compulsory conscription, which the Myanmar army has been enforcing to make up for defections and battlefield losses.

As the sky turned scarlet one evening, Zin Aung ran barefoot through the cloying mud onto a monsoon-soaked pitch, ready for a different kind of battle – a fiercely fought game of football.

Burmese, Chinese and the local Yunnan dialect mingled as vocal spectators reacted to every pass, kick and shot. The agony over a missed goal was unmistakable. This is a daily affair in their new, temporary home, a release after a 12-hour shift on the assembly line.

Many of the workers are from Lashio, the largest town in Shan State, and Laukkaing, home to junta-backed crime families – Laukkaing fell to rebel forces in January and Lashio was encircled, in a campaign which has changed the course of the war and China’s stake in it.

Both towns lie along China’s prized trade corridor and the Beijing-brokered ceasefire left Lashio in the hands of the junta. But in recent weeks rebel forces have pushed into the town – their biggest victory to date. The military has responded with bombing raids and drone attacks, restricting internet and mobile phone networks.

“The fall of Lashio is one of the most humiliating defeats in the military’s history,” says Richard Horsey, Myanmar adviser to the International Crisis Group.

“The only reason the rebel groups didn’t push into Muse is they likely feared it would upset China,” Mr Horsey says. “Fighting there would have impacted investments China has hoped to restart for months. The regime has lost control of almost all northern Shan state – with the exception of Muse region, which is right next to Ruili.”

Ruili and Muse, both designated as special trade zones, are crucial to the Beijing-funded 1,700km trade route, known as the China-Myanmar Economic Corridor. The route also supports Chinese investments in energy, infrastructure and rare earth mining critical for manufacturing electric vehicles.

But at its heart is a railway line that will connect Kunming – the capital of Yunnan province – to Kyaukphyu, a deep sea port the Chinese are building on Myanmar’s western coast.

The port, along the Bay of Bengal, would give industries in and beyond Ruili access to the Indian Ocean and then global markets. The port is also the starting point for oil and gas pipelines that will transport energy via Myanmar to Yunnan.

But these plans are now in jeopardy.

President Xi Jinping had spent years cultivating ties with his resource-rich neighbour when the country’s elected leader Aung San Suu Kyi was forced from power.

Mr Xi refused to condemn the coup and continued to sell the army weapons. But he also did not recognise Min Aung Hlaing as head of state, nor has he invited him to China.

Three years on, the war has killed thousands and displaced millions, but no end is in sight.

Forced to fight on new fronts, the army has since lost between half and two-thirds of Myanmar to a splintered opposition.

Beijing is at an impasse. It “doesn’t like this situation” and sees Myanmar’s military ruler Min Aung Hlaing as “incompetent”, Mr Horsey says. “They are pushing for elections, not because they necessarily want a return to democratic rule, but more because they think this is a way back.”

Myanmar’s regime suspects Beijing of playing both sides – keeping up the appearance of supporting the junta while continuing to maintain a relationship with ethnic armies in Shan State.

Analysts note that many of the rebel groups are using Chinese weapons. The latest battles are also a resurgence of last year’s campaign launched by three ethnic groups which called themselves the Brotherhood Alliance. It is thought that the alliance would not have made its move without Beijing’s tacit approval.

Its gains on the battlefield spelled the end for notorious mafia families whose scam centres had trapped thousands of Chinese workers. Long frustrated over the increasing lawlessness along its border, Beijing welcomed their downfall – and the tens of thousands of suspects who were handed over by the rebel forces.

For Beijing the worst-case scenario is the civil war dragging on for years. But it would also fear a collapse of the military regime, which might herald further chaos.

How China will react to either scenario is not yet clear – what is also unclear is what more Beijing can do beyond pressuring both sides to agree to peace talks.

That predicament is evident in Ruili with its miles of shuttered shops. A city that once benefited from its location along the border is now feeling the fallout from its proximity to Myanmar.

Battered by some of China’s strictest lockdowns, businesses here took another hit when cross-border traffic and trade did not revive.

They also rely on labour from the other side, which has stopped, according to several agents who help Burmese workers find jobs. They say China has tightened its restrictions on hiring workers from across the border, and has also sent back hundreds who were said to be working illegally.

The owner of a small factory, who did not want to be identified, told the BBC that the deportations meant “his business isn’t going anywhere… and there’s nothing I can change”.

The square next to the checkpoint is full of young workers, including mothers with their babies, waiting in the shade. They lay out their paperwork to make sure they have what they need to secure a job. The successful ones are given a pass which allows them to work for up to a week, or come and go between the two countries, like Li.

“I hope some good people can tell all sides to stop fighting,” Li says. “If there is no-one in the world speaking up for us, it is really tragic.”

She says she is often assured by those around her that fighting won’t break out too close to China. But she is unconvinced: “No-one can predict the future.”

For now, Ruili is a safer option for her and Zin Aung. They understand that their future is in Chinese hands, as do the Chinese.

“Your country is at war,” a Chinese tourist tells a Myanmar jade seller he is haggling with at the market. “You just take what I give you.”

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

More than 70,000 people fighting in Russia’s military have now died in Ukraine, according to data analysed by the BBC.

And for the first time, volunteers – civilians who joined the armed forces after the start of the war – now make up the highest number of people killed on the battlefield since Russia’s full-scale invasion began in 2022.

Every day, the names of those killed in Ukraine, their obituaries and photographs from their funerals are published across Russia in the media and on social networks.

BBC Russian and the independent website Mediazona have collated these names, along with names from other open sources, including official reports.

We checked that the information had been shared by authorities or relatives of the deceased – and that they had been identified as dying in the war.

New graves in cemeteries have also helped provide the names of soldiers killed in Ukraine – these are usually marked by flags and wreaths sent by the defence ministry.

We have identified the names of 70,112 Russian soldiers killed in Ukraine, but the actual number is believed to be considerably higher. Some families do not share details of their relatives’ deaths publicly – and our analysis does not include names we were unable to check, or the deaths of militia in Russian-occupied Donetsk and Luhansk in eastern Ukraine.

Among them, 13,781 were volunteers – about 20% – and fatalities among volunteers now exceed other categories. Former prisoners, who joined up in return for pardons for their crimes, were previously the highest but they now account for 19% of all confirmed deaths. Mobilised soldiers – citizens called up to fight – account for 13%.

Since October last year, weekly fatalities of volunteers have not dipped below 100 – and, in some weeks, we have recorded more than 310 volunteer deaths.

As for Ukraine – it rarely comments on the scale of its deaths on the battlefield. In February, its president, Volodymyr Zelensky, said 31,000 Ukrainian soldiers had been killed, but estimates based on US intelligence suggest greater losses.

The story of Rinat Khusniyarov is typical of many of the volunteer soldiers who died. He was from Ufa in Bashkortostan and had been working two jobs to make ends meet – at a tram depot and a plywood factory. He was 62 years old when he signed his contract with the Russian army in November last year.

He survived less than three months of fighting and was killed on 27 February. His obituary, in a local online memorial website, simply called him “a hardworking, decent man”.

According to the data we analysed, most of the men signing up come from small towns in parts of Russia where stable, well-paid work is hard to find.

Most appear to have joined up willingly, although some in the republic of Chechnya have told human rights activists and lawyers of coercion and threats.

Some of the volunteers have said they did not understand the contracts they were signing had no end date, and have since approached pro-Kremlin journalists to, unsuccessfully, ask them for help ending their service.

Salaries in the military can be five to seven times higher than average wages in less affluent parts of the country, plus soldiers get social benefits, including free childcare and tax breaks. One-off payments for people who sign up have also repeatedly risen in value in many parts of Russia.

Most of the volunteers dying at the front are aged between 42 and 50. They number 4,100 men in our list of more than 13,000 volunteers. The oldest volunteer killed was 71 years old – a total of 250 volunteers above the age of 60 have died in the war.

Soldiers have told the BBC that rising casualties among volunteers are, in part, down to their deployment to the most operationally challenging areas on the front line, notably in the Donetsk region in the east, where they form the backbone of reinforcements for depleted units, Russian soldiers told the BBC.

Russia’s “meat grinder” strategy continues unabated, according to Russian soldiers we have spoken to. The term has been used to describe the way Moscow sends waves of soldiers forward relentlessly to try to wear down Ukrainian forces and expose their locations to Russian artillery. Drone footage shared online shows Russian forces attacking Ukrainian positions with little or no equipment or support from artillery or military vehicles.

Sometimes, hundreds of men have been killed on a single day. In recent weeks, the Russian military have made desperate, but unsuccessful, attempts to seize the eastern Ukrainian towns of Chasiv Yar and Pokrovsk with such tactics.

An official study by the primary military medical directorate of the Russian defence ministry says that 39% of soldiers’ deaths are a result of limb injuries and that mortality rates would be significantly improved if first aid and subsequent medical care were better.

The Russian government’s actions suggests it is keen to avoid forcing people to fight through a new, official wave of mobilisation – instead, it is ramping up calls for service volunteers, along with the incentives to do so.

Remarks by regional officials in local parliaments suggest they have been tasked from the top with trying to recruit people from their local districts. They advertise on job vacancy websites, contact men who have debt and bailiff problems, and conduct recruitment campaigns in higher education establishments.

Since 2022, convicted prisoners have also been encouraged to join up in return for their release, but now a new policy means people facing criminal prosecution can accept a deal to go to war instead of facing trial in court. In return, their cases are frozen and potentially dropped altogether.

A small number of the volunteers killed have been from other countries. We have identified the names of 272 such men, many of whom were from Central Asia – 47 from Uzbekistan, 51 from Tajikistan, and 26 from Kyrgyzstan.

Last year saw reports of Russia recruiting people in Cuba, Iraq, Yemen and Serbia. Foreigners already living in Russia without valid work permits or visas, who agree to “work for the state”, are promised they will not be deported and are offered a simplified route to citizenship if they survive the war. Many have later complained that they did not understand the paperwork – as with Russian citizens, they have turned to the media for help.

