The Speaker of the US House Mike Johnson has demanded that Ukraine fire its ambassador to Washington, as a feud between the Republican Party and Volodymyr Zelensky escalates.

Johnson’s intervention comes after President Zelensky visited an arms factory in Scranton, Pennsylvania – the hometown of President Joe Biden in a key swing state – with several top Democrats.

In a public letter, the top Republican said the visit was “designed to help Democrats” and claimed it amounted to “election interference”.

The row has threatened to overshadow Zelensky’s meeting with President Joe Biden on Thursday, during which he will present a “plan for victory” in his country’s war with Russia.

Since his arrival to the US on Sunday, Zelensky has ramped up efforts to persuade the US and other allies to lend more support to Ukraine as it fends off Russian advances.

While details of his “victory” plan have been kept under wraps, the strategy is likely to contain pleas for further military and financial support, plus future security guarantees.

On Thursday, Biden announced that the US will send $7.9bn (£5.9bn) worth of military aid to Ukraine in a surge of assistance as his presidency nears its end.

The aid, part of a $61bn package that passed Congress in April, includes additional Patriot air defence missiles and long-range munitions.

The weapons package will be approved through presidential drawdown authority and will pull from existing Pentagon supplies to deliver the arms more quickly.

Congressional Republicans blocked the Biden administration’s $61bn military package for months earlier this year, before ultimately relenting and passing the legislation in April. Before that, arms supplies to Ukraine had dried up for several months.

The US has been the largest foreign donor to Ukraine, with $56bn provided for its defence to date.

Responding to the aid package, Zelensky thanked the US and said he was “grateful to Joe Biden, US Congress and its both parties”.

The Ukrainian president said the assistance would be used “in the most efficient and transparent manner” to achieve “victory for Ukraine, just and lasting peace, and transatlantic security”.

Russia’s missile and drone attacks on Ukraine have continued while Zelensky is in the US.

The Sumy, Odesa and Kyiv regions were all attacked overnight, leaving one woman dead in Odesa and numerous reported injuries.

In the capital, air raid sirens and explosions from Ukraine’s air defences continued for hours.

“I woke up to the sound of the Shahed drone. I got up and saw the reflection in the windows, how a big ball of fire was falling down,” said Maryna, a 31-year-old mother of two children.

Zelensky had planned to present his priorities outlined in Thursday’s statement to the two presidential candidates: Kamala Harris and Donald Trump.

However, an official on Donald Trump’s campaign said the Republican nominee would not meet the Ukrainian leader on his tour of the US this week.

Trump and Zelensky have long held a fractious relationship. In 2019, Trump was impeached by the US House over accusations that he pressured Ukraine’s leader to dig up damaging information on a political rival.

He has frequently echoed Russian talking points over the war. At a campaign event on Wednesday he mocked Zelensky as the “greatest salesman on Earth” and accused the Ukrainian leader of refusing to “make a deal” with Moscow.

During an earlier rally on Tuesday, Trump also praised Russia’s military capabilities, saying: “They beat Hitler, they beat Napoleon – that’s what they do, they fight.”

The former president’s remarks come amid a growing row between Zelensky and the Republican party over his visit to an ammunition factory in Biden’s hometown of Scranton in the key swing state of Pennsylvania.

During the visit, Zelensky appeared with Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro and several other top Democrats. Speaker Johnson accused the president of taking part in a “partisan campaign event” designed to help Vice-President Kamala Harris’ camapign.

Meanwhile, the Republican-led House Oversight Committee had already announced that it would investigate whether Zelensky’s trip was an attempt to use a foreign leader to benefit Vice-President Kamala Harris’ campaign.

• 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?

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.

Sudan’s army has launched a major offensive against the powerful paramilitary group it is fighting in the country’s civil war, targeting areas in the capital it lost at the start of the conflict.

In dawn strikes on Thursday, government forces shelled Rapid Support Forces (RSF) bases in the capital Khartoum, and Bahri to its north.

Sudan has been embroiled in a war since the army and the RSF began a vicious struggle for power in April 2023, leading to what the UN has called one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises.

Up to 150,000 people have been killed in the conflict while more than 10 million people – about a fifth of the population – have been forced from their homes.

The military escalation comes despite US-led efforts to broker a ceasefire, which is being discussed on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly this week.

Residents said the artillery and air strikes started overnight and intensified at dawn.

Numerous accounts said the army crossed key bridges over the River Nile – which had separated government-controlled areas in Omdurman from the regions controlled by the RSF.

The RSF claimed to have repelled the attempts, but sounds of clashes and plumes of smoke were reported coming from locations in central Khartoum.

Since early in the war, the paramilitaries have been in control of nearly all of the capital.

Thursday’s advances appear to be the government’s first significant push in months to regain some territory.

• A simple guide to the Sudan war
• Starvation in war-hit Sudan ‘almost everywhere’ – WHO
• Who was behind one of the deadliest attacks in Sudan?

The UN has called for “immediate” action to protect civilians and end the fighting.

Much of the worst and most intense fighting has taken place in heavily populated regions. Both sides have accused each other of indiscriminately bombing civilian areas.

“Relentless hostilities across the country have brought misery to millions of civilians, triggering the world’s fastest-growing displacement crisis,” warned the UN on Wednesday.

It noted that half of the 10 million people who had fled their homes were children, while at least two million have sought protection in neighbouring countries.

It also called Sudan “the world’s largest hunger crisis”. There are fears of widespread famine as people have not been able to grow any crops.

There have also been warnings of a possible genocide against non-Arabs in the western region of Darfur.

A cholera epidemic is also raging throughout the country- more than 430 people have died from the easily-treatable disease in the past month, the health ministry said on Wednesday.

But getting treatment to those affected areas is hugely complicated by the conflict.

• ‘Our future is over’: Forced to flee by a year of war
• I recognised my sister in video of refugees captured in Sudan war
• A photographer’s 11-day trek to flee war-torn Sudan

The world’s richest person, Elon Musk, has hit back after not being invited to the UK government’s International Investment Summit.

He was not invited due to his social media posts during last month’s riots, the BBC understands.

“I don’t think anyone should go to the UK when they’re releasing convicted pedophiles in order to imprison people for social media posts,” Mr Musk claimed on X.

Earlier this month, the government released some prisoners to reduce prison overcrowding, but no people serving sentences for sex offences were included.

Following disorder and rioting across the UK in August, some people were jailed for encouraging unrest on social media.

Violence spread across the country after a stabbing attack in Southport, in which three children attending a dance class were killed. At the time, Mr Musk posted on X, formerly Twitter, predicting civil war in the UK and repeatedly attacking the prime minister.

The summit in October is the key moment that PM Sir Keir Starmer hopes will attract tens of billions of pounds in inward funding for business from the world’s biggest investors.

Mr Musk was invited to last year’s event but did not attend. However, he took a starring role in November’s AI Summit, including a fireside chat with then-PM Rishi Sunak.

The government declined to comment on the tech entrepreneur not being invited to the summit and the billionaire’s backlash to the decision.

But Jeremy Hunt, the former Conservative chancellor and now the shadow chancellor, told the BBC it was a “big loss” not to have Mr Musk at the summit.

“He told me last year he was planning a new car plant in Europe and had not decided where but the UK was a candidate,” Mr Hunt claimed.

During the August riots, Mr Musk shared, and later deleted, a conspiracy theory about the UK building “detainment camps” on the Falkland Islands for rioters, on X – the social media platform he owns.

At the time ministers said his comments were “totally unjustifiable” and “pretty deplorable”.

The BBC understands this is why he has not been invited to join hundreds of the world’s biggest investors at the event on 14 October.

David Yelland, a public relations specialist and former editor of the Sun newspaper, told the BBC that if Mr Musk were to attend the summit, it would be “reputationally disastrous for the whole event”.

“He’s a fan of free speech but he behaves like a child and he post things that are deeply inaccurate and extremely damaging,” he said.

“This is just not a guy that is saying stuff in the pub. This is a guy that is encouraging untruths around the world.

“Just because he’s so wealthy, just because he’s so influential doesn’t make any difference. At some point we have to stand up against him, no matter what the consequences are.”

The government’s decision not to invite Mr Musk to the investment summit suggests that it thinks the potential investment is not worth the reputational risk and opens up uncomfortable questions about the background of other investors it has actively encouraged.

Attracting international investment routinely involves charm offensives with investors or nations with questionable human rights records.

The government has actively pursued trade links in the Gulf. Sir Keir, for example, publicly boycotted the 2022 World Cup in Qatar as leader of the opposition, but now he and his team routinely visit these nations to drum up trade and investment.

A number of top sovereign wealth fund executives are expected at the summit next month.

Privately, insiders suggested that Mr Musk’s presence at such a summit would be unthinkable given his comments about the UK last month.

Coming two weeks head of the Budget, the government is billing it as a huge opportunity to attract foreign investment to grow the UK economy. The Labour Party committed before the general election to hold this event within its first 100 days in office.

Mr Musk is said to be turning his attention to a second European gigafactory in addition to his plant in Berlin, Germany, after completing his Mexican plant.

Under the Conservatives, the Tesla boss was quietly shown around various UK sites with potential for a gigafactory for cars and batteries.

He has previously told journalists he opened the site in Berlin and not the UK partly because of Brexit.

Mr Musk is a regular at the equivalent French investment summit. In July, he attended a three-hour lunch with top executives with President Emmanuel Macron ahead of the Paris Olympics earlier this summer.

Under his ownership of the site formerly known as Twitter, Mr Musk lifted the ban on far-right figures, including on the Britain First group.

The UK is considering a tougher Online Safety Act, after the role of misinformation in the widespread racist disorder in August.

He is the world’s richest person and has used his platform to make his views known on a vast array of topics.

Bloomberg estimates his net worth to be around $228bn.

That’s based largely on the value of his shares in Tesla, of which he owns more than 13%. The company’s stock soared in value – some say unreasonably – in 2020 as the firm’s output increased and it started to deliver regular profits.

Since bursting on to the Silicon Valley scene more than two decades ago, the 53-year-old serial entrepreneur has kept the public captivated with his business antics.

Born in Pretoria, South Africa, Mr Musk showed his talents for entrepreneurship early, going door to door with his brother selling homemade chocolate Easter eggs and developing his first computer game at the age of 12.

For a long time Mr Musk, who became a US citizen in 2002, resisted efforts to label his politics – calling himself “half-Democrat, half-Republican”, “politically moderate” and “independent”.

He says he voted for Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and – reluctantly – Joe Biden, all of them Democrats.

But in recent years he’s swung behind Donald Trump, who is a Republican. Mr Musk officially endorsed the former president for a second term in 2024 after his attempted assassination.

An 88-year-old man who is the world’s longest-serving death row inmate has been acquitted by a Japanese court, after it found that evidence used against him was fabricated.

Iwao Hakamada, who was on death row for almost half a century, was found guilty in 1968 of killing his boss, the man’s wife and their two teenage children.

He was recently granted a retrial amid suspicions that investigators may have planted evidence that led to his conviction for quadruple murder.

The 46 years spent on death row has taken a heavy toll on Hakamada’s mental health, though, meaning he was unfit to attend the hearing where his acquittal was finally handed down.

Hakamada’s case is one of Japan’s longest and most famous legal sagas, and has attracted widespread public interest, with some 500 people lining up for seats in the courtroom in Shizuoka on Thursday.

As the verdict was handed down, Hakamada’s supporters outside the court cheered “banzai” – a Japanese exclamation that means “hurray”.

Hakamada, who was exempted from all hearings due to his deteriorated mental state, has been living under the care of his 91-year-old sister Hideko since 2014, when he was freed from jail and granted a retrial.

She fought for decades to clear his name and said it was sweet to hear the words “not guilty” in court.

“When I heard that, I was so moved and happy, I couldn’t stop crying,” she told reporters.

Her brother has previously said his battle for justice was like “fighting a bout every day”. “Once you think you can’t win, there is no path to victory,” he told AFP news agency in 2018.

A former professional boxer, Hakamada was working at a miso processing plant in 1966 when the bodies of his employer, the man’s wife and two children were recovered from a fire at their home in Shizuoka, west of Tokyo. All four had been stabbed to death.

Authorities accused Hakamada of murdering the family, setting fire to their home and stealing 200,000 yen in cash.

Hakamada initially denied having robbed and murdered the victims, but later gave what he came to describe as a coerced confession following beatings and interrogations that lasted up to 12 hours a day.

In 1968 he was convicted of murder and arson, and sentenced to death.

The decades-long legal saga ultimately turned on some clothes found in a tank of miso a year after Hakamada’s arrest. Those clothes, purportedly bloodstained, were used to incriminate him.

For years, however, Hakamada’s lawyers argued that the DNA recovered from the clothes did not match his, raising the possibility that the items belonged to someone else. The lawyers further suggested that police could have fabricated the evidence.

Their argument was enough to persuade Judge Hiroaki Murayama, who in 2014 noted that “the clothes were not those of the defendant”.

“It is unjust to detain the defendant further, as the possibility of his innocence has become clear to a respectable degree,” Murayama said at the time.

Hakamada was then released from jail and granted a retrial.

Prolonged legal proceedings meant that it took until last year for that retrial to begin – and until Thursday morning for the court to declare the verdict.

The detail upon which his retrial and final acquittal hinged was the nature of the red stains on clothing prosecutors said was his. The defence questioned how the stains had aged. It said the fact they remained red and had not darkened after an extended time immersed in soybean paste meant the evidence was fabricated.

Thursday’s ruling found that “investigators tampered with clothes by getting blood on them” which they then hid in the tank of miso, according to AFP.

Hakamada was declared innocent.

Decades of detention, mostly in solitary confinement with the ever-present threat of execution, have taken a heavy toll on Hakamada’s mental health, according to his lawyers and family.

His sister has long advocated for his release. Last year, when the retrial commenced, Hideko expressed relief and said “finally a weight has been lifted from my shoulders”.

Retrials for death row inmates are rare in Japan – Hakamada’s is only the fifth in Japan’s post-war history.

Along with the United States, Japan is the only G7 country that still imposes capital punishment, with death row prisoners being notified of their hanging just a few hours in advance.

The state of Florida has issued a number of mandatory evacuation orders as Hurricane Helene strengthened over the Atlantic ocean.

As of Thursday morning, the storm had grown into a category 2 hurricane and is expected to make landfall on Florida’s Big Bend later in the evening.

Officials have urged people to heed evacuation orders, warning that the storm will bring “life-threatening” weather to the region with destructive winds and significant storm surge.

It is expected to make landfall as a category 4 hurricane south of Tallahassee, a city that has not seen a storm of this magnitude in recent memory.

Hurricane Helene has been described as “catastrophic” and “unsurvivable” by officials, who warned that it will bring with it a storm surge of up to 20 ft above ground level in some areas of the Big Bend.

“This forecast, if realised, is a nightmare surge scenario for Apalachee Bay,” the National Weather Service office in Tallahassee warned in a bulletin.

Michael Brennan, the director of the National Hurricane Centre (NHC), said on Thursday that residents under evacuation orders still have time to get out, but added that “conditions are going to deteriorate quickly.”

Power outages, tree damage and powerful winds that could tear roofs off of structures are expected, Mr Brennan said, as well as significant rainfall of up to 18 inches that could bring flash flooding in some areas.

The storm has been described as “very large” by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who warned on Thursday that it will bring with it tropical storm conditions to much of his state.

Around 14 tornado warnings were issued overnight on Wednesday, and DeSantis warned that more were likely in the coming day.

He added that Tallahassee, Florida’s capital city of 200,000 residents, could be significantly affected if the hurricane makes landfall directly on the city.

“This area has not had a major hurricane hit in quite some time, and nobody in recent memory has seen a storm of this magnitude hit,” DeSantis said.

As of 08:00 EST (13:00 GMT), Hurricane Helene was about 320 miles (515 kilometers) from Tampa, Florida, according to the NHC, with maximum sustained winds of 100 mph (155 km/h).

DeSantis urged residents in the impacted regions to leave as soon as possible, as the hurricane is forecast to travel quickly towards the state.

“Every minute that goes by brings us conditions that are simply going to be too dangerous to navigate,” he said.

He added that people should anticipate flight delays and cancellations. Tampa International Airport and Tallahassee International Airport were both closed on Thursday in anticipation of the storm.

Search and rescue teams have been mobilised should they be needed, DeSantis said, and shelters have been opened for residents in affected areas.

