Israel’s assassination of Hassan Nasrallah, the long–standing leader of Hezbollah, is a major escalation in its war with the Lebanese militant group.

It has, potentially, brought the region one step closer to a much wider and even more damaging conflict, one that pulls in both Iran and the US.

So where is it likely to go from here?

That largely depends on three basic questions.

Hezbollah is reeling from blow after blow.

Its command structure has been decapitated, with more than a dozen top commanders assassinated. Its communications have been sabotaged with the shocking detonations of its pagers and walkie-talkies, and many of its weapons have been destroyed in air strikes.

The US-based Middle East security analyst Mohammed Al-Basha says: “The loss of Hassan Nasrallah will have significant implications, potentially destabilising the group and altering its political and military strategies in the short term.”

But any expectation that this vehemently anti-Israel organisation is going to suddenly give up and sue for peace on Israel’s terms is likely to be misplaced.

Hezbollah has already vowed to continue the fight. It still has thousands of fighters, many of them recent veterans of combat in Syria, and they are demanding revenge.

It still has a substantial arsenal of missiles, many of them long-range, precision-guided weapons which can reach Tel Aviv and other cities. There will be pressure within its ranks to use those soon, before they too get destroyed.

But if they do, in a mass attack that overwhelms Israel’s air defences and kills civilians, then Israel’s response is likely to be devastating, wreaking havoc on Lebanon’s infrastructure, or even extending to Iran.

This assassination is as much of a blow to Iran as it is to Hezbollah. It’s already announced five days of mourning.

It’s also taken emergency precautions, hiding away its leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamanei, in case he too gets assassinated.

Iran has yet to retaliate for the humiliating assassination in July of the Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh in a Tehran guesthouse. What has happened now will be causing hardliners in the regime to contemplate some kind of response.

Iran has a whole galaxy of allied heavily-armed militias around the Middle East, the so-called “Axis of Resistance“.

As well as Hezbollah, it has the Houthis in Yemen, and numerous groups in Syria and Iraq. Iran could well ask these groups to step up their attacks on both Israel and US bases in the region.

But whatever response Iran chooses, it will likely calibrate it to be just short of triggering a war that it cannot hope to win.

If anyone was in any doubt before this assassination, they won’t be now.

Israel clearly has no intention of pausing its military campaign for the 21-day ceasefire proposed by 12 nations, including its closest ally, the United States.

Its military reckon they have Hezbollah on the back foot now, so it will want to press on with its offensive until the threat of those missiles is removed.

Short of a capitulation by Hezbollah – which is unlikely – it is hard to see how Israel can achieve its war aim of removing the threat of Hezbollah attacks without sending in troops on the ground.

The Israel Defense Forces have released footage of its infantry training close to the border for this very purpose.

But Hezbollah has also spent the last 18 years, since the end of the last war, training to fight the next one. In his final public speech before his death, Nasrallah told his followers that an Israeli incursion into south Lebanon would be, in his words, “a historic opportunity”.

For the IDF, going into Lebanon would be relatively easy. But getting out could – like Gaza – take months.

Lebanon is a country that knows war all too well. And it is not eager for more.

It still bears the scars of 15 years of civil war between 1975 and 1990, and of the last war between Hezbollah and Israel in 2006.

But for some, including Beirut’s Governor Marwan Abboud, Israel’s recent escalation already feels worse.

In the past 10 days, the country has endured mass casualties from exploding pagers and walkie-talkies, a wave of assassinations of Hezbollah military commanders, devastating air strikes – and the use of bunker-busting bombs in Beirut, which killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah on Friday.

“It’s the worst moment that the country passed through,” said Abboud, who has no connection with Hezbollah.

“I feel sad. I am shocked by the large number of civilian casualties. I am also shocked by the silence of the international community – as if what’s happening here does not mean anything.”

• US and allies call for 21-day ceasefire in Lebanon
• What might Hezbollah, Israel and Iran do next?
• Follow live: Nasrallah’s killing is ‘historic turning point’, Netanyahu says

We spoke at the edge of Beirut’s Martyrs Square, where many families slept in the open last night after fleeing Israel’s strikes in the southern suburb of Dahieh – Hezbollah’s heartland.

They remain in the square today – unsure where to turn for safety, like many in Lebanon.

Asked what he thought Israel’s plan was, the governor replied: “I don’t know but Israel wants to kill and to kill and to kill. May god protect this country.”