The governments of India and Nepal have called on Moscow to stop sending their citizens to Ukraine and repatriate the bodies of the dead. So far, the calls have not been acted upon.

Many new recruits who have joined the military have criticised the training they have received. A man who signed a contract with the Russian army in November last year told the BBC he had been promised two weeks of training at a shooting range before deployment to the front.

“In reality, people were just thrown out onto the parade ground, and dished out some gear,” he said, adding the equipment was poorly made.

“We were loaded on to trains, then trucks, and sent to the front. About half of us were thrown into battle straight from the road. As a result, some people went from the recruitment office to the front line in just a week,” he said.

Samuel Cranny-Evans, an analyst at the Royal United Services Institute in the UK says: “Basic understanding of things like camouflage and concealment or how to move quietly at night, how to move without creating a profile for yourself during the day,” should be taught as basic infantry skills.

Another soldier also told the BBC that equipment is a problem, saying it “varies, but most often it’s some random set of uniforms, standard boots that wear out within a day, and a kit bag with a label showing it was made in the mid-20th Century”.

“A random bulletproof vest and a cheap helmet. It’s impossible to fight in this. If you want to survive, you have to buy your own equipment.”

The al-Qaeda flag flutters from an airport building. A jihadist places a burning rag in the engine of the presidential jet, others explore the VIP terminal or fire shots as they approach planes belonging to the UN Humanitarian Air Service (UNHAS) – a familiar survival lifeline for so many countries in crisis around the world.

The social media images broadcast by the jihadists who on Tuesday morning attacked the international airport complex outside Mali’s capital, Bamako, and then roamed around the site, graphically demonstrate the fragile security of what should have been one of the most protected locations in the West African country.

A training centre for the gendarmerie (paramilitary police) in the Faladié suburb was also targeted. Residents filmed smoke rising above the skyline as explosions and gunshots shattered the dawn calm.

Just as shocking is another militant video – of fighters, their soft teenage faces a stark contrast with their weapons and combat uniforms – preparing themselves before launching the assault.

Mali’s military rulers have not said how many people died, except that some trainee gendarmes had lost their lives, but it seems that at least 60 and perhaps as many as 80 or even 100 people were killed, with a further 200 or more wounded.

Those figures may or may not include the militants killed as government forces recovered control of the airport at Senou and the Faladié barracks.

Of course, these are far from the first images of conflict in Mali.

The country has been deep in crisis since at least late 2011, when northern ethnic Tuareg separatists and radical Islamist factions allied to them, took over Timbuktu, Gao and other towns across the north.

Bamako has suffered attacks before. In 2015 an assault on the upmarket Radisson Blu hotel claimed 20 lives and five more died in a shooting at a restaurant in the buzzy Hippodrome district.

In 2017, an attack on a tourism complex on the outskirts of the city killed at least four people.

In 2020 Col Assimi Goïta, an experienced combat commander, staged a coup criticising the elected government’s failure to effectively tackle the security crisis.

A civilian-led transition was soon established, but in May 2021 Col Goïta staged a second coup, to put himself and fellow officers firmly back in control.

But despite a reinforced focus on security, and the hiring of Russian mercenary outfit Wagner to provide extra military support – provoking a row with France that led eventually to the withdrawal of the several thousand strong French anti-terror force Barkhane – the new regime proved no more effective than its civilian predecessor in ending the violence.

Open conflict was mainly confined to the desert in the north and the more fertile central regions, where tensions were fuelled by competition between farming villagers from the Dogon ethnic group and livestock herders from the Peul (Fulani) community over precious land and water resources.

But there were occasional reminders of the jihadists’ capacity to range further south in this vast country, to Bamako and its environs.

In July 2022 militants staged two small attacks near the city and then attempted a big raid – trying to ram their way into the Kati barracks complex, the junta’s base just 15km (9.3 miles) north of the capital.

This showed the insurgents’ ability to stage high-profile raids far beyond the more northerly regions, where their presence is an influential fact of everyday life.

However, the army managed to contain this assault, reporting two dead militants as the only casualties. And ultimately the Goïta regime was able to shrug off any wider impact from the incident.

Although the attack was attributed to Jamaat Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM), the al-Qaeda affiliated coalition of armed groups that is Mali’s largest jihadist force, it did not substantially weaken the junta’s self-confidence and capacity to set the domestic political and diplomatic agenda.

Just weeks later, the French completed the withdrawal of their troops, having been driven out by the regime’s political hostility and the ever-tightening rules through which it stifled the operational capacity of the Barkhane force.

And the next year the junta felt sufficiently emboldened to demand the winding up of the United Nations 14,000-strong peacekeeping force, known by the acronym Minusma.

So will Col Goïta’s junta be able to brush off the highly publicised attacks of this week with the same self-confident control of the agenda that it managed after the July 2022 incidents?

Just as then, in a huge country whose territory could never be absolutely controlled by the official security forces, even backed up by Wagner – now renamed Corps Africa – it is not really surprising that a number of jihadist fighters managed to stage raids on locations on the outskirts of Bamako.

And such attention-grabbing forays still fall well short of the militant control over the large tracts of countryside and numerous villages that characterise parts of central and northern Mali.

However, the security picture in West Africa today is much more fragile than it was in 2022.

Across the central Sahel, JNIM and the other main jihadist faction, Islamic State in the Greater Sahara (ISGS), have been probing ever further south.

The military regime in neighbouring Burkina Faso – allied with the Malian and Nigérien juntas in the Alliance of Sahelian States (AES) – has lost control of large tracts of terrain, and quite possibly even the majority of rural areas.

And in Niger jihadists stage regular attacks all over the west, and even within an hour of the capital, Niamey.

Moreover, the militants now routinely range into the northern areas of coastal countries, particularly Benin and Togo. In Ivory Coast they have only been pushed back through a sustained military effort, backed up with a “hearts and minds” programme of development spending.

So the overall regional security picture is as difficult as it has ever been.

But in Mali itself, the mood has felt rather different.

Government forces last year mounted a highly successful campaign to seize back northern towns previously controlled by the Tuareg former separatist movement that had signed a peace agreement with the civilian government back in 2015, but which the junta has cancelled.

Although those northern groups inflicted a costly defeat on the army and its Russian allies at Tinzaouaten, in the Sahara Desert, in late July, the regime’s hold on the north’s key urban centres seems well established for now.

This campaign against the former separatists, and the army’s reoccupation of their Saharan headquarters, Kidal, has proved highly popular among southern public opinion on the streets of Bamako.

And Col Goïta and his fellow junta leaders have so far felt no need to make concessions to the West African bloc, Ecowas, as it proffers goodwill in the hope of persuading them to abandon their declaration of withdrawal from the community.

It seems unlikely that this week’s shocking attacks on the outskirts of Bamako will alter this dynamic, despite the humiliation of seeing JNIM fighters wander freely around the international airport site, where flights have now resumed.

Instead, there is a risk that, in the short term at least, the Malian regime will oversee a reassertion of nationalistic feelings – and with that, the risk of a deepening of inter-ethnic distrust, with the fingers of populist accusation all too often pointing at those groups regularly accused of jihadist sympathy or activism.

Among the flurry of social media videos to emerge from Bamako this week have been scenes not only of arrests by the authorities, but also what appear to be images of citizens’ “detention” of presumed suspects, and at least one lynching, with a man burned alive in the street.

So, as so often, it is members of the Peul community who find themselves the prime targets for such brutal reprisal in a nation desperately in need of peace and stability.

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At the Sahara Restaurant in Dearborn, Michigan, four Arabic language TV news channels are beaming in images of the war in Gaza and the aftermath of the recent pager and radio devices explosions in Lebanon.

The smell of cardamom-infused coffee and shawarma and falafel, and hum of friends catching up, stand in stark contrast to the images on the television screens.

Dearborn is the first Arab-majority city in the US, and it has served as a key centre for the “uncommitted” movement that is opposed to the Biden administration’s policy toward the Middle East.

Because they are in Michigan – a key Midwestern swing state that Joe Biden won by fewer than three points in 2020 – Dearborn voters, like those who frequent the Sahara Restaurant, could decide Kamala Harris’s political future.

Sam Hammoud, whose family has run the Sahara Restaurant in Dearborn for the past 30 years, said that taxes and inflation have negatively affected his business – but it’s not what is motivating his vote. He is currently an undecided voter.

“It’s about the situation in our homelands,” he said.

“We need a ceasefire. There is no ceasefire. We have no more words,” he added.

Mr Hammoud’s feelings are shared by many here, and the Arab-American community has been sounding the alarm bell to Democrats for months, warning the party that its loyal support could not be automatically counted on this election.

In a statement this week, the Uncommitted Movement – which is made up of traditionally Democratic members – said it could not endorse Harris because of her “unwillingness to shift on unconditional weapons policy or to even make a clear campaign statement in support of upholding existing US and international human rights law”.

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Soujoud Hamade is a lawyer in the Detroit suburb and president of the Michigan Chapter of the Arab American Bar Association.

She canvassed for the Democratic Party in past elections, and feels her work helped get President Biden elected in 2020. He won Michigan with a margin of just 2.78%.

This time around, Ms Hamade is voting for Green Party candidate Jill Stein.

She is not alone. An August poll from the Council on American-Islamic Relations indicates that in Michigan, 40% of Muslim voters back Stein, 18% preferred Republican Donald Trump – and only 12% supported Harris – suggesting a significant shift from past strong support for Democrats.

Ms Hamade said the “traditionally” Democratic Arab-American voters in Michigan “cannot stomach the thought of voting for someone who’s directly contributing to the death and destruction of our home country and of our relatives overseas”.

Harris welcoming the endorsement of former Republican Vice-President Dick Cheney was particularly troubling for the Michigan lawyer.

She said Cheney’s involvement in the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 makes him an unwanted bedfellow for her community.

“It’s baffling to me as an American, to now see the direction that the party is going, it’s disheartening,” she said.

“These aren’t the values that we as Democrats stood for. We were not the party of war.”