All across the south-eastern US, the storm could trigger “catastrophic and potentially life-threatening flash and urban flooding”, the NHC said.

In Georgia, all public schools in Atlanta will close on Thursday and Friday because of the storm.

Schools in South Florida have also been closed, and student activities and classes have been cancelled at the University of Florida.

The hurricane also affected the race for the White House, with the Republican candidate for vice-president, JD Vance, cancelling two events in Georgia that were planned for Thursday.

Earlier on its path, Hurricane Helene had passed Mexico’s Yucatán peninsula and the tourist resorts of Cancún.

Those regions were spared major damage when the hurricane skirted its north-eastern coast but failed to make landfall.

Torrential rains caused flooding in parts of the Mexican state of Quintana Roo.

Videos uploaded by tourists and locals in Cancún showed buses attempting to drive through flooded streets in the area where many of the city’s hotels are located.

But the state’s governor said there had been no casualties and officials reported that power was being restored to areas where it had been cut.

Hurricanes need sea surface temperatures of more than 27C (80F) to fuel them.

With exceptionally warm waters of the Gulf at 30-32C (86-89F), the sea surface is about two degrees Celsius above normal for the time of year.

Florida’s 220-mile (350-kilometre) Big Bend Coast is where Hurricane Idalia made landfall in 2023. The area was also battered by Hurricane Debby last month.

The Florida Division of Emergency Management has posted a list of the counties in which voluntary or mandatory evacuation orders have been issued ahead of Helene.

Coldplay are to play an unprecedented 10 nights at London’s Wembley Stadium next summer, breaking a record held by Taylor Swift and Take That.

The band originally announced an six-night run at the stadium next August, but added four extra shows in September due to “phenomenal demand” during a fan-only presale on Thursday morning.

The general ticket sale begins at 9am on Friday, 27 September, with prices starting at £20 (plus fees).

Unlike Oasis, the band have declined to use Ticketmaster’s dynamic pricing model – where prices are adjusted according to demand. A message on the company’s website stated, “all ticket prices for these concerts are fixed at the advertised rate”.

The 2025 tour dates are in support of the band’s 10th album Moon Music, which is due for release on 4 October.

As well as Wembley, the band will play two nights at Hull’s Craven Park Stadium.

Fifty per cent of the tickets for those shows will go to local fans, who live in the HU, YO, DN or LN postcodes.

The 12 concerts will be the band’s only European dates of 2025. Ten per cent of the proceeds will be donated to the Music Venue Trust, which supports small, grassroots concert halls around the UK.

Earlier this year, the band headlined the Glastonbury festival, where they were joined on stage by Back to the Future star Michael J Fox, and a host of other musicians including rapper Little Simz, Nigerian musician Femi Kuti and Palestinian-Chilean singer Elyanna.

In a series of five-star reviews, The Independent called the show “the spectacle of a lifetime” and The Guardian said it would be “churlish” not to be swept up by a set full of “cartoonish good fun“.

Film star Tom Cruise, who watched the set from a VIP area at the side of the Pyramid Stage simply branded the concert “awesome“.

• Why do concert tickets suddenly cost as much as a games console?

During the set, the band also previewed songs from their upcoming album, which frontman Chris Martin has hinted could be their last.

“Our last proper record will come out in 2025 and after that I think we will only tour,” he told BBC Radio 2’s Jo Whiley in 2021.

“Maybe we’ll do some collaborative things but the Coldplay catalogue, as it were, finishes then.”

However, he subsequently backtracked those comments, telling the NME the band had another two records left in them.

“We’re going to make 12 albums. Because it’s a lot to pour everything into making them,” he explained. “I love it and it’s amazing, but it’s very intense too.”

Pre-sale tickets for Coldplay’s 2025 tour went on sale on Thursday morning for fans who had placed advance orders for Moon Music.

According to social media messages, the first tranche of dates sold out in about 20 minutes.

One fan reported a message on the Ticketmaster website flashing up at 09:22, stating: “UPDATE: There are currently no available tickets in this pre-sale.”

Recognising the demand, Coldplay added four extra dates at Wembley, with pre-sales starting at 2:30pm BST.

The 10-date residency means Coldplay will become the act to have played the most nights at the world-famous stadium in a single year.

Taylor Swift and Take That were previously tied for the record, playing eight nights apiece.

Coldplay previously played six nights at Wembley during the 2022 leg of their world tour – which means that, in total, their tour will have doubled the previous record.

The band have made efforts to reduce the environmental impact of their concerts – and announced earlier this year that they had achieved a 59% reduction in carbon dioxide emissions compared with their previous world tour.

They also made efforts to combat rising ticket prices by offering £20 “Infinity tickets” for every show.

They are sold in pairs and can be placed anywhere in the venue – including the very best seats.

For the Wembley dates, a pair of tickets will cost around £52, once fees – including the stadium’s £2.75 sustainability fee – are added.

A Japanese warship has sailed through the Taiwan Strait between Taiwan and China for the first time, prompting Beijing to lodge complaints with Tokyo.

The JS Sazanami, a naval destroyer, travelled south through the strait on Wednesday, accompanied by ships from Australia and New Zealand.

It was on its way to military exercises in the South China Sea, Japanese media reported government ministers saying.

The passage is a significant move by Japan, which is thought to have avoided sailing its ships through the strait in order not to upset China, which claims self-governed Taiwan and the strait.

Japan’s government has declined to comment on the ship, citing military operation discretion.

But China on Thursday confirmed its military had responded to “the activities of a Japanese Self-Defence Force ship entering the Taiwan Strait”.

“China is highly vigilant about the political intentions of Japan’s actions and has lodged stern representations with Japan,” foreign ministry spokesman Lin Jian said.

Chinese state newspaper Global Times, citing an unnamed source, said the Chinese military “conducted tracking and monitoring throughout [the vessels’] entire course and had the situation under control”.

There has been an increase in patrols by the US and its allies to assert their freedom of navigation in the 180km (112-mile) Taiwan Strait.

Both the US and Taiwan say it is a key shipping and trade route through which about half of the global container fleet passes, and is part of international waters and is open to all naval vessels.

Beijing, which claims sovereignty and jurisdiction over the strait, disagrees.

For decades the US Pacific fleet was the only foreign navy that regularly transited the strait. But recently, it was joined by Canada and Australia, Britain and France. Two weeks ago Germany sailed two navy ships through the strait for the first time in decades.

China’s military accused Germany of increasing security risks by sailing though the strait on 13 September, but Berlin said it acted in accordance with international standards. It was the first time in 22 years for a German naval vessel to traverse the strait.

These transits are highly political and designed to show China that America and its allies do not accept Beijing’s claims.

For Japan, it is also another big step away from its long-held policy of not directly challenging China.

On Thursday, Japan’s chief cabinet secretary did not confirm details of the naval operation, but he said Japan felt a strong sense of crisis after repeated airspace violations by the Chinese military, which he said had occurred one after another over a short period of time.

Taiwan has not commented on the passage, but its defence ministry said on Wednesday that it saw a surge in the number of Chinese military planes operating around the island.

Bec Strating, an international relations professor at La Trobe University in Australia, said Japan’s reported transit is “part of a broader pattern of greater naval presence by countries in and beyond Asia that are concerned about China’s maritime assertions”.

“Japan in particular has been dealing with China’s ‘grey zone’ tactics in the East China Sea,” she told AFP news agency.

Grey zone warfare tactics are aimed at weakening an adversary over a prolonged period of time, analysts say.

Last week, Beijing sent an aircraft carrier between two Japanese islands near Taiwan for the first time. In August, a Chinese spy plane flew inside Japan’s airspace, prompting Tokyo to condemn the incursion as “utterly unacceptable” and a “serious violation of sovereignty”.

The leaders of the Quad group of nations – Japan, Australia, India and the US – said last week that they would expand cooperation on maritime security to counter China’s increasing assertiveness in the South China Sea.

Kate – not her real name – was 16 and had recently started working at Harrods when Mohamed Al Fayed summoned her to his apartment.

Inside the Park Lane residence, “he tried to pressure me into having sex with him,” Kate says. “He tried to be charming… but I kept saying no.” Kate says the late Harrods owner’s mood changed and the threats started. “He became angry, the doors were locked and I couldn’t get out. He raped me.”

Kate did not feel ready to tell her story before the broadcast of the BBC documentary Al Fayed: Predator at Harrods. Now she says she wants people to understand what a monster Fayed was, and her testimony throws more light on the corrupt system at the heart of the company, which has since been sold to new owners.

Like many of the women who say they were assaulted while working for the luxury department store, she recalls the doctors who carried out intimate medical examinations on staff. Others describe the personal assistants who summoned them to Fayed and the security guards who protected the apartment where he carried out many of the attacks.

“There was a whole system to facilitate this,” says Dean Armstrong KC, one of the barristers representing some of the alleged victims. How did the system operate?

Soon after she began working at Harrods, Kate says Fayed asked her inappropriate questions about whether she had a boyfriend or was sexually active.

She cannot remember her response, but says Fayed had other ways of finding out the answers he wanted. “It was organised for me to see Dr Ann Coxon of Harley Street for a company medical,” Kate says. “It was sold to me as a perk of working in the chairman’s office.”

She says Dr Coxon asked to do an internal examination and to test for sexually transmitted infections, including HIV. “I explained that I hadn’t become sexually active yet, and therefore it was unnecessary,” she says, adding that her concerns were brushed off.

Back at the office, Fayed asked to see Kate. She says he started discussing the intimate details of her medical exam and questioned her “purity”. She says she was embarrassed easily and found the conversation confusing, intrusive and humiliating.

Kate believes the private information provided to Fayed was crucial in enabling the abuse she went on to suffer. “Dr Coxon had given him the all-clear he needed.”

It was a recurring theme in our investigation that Fayed was obsessed with finding out whether the women he intended to abuse had any sexually transmitted diseases.

Kate says that she was subsequently raped by Fayed.

Other women who say they were assaulted by Fayed name the Harrods company doctor at the time, Wendy Snell, as carrying out similar examinations. Some of them say Fayed had been told the results of their sexual health tests before they returned to the office.

Dr Snell has since died but Dr Coxon remains registered with the General Medical Council, and several women say they intend to make a formal complaint about her to the regulator.

Dr Coxon has not responded to a request for comment. The GMC said the allegations were “deeply concerning” and it would take appropriate action if it found concerns about the fitness to practice of any doctor.

• ‘Being assaulted by Fayed at 16 changed the course of my life’
• Timeline of sex abuse allegations
• Watch on iPlayer: Al Fayed – Predator at Harrods
• Listen to the World of Secrets podcast on Sounds

Lindsay, who worked at Harrods in the 1990s and says Fayed attempted to rape her, believes her medical was organised by one of his senior personal assistants.

“She was following Fayed’s instructions,” she says. “I feel that she recruited us for that purpose, and that purpose only.”

Lindsay accuses Harrods of enabling the abuse. “Who needs 25 PAs?” she asks.

Many of the women we spoke to said that some of Fayed’s senior personal assistants were key cogs in the machinery of abuse. After they had had their medical examination results back, they said senior PAs would send them up to Fayed’s office or apartment where they would be abused.

Tamara, who worked in the chairman’s office in the 1990s, told the BBC: “Mohamed had this sort of modus operandi every day. He would call one senior assistant and ask which girls were working that day and then one of us would be summoned to his office.”

“My recollection would be that the PA’s phone would ring,” says Natacha, another survivor. “Then she would turn round to one of us and point and send one of us up to the apartment.”

The summons would be on the pretext of taking Fayed’s briefcase down in the lift, the women say. Tamara said that, in reality, “you would be alone in that office, and it would be his opportunity to grope you, molest you”.

Some of the senior personal assistants and the doctors played a role in what Mr Armstrong, the lawyer for the victims, called a “system of procurement”. But our investigation suggests others were involved in maintaining the silence around the assaults.

Fayed was protected by personal security guards whose job was to stay close to him. Our investigation suggests some of them witnessed the moments shortly before and after some of the assaults.

Steve, who worked as his personal security in the mid-90s, said from a control room in the basement they could only see the corridors leading up to his Park Lane apartment.

“We would only see the girls going in to the door and then closing the door behind him. And in the morning we see them depart or even after an hour. Some wearing Harrods uniforms still,” he said.

Some of the women recount how security guards escorted them up to Fayed’s apartment. One, whom we are calling Alan, said he was asked to take two girls up to the top floor. Later on, he said he saw one of them crying as they came down in the lift.

He said she described Fayed coming out in his dressing gown and wanting them to sit on his lap “and everything else”. “The poor kid was in bits,” Alan said.

Alan said he felt helpless to complain to anyone. Whereas our evidence suggests other security staff were working to keep the women silent.

Several of the women say they were told there were cameras planted around Harrods and that the phones were bugged. “That’s why none of the other girls, we couldn’t talk to each other properly about it, because we all thought we were being bugged,” says one, Sophia.

Another, Sarah, says after she resisted Fayed’s attempted assault, one of his close security guards appeared out of nowhere when she was returning home from dinner with her boyfriend.

“I believed that because I had said no to Mohamed, they were just keeping tabs on me to make sure I wasn’t telling anybody. Which made me even more fearful,” she says.

Alan says he knows of one occasion where John Macnamara, a former senior officer with the Metropolitan Police who was then head of security at Harrods, knocked on a woman’s door and threatened her.

And Alice – not her real name – says after she had had several conversations with Vanity Fair journalist Maureen Orth about her experiences as a personal assistant at Harrods for a 1995 article, she got a call from Mr Macnamara.

She said that he warned her not to be involved in her article and said that if she went against his advice, she should be aware he knew where her parents lived. “It turned me cold,” she said.

The 1995 article in Vanity Fair – which made allegations of sexual misconduct, racism and staff surveillance but not of sexual assault – resulted in a libel suit from Fayed.

By 1997, he was ready to drop the case, in a settlement negotiated by the Harrods director of public affairs, Michael Cole.

In return, the magazine would destroy all its evidence, affidavits and correspondence – some of which contained allegations of “serial criminality”, according to then-editor Henry Porter.

Mr Cole was also in place when ITV broadcast a film about allegations of Fayed’s sexual harassment, which Fayed denied while Mr Cole worked for him.

Mr Cole has, despite repeated attempts by the BBC, not provided any statement.

It was not the only legal case known to senior figures in the management of Harrods which involved allegations of misconduct against Fayed.

Gemma, who became a personal assistant to Fayed in 2007, made recordings of Fayed which became part of a sexual harassment claim.

She says that as part of the settlement, all the evidence – including the tapes and her phone with “really quite nasty voicemails” – was shredded. Someone from HR was present for all this shredding, she says.

“Harrods, I think they knew the significance of having this information available. I think they just wanted to get rid of it as soon as possible and get rid of me as soon as possible.”

Many questions still remain about who in positions of responsibility at Harrods knew about allegations against Fayed. Michael Cole was one of the directors of Harrods during the 1990s and went on to defend Fayed when a biography was published in 1998 alleging he was a sexual predator. What did the others know?

We have been unable to find evidence that Harrods investigated any of the allegations while Fayed was chairman. Why not?

James McArthur, who was CEO in 2008, recently told the BBC he was not aware that Fayed had been interviewed by police that year over allegations of sexual assault on a 15-year-old girl.

He did not recall that TV news crews had been outside Harrods reporting on allegations that the company chairman abused a child. That sounds surprising. It was surely not just another day at the office.

For Harrods the questions are piling up.

Harrods told the BBC that it acknowledged during this time that the company “failed our employees who were his victims and for this we sincerely apologise”. But it said “the Harrods of today is a very different organisation” to the one owned by Fayed.

Vladimir Putin says Russia would consider an attack from a non-nuclear state that was backed by a nuclear-armed one to be a “joint attack”, in what could be construed as a threat to use nuclear weapons in the war in Ukraine.

In key remarks on Wednesday night, the Russian president said his government was considering changing the rules and preconditions around which Russia would use its nuclear arsenal.

Ukraine is a non-nuclear state that receives military support from the US and other nuclear-armed countries.

His comments come as Kyiv seeks approval to use long-range Western missiles against military sites in Russia.

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky has travelled to the US this week and is due to meet US President Joe Biden in Washington on Thursday, where Kyiv’s request is expected to be top of the agenda.

Ukraine has pushed into Russian territory this year and wants to target bases inside Russia which it says are sending missiles into Ukraine.