His parting words were bleak. “It’s the saddest day of my life,” he said, his voice heavy with emotion.

A few steps away we met an extended family, sitting on bare concrete, under the harsh morning sun.

Madina Mustafa Ali was rocking her seven-month-old baby Amir in her lap and reliving the trauma of Friday night.

“There was an explosion, and we got scared, especially for the children. So we ran away and came here. This is where we slept,” she said.

She told me the family will stay in the square for now because they have nowhere else to go.

Others are fleeing, some heading to the north of Lebanon. The south of the country is not an option – it’s being hit hard.

Driving through the city we saw families on the move, some crammed into cars with thin mattresses strapped to the roof, others piled onto motorbikes.

Here and there, we saw people on foot carrying a few belongings.

This is the new landscape of Beirut: boarded-up shops, fewer people, and more fear – especially since Nasrallah’s killing was confirmed.

Throughout the day, plumes of dark smoke billowed from Dahieh. The Hezbollah stronghold looked much weakened today – the two busiest streets were largely deserted, and many apartment blocks looked empty.

We spotted Hezbollah members, guarding an air strike location, one brandishing a Kalashnikov. A sign of tension, or desperation – as normally the armed group doesn’t show its weapons on the streets.

Hezbollah was not watching our every move today – they were more focused perhaps on the threat from above.

We, too, were keeping an eye on the skies, where there were drones.

At the location of one Israeli strike, we saw smoke still rising from the ruins of what appeared to be a factory. We were told it made kitchen roll, and there was plenty of that shredded on the ground.

Lebanon has been rendered a war zone, but there are risks growing for the entire Middle East. And plenty of questions.

Will Hezbollah hit back hard at Israel? Can it?

Will its Iranian backers intervene? Until now they have been in no rush.

And will Tehran’s other regional proxies – in Iraq, Syria and Yemen – get more involved?

Iran’s supreme leader has said the death of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah “will not go unavenged”, a day after he was killed in an Israeli air strike in Lebanon.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei announced five days of mourning in Iran in response to what he called the “martyrdom of the great Nasrallah”, describing him as “a path and a school of thought” that would continue.

Iranian media reported that a Iranian Revolutionary Guards general was also killed in the Israeli strikes in Beirut on Friday.

Israel’s military said Nasrallah had “the blood of thousands… on his hands”, and that it targeted him while he was “commanding more imminent attacks”.

There are fears that the strike could plunge the wider region into war, after nearly a year of cross-border fighting between Israel and Hezbollah sparked by the 7 October attacks and war in the Gaza Strip.

Key to what happens next in the Middle East is what Ayatollah Khamenei decides.

So far, he and other senior Iranian figures have refrained from vowing to retaliate for the series of severe and humiliating blows that Israel has dealt Hezbollah in recent weeks, seemingly because Iran does not want a war with its arch-enemy.

Iran also has not carried out its threat to avenge the assassination of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran in July, which Iran and Hamas blamed on Israel.

Both Hezbollah and Hamas are designated as terrorist organisations by Israel, the US, UK and other countries.

Earlier on Saturday, Ayatollah Khamenei urged Muslims to stand by Hezbollah “with their resources and help” but did not promise to retaliate for the strike that killed Nasrallah.

“The fate of this region will be determined by the forces of resistance, with Hezbollah at the forefront,” he said.

Reuters news agency meanwhile cited two regional officials as saying that the supreme leader had been transferred to a secure location inside Iran with heightened security measures. They also said Iran was in constant contact with Hezbollah and other allies to determine their next steps, according to the report.

Friday’s Israeli strike levelled several buildings in Beirut’s southern suburb of Dahieh, underneath which the Israeli military said Hezbollah’s central headquarters was located.

Hezbollah confirmed Nasrallah’s death on Saturday. But it did not comment on the Israeli military’s claim that Ali Karaki, the head of the group’s Southern Front, and other commanders were killed alongside Nasrallah.

Gen Abbas Nilforoushan, deputy commander of operations for Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guard Corps (IRGC), was also “martyred” in Dahiyeh on Friday, according to the IRGC-linked Saberin News outlet.

It provided nor further details, although the moderate Didban news website said he was “assassinated along with” Nasrallah.

However, there has been no official confirmation from Iranian authorities.

Iran uses the IRGC to provide Hezbollah with most of its funding, training and weapons, which have allowed the Shia Islamist group to build a military wing stronger than the Lebanese army.