Packed full of cafes, restaurants and independently owned stores, Dearborn enjoys a thriving small-business economy – as well as a strong community that is deeply affected by the conflict in the Middle East.

• Dearborn, Michigan: A visit to the first Arab-majority city in the US

Dr Maisa Hider-Beidoun, who owns a chain of pharmacies and medical centres in the region, said she is a lifelong Democrat who does not know if she can support Harris.

Her community has been placed in “a moral dilemma”, she said.

“We are good Americas, we are good tax-paying, law-abiding citizens, but our money is being funnelled overseas and killing people that are actually physically related to us.”

In February’s Democratic primary in Michigan, part of the process of choosing the party’s presidential candidate, over 100,000 people in this community declared themselves “uncommitted” in protest at the Biden-Harris administration policy towards Gaza.

The community says it has sought meetings with the White House and asked the vice-president to outline how her approach to Israel might differ from Biden’s.

While the Uncommitted Movement criticised Harris, it also opposes Trump, whose “agenda includes plans to accelerate the killing in Gaza while intensifying the suppression of anti-war organising”, it says.

The organisation did not recommend its members vote for a third-party candidate like Stein.

While Trump has been critical at times of Israel’s handling of the war, he has positioned himself as a staunch supporter of Israel. He has condemned pro-Palestinian protests and as president, angered Palestinians by moving the US embassy to Jerusalem. He has said the war would not have happened if he were president but has said little on his plans to end the conflict.

Dr Mona Mawari, a pharmacist and a community organiser who worked on the uncommitted campaign, told the BBC she is still struggling to decide how to vote in November – “a really hard decision”.

Harris is “maybe a little more empathetic with her words” than Biden regarding what Dr Mawari describes as “genocide” in Gaza, but she finds it hard to support her.

Harris has said she is aligned with Biden on US support for Israel though she has spoken more about the scale of the human suffering in Gaza.

Said Dr Mawari: “The community is really upset, and they’re very hyper-aware that lip service is just lip service, and without any actions they can’t vote for her.”

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The situation in Lebanon has also sharpened fears about an escalation in the regional conflict and, for this Arab-American community, what it means for their families there.

Faye Nemer came to the US when she was 10, fleeing Lebanon because of the political instability and violence, and she is now the CEO of the Middle East North American Arab Chamber of Commerce.

Before her family left Lebanon, she says they were “living as refugees” in their own country, moving between “abandoned office buildings”.

So she looks at the situation in Gaza – where more than a million people have been displaced – through a different lens, particularly the experience of children.

Her sister and much of her extended family are still in Lebanon.

“It’s difficult to conduct your day-to-day without that being top of mind,” she said.

A lifelong Democrat, she has also not made up her mind on how – or if – she will vote, and is also weighing voting for a third-party candidate.

Some 3.5 million Americans claimed Middle Eastern descent in the 2020 Census -around 1% of the population, though many are concentrated in battleground states like Michigan and Wisconsin.

Dr Mawari said the uncommitted movement doesn’t want people to feel apathetic and not cast a ballot, but to use their vote in whichever way they believe is right.

“Sitting this one out is not an option. It’s not an answer to what’s going on,” she said.

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.

Tamagotchi is having a moment – again.

The egg-shaped toy housing a virtual pet was one of the biggest crazes of the 1990s.

And several attempts to reignite the brand over the years appears to have now paid off for owner Bandai Namco.

Global sales more than doubled between 2022 and 2023, it tells the BBC, and Tamagotchi has now opened its first shop in the UK – something it didn’t even do when it was 1996’s hottest gadget.

Unsurprisingly, the modern Tamagotchi isn’t the same thing you would have bought in the 1990s.

It still looks the same – a garishly coloured egg with a small digital screen and buttons – but the actual toy has much more functionality.

“Now you can connect with friends, you can play on Wi-Fi and download different items, and that’s really combating that sense of fatigue that you might have gotten with some earlier models,” Tamagotchi brand manager Priya Jadeja told the BBC.

The virtual pet officially relaunched in the UK in 2019 and has been growing since – with a perhaps surprising mix of players young and old.

“When we relaunched, we thought it would be a very millennial-focused relaunch,” Ms Jadeja says.

“But it’s being introduced to kids who’ve never had this sort of device before – it’s really exciting to see them embracing it.”

Unlike in 1996, now there are many other virtual pets on the market.

For example Bitzee, made by Hatchimals, uses a flexible display that responds to your touch, and reacts to tilt-based movement.

Meanwhile Punirunes has a popular feature where you can place your finger inside the toy to “stroke” the virtual pet on the screen.

And there’s also Digimon virtual pets – another 1990s throwback – though these are also owned by Bandai Namco, and were originally designed as Tamagotchi for boys.

Despite those gender-based lines being drawn back in the day, Jadeja says there doesn’t seem to be any real difference in who buys the toys now.

For the Tamagotchi fans we spoke to, nostalgia is playing a big role.

“I got my first Tamagotchi back in primary school, my best friend had one back then and I have fond memories of playing with them together,” says Emma, known on YouTube as Emmalution. She says she “started craving some of that nostalgia”.

She didn’t keep her old Tamagotchi and picked up a modern one last year, she says.

“This kickstarted an obsession, absorbing loads of information about all of the releases that had come out after my first ever Tamagotchi,” she said.

“I started a collection, curious to know what I’d been missing out on whilst I was too busy growing up.”

Koby, known to his fans on YouTube as Lost in Translationmon, agreed.

“When I’m playing with my Digimon or Tamagotchi virtual pets, I get a small snapshot of what it was like when I first played with my virtual pets as a kid.

“There’s also a fantastic sense of community from sharing photos and stories online with other people.”

And for Emma, there is one other big factor – escapism.

“With how the world is at the moment, and how it has been for the past few years, it’s nice to just look down at your little pixel pet every now and again, forget it all for a moment to feed it a little snack or play a little game, and remember a much simpler time.”

In the past, speaking about your own mental health and addiction problems in public was seen as taboo.

But now, in an industry where these issues are often rife, musicians, including Billie Eilish, Demi Lovato and Lewis Capaldi, are digging deep and sharing their most personal experiences, helping many fans “feel seen”.

Following their lead, an increasing number of artists are speaking up to get the message out that it is OK to talk.

lleo, who makes what she calls “bipolar pop”, said the reaction from her fans had been “crazy” since she starting singing about her mental health experiences.

The singer from Cheltenham, who is bipolar, said: “People reach out and say ‘this song helps me so much’.”

Swindon-born singer-songwriter Athena Aperta, 26, also hopes her “honest lyrics” will give listeners hope.

She has been sober for two years but said her struggles with mental health, alcohol and drugs all intensified after becoming involved in the London music scene, where substance abuse was “very common”.

She said finding a job back near her hometown in 2022 was actually “a blessing in disguise”, helping her to overcome her addiction.

“There are drugs still, there’s people drinking alcohol,” she said, but added she is now able to “regulate herself more” if she is around that environment.

Athena recently received funding from the Youth Music: Next Generation award to release two singles, including , which “is about living with anxiety, depression, CPTSD [Complex post-traumatic stress disorder] and being a recovering people-pleaser”.

“There’s a lack of hope in the world at the moment. I just really want to give that to people,” she said.

A 2023 census by Help Musicians found almost a third of musicians had experienced negative mental wellbeing.

The head of Help Musicians’ dedicated mental health sister charity, Music Minds Matter, Grace Meadows, said: “Not knowing that support is available or who to turn to for support can lead to behaviours, such as substance abuse, that compound rather than alleviate mental health issues.”

She explained the “normalisation of drugs and alcohol across the industry” can further exacerbate this.

“Doing music is so rough,” said lleo, who has dealt with serious mental health issues for several years.

“There have been so many points where I’ve thought, ‘I wish I could just do something else’.”

But the artist said she “needs an outlet and music is the way to do that”.

Following the release of her track , which talks frankly about a bipolar medicine that in her words “really messed me up”, she said the response was “really overwhelming and amazing”, with fans getting in touch and sharing similar stories.

“It was really crazy for people to want to open up about such a private thing,” she said.

“It makes me feel very emotional.”

Athena, who has performed at festivals including Boomtown Fair and London Pride, experienced anxiety and depression from the age of 13 and later went on to develop alcohol and drug issues.

She said this was exacerbated while working in a late night venue and gigging around London.

“There was one day where I was offered drugs at 1pm on a Tuesday,” she said.

“That’s when I thought, ‘oh I’m really in it’.”

She explained that she suddenly found herself “in connection” with “probably quite dangerous” people.

She said that the pressure that musicians put on themselves as creatives, linked in with an all too often “lack of self-worth” can add to feelings of depression and anxiety, with many turning to alcohol or drugs as “a form of escape”.

Music Minds Matter said the causes of mental health challenges for people in the music industry can also include “the precarity around job security, pressures of the role, performance anxiety and unstable working patterns”.

Ms Meadows said that in recent times this has been added to with Brexit regulations, the pandemic and the cost-of-living crisis, which she said have “created significant pressures for everyone working in music”.

“More does need to be done to help musicians with their mental health,” said lleo, whose music is supported by BBC Radio 1.

She added that she would especially like to hear more men speaking up about it in their music.

lleo said, despite this, music was “the most important tool” for her to share her feelings and had helped the artist to express things even to her parents that she could not say out loud because “it’s too painful, too uncomfortable”.

Ms Meadows advised anyone in the industry who might be suffering with mental health or substance issues to get in touch with Music Minds Matter via their website or their free and confidential 24/7 support line.

BBC’s Action Line.

Scandinavian Airlines (SAS) has said one of its flights had to make an emergency landing after a mouse scurried out of a passenger’s in-flight meal on Wednesday.

The aircraft was flying from Norway’s capital Oslo to Malaga in Spain and was forced to make an emergency landing in Copenhagen, Denmark.

The diversion was in line with company procedures as the furry stowaway posed a safety risk, airline spokesperson Oystein Schmidt told the AFP news agency.

Passengers on the flight were later flown to Malaga on a different aircraft.