Responding to Putin’s remarks, Zelensky’s chief of staff Andriy Yermak said Russia “no longer has anything other than nuclear blackmail to intimidate the world”.

Putin has threatened the use of nuclear weapons before. Ukraine has criticised it as “nuclear sabre-rattling” to deter its allies from providing further support.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken described the comments as “totally irresponsible” in an MSNBC television interview.

Russian ally China has also called for calm, with reports President Xi Jinping has warned Putin against using nuclear arms.

But on Wednesday, after a meeting with his Security Council, Putin announced the proposed radical expansion.

A new nuclear doctrine would “clearly set the conditions for Russia to transition to using nuclear weapons,” he warned – and said such scenarios included conventional missile strikes against Moscow.

He said that Russia would consider such a “possibility” of using nuclear weapons if it detected the start of a massive launch of missiles, aircraft and drones into its territory, which presented a “critical threat” to the country’s sovereignty.

He added: “It is proposed that aggression against Russia by any non-nuclear state, but with the participation or support of a nuclear state, be considered as their joint attack on the Russian Federation.”

The country’s nuclear arms were “the most important guarantee of security of our state and its citizens”, the Kremlin leader said.

Since the end of World War Two, nuclear-armed states have engaged in a policy of deterrence, which is based on the idea that if warring states were to launch major nuclear strikes it would lead to mutually assured destruction.

But there are also tactical nuclear weapons which are smaller warheads designed to destroy targets without widespread radioactive fallout.

In June, Putin delivered a warning to European countries supporting Ukraine, saying Russia had “many more [tactical nuclear weapons] than there are on the European continent, even if the United States brings theirs over.”

“Europe does not have a developed [early warning system],” he added. “In this sense they are more or less defenceless.”

At the time he had hinted of changes to Russia’s nuclear doctrine – the document which sets out the conditions under which Moscow would use nuclear weapons.

The Kremlin said on Thursday that changes outlined by Putin should be considered a warning to the West.

Elaborating on the move, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters: “It must be considered a specific signal – a signal that warns these countries of the consequences if they participate in an attack on our country by various means, not necessarily nuclear.”

Peskov said that Russia would make a decision on whether not to publish the updated nuclear documents, adding that adjustments to the document on state nuclear deterrence were being formulated.

A Hong Kong Court has jailed two journalists who led a pro-democracy newspaper after they were found guilty in a landmark sedition case last month.

Chung Pui-kuen and Patrick Lam, editors at the now-defunct Stand News media outlet, had published articles about the crackdown on civil liberties in the city under China.

Chung was sentenced to 21 months, while Lam was given 11 months, but was released on medical grounds. The publisher behind Stand News – Best Pencil – has been fined HK$5,000 (US$643; £480).

It is the first sedition case against journalists in Hong Kong since the territory’s handover from Britain to China in 1997.

After a lengthy trial, which began in October 2022 and was originally scheduled to last just 20 days, district court judge Kwok Wai-kin Kwok found that 11 articles published by Stand News were seditious and that Stand News had become a “danger to national security”.

Their newspaper’s editorial line supported “Hong Kong local autonomy”, Mr Kwok said in a written statement.

“It even became a tool to smear and vilify the Central Authorities [in Beijing] and the [Hong Kong] SAR Government,” he added.

Both journalists were charged under a colonial-era sedition law – which until recently had been rarely used by prosecutors – rather than the controversial national security law (NSL).

Stand News was among a handful of relatively new online news portals that especially gained prominence during the 2019 pro-democracy protests.

Rights groups have condemned the sentencing. Reporters Without Borders told the BBC it is “yet another nail in the coffin for press freedom in Hong Kong”.

Since the introduction of the NSL in 2020, a host of media outlets have closed in Hong Kong.

Critics say the law effectively reduces the city’s once-prized judicial autonomy, making it easier to punish demonstrators and activists. China defends it as necessary for maintaining stability.

Stand News was among the last openly pro-democratic publications until its closure in December 2021, when more than 200 police officers were sent to raid its office.

Seven employees were arrested and accused of a “conspiracy to publish seditious publications”, which included interviews with pro-democracy activists.

Hong Kong’s current chief executive John Lee supported the police operation at the time, calling those arrested the “evil elements that damage press freedom”.

The case has drawn international scrutiny and condemnation from western countries.

The United States has repeatedly condemned the prosecutions of journalists in Hong Kong, saying that the case against the both editors “creates a chilling effect on others in the press and media”.

The former British colony has seen its standing in press freedom rankings plummet from 18th place to 135th over the past two decades, according to the World Press Freedom Index compiled by Reporters Without Borders.

Their Asia-based Advocacy Manager Aleksandra Bielakowska told the BBC that the Hong Kong judiciary has become “a political tool, used to threaten those who dare to speak independently”.

“Like in China, the regime is trying to create its own narratives, and make sure that all reporters will be only ‘telling Hong Kong’s story well’,” she said.

“Deliberately targeting independent media and its journalists has left a huge void in Hong Kong’s media landscape that will be very difficult to rebuild,” she added.

Many hardline conservatives in Iran are growing uneasy about its lack of action as Israel targets the Lebanese armed group Hezbollah, their country’s closest and most long-standing ally.

When President Masoud Pezeshkian addressed the UN General Assembly on Tuesday, he criticised Israel’s war in Gaza and warned that its attacks on Lebanon could not go unanswered.

But Mr Pezeshkian, who was elected in July, adopted a more conciliatory tone than his hard-line predecessors, avoiding rhetoric about annihilating the Islamic Republic’s arch-enemy.

“We seek peace for all and have no intention of conflict with any country,” he stated.

He also expressed his government’s readiness to resume nuclear talks with Western powers, saying: “We are ready to engage with participants of the 2015 nuclear deal.”

Other senior Iranian officials and commanders of the Islamic Revolution Guard Corps (IRGC) have also appeared to be unusually restrained when expressing their intentions to take revenge on Israel for its actions against their country and its key allies Hamas and Hezbollah.

Iran has armed, funded and trained both armed groups, but Tehran’s leaders rely on Hezbollah to be a major deterrent preventing direct attacks on their country by Israel.

Iranian support has been critical to Hezbollah’s transformation into Lebanon’s most powerful armed force and political actor since the IRGC helped found the group in the 1980s.

It is the main supplier of the weapons that Hezbollah can deploy against Israel, particularly advanced missiles and drones, and the US has previously alleged that it also provides as much as $700m in funds annually.

Last week, Mojtaba Amani, Iran’s ambassador to Lebanon, was severely injured when his pager exploded last week at the embassy in Beirut. Thousands more pagers and walkie-talkies used by Hezbollah members also blew up in two attacks that killed a total of 39 people.

Iran blamed Israel, but it made no immediate public threats of retaliation.

In contrast, when Israel struck the Iranian consulate in Damascus in April, killing eight high-ranking IRGC Quds Force commanders, Iran swiftly responded by launching hundreds of drones and missiles at Israel.

Iran also vowed to retaliate after blaming Israel for the assassination of Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran in late July, although it has not announced that it has taken any action yet.

A former IRGC commander told the BBC that repeatedly threatening Israel without following through was further damaging the force’s credibility among its supporters inside Iran and its proxies abroad.

On Monday, President Pezeshkian told members of the US media in New York that Israel was seeking to draw Iran into a war.

“Iran is ready to defuse tensions with Israel and lay down arms if Israel does the same,” he insisted.

Some hardline conservatives close to Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, criticised the president for talking about defusing tensions with Israel, asserting that he should recognize his position and avoid giving live interviews.

Mr Pezeshkian was due to hold a press conference in New York on Wednesday, but it was cancelled. It was unclear if he was forced to cancel because of his comments.

In Iran, power lies in the hands of Ayatollah Khamenei and the IRGC. They are the ones making the key strategic decisions, not the president.

It is notable that Ayatollah Khamenei also did not mention any plans for retaliation or issue threats toward Israel, which is quite unusual for him, when he addressed veterans on Wednesday.

Barak Ravid, an Israeli journalist at the US news site Axios, reported on Tuesday that two Israeli officials and Western diplomats had indicated that Hezbollah was urging Iran to come to its aid by attacking Israel. The Israeli officials claimed that Iran had told Hezbollah that “the timing isn’t right”, according to Ravid.

Last week, the host of the Iranian internet TV program Maydan, which is known to have ties to the IRGC, cited Iranian intelligence sources as claiming that Israel had also “carried out a special operation last month, killing IRGC members and stealing documents”.

He asserted that the Iranian press had been forbidden from reporting on the incident, which allegedly happened inside in Iran, and that the authorities were attempting to control the narrative.

In response, Tasnim News Agency, which also linked to the IRGC, denied the allegations.

The Islamic Republic finds itself in a precarious situation.

It is concerned that attacking Israel could provoke a US military response, dragging the country into a broader conflict.

With a crippled economy due to US sanctions and ongoing domestic unrest, a potential US strike against the IRGC could further weaken its the regime’s security apparatus, possibly emboldening the Iranian opponents to rise up once more.

However, if Iran refrains from direct intervening in Hezbollah’s conflict with Israel, it risks sending a signal to other allied militias in the region that, in times of crisis, the Islamic Republic may prioritize its own survival and interests over theirs.

This could weaken Iran’s influence and alliances across the region.

Britons have told the BBC they are struggling to get out of Lebanon, as Sir Keir Starmer repeats his call for UK nationals to leave.

The UK has urged British nationals to leave immediately because of the escalation in fighting between Israel and Hezbollah.

Speaking to BBC News, the prime minister said Britons still in the country should: “Leave now. It’s very important.”

The UK and allied nations have called for an immediate 21-day ceasefire in Lebanon “to provide space for diplomacy towards the conclusion of a diplomatic settlement”.

Speaking to the BBC’s political editor Chris Mason at the UN in New York, Sir Keir said the situation in Lebanon was escalating and he urged Britons to “leave now” without waiting for an evacuation.

The prime minister said he would not go into detail about evacuation plans, but contingency measures were in place.

The government has sent about 700 additional military personnel to Cyprus in case an emergency evacuation is required.

Britons in Lebanon have spoken of their difficulty in leaving the country.

BBC News understands there are between 4,000 and 6,000 UK nationals including dependents in Lebanon.

When the BBC visited Beirut–Rafic Hariri International Airport, the only civilian airport in the country, most flights were cancelled after international airlines suspended flights to and from the city.

Middle East Airlines, as well Iraqi Airways and Iran Air, are the only companies still operating at the moment.

Chloe Lewin, 24, from London, told BBC News she was due to get a flight out of Lebanon on Friday.

“Keir Starmer’s telling everyone to get out but we can’t,” the freelance journalist, who has lived in Beirut since January 2023, said.

“You can’t get out this week because they’re [flights] all full and every time you get to the last page of the booking, it just crashes and it says you can’t book a flight.

She added: “My friends were meant to leave this morning on Egyptair – that got cancelled, so they can’t get out. “

Isabella Baker said she was too scared to go to the airport in Beirut and had decided to head to Tripoli in the north of the country to stay with a friend and then continue by boat to Turkey.

The student, who had been studying for a masters degree in human rights at a French university in Beirut, described hearing drones and sonic booms over the city following the pagers attack.

Emma Bartholomew, who splits her time between London and Beirut, is booked on a flight home to London next week.

She described a gridlock on the roads from ambulances on the day of the pager explosions and Israeli jets flying low over her hotel, where hundreds of displaced people have arrived from the city’s southern suburbs.

“There’s an intense sense of anticipation and anxiety amongst Lebanese people,” she said.

A woman stuck in a town outside Beirut with a British spousal visa and Biometric Residence Permit said she hadn’t heard from the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) since August to register her to leave in case of emergency.

Rita, who asked we only use her first name, told BBC Radio 4’s the World Tonight that she was booked on a commercial flight departing next week, but was eligible to leave on a British evacuation flight.

Her British husband and two sons are in London and have encouraged her to flee over land.

The FCDO said it had asked British nationals to let the UK government know they were in Lebanon through its Register Your Presence service.

Other Britons have decided to stay in Lebanon for the time being.

Anne Bouji, who has lived in the country for the last seven years, said she was going to stay with her partially paralysed Lebanese husband who does not have a British passport or visa.

She told BBC Radio 4’s World at One programme “it was relatively safe” on the eastern side of Beirut where she lives, but in other parts of the city people were “very afraid and you can taste the fear in the air”.

Hayat Fakhoury, a British-Lebanese dual national, said she would leave the country only “if it becomes completely unsafe everywhere”.

Speaking to The World Tonight on BBC Radio 4, she said the possibility of an Israeli ground invasion in Lebanon was “definitely something” she feared.

Earlier, Sir Keir, addressing the UN Security Council, said the region was “on the brink” as he called for an immediate ceasefire.

The FCDO said the situation in Lebanon was deeply concerning and the risk of escalation remained high.

“That’s why we are continuing to advise people to leave now while commercial routes remain available,” a statement said.

“The government is planning for a range of scenarios and is prepared to provide additional support to British nationals if required.”

It has also said it was sending £5m to UNICEF to support humanitarian efforts.

Officials say the UK already has a significant diplomatic and military presence close to Lebanon, including RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus and two Royal Navy ships – RFA Mounts Bay and HMS Duncan – which have been in the eastern Mediterranean over the summer.

The Royal Air Force also has planes and helicopters on standby.

Tensions have been growing across the Middle East since Hamas gunmen attacked Israel on 7 October last year, killing about 1,200 people and taking 251 others as hostages.

Previously sporadic fighting between Israel and armed group Hezbollah escalated on 8 October – the day after Hamas’s unprecedented attack. Hezbollah fired at Israeli positions, in solidarity with Hamas.

Hezbollah, proscribed as a terrorist organisation in the UK and other countries, has launched more than 8,000 rockets at northern Israel and the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. It has also fired anti-tank missiles at armoured vehicles and attacked military targets with explosive drones.

Last week Hezbollah’s communication devices started exploding across Lebanon.

Israel then launched a series of air strikes on Monday that have so far killed 569 people according to the Lebanese government.

You can get in touch via this link

Israel’s attacks on Hezbollah targets have had terrifying effects on local civilians, who have been forced to flee place after place in search of safety.

Cross-border attacks by Israel and Hezbollah have left tens of thousands of people displaced on both sides.

In Lebanon, recent Israeli air strikes have killed 600 people and left thousands of injured and another 90,000 newly displaced.

Some of those abandoning their houses told the BBC of their experiences, leaving their possessions behind and having to rely on strangers to survive.

Among them is Valentine Nesser, a journalist who fled southern Lebanon with her mother and brother on Monday, when an intense bombardment made it Lebanon’s deadliest day in decades.

“We went to Mount Lebanon, about 30 minutes from Beirut, which is currently considered a safe zone,” she said.

The journey took them 15 hours because of severe traffic jams as thousands tried to get away.

“We came here without anything, because the bombs were everywhere and we want to be safe as soon as possible,” she added.

“We are staying in a hotel that’s been converted into a displaced centre and there are more than 300 people here now, with the number increasing.

“We have, like, 50 people in the same room. Many people still haven’t found a place to stay and some have been forced to sleep in their cars.”

She said local authorities were providing food and water, adding that although she had lived through periods of conflict before, this time was different.

“This time is more tension, more sadness, more anger.”

Those in eastern Lebanon, which has seen fewer air strikes than the south, are hoping to avoid the worst of the conflict, with some volunteers providing support.

Amani Deni lives in Beirut and came back to her mother’s house in the Bekaa Valley a few days ago.

She says: “I have 13 relatives staying with me and my mum, they were displaced from the Baalbek area. They are all staying together in our house, which has only one bedroom and one living room.

“I had to sit with the kids and say, ‘We do have air strikes in this area, the Bekaa Valley too, but it’s safer than Baalbek where you come from.’”

“I am also volunteering in the schools which are housing – helping get them food. The situation is really hard.

“Several schools in my town have refugees in them – many, many people from all over Lebanon – but mainly coming from the south.

“Local people, volunteers, are taking food from our houses and trying to support these people. We have been trying to talk to children, to do psychological first aid. They are panicking and we try to play with them to calm them down.

“They were crying as they were hungry. They’d had only biscuits to eat all day.”