Airlines usually have strict restrictions involving rodents on board planes in order to prevent electrical wiring being chewed through.

“This is something that happens extremely rarely,” Mr Schmidt said.

“We have established procedures for such situations, which also include a review with our suppliers to ensure this does not happen again.”

Jarle Borrestad experienced the incident first-hand, telling the BBC News Channel in a recorded video that the mouse escaped from the box of food that the woman sat next to him on the flight was opening.

Mr Borrestad said the situation was very calm and that people “were not stressed at all”.

However, he admitted that he did put his socks over his trousers so the mouse did not crawl up his legs.

Mr Borrestad said that while the flight was diverted, it only added a few extra hours to the journey.

It is the second rodent-related travel incident in a week.

A train service in southern England had to be terminated mid-journey after two squirrels boarded a carriage and one refused to get off.

Ukraine has banned the use of the Telegram messaging platform on official devices issued to government and military personnel, as well as defence sector and critical infrastructure employees.

The country’s powerful National Security and Defence Council (Rnbo) said this was done to “minimise” threats posed by Russia, which launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

“Telegram is actively used by the enemy for cyber-attacks, the distribution of phishing and malicious software, user geolocation and missile strike correction,” the Rnbo said on Friday.

In a statement to the BBC, Telegram said it has “never provided any messaging data to any country, including Russia”.

Telegram is widely used by the government and the military in both Ukraine and Russia.

In a statement, the Rnbo said the ban was agreed at a meeting of Ukraine’s top information security officials, the military as well as lawmakers.

It said military intelligence chief Kyrylo Budanov had presented credible evidence of Russian special services’ ability to access personal correspondence of Telegram users, even their deleted messages.

“I have always supported and continue to support freedom of speech, but the issue of Telegram is not a matter of freedom of speech, it is a matter of national security,” Budanov was quoted as saying.

The Rnbo said that those officials for whom the use of Telegram was part of their work duties would be exempt from the ban.

Separately, Andriy Kovalenko, head of the Rnbo’s centre on countering disinformation, stressed the ban only applied to official devices – not personal smartphones.

He added that government officials and military personnel would be able to continue to maintain and update their official Telegram pages.

Last year, a USAID-Internews survey found that Telegram was the top social platform in Ukraine for news consumption, with 72% of Ukrainians using it.

Telegram – which offers end-to-end encryption – was co-founded by Russian-born Pavel Durov and his brother in 2013.

A year later, Durov left Russia after refusing to comply with government demands to shut down opposition communities on the platform.

Last month, Durov, who is also a French national, was placed under formal investigation in France as part of a probe into organised crime.

His case has fuelled a debate about freedom of speech, accountability and how platforms moderate content.

In July, Durov claimed that Telegram reached 950 million monthly active users.

Following Ukraine’s claims, a spokesperson for Telegram said the company would be “interested in reviewing any evidence that supports Mr Budanov’s claims”, adding that “to our knowledge, no such evidence exists”.

“Telegram has never provided any messaging data to any country, including Russia,” the spokesperson added.

Telegram also said “deleted messages are deleted forever and are technically impossible to recover”.

The firm added that “every instance of supposed ‘leaked messages’ Telegram has investigated has been the result of a compromised device, whether through confiscation or malware”.

The US state of Georgia has ordered a hand count of ballots cast in November’s election, potentially creating further delays in a system that took days to deliver a definitive result four years ago.

Georgia’s elections board voted 3-2 to require the hand count, despite the objections of state officials and poll workers.

Around five million votes for president were cast in Georgia in 2020, with Joe Biden beating Donald Trump in the key battleground state state by a margin of around 12,000.

While hand counting of ballots is common in many countries, including the UK, it is extremely rare in US elections.

The rule passed on Friday requires three poll workers in each of the state’s 6,500 voting precincts to begin counting ballots on election night.

The move was opposed by the state’s top election official, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican, who warned that a hand count would introduce the possibility of “error, lost or stolen ballots, and fraud”.

In a phone call following the 2020 election, Trump pressured Raffensperger to “find 11,780 votes” – a move which along with other alleged efforts to overturn the result led to criminal charges against Trump and some of his allies.

• Election polls: Who is ahead, Harris or Trump?

Raffensperger publicly tussled with Trump but also ordered a hand recount of the state’s ballots, which slightly changed vote totals but confirmed the overall result.

Trump’s supporters on the Georgia elections board argued that hand counting will make the forthcoming election more secure.

“What I don’t want to do is set a precedent that we are OK with speed over accuracy,” said board member Janelle King.

Opponents of the move included county elections supervisors, poll workers and voting rights organisations, several of whom testified at a hearing on Friday.

They warned of delays and possible chaos caused by changing the rules so close to the election. Early voting in Georgia starts on 15 October. Election day is on 5 November.

Ethan Compton, the election supervisor for Irwin County, said that ballots had already been sent to members of the military posted overseas.

“The election has begun,” Mr Compton said. “This is not the time to change the rules. That will only lower the integrity of our elections.”

The board’s chair, John Fervier, a Republican, voted against the rule for that reason.

“I do think it’s too close to the election,” he said.

Fervier warned that the board may not have the legal authority to require hand counting, and the change is almost certain to face legal challenges.

Voting rights organisations say hand counting would complicate the voting system and is less accurate than machine counting.

Many Republicans, meanwhile, believe Trump’s oft-repeated but false claims that the voting system is riddled with fraud and has been “rigged” by Democrats.

During an rally in Atlanta in August, Trump called the board members “pit bulls fighting for victory”.

Georgia Senator Raphael Warnock, a Democrat, said of the election board prior to the vote: “They are fully trying to set up a scenario in which they could refuse to certify an election whose results they don’t like.”

The rule change came as early voting got under way on Friday in other states including Virginia, Minnesota and South Dakota.

• 3 November: US presidential election

• 11 November: Georgia orders hand recount of votes as the race is so close

• 13 November: Cable networks project Biden wins Georgia

• 20 November: Georgia hand recount confirms Biden won by just over 12,000 votes

• 21 November: Trump requests recount, as allowed under Georgia law

• 7 December: The recount again confirms Biden won

• 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.

South Carolina has executed its first death row inmate in 13 years, administering a lethal injection to Freddie Owens.

Owens, 46, was found guilty by a jury of killing shop worker Irene Graves during an armed robbery in Greenville in 1997.

He was executed despite his co-defendant signing a sworn statement this week claiming Owens was not present at the time of the robbery and killing.

The South Carolina Supreme Court refused to halt Owens’ execution, saying the claims were inconsistent with testimony made at his trial.

Owens was executed at the Broad River Correctional Institute in Columbia, South Carolina, on Friday evening.

He was pronounced dead at 18:55 local time (22:55 GMT) after being injected with a drug called pentobarbital. He made no final statement.

His death followed a pause in executions in the state because prison officials were unable to procure the drug required for lethal injections.

Owens was sentenced to death in 1999, two years after killing Graves, after being convicted of murder, armed robbery and criminal conspiracy.

The day after he was found guilty, he killed his cellmate in jail, reports CNN affiliate WHNS.

According to reporting on his trial by South Carolina newspaper The State, Owens was 19 when he and Steve Golden, then 18, held Graves at gunpoint while attempting to rob the convenience store where she worked.

Owens shot and killed Graves after she failed to open a safe below the counter, according to testimony provided by Golden at Owens’s trial.

At the time of her death, Graves was a 41-year-old single mother of three.

Lawyers for Owens tried to halt his execution a few times, including twice in September. But the court denied each request.

In the latest attempt, lawyers pointed to an affidavit signed by Golden on Wednesday, which claimed Owens was innocent.

The court denied the request to halt the execution by saying that the new affidavit was “squarely inconsistent with Golden’s testimony at Owens’s 1999 trial” and the statement he gave to police right after their arrest.

Other witnesses testified that Owens had told them he shot Graves, prosecutors said.

Advocates against the death penalty and Owens’s mother also appealed to the state for clemency, which was denied by Governor Henry McMaster.

Hours before his execution, Owens’s mother said in a statement it was a “grave injustice that has been perpetrated against my son”.

“Freddie has maintained his innocence since day one,” his mother, Dora Mason, said, according to local news outlet the Greenville News.

Inmates in South Carolina are allowed to choose whether they want to die by lethal injection, electric chair or firing squad.

Owens deferred the decision to his lawyer, who chose the lethal injection option for him, according to the Greenville News.

Journalists who witnessed the execution said members of Graves’ family were also present.

A Christmas super fan who keeps her tree up all year round admits her festive way of life strikes a “fine balance of eccentricity and bonkers”.

Jane Malyon ensures stockings are filled, presents wrapped and crackers laid on the table 24/7, just in case her adult children come to visit her in White Roding, Essex.

The 67-year-old said George, 35, and Edward, 40, spent most of their lives abroad and would often show up without prior notice.

“The solution seemed to be let’s be in Christmas mode at all times – we call it Christmas standby,” Mrs Malyon says.

The mother-of-two, who is speaking to the BBC in front of her fully decorated Christmas tree, concedes she is “seasonally challenged”.

“We’re not bonkers, we don’t have a 20ft inflatable reindeer outside or wear Christmas hats the whole time, but every room has some tell-tale signs,” she says.

The inspiration came after both of her children found themselves unable to return home throughout December.

George was too busy travelling the world with the Cirque du Soleil and Edward was in Toronto, Canada, where his partner worked at a hotel, Mrs Malyon says.

On a previous occasion, George had “caught a plane, a coach, two trains and a bus” to spontaneously arrive at the family home.

“They might literally appear and we want to make a fuss of them,” she adds.

“So it adapted into always having a Christmas stocking at the ready, always having some presents at the ready and always having a turkey in the freezer.

“Often, without any notice, we go hurtling into mad Christmas mode.”

However, Mrs Malyon, who runs a cream tea company, admits her and husband Roger, 68, are “old enough to know better”.

“I do agree I’m seasonally challenged, I’ll accept that,” she continues.

“Our postman knocked on the window the first year we did this and said ‘is that a Christmas tree?’.”