• Live: Latest news on Israel and Hezbollah
• Explained: What is Hezbollah and why is Israel attacking Lebanon?
• Watch: Hezbollah rockets hit residential areas in Israel
• Analysis: Israel is gambling Hezbollah will crumple but it faces a well-armed, angry enemy

Another resident of Bekaa, Omar Hayek, works with several NGOs including Medecins Sans Frontieres.

He told the BBC there was no sense of safety in the region and people were unsure of what was going to happen next.

“In the Bekaa area, we don’t have many exits,” he said. “If you want to flee, you can flee to Syria, and the question is, is Syria a safe place for us? These questions come up in people’s minds, and you feel like you’re lost.”

As Indian-administered Kashmir prepared for assembly elections earlier this month, a local MP returned home from a Delhi prison to campaign for his candidates. Who is he and why does his return matter to the region’s politics? Auqib Javeed reports from Srinagar.

Sheikh Abdul Rashid, who had been in jail since Article 370 was abrogated in 2019, was granted interim bail earlier this month on terror funding charges he denies.

The 57-year-old, who is popularly known as Engineer Rashid, has urged people to vote for his candidates instead of regional or national parties. His Awami Ittehad Party has fielded candidates in more than three dozen seats.

The high-stakes assembly elections are the first since the region’s autonomy was revoked in 2019. With 873 candidates across 90 constituencies in the Muslim-majority Kashmir valley and Hindu-majority Jammu, the elections have been described by federal officials as a proof of normalcy in a region long plagued by insurgency. The third and last phase of the polls will be held on Tuesday and votes will be counted on 8 October.

Kashmir’s politics, dominated by mainstream parties pledging allegiance to India, has had a history of individuals and groups seeking separation from the country or enhanced autonomy for Kashmir, with some of them supporting an armed movement to achieve that.

• Article 370: What happened with Kashmir and why it matters
• Kashmir: The complicated truth behind its ‘normality’

Some separatist groups in the past have also backed Pakistan’s role in Kashmir. India and Pakistan both claim Kashmir in full, but control only parts of it.

But this assembly election has seen participation of many former separatist leaders as well.

Rashid has chosen to be part of the democratic process but has been vocal against what he calls Delhi’s “heavy-handed” rule in Kashmir.

He is known for his fiery speeches, and leading protests in unconventional ways against alleged government excesses, often irking authorities.

He made waves in June when he defeated regional political heavyweight Omar Abdullah in parliamentary elections. While he was lodged in jail, his sons led an emotionally charged and successful campaign on his behalf.

But this time he is able to speak to voters directly and he has also smartly used social media to amplify his messages.

Within hours of being released on 11 September, Rashid told the media that he was going to fight against the removal of Article 370.

The article allowed the state its own constitution, a separate flag and freedom to make laws. Foreign affairs, defence and communications remained the preserve of the federal government.

“We don’t accept Prime Minister [Narendra Modi’s] decision taken on 5 August [2019],” he said, referring to the day when the autonomy was abrogated.

He then went live on Facebook, repeating similar messages. The hour-long speech currently has more than 2.5m views, 44,000 likes and 25,000 comments – an unusually high number for a regional politician.

Rashid’s popularity worries his regional opponents, who have termed him a “proxy” of Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

Two former chief ministers of the state and the heirs of leading regional parties, Mehbooba Mufti and Omar Abdullah, have publicly questioned his party’s funding and alleged that he was dividing voters to favour the BJP.

He has repeatedly denied the allegations. “If I were a BJP man, I wouldn’t have spent over five years in jail,” he told the BBC. “I won [almost] 500,000 votes in the general elections, how could I be dividing votes?”.

Prof Sheikh Showkat Hussain, a political analyst, said Rashid’s release from jail just days before the elections did give his opponents a pretext to accuse him of collusion with the BJP-run federal government in Delhi.

“Despite these allegations, his win in the 2024 parliamentary elections from jail has given him an unprecedented credibility in the eyes of the locals,” he said.

Rashid has also worked hard to carefully craft his image.

Unlike the valley’s prominent leaders who have established political lineages, Rashid has managed to establish an image of a “common man’s politician” who doesn’t shy away from taking on authorities.

In 2012, he attempted to bring dozens of dogs into the state secretariat as a protest against the government’s inaction on the growing canine menace in his constituency, where numerous dog bite incidents had been reported.

“I hope the ministers and bureaucracy now understand the seriousness of the issue,” he said at the time.

But Rashid’s bluntness and candour have also landed him in trouble.

In 2015, he hosted a “beef party” to protest a ban on the slaughter of cows, considered sacred by many Hindus, in several states. A day later, members of the BJP, then a part of the state’s ruling coalition, assaulted him in the assembly.

A few days later, members of a Hindu group outraged by the “beef party” attacked him at Delhi’s Press Club, dousing his face with ink as he protested the lynching of a Kashmiri truck driver accused of cow smuggling in Jammu.

Rashid’s unusual protests have often addressed the alleged human rights violations in the Kashmir valley, a charge that the federal government denies.

On International Human Rights Day in 2015, his party marched through Srinagar with a cow, a mule, a goat, and a dog, holding placards saying, “Animals have more rights than people in Kashmir.” He and other leaders were detained.

His family members say they are not surprised by his politics as he had a “rebellious nature” since childhood.

“He used to protest against the human rights violations, presence of military bunkers, forced labour by the army,” said his brother Khurshid Ahmad Sheikh.

In 2008, he resigned from his government job as an engineer to contest assembly elections, winning twice in a row as an independent candidate.

Once elected to the state assembly, he gained recognition across Kashmir for protesting against what he called the government’s “anti-people” policies, analysts say.

“The element of protest makes him popular. He has been a crowd-puller since he entered politics,” said Noor Mohammad Baba, a political analyst based in Kashmir.

His jail term has intensified public interest in his rallies, he added.

At a recent rally, an enthusiastic group of men assembled to listen to him. Some of them were curious onlookers hoping to see the man in the news, and some were his fans.

Did the allegations of Rashid being a “proxy of Delhi” bother them?

“Almost all the regional parties have been in an alliance with the BJP [in the past]. They aren’t in a position to allege him of complicity with the BJP,” said Rafiq Ahmad, a businessman. “People want to give Rashid a chance and see what he does.”

Rashid spoke and demanded a resolution to the Kashmir conflict and an end to the use of anti-terror laws to put Kashmiris in jail. Young men shouted in unison in support.

Within minutes, Rashid was on his way to his next public meeting.

Women working in hospitals in Pakistan say they regularly face sexual harassment, violence and verbal abuse, from male colleagues, patients and their families.

Following the rape and murder of a 31-year-old trainee doctor at work in an Indian hospital, more than a dozen female medics in Pakistan told the BBC they were worried about their own safety.

But this is a largely hidden crisis, as many are too scared to come forward to report the crimes – while those who do are often told no one would believe their allegations.

Most of the women the BBC spoke to asked that their names be withheld for fear of losing their jobs, “honour and respect”.

A few months ago, a young doctor came to Dr Nusrat (not her real name) in tears. While she was using the toilet, a male doctor had filmed the woman through a hole in the wall and was using the video to blackmail her.

“I suggested filing a complaint with the FIA [Federal Investigation Agency, which handles cyber crimes], but she refused. She said she didn’t want it to be leaked and reach her family or in-laws,” Dr Nusrat explained, adding that she knows of at least three other cases where female doctors have been secretly filmed.

Dr Nusrat happened to know someone senior in the police who spoke to the blackmailer, warning him he could be arrested for what he had done. The police officer made sure the video was deleted.

“Unfortunately, we couldn’t take further action, but we got the hole covered so that no-one could do it again,” says Dr Nusrat.

Other women shared experiences of being sexually harassed, including Dr Aamna (not her real name), who was a resident medical officer in a government hospital five years ago when she was targeted by her senior doctor, a powerful man.

“When he saw me with a file in my hand, he would try to lean over it, make inappropriate comments, and try to touch me,” she says.

She filed a complaint with the hospital administration, but says she was met with indifference. “I was told I had only been there for a short time, and asked what proof I had of this harassment. They said, ‘We’ve been unable to fix this person in seven years – nothing will change, and no-one will believe you’.”

Dr Aamna says she knows of other women who have managed to record videos of harassment, “but nothing happens – the harasser is merely transferred to another ward for a few months, then comes back”.

She had to complete her placement to qualify as a doctor, but moved as soon as it was over.

Testimony gathered by the BBC suggests her story is disturbingly common.

The root of the problem lies in a lack of trust and accountability, according to Dr Summaya Tariq Syed, the chief police surgeon in Karachi and head of Pakistan’s first rape crisis centre.

She describes her 25 years of service as a constant battle against violence and betrayal, and says she has been disappointed with how things are handled.

She recounts how, a few years ago when she was in a different role, she was shut in a room by colleagues who wanted her to change what she had written in a post-mortem examination report about someone who had been killed.

“They said, ‘Sign it or you have no idea what we’ll do to you’,” but she refused. Given the senior position of one of the people involved, she says, no action was taken against them.

Another female doctor at a government hospital in Punjab explains that it can be hard for women to report abuse.

“The [hospital] committees that do exist often include the same doctors who harass us, or their friends. So why would anyone file a complaint and make their life even more difficult?”

There are no official statistics available on assaults against female health workers in Pakistan. However, a report in the US National Institutes of Health in 2022 paints a troubling picture. It indicates that up to 95% of nurses in Pakistan have faced workplace violence at least once in their career. This includes assault and threats as well as verbal and mental abuse, from colleagues, patients and hospital visitors.

This tallies with a report in the Pakistan Journal of Medicine and Dentistry, which quotes a 2016 study of public sector hospitals in Lahore that suggested 27% of nurses had experienced sexual violence. It also cites a study from Pakistan’s north-western Khyber Pakhtunkha province that indicated that 69% of nurses and 52% of female doctors there had experienced some sort of sexual harassment in the workplace from other staff.

Dr Syed recounts a particularly disturbing attack that happened in Karachi in 2010: “A doctor at a government hospital lured a nurse to his hostel, where he wasn’t alone – two other doctors were there as well.” The nurse was raped and was so distraught that she jumped off the roof and was in a coma for about a week. “Nothing that happened was consensual. But she decided not to pursue the case.”

Dr Syed believes that society often blames victims and if the nurse had reported it “the blame would have fallen on her”.

Harassment and threats come from patients, their friends and families too, she says, describing how members of the public attacked her team while they were handling bodies in the mortuary last year.

“Two people had to ward off blows from a person who tried to hit me, just because I told him not to make videos.”

She registered a complaint with the police and is now waiting for the case to work its way through court. “We must continue our part of the fight – staying quiet will only strengthen the culprits.”

Other female doctors also describe a lack of security as a problem, especially in state-run hospitals, where they say anyone can walk in unchecked. At least three said people who attacked them were ordinary citizens who had entered the hospital while drunk. Drinking alcohol is largely banned in Pakistan.

Dr Saadia (not her real name) explains that several of her colleagues at a major government hospital in Karachi have been repeatedly sexually harassed. “It’s often people under the influence of drugs wandering into the hospital,” she says.

“One evening, a colleague was on her way to another ward when a drunken man started harassing her. Another time, a different doctor was attacked. Some other doctors managed to get rid of the man, but there were no security guards around.”

Nurse Elizabeth Thomas (not her real name) says incidents where drunk patients try to touch them are common. “We feel terrified, unsure whether to treat the man or protect ourselves. We feel utterly helpless. And there are no security staff to help us.”

Dr Saadia says they don’t even know “if the person sweeping the floor or roaming around the ward claiming to be staff is actually staff”.

Looking back at her time at a government hospital in Punjab five years ago, Dr Aamna says: “In remote areas, forget about security; they don’t even have proper lighting in the hallways.”

According to the Pakistan Economic Survey 2023, there are 1,284 government hospitals in the country. Doctors say security measures are extremely poor.

Healthcare workers say many either lack CCTV cameras or have too few, and those that do exist often don’t function properly. They say thousands of patients and their families visit these hospitals daily, and attacks on medical staff have become common.

Dr Saadia recounts how she once had to hide after a patient’s relative attacked her for waiting for test results to arrive before administering an injection.

“He was a tall man, and he started yelling at me. I was pressed against the door. He threatened me, saying, ‘Give the injection now, or I’ll kill you’.”

Many of Pakistan’s nursing staff come from minority non-Muslim communities, which can make them vulnerable in other ways, says Elizabeth Thomas.

“I know many nurses who are harassed, and if they don’t comply, they’re threatened with accusations of blasphemy. If a nurse is attractive, they’re often told to convert their religion.

“We’re always left wondering how to respond because if we don’t do what they want, they might falsely accuse us of blasphemy. This has happened to nurses.”

On top of the abuse, female doctors describe enduring long, demanding shifts with a lack of basic facilities.

“During my house job, we went through times when, during a 30-hour shift, we didn’t have a room to rest in. We would go outside and rest in a colleague’s car for 15 minutes or so,” says Dr Saadia.

“When I was in the emergency ward, there was no toilet. We couldn’t go to the loo during 14-hour shifts. Even when we were menstruating, we couldn’t use a toilet.”

She says toilets for hospital staff were in other blocks, so far away that they didn’t have time to go and use them.

The BBC asked local health ministers in the four provinces where these women have worked to comment, as well as the national health co-ordinator in Islamabad but did not receive any replies.

Since the rape and murder of the trainee doctor in India, discussions have intensified among female doctors in Pakistan about how to ensure their own safety.

Dr Saadia says it has affected her deeply and she has changed her routine: “I no longer go to dark or deserted places. I used to take the stairs, but now I feel safer using the lifts.”

And Elizabeth Thomas says it has shaken her too. “I have a seven-year-old daughter, and she often says she wants to become a doctor. But I keep wondering, is a doctor safe in this country?”

The late leader of the Cuban Revolution, Fidel Castro, once famously called Cuba “the safest country in the world”.

In terms of the island’s low rates of violent crime and the scarcity of guns circulating among the civilian population, he may well have had a case for that title.

His critics, of course, responded that the low crime rate was achieved through intimidation, that Castro’s Cuba was – and still remains – a police state which brooked no criticism of its communist-led government, and which rode roughshod over its opponents’ human rights.

However it was done, few could deny that Cuba’s streets have traditionally been among the safest in the Americas.

Yet it doesn’t feel to Samantha González like she lives in the world’s safest nation. Her younger brother, an aspiring music producer called Jan Franco, was murdered two months ago in an apparent gang-related dispute.

From the low-income Havana neighbourhood of Cayo Hueso and just 19 years old when he was killed, Jan Franco was stabbed twice in the chest outside a recording studio, caught in the middle of an argument when someone pulled a knife.

“I still can’t understand it,” says Samantha, struggling to express her grief as she scrolls through old photos of her brother on her phone.

“He was the light of our family.”

Just 20 herself and mother of a one-year-old boy, Samantha says that Jan Franco was one of many young people to lose their lives in the streets in recent months:

“So many young people have been killed this year,” she explains.

“The violence is getting out of hand. They’re basically gangs, and they fall out with each other as gangs. That’s where it’s all coming from, these killings and deaths of young people.”

They often solve their quarrels with knives and machetes, she says.

“Almost no-one settles an argument with their fists anymore. It’s all knives, machetes, even guns. Things I just don’t understand,” her voice trails off.

The situation has been worsened by a new drug in Cuba called “quimico” – a cheap chemical high with a cannabis base. Samantha says that it’s increasingly popular among Cuban youth in the parks and on the streets.

Previously, even suggesting that Cuba had a problem with opioids and street gangs – especially to a foreign journalist – could land you in difficulties.

The Cuban authorities have always been fiercely protective of their island’s reputation as crime-free and quick to point out that the streets are demonstrably safer than those of most cities in the US. Anything that highlights Cuba’s social problems is generally painted as biased criticism of their socialist system or as anti-revolutionary fabrications originating from Miami or Washington.

However, such has been the public perception of a worsening crime rate, a perception shared by many Cubans on social media, that the authorities have openly addressed it on state television.

In August, an edition of nightly talk programme Mesa Redonda – in which Communist Party officials are invited on air to deliver the party line – was titled Cuba Against Drugs.

During the broadcast, Colonel Juan Carlos Poey Guerra, the head of the interior ministry’s anti-drug unit, acknowledged the existence, production and distribution of the new drug, químico, and its impact on Cuba’s youth. He insisted the authorities were tackling the issue.

In another edition, on crime, the government denied the situation was worsening, claiming only 9% of crimes in Cuba were violent and just 3% were murders.

However, critics question the transparency of the government’s statistics and say there’s no independent oversight of the bodies which produce them or the methodologies they use.

For its part, the government largely blames the old enemy, the United States, for both the existence of synthetic opioids in Cuba and for the decades-long US economic embargo on the island which they say is the reason some Cubans have resorted to crime.

In a rare interview, the vice-president of Cuba’s Supreme Court, Maricela Sosa Ravelo, told the BBC the problem was being blown out of proportion on social media. She refuted the suggestion that many crimes go unreported through a lack of public confidence in the police.

“In my 30 years as a judge and magistrate, I don’t think that the Cuban people lack confidence in their authorities,” she claimed, speaking inside the ornate Supreme Court building.

“In Cuba, the police have a high success rate in solving crimes. We don’t see people taking the law into their own hands – which happens in other parts of Latin America and elsewhere – which suggests the population trusts in the Cuban justice system,” she argued.

Again, though, that wasn’t the experience of another recent victim of opportunistic theft on Havana’s dimly lit streets.

Shyra is a transgender activist who is used to speaking out about rights in Cuba. She says that her story, of being robbed by a man brandishing a knife one evening, is common.

But it was the police response which disillusioned her the most.

“Just after I was attacked, I came across two motorcycle police in a side street,” Shyra recalls. Despite her obvious distress, the police ignored her pleas for help, she says.

“They openly told me: ‘We’re not here for stuff like that.’ It was such a shocking thing to hear because I told them where they could find the attacker, showed them which direction he was headed in, what he was wearing. But they just didn’t pay me any attention.”

In the small apartment she shares with her mother, Samantha González watches videos of her younger brother’s wake. A crowd of Jan Franco’s friends appeared outside his home and began singing the songs which he’d produced before his fledgling music career was cut short.

As his coffin was loaded onto the hearse, the mourners fell silent, except for the soft murmur of weeping and prayer.

Buried with him, and every young victim of violence on the island, is another piece of Cuba’s claim to be the world’s safest nation.

Travelling nearly 10,000 miles by train, British photographer Katie Edwards crossed the United States capturing the landscape through a window.

The journey, from New York to San Francisco, via Chicago, Los Angeles and Seattle, resulted in 20,000 photographs taken during 180 hours on the rails.

“I had assumed that the world was going to be full of exquisite moments and my job was simply to surrender to the train, its speed, direction and frame,” Edwards says.

But the reality saw dirty train windows and reflections that obscured the views.

Taking the photographs in a vestibule at the end of a carriage, Edwards taped a large bag to the opposite window to reduce the glare – though the train conductor was not so happy.

Towards the front of the train, her father, John, acted as a spotter, giving Edwards a brief warning of upcoming photo opportunities.

At one point, John shouted: “Deer,” through the phone.

“I wasn’t quick enough,” Edwards says.

“But if there was one deer, there would be more.

“Finally, my concentration paid off and I secured a shot of two little deer almost touching noses in front of a huge cliff face.

“I was very happy.”

A more unexpected message from John was simply: “Moony.”

At first, Edwards thought she had misheard but set about taking pictures anyway.

“I quickly looked back at my photos,” she says.

“There was indeed a perfect line of bottoms opposite the train.”

But while photographing the farmland of Illinois, Edwards missed a frame she wished she had shot.

“I had been standing at the window for hours, my feet were hurting and my eyes were glazing over,” she says.

“And an exquisite moment passed me by.

“A queue of army tanks were waiting at a crossing and, if that wasn’t enough, a baby deer was looking up at the first tank in fear or curiosity or both.

“Gone in a second – if I’d been concentrating, I could have caught that moment.”

Edwards describes each picture as a fragment of a larger narrative.

“The journey itself became a storyline that traversed different geographical and cultural landscapes,” she says.

An eight-hour delay meant Edwards found herself amid large open plains as the light faded towards the end of the day.

“I was able to see for hundreds of miles on either side and this created bizarre effects with the light as it hit specific strips of land in the expanse,” she says.

Returning to the UK meant long days of editing, reducing the thousands of pictures to just 20 for an exhibition at London’s Observatory Photography Gallery.

Laying all the images together created panoramic views of fields and stations, each elongated or contracted depending on the speed of the train.

“Looking at the mosaic of all the pictures, you can see strata as you move from one landscape to another,” Edwards says.

“This image was the very last one that I found in my search, discovered three months after it was taken, it almost didn’t make the exhibition.

“The rungs of the ladder make me feel as if I could climb the mountain in just a few steps.”

Portrait of America is at London’s Observatory Photography Gallery from 26 September to 25 January.

More of Edwards’s work can be seen on Instagram.

On a moonless night in the Kenyan lakeside town of Naivasha, Anne sits inside a makeshift, two-room house, exhausted after a gruelling shift picking and sorting roses.

Anne (not her real name) is a single mother and one of thousands of the predominantly female workers in Kenya’s flower industry, harvesting and categorising blooms in one of the many greenhouse complexes around the edge of the picturesque Lake Naivasha, about 90km (56 miles) north-west of the capital, Nairobi.

Inside endless rows of the temperature-controlled greenhouses the size of tennis courts, workers like Anne harvest a huge variety of flowers that grow profusely in the rich Kenyan soil.

There are carnations, chrysanthemums, and an abundance of roses in almost every hue. The majority of these blooms are destined for Europe.

Anne has spent over 15 years working in Kenya’s burgeoning flower industry, one of the largest employers in the country.

Estimates suggest it employs more than 150,000 people and earns the country around $1bn (£760m) annually in foreign exchange.

Despite dedicating her working life to the industry, she says her monthly pay of just over $100 has barely changed in years.

It is not enough to contend with the worsening cost-of-living crisis in Kenya, which has pushed up the prices of essential household goods such as maize, wheat, rice and sugar.

At the end of each month, Anne does not have enough to eat and often has to skip meals.

“You have to enter into debt to survive,” she says, pointing out that she had to take out a loan to help her 23-year-old son attend university in Nairobi.

Each sunrise Anne queues with hundreds of other workers to catch one of the company buses that takes them to the farms, as the gentle fog lingers over the hills before being evaporated by the blazing mid-morning sun.

Anne starts work at 07:30, six days a week. On Sunday, she goes to church.

The working day at her flower farm is meant to be eight hours, but she explains that she often feels obliged to work an extra three hours, for which she does not receive overtime pay.

She used to work inside the pack house, where the flowers were cleaned, bunched, and sorted into stems.

She recounts that the conditions there were harsh.

The flower company gave her stringent daily targets, which the managers pressured the workers to meet.

“We had to grade 3,700 stems a day,” she says.

Anne feels these targets were unrealistic, but she says workers like her had no choice but to deliver, or the farm managers would sanction them.

If she missed her daily target, she had to write a statement to her manager explaining the reasons for falling short.

“If you don’t achieve it, maybe you can be thrown out,” she says.

In early 2023, Anne fell ill with a blood condition, which, if untreated, could be deadly.

She felt weak and suffered shortness of breath, which made working extremely difficult.

She went to see a nurse at the farm who gave her medicine and allowed her to rest for a few hours, after which he told her to return to work.

“I told him: ‘You know, I’m too sick to work,'” Anne recounts.

Anne says it was tough to convince the nurse she was genuinely ill, but he eventually agreed to refer her to an off-farm doctor.

She was allowed only one day off, despite still feeling weak and being treated for a serious illness.

“It felt bad because I was still sick,” she says.

To make matters worse, she had to write a letter to her manager explaining why she could not meet her target that day.

Anne worries about other ways in which her work on the flower farm may harm her health – for example, the unfamiliar chemicals she was asked to use to spray the roses.

It is a concern shared by many other workers.

Margaret, another flower picker on a nearby farm, says workers are routinely forced to spray chemicals on flowers without being given protective gear.

Margaret (not her real name) insisted we meet her at the home of a colleague after dark, in their tiny dwelling not far from the shores of Lake Naivasha.

She is afraid to speak out for fear of retribution from the flower industry, and says their influence is everywhere in Naivasha.

“Nobody cares,” she adds.

A report in September 2023 by the Nairobi-based NGO, Route To Food Initiative, showed that highly hazardous pesticides are routinely used in Kenyan farming, some known to cause cancer.

Margaret says she has repeatedly approached her bosses about her concerns.

“They shout to the men, they shout to the women,” she says. “They shout to everybody. They don’t care, and they are Kenyans.”

She says women can also face sexual harassment from male workers – the industry has been marred with complaints.

We put the allegations of sexual harassment, unpaid overtime, harsh working conditions, and lack of protective gear on some flower farms in Naivasha to both the Kenya Flower Council and the Kenya Plant Health Inspectorate Service (KEPHIS), the government agency responsible for monitoring the industry, but neither got back to us.

Kenya’s flower business also has a significant cost for the environment at large.

The production of flowers requires a great deal of water, and to feed the European appetite for cheap cut flowers, the blooms are transported refrigerated in long-haul, gas-guzzling jets, wrapped in single-use plastic, and are usually arranged in toxic floral foam to keep them fresh.

Kenya supplies more than 40% of the flower market in Europe, with the vast majority of blooms destined for the Netherlands, the hub for the European cut flower industry.

Flowers arrive daily by plane and are taken to the huge, frenetic flower market in the picturesque town of Aalsmeer, where they are bought and distributed to suppliers across Europe.

Here lorries arrive by the minute and tourists gaze down from walkways as huge trolleys of flowers of all colours are moved around at speed, as far as the eye can see.

In supermarkets and florists across Europe, consumers buy the cheap flowers to mark important events like marriages and birthdays, with no way of tracing their provenance or hearing the experiences of those like Anne and Margaret that have toiled, thousands of kilometres away, to produce them.

As a single mother with a son who needs her support, Anne feels she has no choice but to continue to work in the flower industry. There are few other opportunities in Naivasha and she is afraid to be left with no income at all.

“If God helps me,” Anne says, “I will move on.”

• How flowers are ‘put to sleep’ for long sea voyages
• Spectacular super bloom transforms South African desert
• Climate change: Could daffodil diet for livestock help?

The tragic death of a 26-year-old Indian employee at a leading accounting firm has ignited a serious debate about workplace culture and employee welfare in corporate environments.

Anna Sebastian Perayil, a chartered accountant at Ernst & Young (EY), died in July, four months after joining the firm. Her parents have alleged that the “overwhelming work pressure” at her new job took a toll on her health and led to her death.

EY has refuted the allegation, saying that Perayil was allotted work like any other employee and that it didn’t believe that work pressure could have claimed her life.

Her death has resonated deeply, sparking a discussion on the “hustle culture” promoted by many corporates and start-ups – a work ethic that prioritises productivity, often at the expense of employee well-being.

Some argue that this culture drives innovation and growth, with many choosing extra hours out of passion or ambition. Others say that employees are often pressured by management, leading to burnout and a diminished quality of life.

Perayil’s death came under the spotlight after a letter written by her mother Anita Augustine to EY went viral on social media last week. In the letter, she detailed the alleged pressures her daughter had experienced at work, including working late into the night and on weekends, and appealed to EY to “reflect on its work culture” and take steps to prioritise its employees’ health.

“Anna’s experience sheds light on a work culture that seems to glorify overwork while neglecting the very human beings behind the roles,” she wrote. “The relentless demands and the pressure to meet unrealistic expectations are not sustainable, and they cost us the life of a young woman with so much potential.”

Many people condemned EY for its “toxic work culture”, sharing their experiences on Twitter and LinkedIn. One user alleged that he had been made to work for 20 hours a day at a top consultancy firm without being paid overtime.

“Work culture in India is horrid. Pay is dismal, exploitation is max [maximum]. There are zero repercussions and no remorse on the part of employers who routinely harass workers,” another user wrote, adding that managers are often praised for overworking and underpaying their employees.

A former EY employee criticised the work culture at the firm and alleged that employees were often “mocked” for leaving on time and “shamed” for enjoying weekends.

“Interns [are] given crazy workload, unrealistic timelines and [are] humiliated during reviews as it builds character for their future,” he wrote.

EY’s India chief, Rajiv Memani, has since said that the firm attaches the “highest importance” to the wellbeing of its employees. “I would like to affirm that the wellbeing of our people is my top-most priority and I will personally champion this objective,” he wrote in a post on LinkedIn.

Perayil’s death isn’t the first incident that has brought India’s work culture under scrutiny. In October last year, Infosys co-founder Narayana Murthy faced criticism for suggesting that young Indians should work 70-hour weeks to boost the country’s economic growth.

His views were backed by Ola’s India chief Bhavesh Aggarwal, who said that he didn’t believe in the concept of work-life balance because “if you are enjoying your work, you will find happiness in life also and work also, and both of them will be in harmony”.

In 2022, Shantanu Deshpande, founder of the Bombay Shaving Company, asked youngsters to stop “cribbing” about working hours and suggested that new recruits at any job should be prepared to work 18 hours a day for the first four to five years of their career.

But mental health experts and labour rights activists say that such demands are unfair and put employees under immense stress. In her letter, Perayil’s mother alleged that her daughter had experienced “anxiety and sleeplessness” soon after joining EY.

India is known to have one of the most overworked workforces globally. A recent report by the International Labour Organisation said half of India’s workforce worked for over 49 hours each week, making India the second country after Bhutan to have the longest working hours.

Labour economist Shyam Sunder said India’s work culture had shifted post-1990s with the rise of the service sector, leading firms to bypass labour laws to meet round-the-clock demands.

He added that the culture has now been “institutionalised” by firms but it has also been accepted by employees. “Even in business schools, students are tacitly told that working long hours to earn a high salary is normal and even desirable,” he said.

According to him, for there to be any real change in corporate culture, a “mindset shift” is necessary – one where both firms and employees approach work with a more mature outlook, viewing it as important, but not the only part and purpose of life.

“Till then, all the other steps by corporates, like offering period leave or partnering with mental health firms will remain supplementary at best and symbolic at worst,” he said.

Chandrasekhar Sripada, a professor at the Indian School of Business, agrees with this view. He said that toxic work culture was a “complex, multi-stake holder problem” and that everyone, from industry leaders to managers to employees and even society, would have to change the way they viewed productivity in order for there to be any real change.

“We’re still confusing hard work with productive work,” Mr Sripada said. “The point of technology is to reduce human work so why are working hours getting longer?”

“We need to start focussing on sustainable growth, not just from an environmental standpoint, but also from a labour rights perspective,” he added.

“Scandinavian countries have already created much gentler working environments, so there are models for India to follow. All it needs is willpower.”

Ordinarily, US District Judge Gary J Brown would have sent the man to the local federal jail to serve out his sentence for tax fraud.

But one thing stopped him: “The dangerous, barbaric conditions that have existed for some time at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn.”

The notorious jail, commonly known as MDC, is in the spotlight once again due to its latest celebrity detainee. Last week, a New York judge ordered Sean “Diddy” Combs be held there after federal prosecutors charged him with sex trafficking, racketeering, and transportation to engage in prostitution. He has pleaded not guilty.

High-profile defendants like Mr Combs sometimes receive special protection when jailed, and the music mogul is reported to be in a section of MDC Brooklyn for detainees who require special protection.

Mr Combs is, according to local media reports, sharing a dormitory-style room there with the cryptocurrency entrepreneur Sam Bankman-Fried, who once ran a company worth billions but was convicted on multiple counts of fraud in March.

And because it is the only federal jail in New York City, where many high-profile cases are processed, the pair are just the latest in an extensive list of notable names to have passed through the facility’s doors. That list includes the rapper R Kelly as well as Jeffrey Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell.

But for many of MDC Brooklyn’s 1,200 current inmates, it’s a different story.

• An 11th lawsuit for Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs as he sits in jail
• Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs will stay in jail after judge refuses bail appeal
• Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs: Who is the US rapper accused of sex trafficking?

In an August sentencing decision, Judge Brown cited multiple cases of fellow jurists who had hesitated to send defendants and convicts to the jail due to the conditions.

“Allegations of inadequate supervision, unbridled assaults, and lack of sufficient medical care are supported by an increasing body of evidence, with certain instances that are irrefutable,” he said.

“Chaos reigns, along with uncontrolled violence,” Judge Brown added. His ruling included the case of a defendant who was stabbed multiple times but reported receiving no medical care, instead being locked in his cell for 25 days. The judge cited staffing shortages and worsening conditions after the Covid pandemic that forced the jail into lockdown.