Mrs Malyon says Christmas time – whenever it falls – is filled with happy memories of “family love” together.

“We do agree this is on slight eccentricity side, just slight, but I hope you realise we do have reason for it,” she adds.

Women’s rights advocates are demanding the immediate implementation of a nearly 30-year-old gender equity bill which Ghana’s president signed into law on Thursday.

This ends a process which began in 1998, with the bill shuffling between parliaments until the legislature passed it in July this year. Many campaigners faulted Ghana’s law-making body for the long delay.

Ghana now joins Rwanda, Uganda, Burundi, Mozambique and others in Africa that have working affirmative action laws.

These countries have a 30% quota for women in decision-making bodies, in parliament and other state agencies.

Ghana’s Affirmative Action (Gender Equality) Act 2024 is expected to ensure a critical number of women hold key positions in government, security, commerce and other decision-making spaces.

The law promotes the progressive and active participation of women in public life from a minimum of 30% to 50% by 2030, in line with the UN’s Sustainable Development Goal of achieving gender equality by 2030.

The country’s trade unions are mandated by this law to ensure gender balanced representation on their executive boards, while private industries which enforce provisions of this law to employ women would benefit from tax incentives.

After the law passed in July, Speaker of Parliament Alban Bagbin said he hoped lawmakers would commit to the reforms and “do more to create a free and just society to liberate more women to support us develop mother Ghana”.

Subjecting an employee to gender-specific verbal attacks, stereotyping, hate speech or harsh rhetoric as well as discriminating against, intimidating or seeking to disqualify a candidate on grounds of gender are all banned under this law.

Penalties include fines, and jail terms of between six and 12 months.

Any act that victimizes, obstructs or exerts “undue influence on a person” in a way that undermines the new law is deemed an offence.

Trade unions who fail to comply could lose their registered status.

Female lawmakers have described the law as a strong statement for the empowerment drive.

Abla Dzifa Gomashie MP, whose constituency is in south-east Ghana, told the BBC she hoped it would “cure the cultural, political and economic discrimination against women and minority groups – especially that of the disability community.”

“We must kick in the advocacy as soon as possible to ensure that state agencies and institutions get on board and educate the populace on the expectation that this law carries,” she added.

But some advocates and activist groups who welcome the law worry that it will not be properly enforced.

“In the midst of the joy, there are fears – we fear that for example where political parties are required to play a role, they may not necessarily do what they have to do,” Dinah Adiko, a technical consultant who previously worked with Ghana’s gender ministry, told the BBC.

“We fear that the supervision of it, regulation… What are the biting powers to actively implement this law? Those are some of the reservations. But for the moment we are excited to see this come to light.”

There has been little public criticism of the law.

At a recent press conference, a journalist asked if “pursuing equality by discriminating in favour of women” was the wrong thing to do.

But a senior minister dismissed that as a “misconception about the bill fuelling tokenism”.

“Ghanaian women are qualified to hold positions of authority and influence,” Minister for Gender, Children and Social Protection Dakoa Newman told reporters.

Many blamed both of Ghana’s two main political parties – the NDC and the NPP – for failing to ensure passage of the law, despite repeatedly using it as a campaign promise.

It was final re-introduced to parliament by current Gender Minister Newman earlier this year.

Last year Ghana’s parliamentary speaker said he wanted the bill to be passed but said it was not ready in its current form, and needed “critical stakeholder consultation for a well-defined and crafted law.”

Recalling her stint as a technical advisor at the gender ministry in 2014, Ms Adiko said: “We saw the bill all the way through to cabinet, got the approval until elections and the change in government in 2016 meant it went back several steps again.”

With the Ghana’s general elections approaching in December, there are expectations that it could encourage more women to apply for political office.

At present, two women have successfully submitted nomination forms for the presidency. One less than in the 2020 vote.

With this new law, the electoral commission is mandated to ensure political parties comply with quotas for women at various levels.

The commission is also expected to “put measures in place to increase participation of women in the electoral process as candidates and voters”.

Gomashie MP said she expected “political parties to engage vigorously in ensuring that they create spaces for our women to participate in electoral processes and also be able to contest in a free and fair environment”.

• Ghana opposition demands voter roll audit
• ‘Bipolar, colour and me’ – an artist’s spreadsheet of emotion
• ‘Why I’m taking part in a beauty pageant’
• The Ghanaian royals taking over US reality TV

Controversy swirling around a North Carolina Republican candidate for governor is causing political turbulence in a must-win swing state for Donald Trump. The BBC asked conservatives there what they make of the alleged scandal.

It was during a regular meeting of the Johnston County Republican Women’s committee that they heard the news.

All around North Carolina on Thursday, Republicans and Democrats alike had been waiting for what was billed as a bombshell exposé about Republican Lt Gov Mark Robinson.

The furniture maker-turned-politician, who is running to be the state’s first black governor, had called himself a “black Nazi” on a porn website more than a decade ago, according to a report by CNN.

Robinson, who identifies as an evangelical Christian, branded the report “tabloid lies”. The BBC has not independently verified CNN’s claims.

But when the news finally did break, it barely caused a stir, at least not among this polite gathering of women in Johnston County.

“If the accusations are accurate, it’s something for him and his wife to deal with. It’s not my business. It’s a marital issue,” said Adele Walker, 52.

Soon afterwards, the group discussed their planned $200 donation to his campaign, in which he is already trailing the Democratic candidate Josh Stein, the state’s attorney general.

“What we decided is that we’re going to donate even more money to Mr Robinson,” she said.

The opinions of conservative women like Walker are being closely watched this election, not just in North Carolina, but across the US. The Tar Heel State has one of the closest races in the country with November’s election looming.

Trump had previously offered a glowing endorsement of Robinson, calling him “Martin Luther King on steroids”.

Even before the CNN exposé was published, Robinson was under scrutiny.

He has faced backlash over 2019 comments in a Facebook video about abortion on demand, when he said women should be “responsible enough to keep your skirt down”.

In 2021, he said children in schools should not be learning about “transgenderism, homosexuality, any of that filth”, and later rejected calls to apologise.

“I think it’s fair to call the Robinson campaign a dumpster fire at this point,” said North Carolina State University political scientist Steven Greene.

There are fears among some Republicans that Robinson could be a political albatross, causing their voters to stay home, or driving Democratic turnout.

North Carolina has remained “stubbornly Republican”, said Greene. Barack Obama was the only Democrat to win the state in 44 years, and he could only succeed once, in 2008.

But the state’s growing urban centres have tilted the political scales towards Democrats, who hope this is the year they can turn North Carolina blue.

An Emerson College Polling/The Hill survey released on Thursday, before the CNN report about Robinson was published, showed Harris leading Trump by one percentage point.

That is still well within the margin of error, which means the race is very much up in the air.

This state is essential for the Republican White House candidate, Greene said.

“It’s a lot harder to see Donald Trump getting to 270 without North Carolina than Kamala Harris,” he said, referring to the number of electoral college votes needed to clinch the US presidency.

Scott Lassiter, a Republican running for state Senate, expressed disappointment that Robinson did not drop out before a state deadline on Thursday, allowing another candidate from the party to take his place.

Lassiter said Robinson is a gift to Democrats, who “would love for every race on the ballot to be about Mark Robinson at this point”.

Once a regular at Trump’s campaign events in the state, Robinson will not attend the former president’s rally in Wilmington on Saturday, according to reports.

• US election polls: Who is ahead – Harris or Trump?
• Seven swing states set to decide the 2024 US election

But those close to Robinson are sticking by him.

Guilford County chairman Chris Meadows, a Republican, said he’s known Robinson, who’s from the area, for years.

“Our position is that these are unsubstantiated allegations, accusations,” he said.

“In the age of the improvement of AI, I really don’t put any credibility in any of this until he admits it.

“CNN has a great deal of credibility problems and they have for several years.”

• SIMPLE GUIDE: Everything you need to know about the vote
• EXPLAINER: What are Harris and Trump’s policies?
• FACT CHECK: Was US economy stronger under Biden or Trump?

In the end, Greene said the presidential race will all come down to voter turnout, and it’s unclear how Robinson will affect that.

He was already known for outlandish statements. People’s minds are probably largely made up, he said.

It certainly seemed that way in Johnston County.

One Republican voter, who did not want to be named, said he would not vote for Robinson, who he said “had a loud mouth”.

But he has no problem voting for Trump.

“I don’t know what Trump knew about Robinson. The news of Robinson has no effect on me,” he said.

Evelyn Costelloe, 66, who has voted for Republicans in the past but not recently, said she will back the Democrats because of their stance on abortion. And Robinson’s comments didn’t help either, she said.

“I don’t know about all these accusations, but I do know the stuff he’s said. Stuff like that makes me want to vote for sure,” she told the BBC.

Given that Trump only won North Carolina by about 75,000 votes in 2020, even a little bit of political damage spilling over from Robinson could make a difference.

For now, however, North Carolina remains a deep shade of purple.

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.

Scandinavian Airlines (SAS) has said one of its flights had to make an emergency landing after a mouse scurried out of a passenger’s in-flight meal on Wednesday.

The aircraft was flying from Norway’s capital Oslo to Malaga in Spain and was forced to make an emergency landing in Copenhagen, Denmark.

The diversion was in line with company procedures as the furry stowaway posed a safety risk, airline spokesperson Oystein Schmidt told the AFP news agency.

Passengers on the flight were later flown to Malaga on a different aircraft.

Airlines usually have strict restrictions involving rodents on board planes in order to prevent electrical wiring being chewed through.

“This is something that happens extremely rarely,” Mr Schmidt said.

“We have established procedures for such situations, which also include a review with our suppliers to ensure this does not happen again.”

Jarle Borrestad experienced the incident first-hand, telling the BBC News Channel in a recorded video that the mouse escaped from the box of food that the woman sat next to him on the flight was opening.

Mr Borrestad said the situation was very calm and that people “were not stressed at all”.

However, he admitted that he did put his socks over his trousers so the mouse did not crawl up his legs.