If the Bureau of Prisons decided to send the defendant in the tax fraud case to MDC, the judge wrote, he would vacate the man’s sentence.

MDC Brooklyn was opened in the 1990s, and its issues stretch back years.

In 2019, an electrical fire in the dead of winter caused a blackout, plunging the facility into darkness and frigid conditions.

And in June 2020, an inmate, Jamel Floyd, died after being pepper sprayed by correctional officers. His family sued the federal government over his death. A review by the Department of Justice concluded there was “insufficient evidence” that prison authorities “engaged in administrative misconduct,” but did acknowledge that the use of pepper spray violated policy.

Judge Brown is not the only judge to harshly criticise the facility.

In January, Judge Jesse Furman of the Federal District Court in Manhattan refused to send a man who pleaded guilty in a drug case there because of its dangerous conditions.

After initially allowing the man, Gustavo Chavez, to await sentencing on supervised release, Judge Furman ultimately let him bypass MDC and report directly to the prison where he would serve out his sentence.

In July, 36-year-old Edwin Cordero died after he was injured in a fight while serving out a sentence at MDC.

• The charges against Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs explained
• Diddy assault video cements fall of hip-hop icon

“The decrepit conditions are really fuelled by this sort of terrible conflation of circumstances,” Andrew Dalack, the lawyer for both Mr Cordero and Mr Chavez, told the BBC. “Overcrowding, understaffing and a lack of a political will to fix the conditions.”

As a Brooklyn-based public defender, Mr Dalack has represented numerous clients who have been sent to MDC. “It’s a really scary place to be,” he said.

After Mr Cordero’s death, US Congressman Dan Goldman, who represents the district where the Brooklyn facility is located, called for more federal oversight to address “chronic understaffing, perpetual solitary confinement and widespread violence”.

The Federal Bureau of Prisons, which manages the facility, said in a statement that it “takes seriously our duty to protect the individuals entrusted in our custody, as well as maintain the safety of correctional employees and the community”.

A spokesman for the bureau pointed to the creation of an urgent action team, which is seeking to address issues at MDC, and an ongoing effort to hire more staff and address a backlog of maintenance requests.

A February 2024 report compiled by the Federal Defenders office, where Mr Dalack works, attributed overcrowding issues to the closure of its troubled sister facility in Manhattan, which the government shut down in 2021 – two years after Jeffrey Epstein’s in-custody death at the facility.

• Watchdog finds serious failures at prison where Jeffrey Epstein died
• Jeffrey Epstein: Jail CCTV erased by ‘technical errors’

They also said the presence of drugs and other contraband contributes to the facility’s dangerous atmosphere.

The federal facility holds individuals who have been convicted of crimes, but a substantial portion of the population there is awaiting trial in the city’s federal courts, and have yet to be found innocent or guilty.

The conditions weighed on Mr Dalack’s clients, who were already facing the prospect of more permanent incarceration.

“It should not be the case that while your life is on the line and your liberty is on the line, that you have to be completely stripped of your humanity,” he said. “MDC Brooklyn has a way of really breaking people down, and making them feel less than human.”

Get ready for a cosmic surprise this autumn – Earth is about to get a second moon, according to scientists.

A small asteroid is going to be captured by Earth’s gravitational pull and temporarily become a “mini-moon”.

This space visitor will be around from September 29 for a couple of months before escaping from Earth’s gravity again.

Sadly the second moon is going to be too small and dim to be seen, unless you have a professional telescope.

The asteroid was first spotted by NASA’s Asteroid Terrestrial-Impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) on 7 August.

Scientists worked out its trajectory in a study published in Research Notes of the American Astronomical Society.

The asteroid, which scientists refer to as 2024 PT5, hails from the Arjuna asteroid belt, which contains rocks that follow an orbit quite similar to Earth’s.

Occasionally, some of these asteroids get relatively close, getting as near as 2.8 million miles (4.5 million km) from our planet.

According to the researchers involved in the study, if an asteroid like this is moving at a relatively slow speed of around 2,200mph (3,540km/h), Earth’s gravitational field can exert a strong influence, enough to trap it temporarily.

Which is exactly what’s about to happen – starting this weekend, this small asteroid will spend about two months orbiting Earth.

Dr Jennifer Millard, astronomer and host of the Awesome Astronomy podcast, told the BBC’s Today programme that the asteroid would enter orbit on the 29th of September and then was predicted to leave on 25 November.

“It’s not going to complete a full revolution of our planet, it’s just going to kind of have its orbit altered, just twisted slightly by our own planet and then it’ll continue on its merry way,” she said.

The asteroid is approximately 32ft (10m) long, which is tiny in comparison to Earth’s moon, which has a diameter of approximately 3,474km.

Because it is small and made of dull rock it will not be visible to people on earth even if they use binoculars or a home telescope.

“Professional telescopes, they’ll be able to pick it up. So you’ll be able to look out for lots of wonderful pictures online of this little dot kind of moving past the stars at great speed,” said Dr Millard.

Mini-moons have been spotted before, and it’s thought many more are likely to have gone unnoticed.

Some even come back for repeat visits, the 2022 NX1 asteroid became a mini-moon in 1981 and again in 2022.

So don’t worry if you miss this one – scientists predict 2024 PT5 will also return to Earth’s orbit again in 2055.

“This story highlights just how busy our solar system is and how much there is out there that we haven’t discovered, because this asteroid was only discovered this year.

“There are tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of objects out there that we haven’t discovered and so I think this highlights the importance of us being able to continually monitor the night sky and find all of these objects,” said Dr Millard.

The murder of a 19-year-old female student in an exclusive neighbourhood of Paris is fuelling new calls from the French right for tougher action on immigration.

The body of the young woman, named only as Philippine, was found on Saturday, half-buried in the Bois de Boulogne park on the western edge of the capital.

She had last been seen on Friday lunchtime a few hundred metres away, as she left the Paris-Dauphine university campus where she was studying economics.

The suspected killer was traced to Geneva, where he was arrested on Tuesday and awaits deportation to France.

He is a 22 year-old Moroccan man who was released from detention in France earlier this month after serving five years for raping a student in 2019.

Named by French media as Taha O, he was the subject of an expulsion order from France, which had not been carried out.

For France’s hardline new interior minister Bruno Retailleau, it is a first test after he took office last week promising that his top three priorities would be to “establish order, establish order and establish order.”

“It is up to us as public officials to … change our legal arsenal in order to protect the French,” he said on the X social media platform.

The far-right National Rally (RN) seized on the murder as more evidence of the laxity of the French judicial system.

“This migrant had no right to be here, but he was able to offend again in total impunity. Our justice is too lenient; our state is dysfunctional. It is time for the government to act,” said the RN’s president, Jordan Bardella.

With more than 120 members of parliament, the RN has leverage over the minority government of Prime Minister Michel Barnier because it can decide at any time to support a vote of no confidence and potentially bring it down.

Some left-wing politicians joined calls for greater effectiveness in carrying out expulsion orders.

The suspect “should have gone straight from prison to plane”, said Socialist party leader Olivier Faure.

Currently fewer than 10% of French expulsion orders are carried out, according to government figures.

Sandrine Rousseau of the Ecologists said the murder was a “femicide” which should be “punished severely”. But she warned that the far right would “exploit it to spread its racist and xenophobic hate”.

Philippine’s disappearance led to an alert on a phone app called The Sorority, whose network of members are pledged to come to the help of women in distress.

Philippine did not have the app, but The Sorority said it issued a “missing persons notice” on Saturday to encourage members to join the search.

Philippine was on her way home to her parents’ house west of Paris when she disappeared. She was described as a quiet, model student by her colleagues and was involved in the scouting movement.

Her killing has raised fears about safety in the Bois de Boulogne, which abuts the expensive areas of Paris’s 16th (district).

The park has long been a centre of prostitution but local residents say parts have become increasingly frightening in recent years, because of the presence of drug-addicts and other suspicious characters.

Eswatini’s main opposition leader has been poisoned as part of an assassination attempt and is being treated in hospital, his party says.

Mlungisi Makhanya, 46, has been living in exile in neighbouring South Africa for the last two years, saying he fears for his life at home following a violent crackdown on pro-democracy activists in Africa’s last remaining absolute monarchy.

“Our president has been stabilised but he is still in a critical condition,” the People’s United Democratic Movement (Pudemo) said.

Eswatini spokesman Alpheous Nxumalo denied state involvement, saying the “government does not kill or poison suspects”.

Pudemo says the attempt on its leader’s life comes ahead of planned protests next month calling for multi-party elections.

The country, formerly known as Swaziland, allows independent candidates to stand for parliament but does not allow political parties to participate.

King Mswati III has been on the throne since 1986 and rules by decree. He has been criticised for his extravagant lifestyle and is regularly accused of not allowing any dissent, which his government denies.

Last year, Thulani Rudolf Maseko, a human rights lawyer, who was opposed to the king, was killed in his home in the capital, Mbabane, sparking widespread condemnation.

In September 2022, Makhanya’s home in Eswatini was set alight in an alleged fire bomb attack by state agents. He now lives in South Africa’s capital, Pretoria, with his family.

• What does this activist’s death mean for Eswatini?
• Zuma’s daughter marrying polygamous king ‘for love’

Makhanya leads Pudemo, one of the leading pro-democracy parties which are theoretically allowed, but banned from participating in elections.

He was allegedly poisoned in the early hours of Tuesday inside his house in Pretoria by an unnamed “young boy”, who Pudemo said was used as an “agent of evil intent by Swazi government”.

Makwanya was rushed to a Pretoria hospital escorted by the South African police, the Swaziland News website reported. He was later moved to the Intensive Care Unit (ICU), in a critical but stable condition, it added.

He reportedly informed police and doctors that he had been poisoned and robbed of his cell phones.

In a press briefing on Wednesday, Wandile Dludlu, the Pudemo deputy president, said an “extremely dangerous and fatal” pesticide poison was used in the incident.

“It is encouraging that the president has survived a day,” Dludlu added.

“It was an assassination attempt on the life of our leader.”

This was rejected by the Eswatini government.

“Government, through the law enforcement agencies – that adheres to a strict code of ethics and professionalism – only apprehend suspects and bring them to Justice, and they are brought to justice ‘alive’, not ‘dead’,” Nxumalo said in a statement.

The Pudemo party has appealed for international support to ensure Makhanya’s security and that of his family while in hospital.

The Swaziland Solidarity Network (SSN), a group of Swazis living in South Africa, condemned what it termed a “bold attack” and a “clear assassination attempt” against Makhanya.

It called on the South African government to take action against Swazi state agents it said were targeting exiled pro-democracy activists “fighting for freedom” .

Opposition parties have accused security agents of killing dozens of protesters who have blamed the lack of development in the country on the current political system.

In 2021, student-led protests that began over alleged police brutality morphed into calls for political change. At least 46 people died in a series of clashes between the security forces and demonstrators, according to Human Rights Watch.

The government has disputed this figure and said that the police were responding to violent attacks.

“This is a political fight between the oppressed masses and the traditional autocratic monarch,” Dludlu said, vowing that Pudemo would proceed with next month’s protests as planned.

• The election in a kingdom where parties are banned
• Why people in Eswatini are protesting
• Find out more about Eswatini

A zoo in Finland will return two giant pandas to China eight years early, saying it can no longer afford to look after them.

Lumi and Pyry were brought to Finland in 2018, after the two countries signed an agreement to protect the animals.

They were meant to stay in the Nordic country for 15 years, but will be sent home in November – with Ähtäri Zoo blaming inflation and debt linked to the Covid pandemic for the pandas’ eviction.

It also said the zoo spent €1.5m (£1.2m) a year on the pandas’ upkeep, as well as more than €8m on their enclosure.

Marko Haapakoski, curator at Ähtäri Zoo, said the €1.5m upkeep was “much more than all the other species combined”.

It included a keeper required to stay with them at all times, a preservation fee to China and imported bamboo.

“It’s a good thing for the zoo because they were so expensive,” but the pandas had been “doing really well, so it’s a pity”, said Mr Haapakoski.

“They’re really nice to work with.”

Another factor in the decision to return the pandas was the Finnish government rejecting pleas for state funding last year.

“They thought the pandas would bring more visitors, and that it was a good investment – turns out it wasn’t so”, said Mr Haapakoski.

The zoo revealed last year that it was discussing their return.

Lumi and Pyry will soon go into a month-long quarantine before they are shipped back to China.

A spokesperson for Finland’s foreign ministry said the pandas’ return was a business decision that did not involve the government, and that it should not impact relations between Finland and China.

Finland’s Chinese embassy, meanwhile, told the Reuters news agency that while efforts had been made to try and help the zoo, a joint decision was eventually made to send the animals back.

China sends pandas to foreign zoos to strengthen its trading ties, relationships and image abroad – termed ‘panda diplomacy’.

One person has died after a gunman hijacked a Los Angeles bus on Wednesday, sparking a sprawling police chase that ended with a Swat team storming the vehicle.

The armed suspect boarded the Metro bus, which had two other passengers on board, in South Los Angeles at around 01:00 local time (08:00 GMT).

Police gave pursuit as the hijacker forced the bus driver at gunpoint to steer the vehicle through traffic for the next hour.

It is the latest violent incident on the Los Angeles transit system, which has seen a number of shootings and stabbings this year.

In Wednesday’s incident, the driver pressed a panic button, activating a “911 call police” message to flash on the light display at the front of the bus.

Police disabled the vehicle by deploying spike strips at a downtown intersection after it had travelled more than 7 miles (11km).

A Swat team deployed flash-bang grenades as they boarded the bus and arrested the suspect.

A man was found inside with multiple gunshot wounds, and he was pronounced dead in hospital. The other passenger was not injured.

Police said the suspect had boarded the bus, argued with the driver and shot a passenger.

TV news footage showed the bus driver climbing out of a window on the vehicle to escape.

The Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority said the driver was unharmed.

It is not the first such incident on the city’s transit system this year.

In March, one person was injured when a man hijacked a bus which crashed into a hotel and several vehicles.

Mayor Karen Bass called in May for security to be beefed up on the city’s bus and train routes.

The Speaker of the US House Mike Johnson has demanded that Ukraine fire its ambassador to Washington, as a feud between the Republican Party and Volodymyr Zelensky escalates.

Johnson’s intervention comes after President Zelensky visited an arms factory in Scranton, Pennsylvania – the hometown of President Joe Biden in a key swing state – with several top Democrats.

In a public letter, the top Republican said the visit was “designed to help Democrats” and claimed it amounted to “election interference”.

The row has threatened to overshadow Zelensky’s meeting with President Joe Biden on Thursday, during which he will present a “plan for victory” in his country’s war with Russia.

Since his arrival to the US on Sunday, Zelensky has ramped up efforts to persuade the US and other allies to lend more support to Ukraine as it fends off Russian advances.

While details of his “victory” plan have been kept under wraps, the strategy is likely to contain pleas for further military and financial support, plus future security guarantees.

On Thursday, Biden announced that the US will send $7.9bn (£5.9bn) worth of military aid to Ukraine in a surge of assistance as his presidency nears its end.

The aid, part of a $61bn package that passed Congress in April, includes additional Patriot air defence missiles and long-range munitions.

The weapons package will be approved through presidential drawdown authority and will pull from existing Pentagon supplies to deliver the arms more quickly.

Congressional Republicans blocked the Biden administration’s $61bn military package for months earlier this year, before ultimately relenting and passing the legislation in April. Before that, arms supplies to Ukraine had dried up for several months.

The US has been the largest foreign donor to Ukraine, with $56bn provided for its defence to date.

Responding to the aid package, Zelensky thanked the US and said he was “grateful to Joe Biden, US Congress and its both parties”.

The Ukrainian president said the assistance would be used “in the most efficient and transparent manner” to achieve “victory for Ukraine, just and lasting peace, and transatlantic security”.

Russia’s missile and drone attacks on Ukraine have continued while Zelensky is in the US.

The Sumy, Odesa and Kyiv regions were all attacked overnight, leaving one woman dead in Odesa and numerous reported injuries.

In the capital, air raid sirens and explosions from Ukraine’s air defences continued for hours.

“I woke up to the sound of the Shahed drone. I got up and saw the reflection in the windows, how a big ball of fire was falling down,” said Maryna, a 31-year-old mother of two children.

Zelensky had planned to present his priorities outlined in Thursday’s statement to the two presidential candidates: Kamala Harris and Donald Trump.

However, an official on Donald Trump’s campaign said the Republican nominee would not meet the Ukrainian leader on his tour of the US this week.

Trump and Zelensky have long held a fractious relationship. In 2019, Trump was impeached by the US House over accusations that he pressured Ukraine’s leader to dig up damaging information on a political rival.

He has frequently echoed Russian talking points over the war. At a campaign event on Wednesday he mocked Zelensky as the “greatest salesman on Earth” and accused the Ukrainian leader of refusing to “make a deal” with Moscow.

During an earlier rally on Tuesday, Trump also praised Russia’s military capabilities, saying: “They beat Hitler, they beat Napoleon – that’s what they do, they fight.”

The former president’s remarks come amid a growing row between Zelensky and the Republican party over his visit to an ammunition factory in Biden’s hometown of Scranton in the key swing state of Pennsylvania.

During the visit, Zelensky appeared with Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro and several other top Democrats. Speaker Johnson accused the president of taking part in a “partisan campaign event” designed to help Vice-President Kamala Harris’ camapign.

Meanwhile, the Republican-led House Oversight Committee had already announced that it would investigate whether Zelensky’s trip was an attempt to use a foreign leader to benefit Vice-President Kamala Harris’ campaign.

• 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?

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 88-year-old man who is the world’s longest-serving death row inmate has been acquitted by a Japanese court, after it found that evidence used against him was fabricated.

Iwao Hakamada, who was on death row for almost half a century, was found guilty in 1968 of killing his boss, the man’s wife and their two teenage children.

He was recently granted a retrial amid suspicions that investigators may have planted evidence that led to his conviction for quadruple murder.

The 46 years spent on death row has taken a heavy toll on Hakamada’s mental health, though, meaning he was unfit to attend the hearing where his acquittal was finally handed down.

Hakamada’s case is one of Japan’s longest and most famous legal sagas, and has attracted widespread public interest, with some 500 people lining up for seats in the courtroom in Shizuoka on Thursday.

As the verdict was handed down, Hakamada’s supporters outside the court cheered “banzai” – a Japanese exclamation that means “hurray”.

Hakamada, who was exempted from all hearings due to his deteriorated mental state, has been living under the care of his 91-year-old sister Hideko since 2014, when he was freed from jail and granted a retrial.

She fought for decades to clear his name and said it was sweet to hear the words “not guilty” in court.

“When I heard that, I was so moved and happy, I couldn’t stop crying,” she told reporters.

Her brother has previously said his battle for justice was like “fighting a bout every day”. “Once you think you can’t win, there is no path to victory,” he told AFP news agency in 2018.

A former professional boxer, Hakamada was working at a miso processing plant in 1966 when the bodies of his employer, the man’s wife and two children were recovered from a fire at their home in Shizuoka, west of Tokyo. All four had been stabbed to death.

Authorities accused Hakamada of murdering the family, setting fire to their home and stealing 200,000 yen in cash.

Hakamada initially denied having robbed and murdered the victims, but later gave what he came to describe as a coerced confession following beatings and interrogations that lasted up to 12 hours a day.

In 1968 he was convicted of murder and arson, and sentenced to death.

The decades-long legal saga ultimately turned on some clothes found in a tank of miso a year after Hakamada’s arrest. Those clothes, purportedly bloodstained, were used to incriminate him.

For years, however, Hakamada’s lawyers argued that the DNA recovered from the clothes did not match his, raising the possibility that the items belonged to someone else. The lawyers further suggested that police could have fabricated the evidence.

Their argument was enough to persuade Judge Hiroaki Murayama, who in 2014 noted that “the clothes were not those of the defendant”.

“It is unjust to detain the defendant further, as the possibility of his innocence has become clear to a respectable degree,” Murayama said at the time.

Hakamada was then released from jail and granted a retrial.

Prolonged legal proceedings meant that it took until last year for that retrial to begin – and until Thursday morning for the court to declare the verdict.

The detail upon which his retrial and final acquittal hinged was the nature of the red stains on clothing prosecutors said was his. The defence questioned how the stains had aged. It said the fact they remained red and had not darkened after an extended time immersed in soybean paste meant the evidence was fabricated.

Thursday’s ruling found that “investigators tampered with clothes by getting blood on them” which they then hid in the tank of miso, according to AFP.

Hakamada was declared innocent.

Decades of detention, mostly in solitary confinement with the ever-present threat of execution, have taken a heavy toll on Hakamada’s mental health, according to his lawyers and family.

His sister has long advocated for his release. Last year, when the retrial commenced, Hideko expressed relief and said “finally a weight has been lifted from my shoulders”.

Retrials for death row inmates are rare in Japan – Hakamada’s is only the fifth in Japan’s post-war history.

Along with the United States, Japan is the only G7 country that still imposes capital punishment, with death row prisoners being notified of their hanging just a few hours in advance.

The state of Florida has issued a number of mandatory evacuation orders as Hurricane Helene strengthened over the Atlantic ocean.

As of Thursday morning, the storm had grown into a category 2 hurricane and is expected to make landfall on Florida’s Big Bend later in the evening.

Officials have urged people to heed evacuation orders, warning that the storm will bring “life-threatening” weather to the region with destructive winds and significant storm surge.

It is expected to make landfall as a category 4 hurricane south of Tallahassee, a city that has not seen a storm of this magnitude in recent memory.

Hurricane Helene has been described as “catastrophic” and “unsurvivable” by officials, who warned that it will bring with it a storm surge of up to 20 ft above ground level in some areas of the Big Bend.

“This forecast, if realised, is a nightmare surge scenario for Apalachee Bay,” the National Weather Service office in Tallahassee warned in a bulletin.

Michael Brennan, the director of the National Hurricane Centre (NHC), said on Thursday that residents under evacuation orders still have time to get out, but added that “conditions are going to deteriorate quickly.”

Power outages, tree damage and powerful winds that could tear roofs off of structures are expected, Mr Brennan said, as well as significant rainfall of up to 18 inches that could bring flash flooding in some areas.

The storm has been described as “very large” by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who warned on Thursday that it will bring with it tropical storm conditions to much of his state.

Around 14 tornado warnings were issued overnight on Wednesday, and DeSantis warned that more were likely in the coming day.

He added that Tallahassee, Florida’s capital city of 200,000 residents, could be significantly affected if the hurricane makes landfall directly on the city.

“This area has not had a major hurricane hit in quite some time, and nobody in recent memory has seen a storm of this magnitude hit,” DeSantis said.

As of 08:00 EST (13:00 GMT), Hurricane Helene was about 320 miles (515 kilometers) from Tampa, Florida, according to the NHC, with maximum sustained winds of 100 mph (155 km/h).

DeSantis urged residents in the impacted regions to leave as soon as possible, as the hurricane is forecast to travel quickly towards the state.

“Every minute that goes by brings us conditions that are simply going to be too dangerous to navigate,” he said.

He added that people should anticipate flight delays and cancellations. Tampa International Airport and Tallahassee International Airport were both closed on Thursday in anticipation of the storm.

Search and rescue teams have been mobilised should they be needed, DeSantis said, and shelters have been opened for residents in affected areas.

All across the south-eastern US, the storm could trigger “catastrophic and potentially life-threatening flash and urban flooding”, the NHC said.

In Georgia, all public schools in Atlanta will close on Thursday and Friday because of the storm.

Schools in South Florida have also been closed, and student activities and classes have been cancelled at the University of Florida.

The hurricane also affected the race for the White House, with the Republican candidate for vice-president, JD Vance, cancelling two events in Georgia that were planned for Thursday.

Earlier on its path, Hurricane Helene had passed Mexico’s Yucatán peninsula and the tourist resorts of Cancún.

Those regions were spared major damage when the hurricane skirted its north-eastern coast but failed to make landfall.

Torrential rains caused flooding in parts of the Mexican state of Quintana Roo.

Videos uploaded by tourists and locals in Cancún showed buses attempting to drive through flooded streets in the area where many of the city’s hotels are located.

But the state’s governor said there had been no casualties and officials reported that power was being restored to areas where it had been cut.

Hurricanes need sea surface temperatures of more than 27C (80F) to fuel them.

With exceptionally warm waters of the Gulf at 30-32C (86-89F), the sea surface is about two degrees Celsius above normal for the time of year.

Florida’s 220-mile (350-kilometre) Big Bend Coast is where Hurricane Idalia made landfall in 2023. The area was also battered by Hurricane Debby last month.

The Florida Division of Emergency Management has posted a list of the counties in which voluntary or mandatory evacuation orders have been issued ahead of Helene.

Vladimir Putin says Russia would consider an attack from a non-nuclear state that was backed by a nuclear-armed one to be a “joint attack”, in what could be construed as a threat to use nuclear weapons in the war in Ukraine.

In key remarks on Wednesday night, the Russian president said his government was considering changing the rules and preconditions around which Russia would use its nuclear arsenal.

Ukraine is a non-nuclear state that receives military support from the US and other nuclear-armed countries.

His comments come as Kyiv seeks approval to use long-range Western missiles against military sites in Russia.

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky has travelled to the US this week and is due to meet US President Joe Biden in Washington on Thursday, where Kyiv’s request is expected to be top of the agenda.

Ukraine has pushed into Russian territory this year and wants to target bases inside Russia which it says are sending missiles into Ukraine.

Responding to Putin’s remarks, Zelensky’s chief of staff Andriy Yermak said Russia “no longer has anything other than nuclear blackmail to intimidate the world”.

Putin has threatened the use of nuclear weapons before. Ukraine has criticised it as “nuclear sabre-rattling” to deter its allies from providing further support.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken described the comments as “totally irresponsible” in an MSNBC television interview.

Russian ally China has also called for calm, with reports President Xi Jinping has warned Putin against using nuclear arms.

But on Wednesday, after a meeting with his Security Council, Putin announced the proposed radical expansion.

A new nuclear doctrine would “clearly set the conditions for Russia to transition to using nuclear weapons,” he warned – and said such scenarios included conventional missile strikes against Moscow.

He said that Russia would consider such a “possibility” of using nuclear weapons if it detected the start of a massive launch of missiles, aircraft and drones into its territory, which presented a “critical threat” to the country’s sovereignty.

He added: “It is proposed that aggression against Russia by any non-nuclear state, but with the participation or support of a nuclear state, be considered as their joint attack on the Russian Federation.”

The country’s nuclear arms were “the most important guarantee of security of our state and its citizens”, the Kremlin leader said.

Since the end of World War Two, nuclear-armed states have engaged in a policy of deterrence, which is based on the idea that if warring states were to launch major nuclear strikes it would lead to mutually assured destruction.

But there are also tactical nuclear weapons which are smaller warheads designed to destroy targets without widespread radioactive fallout.

In June, Putin delivered a warning to European countries supporting Ukraine, saying Russia had “many more [tactical nuclear weapons] than there are on the European continent, even if the United States brings theirs over.”

“Europe does not have a developed [early warning system],” he added. “In this sense they are more or less defenceless.”

At the time he had hinted of changes to Russia’s nuclear doctrine – the document which sets out the conditions under which Moscow would use nuclear weapons.

The Kremlin said on Thursday that changes outlined by Putin should be considered a warning to the West.

Elaborating on the move, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters: “It must be considered a specific signal – a signal that warns these countries of the consequences if they participate in an attack on our country by various means, not necessarily nuclear.”

Peskov said that Russia would make a decision on whether not to publish the updated nuclear documents, adding that adjustments to the document on state nuclear deterrence were being formulated.

A teacher who sent a girl naked photographs and a video of himself performing a sex act has been banned from classrooms in England.

David Amos contacted the student at Sedgefield Community College in County Durham, where he taught, by email and then on the social media platform Snapchat.

He was jailed for 30 months in October 2022 after admitting causing a child to watch a sexual activity and inciting a child to engage in sexual activity.

Banning him from the profession for life, the Teaching Regulation Agency said his behaviour “fell significantly short of the standards expected of the profession”.

The panel found Amos “used his position of trust” to engage in “sexual communications” with the girl, who was under 16.

It added his actions “were serious sexual misconduct against a child”.

The panel said a lack of insight and remorse meant there was some risk of Amos reoffending if he was allowed to return to the classroom which would put pupils’ wellbeing “at risk”.

He had been employed by the college between January 2017 and October 2022.

He is now prohibited from teaching indefinitely in any school, sixth form college, relevant youth accommodation or children’s home in England, although he can appeal to the High Court within 28 days of the decision having been made.

As well as the jail term, Amos was also required to register with police indefinitely and a 10-year sexual harm prevention order was put in place while his iPad and phone were destroyed.

A Japanese warship has sailed through the Taiwan Strait between Taiwan and China for the first time, prompting Beijing to lodge complaints with Tokyo.

The JS Sazanami, a naval destroyer, travelled south through the strait on Wednesday, accompanied by ships from Australia and New Zealand.

It was on its way to military exercises in the South China Sea, Japanese media reported government ministers saying.

The passage is a significant move by Japan, which is thought to have avoided sailing its ships through the strait in order not to upset China, which claims self-governed Taiwan and the strait.

Japan’s government has declined to comment on the ship, citing military operation discretion.

But China on Thursday confirmed its military had responded to “the activities of a Japanese Self-Defence Force ship entering the Taiwan Strait”.

“China is highly vigilant about the political intentions of Japan’s actions and has lodged stern representations with Japan,” foreign ministry spokesman Lin Jian said.

Chinese state newspaper Global Times, citing an unnamed source, said the Chinese military “conducted tracking and monitoring throughout [the vessels’] entire course and had the situation under control”.

There has been an increase in patrols by the US and its allies to assert their freedom of navigation in the 180km (112-mile) Taiwan Strait.

Both the US and Taiwan say it is a key shipping and trade route through which about half of the global container fleet passes, and is part of international waters and is open to all naval vessels.

Beijing, which claims sovereignty and jurisdiction over the strait, disagrees.

For decades the US Pacific fleet was the only foreign navy that regularly transited the strait. But recently, it was joined by Canada and Australia, Britain and France. Two weeks ago Germany sailed two navy ships through the strait for the first time in decades.

China’s military accused Germany of increasing security risks by sailing though the strait on 13 September, but Berlin said it acted in accordance with international standards. It was the first time in 22 years for a German naval vessel to traverse the strait.

These transits are highly political and designed to show China that America and its allies do not accept Beijing’s claims.

For Japan, it is also another big step away from its long-held policy of not directly challenging China.

On Thursday, Japan’s chief cabinet secretary did not confirm details of the naval operation, but he said Japan felt a strong sense of crisis after repeated airspace violations by the Chinese military, which he said had occurred one after another over a short period of time.

Taiwan has not commented on the passage, but its defence ministry said on Wednesday that it saw a surge in the number of Chinese military planes operating around the island.

Bec Strating, an international relations professor at La Trobe University in Australia, said Japan’s reported transit is “part of a broader pattern of greater naval presence by countries in and beyond Asia that are concerned about China’s maritime assertions”.

“Japan in particular has been dealing with China’s ‘grey zone’ tactics in the East China Sea,” she told AFP news agency.

Grey zone warfare tactics are aimed at weakening an adversary over a prolonged period of time, analysts say.

Last week, Beijing sent an aircraft carrier between two Japanese islands near Taiwan for the first time. In August, a Chinese spy plane flew inside Japan’s airspace, prompting Tokyo to condemn the incursion as “utterly unacceptable” and a “serious violation of sovereignty”.

The leaders of the Quad group of nations – Japan, Australia, India and the US – said last week that they would expand cooperation on maritime security to counter China’s increasing assertiveness in the South China Sea.

Ordinarily, US District Judge Gary J Brown would have sent the man to the local federal jail to serve out his sentence for tax fraud.

But one thing stopped him: “The dangerous, barbaric conditions that have existed for some time at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn.”

The notorious jail, commonly known as MDC, is in the spotlight once again due to its latest celebrity detainee. Last week, a New York judge ordered Sean “Diddy” Combs be held there after federal prosecutors charged him with sex trafficking, racketeering, and transportation to engage in prostitution. He has pleaded not guilty.

High-profile defendants like Mr Combs sometimes receive special protection when jailed, and the music mogul is reported to be in a section of MDC Brooklyn for detainees who require special protection.

Mr Combs is, according to local media reports, sharing a dormitory-style room there with the cryptocurrency entrepreneur Sam Bankman-Fried, who once ran a company worth billions but was convicted on multiple counts of fraud in March.