Mr Borrestad said that while the flight was diverted, it only added a few extra hours to the journey.

It is the second rodent-related travel incident in a week.

A train service in southern England had to be terminated mid-journey after two squirrels boarded a carriage and one refused to get off.

Polls have closed in Sri Lanka’s election, where voters are choosing a new president for the first time since mass protests unseated the country’s leader in 2022.

Saturday’s vote is widely regarded as a referendum on economic reforms meant to put the country on the road to recovery after its worst ever financial crisis.

But many people are still struggling to make ends meet because of tax hikes, and cuts to subsidies and welfare.

Multiple analysts predict that economic concerns will be front of mind for voters in what is shaping up to be a close race.

Counting began with postal votes at 17:00 local time (11:30 GMT), but results are not expected to become clear until Sunday morning.

“The country’s soaring inflation, skyrocketing cost-of-living and poverty have left the electorate desperate for solutions to stabilise prices and improve livelihoods,” Soumya Bhowmick, an associate fellow at India-based think tank the Observer Research Foundation, told the BBC.

“With the country seeking to emerge from its economic collapse, this election serves as a crucial moment for shaping Sri Lanka’s recovery trajectory and restoring both domestic and international confidence in its governance.”

President Ranil Wickremesinghe, who was charged with the monumental task of leading Sri Lanka out of its economic collapse, is seeking another term.

The 75-year-old was appointed by parliament a week after former president Gotabaya Rajapaksa was chased out of power.

Shortly after taking office, Wickremesinghe crushed what was left of the protest movement. He has also been accused of shielding the Rajapaksa family from prosecution and allowing them to regroup – allegations he has denied.

Another strong contender is leftist politician Anura Kumara Dissanayake, whose anti-corruption platform has seen him draw increasing public support.

More candidates are running in Saturday’s election than any other in Sri Lanka’s history. But of more than three dozen, four are dominating the limelight.

Other than Wickremesinghe and Dissanayake, there is also the leader of the opposition, Sajith Premadasa, and the 38-year-old nephew of the ousted president, Namal Rajapaksa.

The “Aragalaya” (struggle) uprising that deposed former president Gotabaya Rajapaksa was sparked by an economic meltdown.

Years of under-taxation, weak exports and major policy errors, combined with the Covid-19 pandemic dried up the country’s foreign exchange reserves. Public debt reached more than $83 billion and inflation soared to 70%.

While the country’s social and political elite were largely insulated against the fallout, basics like food, cooking gas and medicine became scarce for ordinary people, fuelling resentment and unrest.

Then-president Rajapaksa and his government were blamed for the crisis, leading to months-long protests calling for his resignation.

On 13 July 2022, in dramatic scenes that were broadcast around the world, crowds overran the presidential palace, jumping into the swimming pool and ransacking the house.

In the wake of Rajapaksa’s flight from the country – an exile that lasted 50 days – the interim government of President Wickremesinghe imposed strict austerity measures to salvage the economy.

Although the economic reforms have successfully brought down inflation and strengthened the Sri Lankan rupee, everyday Sri Lankans continue to feel the pinch.

“Jobs are the hardest thing to find,” says 32-year-old Yeshan Jayalath. “Even with an accounting degree, I can’t find a permanent job.” Instead, he has been doing temporary or part-time jobs.

Many small businesses across the country are also still reeling from the crisis.

Norbet Fernando, who was forced to shut his roof tile factory north of Colombo in 2022, told the BBC that raw materials such as clay, wood and kerosene are three times more costly than they were two years ago. Very few people are building homes or buying roof tiles, he added.

“After 35 years, it hurts to see my factory in ruins,” Fernando told the BBC, adding that of the 800 tile factories in the area, only 42 have remained functional since 2022.

Central bank data on business sentiments shows depressed demand in 2022 and 2023 – and though the situation is improving in 2024, it’s still not back to pre-crisis levels.

“The Sri Lankan economy may for now have been put back on its feet, but many citizens still need to be convinced the price is worth paying,” Alan Keenan, the International Crisis Group’s (ICG) senior consultant on Sri Lanka, told the BBC.

Ranil Wickremesinghe: Having previously lost twice at the presidential polls, Saturday marks his third chance to be elected by the Sri Lankan people, rather than parliament

Anura Kumara Dissanayake: The candidate of the leftist National People’s Party alliance promises tough anti-corruption measures and good governance

Sajith Premadasa: The opposition leader is representing the Samagi Jana Balawegaya party – his father served as the second executive president of Sri Lanka before he was assassinated in 1993

Namal Rajapaksa: The son of Mahinda Rajapaksa, who led the country between 2005 and 2015, he hails from a powerful political lineage, but will need to win over voters who blame his family for the economic crisis

Voters in Sri Lanka elect a single winner by ranking up to three candidates in order of preference.

If a candidate receives an absolute majority, they will be declared the winner. If not, a second round of counting will commence, with second and third-choice votes then taken into account.

No election in Sri Lanka has ever progressed to the second round of counting, as single candidates have always emerged as clear winners based on first-preference votes.

This year could be different.

“Opinion polls and initial campaigning suggest the vote is likely, for the first time ever, to produce a winner who fails to gain a majority of votes,” said Mr Keenan, of ICG.

“Candidates, party leaders and election officials should be prepared to handle any possible disputes calmly and according to established procedures.”

Maria Ivashchenko’s husband Pavlo volunteered to fight the very same day Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022.

Six months later, he was killed as Ukrainian forces went on a counter-offensive in the region of Kherson – making Maria one of the hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians who have lost loved ones in the war.

To cope with her grief, Maria has been attending therapy classes organised by a volunteer group called Alive. True Love Stories.

In the sessions, the widows and mothers of fallen fighters express their feelings, and seek solace and closure by painting. They then accompany their paintings with written stories of their love.

Maria says that painting helps externalise and process memories and moments that people can be afraid to re-live.

“There’s total trust. No one will judge you, whether you laugh or cry,” she adds. “They understand you unconditionally. There’s no need to explain anything.”

“There’s a reason why it’s called Alive. We came back to life. This project has pulled many of us out of the abyss.”

The founder of Alive, Olena Sokalska, says more than 250 women have become involved in her project so far, and there is a waiting list of about 3,000.

Olena says that the paintings generally depict scenes that remind the women of the times they spent with their loved ones or of dreams they had. Some paint themselves or their husbands, Olena adds.

“Very often they paint angels, their families or children are depicted as angels,” she says. “These paintings mark the end of the life they had and the beginning of a new life.”

In addition to the trauma of bereavement, the dangers and insecurities of war have affected millions of Ukrainians.

Anna Stativka, a Ukrainian psychotherapist, explains that when wars start people lose safety and stability – basic human needs.

“When these two basic resources are gone very suddenly, this creates a lot of stress.”

In situations where war is sustained, this can also turn chronic, with symptoms such as anxiety, depression, apathy, insomnia, lack of concentration and difficulties with memory.

“You can’t stay in this hyper alert state for so long,” Ms Stativka says, adding that this has consequences on people’s mental and physical health.

“So this is generally what is happening to Ukrainian society,” she says.

Research and statistics suggest that the share of Ukrainians who are experiencing mental health issues is huge, and it is growing.

According to the Ukrainian Health Ministry, the number of patients complaining of mental health problems this year has doubled since 2023, and market research data shows antidepressant sales have jumped by almost 50% since 2021.

A study published in the medical journal The Lancet suggests that 54% of Ukrainians (including refugees) have PTSD. Severe anxiety is prevalent among 21%, and high levels of stress among 18%.

Another study carried out in 2023 showed that 27% of Ukrainians felt depressed or very sad, up from 20% in 2021, the year before Russia’s full-scale invasion.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) estimates that the majority of Ukraine’s population may be experiencing distress caused by war.

“It may have different symptoms. Some feel sadness, some feel anxiety, some have difficulties with sleep, some feel fatigue. Some are getting more angry. Some people have unexplained somatic syndromes, be it just pain or feeling bad,” the WHO representative in Ukraine, Jarno Habicht, told the BBC.

But, Mr Habicht says, Ukraine has made strides in dealing with the acute crisis and battling the Soviet-era stigma associated with mental health.

He says mental health was prioritised during the first months of the war. “Ukraine started to talk about mental health, and I think that’s something unique which we have not seen in many places,” Mr Habicht says.

Ukraine’s first lady Olena Zelenska spearheads a mental health campaign called How are you? and she also held the Third Summit of First Ladies and Gentlemen focusing on mental health in times of war. It was co-hosted by the British broadcaster, author and mental health campaigner Stephen Fry.

In an interview with the BBC’s Ukrainecast, Mr Fry described the mental health challenges facing Ukraine as an “urgent crisis”, but said he was also impressed by what Ukraine is doing to address it.

“It’s extraordinary to me that in Ukraine this is being talked about,” Mr Fry said. “It is certainly a strength of Ukraine. The day Russians start to talk about the mental health of their soldiers and the crises amongst them will be the day that it’s moved away from some of the totalitarian horror in which it seems to be mired at the moment.”

According to psychotherapist Anna Stativka, one of the ways in which Ukrainian society has responded to the trauma of war is by coming together.

She says that people have generally become much more ready to help to each other and are much more polite, even in public places. “People talk to neighbours more. So many are volunteering, donating, trying to help each other. This is a very stabilising factor. We see much more trust towards each other, much more empathy,” she says.

Maria Ivashchenko is now raising four children on her own. But she is smiling again, even if through tears sometimes. He message to those who are struggling with their loss is: “Don’t be afraid to talk to people. Get out of your bubble. Don’t be alone.”

“The most important thing is not to give up and not to think that you’re alone in this world, or that nobody cares. Oh yes, they do,” she says.

“Our husbands did not go to war so that we can sit around crying, but so that we keep moving on, so that we keep living.”

The impact of this war will be felt by generations to come, but Ukrainians are working hard to deal with the trauma now.

After thousands of pagers and radio devices exploded in two separate incidents in Lebanon – injuring thousands of people and killing at least 37 – details are still being pieced together as to how such an operation was carried out.

Lebanon and Hezbollah, whose members and communication systems were targeted, have blamed Israel – though Israel is yet to comment.

The BBC has followed a trail from Taiwan, to Japan, Hungary, Israel and back to Lebanon.

Here are the unanswered questions.

Some early speculation suggested that the pagers could have been targeted by a complex hack that caused them to explode. But that theory was quickly dismissed by experts.

To cause damage on the scale that they did, it is probable they were rigged with explosives before they entered Hezbollah’s possession, experts say.

Images of the broken remains of the pagers show the logo of a small Taiwanese electronics manufacturer: Gold Apollo.

The BBC visited the company’s offices, situated on a large business park in a nondescript suburb of Taipei.

The company’s founder, Hsu Ching-Kuang, seemed shocked. He denied the business had anything to do with the operation.

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

Instead – he pointed to a Hungarian company: BAC Consulting.

Mr Hsu said that three years ago he had licensed Gold Apollo’s trademark to BAC, allowing them to use Gold Apollo’s name on their own pagers.

He said the money transfers from BAC had been “very strange” – and that there had been problems with the payments, which had come from the Middle East.

• Taiwan pager maker stunned by link to Lebanon attacks

The BBC went to the registered office of BAC Consulting, situated in a residential area of the Hungarian capital, Budapest.

The address appeared to be shared by 12 other companies – and no-one in the building could tell us anything about BAC Consulting at all.

Officials in Hungary say the firm, which was first incorporated in 2022, was merely a “trading intermediary with no manufacturing or operational site” in the country.

A brochure for BAC, published on LinkedIn, lists eight organisations it claims to have worked with – including the UK Department for International Development (DfID).

The UK Foreign Office – which has taken on DfID’s responsibilities – told the BBC it was in the process of investigating. But based on initial conversations, it said it did not have any involvement with BAC.

BAC’s website listed one person as its chief executive and founder – Cristiana Bársony-Arcidiacono.

The BBC made several attempts to contact Ms Bársony-Arcidiacono, but were unable to reach her.

However, she did reportedly speak to NBC News, saying: “I don’t make the pagers. I am just the intermediate.”

So who is really behind BAC Consulting?

The New York Times has reported that the company was in fact a front for Israeli intelligence.

The newspaper, citing three Israeli officials, said that two other shell companies were created to help hide the identities of the people who were really producing the pagers: Israeli intelligence officers.

The BBC has not been able to independently verify these reports – but we do know that Bulgarian authorities have now begun investigating another company linked to BAC.

Bulgarian broadcaster bTV reported on Thursday that 1.6 million euros ($1.8m; £1.3m) connected to the device attacks in Lebanon passed through Bulgaria and was later sent to Hungary.

• What we know about firm linked to Lebanon pagers

The origins of the radio devices, which exploded in the second wave of attacks, are less clear.

We know that at least some of those that exploded were the IC-V82 model produced by the Japanese company, ICOM.

Those devices were purchased by Hezbollah five months ago, according to a security source speaking to Reuters news agency.

Earlier, a sales executive at the US subsidiary of Icom told the Associated Press news agency that the exploded radio devices in Lebanon appeared to be knockoff products that were not made by the company – adding that it was easy to find counterfeit versions online.

It took the BBC a matter of seconds to find Icom IC-V82s listed for sale in online marketplaces.

ICOM said in a statement it had stopped manufacturing and selling the model almost a decade ago, in October 2014 – and said it had also discontinued production of the batteries needed to operate it.

The company said it does not outsource manufacturing overseas – and all its radios are produced at a factory in Western Japan.

According to Kyodo news agency, Icom director Yoshiki Enomoyo suggested that photos of the damage around the battery compartment of the exploded walkie-talkies suggest they may have been retrofitted with explosives.

• Japan firm says it stopped making walkie-talkies used in Lebanon blasts

Videos show victims reaching into their pockets in the seconds before the devices detonated, causing chaos in streets, shops and homes across the country.

Lebanese authorities have concluded that the devices were detonated by “electronic messages” sent to them, according to a letter by the Lebanese mission to the UN, seen by Reuters news agency.

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.

We do not yet know what kind of message was sent to the radio devices.

This is the question many in Lebanon are now asking – paranoid that other devices, cameras, phones or laptops could have also been rigged with explosives.

The Lebanese Army has been on the streets of Beirut using a remote-controlled bomb disposal robot to carry out controlled explosions.

BBC crews in Lebanon have been stopped and told not to use their phones or cameras.

“Everyone is just panicking… We don’t know if we can stay next to our laptops, our phones. Everything seems like a danger at this point, and no-one knows what to do,” one woman, Ghida, told a BBC correspondent.

• ‘We don’t know if our phones are safe’: Lebanon on edge after exploding device attacks

There are several theories as to why the devices were triggered to explode this week.

One is that Israel chose this moment to send a devastating message to Hezbollah, following almost a year of escalating cross-border hostilities after Hezbollah fired rockets at or around northern Israel a day after the Hamas attack of 7 October.

The other is that Israel did not intend to put its plan in motion at this moment, but was forced to after fearing the plot was about to be exposed.

According to US outlet Axios, the original plan was for the pager attack to be the opening salvo of an all-out war as a way to try to cripple Hezbollah’s fighters.

But, it says, after Israel learned that Hezbollah had become suspicious, it chose to carry out the attack early.

One person has died and seven others are missing, officials said, after “unprecedented” rains caused floods and landslides in the coastal quake-hit region of Ishikawa in northern Japan.

Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) on Saturday issued its highest “life-threatening” alert level for the Ishikawa region, following torrential rains which are expected to last until midday on Sunday.

More than 40,000 people across four cities have been ordered to evacuate after at least a dozen rivers in the region burst their banks.

Two of the missing were carried away by strong river currents, according to Japan’s public service broadcaster NHK.

Meanwhile, another four workers carrying out road repairs following a deadly New Year’s Day earthquake are also unaccounted for.

More than 120mm (4.7in) of rain was recorded in Wajima on Saturday morning, NHK reported, the heaviest downpour in the region since records began.

JMA forecaster Sugimoto Satoshi told reporters: “This level of downpours has never been experienced in this region before. Residents must secure their safety immediately. The risk to their lives is imminent.”

Footage aired by NHK showed an entire street in Wajima submerged under water.

Government official Koji Yamamoto told AFP that 60 people had been working to restore a road hit by the quake in the city of Wajima, but were hit by a landslide on Saturday morning.

“I asked [contractors] to check the safety of workers… but we are still unable to contact four people,” Mr Yamamoto said.

Rescue workers who had tried to gain access to the site, he said, were “blocked by landslides”.

A further two people have been seriously injured, according to government officials.

Some 6,000 households have been left without power, with an unknown number of households without running water, AFP agency reported.

The cities of Wajima and Suzu and the town of Noto have ordered some 44,000 residents to evacuate and seek shelter in Ishikawa prefecture, Honshu island.

Meanwhile, another 16,000 residents in the Niigata and Yamagata prefectures north of Ishikawa were also told to evacuate, the AFP news agency said.

Wajima and Suzu, in central Japan’s Noto peninsula, were among the areas hardest hit by a huge 7.5 magnitude earthquake on New Years Day that killed at least 236 people.

The region is still recovering from the powerful quake which had toppled buildings, ripped up roads and sparked a major fire.

Japan has seen unprecedented rainfall in parts of the country in recent years, with floods and landslides sometimes causing casualties.

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 are just one or two percentage points separating the 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 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
• IMMIGRATION: Could Trump really deport a million migrants?
• FACT CHECK: Was US economy stronger or weaker under Trump?
• Read more about: Kamala Harris | Donald Trump | US election

Travis King, the US soldier who fled from South to North Korea last year before being returned home, has been sentenced to one year of confinement and dishonourably discharged from the military.

He faced charges including desertion in July 2023 and assault of a non-commissioned officer.

But with time already served and credit for good behaviour, the 24-year-old Army private walked free, his legal team told the BBC.

At Friday’s hearing at Fort Bliss, Texas, he pleaded guilty to five of the original 14 military charges that had been filed against him. The other counts were dismissed.

King joined the army in January 2021 and was in South Korea as part of a unit rotation when he crossed into North Korea.

At the hearing, King told military judge Lt Col Rick Mathew that he had decided to flee the US Army because he was “dissatisfied” with work and had been thinking about leaving for about a year before he bolted into North Korea.

“I wanted to desert from the US Army and never come back,” King said, according to reporters inside the courtroom.

He also said he had been diagnosed with mental health conditions, though he maintained he was fit to stand trial and understood the charges.

King’s lawyer, Franklin Rosenblatt, said in a statement that his client accepts full responsibility for what happened and added that King “faced significant challenges in his life, including a difficult upbringing, exposure to criminal environments, and struggles with mental health”.

“All these factors have compounded the hardships he faced in the military,” Mr Rosenblatt said.

King illegally crossed into North Korea while on a civilian tour of the village of Panmunjom, located on the heavily guarded Demilitarised Zone (DMZ) between North and South Korea.

He joined the civilian tour after he was released from a South Korean prison where he had served nearly two months on charges that he assaulted two people and kicked a police car.

After his release, he was taken to the airport so he could return to the Fort Bliss base to face disciplinary action. But instead of getting on the plane, King joined the civilian tour and ultimately bolted into North Korea, where he was detained by local authorities.

At the time, North Korean media reported that he had fled because of “inhuman treatment” and racism within the US military.

He became the first American to be detained in North Korea in nearly five years.

King was released two months later after “intense diplomacy”, US officials said at the time. He was taken by a state department aircraft to a US airbase in South Korea.

On 28 September 2023, he was flown back to Texas and had been in custody there since.

The following month, he was charged by the US military with desertion, kicking and punching other officers, unlawfully possessing alcohol, making a false statement and possessing a video of a child engaged in sexual activity.

King pleaded guilty to charges including desertion, three counts of disobeying an officer and assault on a non-commissioned officer.

The other charges, however, were dismissed after the government made a motion to do so, which was granted by the judge.