And because it is the only federal jail in New York City, where many high-profile cases are processed, the pair are just the latest in an extensive list of notable names to have passed through the facility’s doors. That list includes the rapper R Kelly as well as Jeffrey Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell.

But for many of MDC Brooklyn’s 1,200 current inmates, it’s a different story.

• An 11th lawsuit for Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs as he sits in jail
• Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs will stay in jail after judge refuses bail appeal
• Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs: Who is the US rapper accused of sex trafficking?

In an August sentencing decision, Judge Brown cited multiple cases of fellow jurists who had hesitated to send defendants and convicts to the jail due to the conditions.

“Allegations of inadequate supervision, unbridled assaults, and lack of sufficient medical care are supported by an increasing body of evidence, with certain instances that are irrefutable,” he said.

“Chaos reigns, along with uncontrolled violence,” Judge Brown added. His ruling included the case of a defendant who was stabbed multiple times but reported receiving no medical care, instead being locked in his cell for 25 days. The judge cited staffing shortages and worsening conditions after the Covid pandemic that forced the jail into lockdown.

If the Bureau of Prisons decided to send the defendant in the tax fraud case to MDC, the judge wrote, he would vacate the man’s sentence.

MDC Brooklyn was opened in the 1990s, and its issues stretch back years.

In 2019, an electrical fire in the dead of winter caused a blackout, plunging the facility into darkness and frigid conditions.

And in June 2020, an inmate, Jamel Floyd, died after being pepper sprayed by correctional officers. His family sued the federal government over his death. A review by the Department of Justice concluded there was “insufficient evidence” that prison authorities “engaged in administrative misconduct,” but did acknowledge that the use of pepper spray violated policy.

Judge Brown is not the only judge to harshly criticise the facility.

In January, Judge Jesse Furman of the Federal District Court in Manhattan refused to send a man who pleaded guilty in a drug case there because of its dangerous conditions.

After initially allowing the man, Gustavo Chavez, to await sentencing on supervised release, Judge Furman ultimately let him bypass MDC and report directly to the prison where he would serve out his sentence.

In July, 36-year-old Edwin Cordero died after he was injured in a fight while serving out a sentence at MDC.

• The charges against Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs explained
• Diddy assault video cements fall of hip-hop icon

“The decrepit conditions are really fuelled by this sort of terrible conflation of circumstances,” Andrew Dalack, the lawyer for both Mr Cordero and Mr Chavez, told the BBC. “Overcrowding, understaffing and a lack of a political will to fix the conditions.”

As a Brooklyn-based public defender, Mr Dalack has represented numerous clients who have been sent to MDC. “It’s a really scary place to be,” he said.

After Mr Cordero’s death, US Congressman Dan Goldman, who represents the district where the Brooklyn facility is located, called for more federal oversight to address “chronic understaffing, perpetual solitary confinement and widespread violence”.

The Federal Bureau of Prisons, which manages the facility, said in a statement that it “takes seriously our duty to protect the individuals entrusted in our custody, as well as maintain the safety of correctional employees and the community”.

A spokesman for the bureau pointed to the creation of an urgent action team, which is seeking to address issues at MDC, and an ongoing effort to hire more staff and address a backlog of maintenance requests.

A February 2024 report compiled by the Federal Defenders office, where Mr Dalack works, attributed overcrowding issues to the closure of its troubled sister facility in Manhattan, which the government shut down in 2021 – two years after Jeffrey Epstein’s in-custody death at the facility.

• Watchdog finds serious failures at prison where Jeffrey Epstein died
• Jeffrey Epstein: Jail CCTV erased by ‘technical errors’

They also said the presence of drugs and other contraband contributes to the facility’s dangerous atmosphere.

The federal facility holds individuals who have been convicted of crimes, but a substantial portion of the population there is awaiting trial in the city’s federal courts, and have yet to be found innocent or guilty.

The conditions weighed on Mr Dalack’s clients, who were already facing the prospect of more permanent incarceration.

“It should not be the case that while your life is on the line and your liberty is on the line, that you have to be completely stripped of your humanity,” he said. “MDC Brooklyn has a way of really breaking people down, and making them feel less than human.”

The world’s richest person, Elon Musk, has hit back after not being invited to the UK government’s International Investment Summit.

He was not invited due to his social media posts during last month’s riots, the BBC understands.

“I don’t think anyone should go to the UK when they’re releasing convicted pedophiles in order to imprison people for social media posts,” Mr Musk claimed on X.

Earlier this month, the government released some prisoners to reduce prison overcrowding, but no people serving sentences for sex offences were included.

Following disorder and rioting across the UK in August, some people were jailed for encouraging unrest on social media.

Violence spread across the country after a stabbing attack in Southport, in which three children attending a dance class were killed. At the time, Mr Musk posted on X, formerly Twitter, predicting civil war in the UK and repeatedly attacking the prime minister.

The summit in October is the key moment that PM Sir Keir Starmer hopes will attract tens of billions of pounds in inward funding for business from the world’s biggest investors.

Mr Musk was invited to last year’s event but did not attend. However, he took a starring role in November’s AI Summit, including a fireside chat with then-PM Rishi Sunak.

The government declined to comment on the tech entrepreneur not being invited to the summit and the billionaire’s backlash to the decision.

But Jeremy Hunt, the former Conservative chancellor and now the shadow chancellor, told the BBC it was a “big loss” not to have Mr Musk at the summit.

“He told me last year he was planning a new car plant in Europe and had not decided where but the UK was a candidate,” Mr Hunt claimed.

During the August riots, Mr Musk shared, and later deleted, a conspiracy theory about the UK building “detainment camps” on the Falkland Islands for rioters, on X – the social media platform he owns.

At the time ministers said his comments were “totally unjustifiable” and “pretty deplorable”.

The BBC understands this is why he has not been invited to join hundreds of the world’s biggest investors at the event on 14 October.

David Yelland, a public relations specialist and former editor of the Sun newspaper, told the BBC that if Mr Musk were to attend the summit, it would be “reputationally disastrous for the whole event”.

“He’s a fan of free speech but he behaves like a child and he post things that are deeply inaccurate and extremely damaging,” he said.

“This is just not a guy that is saying stuff in the pub. This is a guy that is encouraging untruths around the world.

“Just because he’s so wealthy, just because he’s so influential doesn’t make any difference. At some point we have to stand up against him, no matter what the consequences are.”

The government’s decision not to invite Mr Musk to the investment summit suggests that it thinks the potential investment is not worth the reputational risk and opens up uncomfortable questions about the background of other investors it has actively encouraged.

Attracting international investment routinely involves charm offensives with investors or nations with questionable human rights records.

The government has actively pursued trade links in the Gulf. Sir Keir, for example, publicly boycotted the 2022 World Cup in Qatar as leader of the opposition, but now he and his team routinely visit these nations to drum up trade and investment.

A number of top sovereign wealth fund executives are expected at the summit next month.

Privately, insiders suggested that Mr Musk’s presence at such a summit would be unthinkable given his comments about the UK last month.

Coming two weeks head of the Budget, the government is billing it as a huge opportunity to attract foreign investment to grow the UK economy. The Labour Party committed before the general election to hold this event within its first 100 days in office.

Mr Musk is said to be turning his attention to a second European gigafactory in addition to his plant in Berlin, Germany, after completing his Mexican plant.

Under the Conservatives, the Tesla boss was quietly shown around various UK sites with potential for a gigafactory for cars and batteries.

He has previously told journalists he opened the site in Berlin and not the UK partly because of Brexit.

Mr Musk is a regular at the equivalent French investment summit. In July, he attended a three-hour lunch with top executives with President Emmanuel Macron ahead of the Paris Olympics earlier this summer.

Under his ownership of the site formerly known as Twitter, Mr Musk lifted the ban on far-right figures, including on the Britain First group.

The UK is considering a tougher Online Safety Act, after the role of misinformation in the widespread racist disorder in August.

He is the world’s richest person and has used his platform to make his views known on a vast array of topics.

Bloomberg estimates his net worth to be around $228bn.

That’s based largely on the value of his shares in Tesla, of which he owns more than 13%. The company’s stock soared in value – some say unreasonably – in 2020 as the firm’s output increased and it started to deliver regular profits.

Since bursting on to the Silicon Valley scene more than two decades ago, the 53-year-old serial entrepreneur has kept the public captivated with his business antics.

Born in Pretoria, South Africa, Mr Musk showed his talents for entrepreneurship early, going door to door with his brother selling homemade chocolate Easter eggs and developing his first computer game at the age of 12.

For a long time Mr Musk, who became a US citizen in 2002, resisted efforts to label his politics – calling himself “half-Democrat, half-Republican”, “politically moderate” and “independent”.

He says he voted for Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and – reluctantly – Joe Biden, all of them Democrats.

But in recent years he’s swung behind Donald Trump, who is a Republican. Mr Musk officially endorsed the former president for a second term in 2024 after his attempted assassination.

Coldplay are to play an unprecedented 10 nights at London’s Wembley Stadium next summer, breaking a record held by Taylor Swift and Take That.

The band originally announced an six-night run at the stadium next August, but added four extra shows in September due to “phenomenal demand” during a fan-only presale on Thursday morning.

The general ticket sale begins at 9am on Friday, 27 September, with prices starting at £20 (plus fees).

Unlike Oasis, the band have declined to use Ticketmaster’s dynamic pricing model – where prices are adjusted according to demand. A message on the company’s website stated, “all ticket prices for these concerts are fixed at the advertised rate”.

The 2025 tour dates are in support of the band’s 10th album Moon Music, which is due for release on 4 October.

As well as Wembley, the band will play two nights at Hull’s Craven Park Stadium.

Fifty per cent of the tickets for those shows will go to local fans, who live in the HU, YO, DN or LN postcodes.

The 12 concerts will be the band’s only European dates of 2025. Ten per cent of the proceeds will be donated to the Music Venue Trust, which supports small, grassroots concert halls around the UK.

Earlier this year, the band headlined the Glastonbury festival, where they were joined on stage by Back to the Future star Michael J Fox, and a host of other musicians including rapper Little Simz, Nigerian musician Femi Kuti and Palestinian-Chilean singer Elyanna.

In a series of five-star reviews, The Independent called the show “the spectacle of a lifetime” and The Guardian said it would be “churlish” not to be swept up by a set full of “cartoonish good fun“.

Film star Tom Cruise, who watched the set from a VIP area at the side of the Pyramid Stage simply branded the concert “awesome“.

• Why do concert tickets suddenly cost as much as a games console?

During the set, the band also previewed songs from their upcoming album, which frontman Chris Martin has hinted could be their last.

“Our last proper record will come out in 2025 and after that I think we will only tour,” he told BBC Radio 2’s Jo Whiley in 2021.

“Maybe we’ll do some collaborative things but the Coldplay catalogue, as it were, finishes then.”

However, he subsequently backtracked those comments, telling the NME the band had another two records left in them.

“We’re going to make 12 albums. Because it’s a lot to pour everything into making them,” he explained. “I love it and it’s amazing, but it’s very intense too.”

Pre-sale tickets for Coldplay’s 2025 tour went on sale on Thursday morning for fans who had placed advance orders for Moon Music.

According to social media messages, the first tranche of dates sold out in about 20 minutes.

One fan reported a message on the Ticketmaster website flashing up at 09:22, stating: “UPDATE: There are currently no available tickets in this pre-sale.”

Recognising the demand, Coldplay added four extra dates at Wembley, with pre-sales starting at 2:30pm BST.

The 10-date residency means Coldplay will become the act to have played the most nights at the world-famous stadium in a single year.

Taylor Swift and Take That were previously tied for the record, playing eight nights apiece.

Coldplay previously played six nights at Wembley during the 2022 leg of their world tour – which means that, in total, their tour will have doubled the previous record.

The band have made efforts to reduce the environmental impact of their concerts – and announced earlier this year that they had achieved a 59% reduction in carbon dioxide emissions compared with their previous world tour.

They also made efforts to combat rising ticket prices by offering £20 “Infinity tickets” for every show.

They are sold in pairs and can be placed anywhere in the venue – including the very best seats.

For the Wembley dates, a pair of tickets will cost around £52, once fees – including the stadium’s £2.75 sustainability fee – are added.

Many hardline conservatives in Iran are growing uneasy about its lack of action as Israel targets the Lebanese armed group Hezbollah, their country’s closest and most long-standing ally.

When President Masoud Pezeshkian addressed the UN General Assembly on Tuesday, he criticised Israel’s war in Gaza and warned that its attacks on Lebanon could not go unanswered.

But Mr Pezeshkian, who was elected in July, adopted a more conciliatory tone than his hard-line predecessors, avoiding rhetoric about annihilating the Islamic Republic’s arch-enemy.

“We seek peace for all and have no intention of conflict with any country,” he stated.

He also expressed his government’s readiness to resume nuclear talks with Western powers, saying: “We are ready to engage with participants of the 2015 nuclear deal.”

Other senior Iranian officials and commanders of the Islamic Revolution Guard Corps (IRGC) have also appeared to be unusually restrained when expressing their intentions to take revenge on Israel for its actions against their country and its key allies Hamas and Hezbollah.

Iran has armed, funded and trained both armed groups, but Tehran’s leaders rely on Hezbollah to be a major deterrent preventing direct attacks on their country by Israel.

Iranian support has been critical to Hezbollah’s transformation into Lebanon’s most powerful armed force and political actor since the IRGC helped found the group in the 1980s.

It is the main supplier of the weapons that Hezbollah can deploy against Israel, particularly advanced missiles and drones, and the US has previously alleged that it also provides as much as $700m in funds annually.

Last week, Mojtaba Amani, Iran’s ambassador to Lebanon, was severely injured when his pager exploded last week at the embassy in Beirut. Thousands more pagers and walkie-talkies used by Hezbollah members also blew up in two attacks that killed a total of 39 people.

Iran blamed Israel, but it made no immediate public threats of retaliation.

In contrast, when Israel struck the Iranian consulate in Damascus in April, killing eight high-ranking IRGC Quds Force commanders, Iran swiftly responded by launching hundreds of drones and missiles at Israel.

Iran also vowed to retaliate after blaming Israel for the assassination of Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran in late July, although it has not announced that it has taken any action yet.

A former IRGC commander told the BBC that repeatedly threatening Israel without following through was further damaging the force’s credibility among its supporters inside Iran and its proxies abroad.

On Monday, President Pezeshkian told members of the US media in New York that Israel was seeking to draw Iran into a war.

“Iran is ready to defuse tensions with Israel and lay down arms if Israel does the same,” he insisted.

Some hardline conservatives close to Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, criticised the president for talking about defusing tensions with Israel, asserting that he should recognize his position and avoid giving live interviews.

Mr Pezeshkian was due to hold a press conference in New York on Wednesday, but it was cancelled. It was unclear if he was forced to cancel because of his comments.

In Iran, power lies in the hands of Ayatollah Khamenei and the IRGC. They are the ones making the key strategic decisions, not the president.

It is notable that Ayatollah Khamenei also did not mention any plans for retaliation or issue threats toward Israel, which is quite unusual for him, when he addressed veterans on Wednesday.

Barak Ravid, an Israeli journalist at the US news site Axios, reported on Tuesday that two Israeli officials and Western diplomats had indicated that Hezbollah was urging Iran to come to its aid by attacking Israel. The Israeli officials claimed that Iran had told Hezbollah that “the timing isn’t right”, according to Ravid.

Last week, the host of the Iranian internet TV program Maydan, which is known to have ties to the IRGC, cited Iranian intelligence sources as claiming that Israel had also “carried out a special operation last month, killing IRGC members and stealing documents”.

He asserted that the Iranian press had been forbidden from reporting on the incident, which allegedly happened inside in Iran, and that the authorities were attempting to control the narrative.

In response, Tasnim News Agency, which also linked to the IRGC, denied the allegations.

The Islamic Republic finds itself in a precarious situation.

It is concerned that attacking Israel could provoke a US military response, dragging the country into a broader conflict.

With a crippled economy due to US sanctions and ongoing domestic unrest, a potential US strike against the IRGC could further weaken its the regime’s security apparatus, possibly emboldening the Iranian opponents to rise up once more.

However, if Iran refrains from direct intervening in Hezbollah’s conflict with Israel, it risks sending a signal to other allied militias in the region that, in times of crisis, the Islamic Republic may prioritize its own survival and interests over theirs.

This could weaken Iran’s influence and alliances across the region.