The Associated Press reported in July that King’s lawyers were in talks with military prosecutors to work out a plea deal. A preliminary hearing was scheduled that month, but was postponed so both sides could negotiate.

In his statement, Mr Rosenblatt said he believes that despite his client walking away free on Friday, “the negative public perception” and the time King has spent in custody “represents an ongoing punishment that he will endure for the rest of his life”.

Eighty years after hundreds of allied soldiers parachuted from military aircraft into Nazi-occupied Netherlands as part of a daring World War Two offensive, their modern equivalents will on Saturday repeat the jump in commemoration.

In an airborne spectacular, 700 paratroopers from eight Nato nations – including the Netherlands, Germany, UK and US – will parachute from 12 aircraft.

The jump will be done in two waves and those involved will land at the same location at Ginkel Heath, near the Dutch town of Ede.

Among them will be members of the parachute display team, the British Red Devils.

The airdrop is one of several events organised to mark the anniversary of Operation Market Garden, an ambitious military offensive designed to speed up the invasion of Nazi Germany and shorten the war in Europe.

Among those who parachuted into the Netherlands were 1,900 allied airborne soldiers from Britain’s 4th Parachute Brigade.

It combined one of the largest airborne assaults in history, known as “Market”, with a ground offensive, “Garden”, aimed at swiftly capturing key bridges over the Rhine River.

Immortalised by the everyday phrase “a bridge too far”, the failure to secure a final bridge at Arnhem was the result of stronger-than-anticipated German resistance, logistical setbacks and tactical decisions by Allied commanders.

Two British soldiers killed in Operation Market Garden were laid to rest earlier this week with full military honours in the Oosterbeek war graves cemetery, close to Ginkel Heath.

Their coffins were dressed in Union Flags and carried by military bearer parties.

Private Henry Moon, 7th Battalion, The Green Howards, was part of the ground offensive and was killed at the age of 21. His remains were identified through a DNA match.

It was a humbling moment, his great-nephew David Snowdon told the BBC, to see hundreds of people turn out to pay their respects.

Lieutenant Dermod Green Anderson, a glider pilot who landed with his troops in a village northwest of Arnhem, was killed when an enemy shell exploded near his trench just hours before the evacuation order came.

His great-nephew, Lieutenant Colonel Julian Anderson, watched as his wooden coffin was gently lowered into a freshly dug grave – stunned to discover his great-uncle’s body had lain undetected for decades nearby.

Many of the thatched roof villas and apartments around Arnhem display the merlot flag decorated with a leaping pegasus, dedicated to the British Airborne forces, to ensure the sacrifices made for their freedom are not forgotten.

Some of the most ferocious fighting took place on these tranquil, tree-lined streets during the eight-day battle.

The battles were so incongruously bloody that those who witnessed war on their doorsteps recalled taking refuge from the relentless gunfire and described the paratroopers dropping like “stars falling from the sky’”

The area was eventually swarmed by victorious Nazi soldiers and became one of the last places to be liberated from the Nazis.

This eastern Dutch region has long maintained its traditions as a heartland of Allied remembrance.

So, why do the Dutch still put such great emphasis on remembering the failed Allied effort?

Earlier this month, the BBC sought answers from walkers on ‘Wandeltocht’ – the world’s largest one-day commemorative march that follows the footsteps of the Allied forces, passing key historical landmarks.

Thirty-four thousand people armed only with water bottles took part in the annual tribute, which encourages young and old to engage with history in a meaningful way.

As living memory passes with the remaining veterans, the Dutch feel a responsibility to share these stories and ensure their legacy is maintained.

Mattijs van Gessel’s sons Koen and Tom are hiding shyly behind his shorts. Their mother Sary told the BBC it was an opportunity to educate them.

“Wars take place everywhere and we tell them our safety is not something that you can take for granted,” she said.

That morning, during breakfast, Sary said the family had discussed why all the military personnel were in the village.

“If this wasn’t happening then we wouldn’t be talking about it.”

One gentleman, Geert, told me he had goosebumps on the walk. His adopted grandfather was wounded by a piece of shrapnel and was tended to by two Dutch nurses. The shrapnel and his beret are on display in the Oosterbeek museum.

“We would like to take it back for the family but it is more important for the world to see the evidence. It’s most important for kids to know it was real,” Geert said.

Another participant, Amanda Juanita Diemel, told the BBC that they were “walking with history”.

“It makes it very concrete, very tangible,” she said.

“It’s important to keep it alive, to learn from the past, especially with everything going on in the world today.”

As weeks of commemorations to mark the 80th anniversary of Operation Market Garden draw to a close, these moments have caused people to pause and remember the price paid to restore peace in Europe.

Witness History – Operation Market Garden

Thousands of Allied troops parachuted into Nazi-occupied Holland in September 1944. It was the most ambitious Allied airborne offensive of World War Two. The BBC World Service hears from Hetty Bischoff van Heemskerck, a young Dutch woman from the city of Arnhem, who watched the Allied paratroopers come down.

A recent report, which details poor working conditions and rampant sexual harassment faced by women in Malayalam-language cinema, is causing seismic upheavals in the entertainment industry in India.

But the messages of solidarity and support have come largely from women – and critics say the silence of powerful men, including India’s biggest and most loved stars, is deafening.

Based on testimonies from 51 people from the Kerala-based film industry, the Hema Committee report lays bare decades of exploitation and says that “women have been asked to make themselves available for sex on demand” and that they were constantly told to make “compromise and adjustments” if they wanted work.

The panel was set up in 2017 after Women in Cinema Collective (WCC), formed by a group of women working in the Malayalam cinema, petitioned the government after a top actress was sexually assaulted by a group of men allegedly at the behest of a top male actor.

Their 290-page report was released last month, with chunks redacted to hide the identities of the survivors and those accused of harassment.

But since its release on 19 August, several women have publicly spoken up about their ordeal and more than a dozen police complaints have been lodged against male stars, producers, directors and other influential men.

The state government has set up a special investigation team (SIT) to look into the allegations and the Kerala high court has asked the SIT to investigate the instances mentioned in the report, raising hopes that the survivors may after all get justice.

Women in all Indian film industries, including in the biggest and hugely popular Bollywood, have repeatedly spoken about the casting couch – the practice of men asking for sexual favours in return for roles – and rampant sexual harassment they face.

“The rot is as deep as the ocean across all Indian film industries,” film critic and author Shubhra Gupta told the BBC. “We won’t find a single female performer anywhere in the country who has not suffered. If everyone came out to complain, it will take us many decades to deal with all those complaints.”

The sordid revelations about the extent of the rot in Malayalam cinema have made headlines and the findings have been debated on primetime TV. Deedi Damodaran, a WCC member, told the BBC that the response has been “overwhelming”.

“Some women have now talked about how they had to flee the industry because of the terrible things that happened to them. They have no evidence, but they’ve got some sort of closure by talking about their experiences.”

Many of them, she says, have spoken out despite being trolled and abused on social media.

The report has also created ripples in other film industries, with calls for reform being heard in regional industries based in Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and Karnataka.

In Telangana, pressure has grown on the government to publish a report on the Telugu film industry that’s been waiting to see the light of the day for two years. An inquiry was instituted after an upcoming actress, Sri Reddy, protested by stripping down to her undergarments in public in 2018 “to draw attention to the sexual exploitation of women in the industry”.

West Bengal has set up a committee to investigate allegations of sexual abuse in the Bengali film industry, actress Ritabhari Chakraborty has said. This, she added, would “cleanse the industry from predators”.

• A report that exposed the Kerala film industry

Women in Tamil and Kannada cinema have also petitioned their state governments to improve working conditions for them.

Veteran Tamil actress Radhika Sarathkumar told the BBC that the Hema committee report has created a lot of awareness and that “men will be scared now”.

“It’s time women in cinema get together and speak up and stop this nonsense,” she said.

But the lack of support from the men in the industry, says Damodaran, has been disappointing.

Malayalam superstars Mohanlal and Mammootty have welcomed the report but said that nothing should be done to hurt the industry.

“These heroes are worshipped as larger than life beings, but we’re waiting for them to take a heroic stand,” Damodaran told the BBC.

In Tamil Nadu, actor-politicians Kamal Haasan and Vijay’s silence has been noted, while Rajinikanth faced criticism for claiming ignorance of the report 10 days after its release.

“The harassment happens to each of us, how come men don’t know about it? Maybe the male actors compartmentalise, maybe they choose not to see it,” Sarathkumar told the BBC. “It’s very sad that every time the onus in on the women to protect themselves.”

Some have also pointed out that the biggest names in Bollywood – Amitabh Bachchan, Shah Rukh Khan, Salman Khan, Aamir Khan and Akshay Kumar – have chosen to remain silent.

Gupta says their silence may be deafening, but it’s not unexpected. “I would’ve been very surprised if there had been a reaction. We saw what happened in 2018 after the #MeToo movement first started in Bollywood after actress Tanushree Dutta accused an actor of behaving inappropriately towards her on a film set in 2008.”

“For a while, there was a groundswell of support and it seemed that Bollywood would step up and do something about it. But then things were contained. None of the men suffered any consequences, they are all back to doing what they did. In fact, the women who complained didn’t get work.”

A key criticism of Bollywood is that, unlike other industries, none of its leading actresses have addressed gender issues.

Dutta, who received little support from her A-lister peers and has since claimed that she has been denied work, has described the Hema committee report as “useless”, adding that earlier reports about making workplaces safer for women had not helped.

Gupta says one of the reasons why stars don’t speak out could be to avoid trouble for themselves.

“ I think they keep quiet because they know the stakes are high, they are fearful of not getting work in the industry. Remember the time when Aamir Khan or Shahrukh Khan spoke about intolerance? They got trolled heavily and lost out on work.”

Damodaran, however, says the response to the report has given her cause for optimism.

“Film industries in India are deeply patriarchal and misogynistic. But we can’t continue with the kind of sexism and misogyny that women have to face in their workplace. Things are bound to change – and they must.”