The US says the IRGC also oversees the co-ordination of Iran’s network of allied armed groups across the Middle East, which are all opposed to the US and Israel and sometimes refer to themselves as the “Axis of Resistance”. Besides Hezbollah, they include Hamas, the Houthis in Yemen and Shia militias in Iraq and Syria.

On Saturday, there were air raid sirens in the Israeli city of Tel Aviv after the Houthis launched a missile in support of Hezbollah. The Israeli military said the missile was intercepted.

The Islamic Resistance in Iraq, an umbrella group of Iraqi militias, also claimed new drone attacks on northern Israel and the occupied Golan Heights.

Sanam Vakil, director of the Middle East programme at the UK-based think tank Chatham House, said Iran’s reputation among its allies was “certainly damaged” and that it would be “looking for some way to turn the tables and save some face”.

“This could result in a co-ordinated axis response, including from Iraq and the Houthis, or another direct Iranian strike on Israel itself,” she said.

“By maintaining pressure or even escalating, Tehran is aware that this will invite further attacks, but it will choose to do so keep pressure on Israel.”

It is time to stop talking about the Middle East being on the brink of a much more serious war. After the devastating Israeli attack on Lebanon – which killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah – it feels as if they’re tumbling over it.

It was a huge series of blasts, according to people who were in Beirut. A friend of mine in the city said it was the most powerful she had heard in any of Lebanon’s wars.

As rescue workers searched among the rubble, Hezbollah remained silent on the fate of their leader – before confirming his death on Saturday afternoon.

• FOLLOW LIVE: Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah killed

It will reinforce Israel’s belief that this is their greatest triumph yet against their great enemy.

They have mobilised more soldiers, and seem to want to pick up the pace. They may even be thinking about a ground incursion into Lebanon.

It is a massively escalatory action. Over the last eleven months there has been an ongoing tit-for-tat between both sides, though with more pressure from the Israelis.

But now they have decided they are going to push.

They will be delighted with what they have done because – unlike the war against Hamas, which they did not expect – they have been planning this war since 2006. They are now putting those plans into effect.

There are now huge challenges for Hezbollah.

Their rockets landed again in Israeli territory on Saturday morning, targeting areas further south, so they are pushing back, but this is an uncertain period.

That uncertainty is part of the danger. The predictability of the war of attrition that went on for months and months meant people knew where they were – they absolutely do not now.

Earlier on Friday there had been hopes, admittedly faint ones, that Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was at least prepared to discuss a proposal for a 21-day ceasefire. It came from the US and France and was backed by Israel’s most significant Western allies.

But in a typically defiant and at times aggressive speech to the UN General Assembly in New York, Netanyahu did not talk about diplomacy.

Israel, he said, had no choice but to fight savage enemies who sought its annihilation. Hezbollah would be defeated – and there would be total victory over Hamas in Gaza, which would ensure the return of Israeli hostages.

Far from being lambs led to the slaughter – a phrase sometimes used in Israel to refer to the Nazi Holocaust – Israel, he said, was winning.

• 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

The huge attack in Beirut that occurred as he finished his speech was an even more emphatic sign that a truce in Lebanon was not on Israel’s agenda.

It seemed more than feasible that the attack was timed to follow up Mr Netanyahu’s threats that Israel could, and would, hit its enemies, wherever they were.

The Pentagon, the US defence department, said it had no advance warning from Israel about the raid.

A photo released by the prime minister’s office in Jerusalem showed him at a bank of communications equipment in what looked like his hotel in New York City. The image’s caption said it showed the moment that he authorised the raid.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken defended the policy he has worked on for months. He said there was still room for negotiation. That assertion is looking hollow.

The Americans have very few levers to use against any side. They cannot, by law, talk to Hezbollah and Hamas as they are classified as foreign terrorist organisations. With the US elections only weeks away, they are even less likely to put pressure on Israel than they have been in the last year.

Powerful voices in the Israeli government and military wanted to attack Hezbollah in the days after the Hamas attacks last October. They argued that they could deal their enemies in Lebanon a decisive blow. The Americans persuaded them not to do it, arguing that the trouble it might set off across the region offset any potential security benefit for Israel.

But in the course of the last year Netanyahu has made a habit of defying President Joe Biden’s wishes about the way Israel is fighting. Despite providing Israel with the aircraft and bombs used in the raid on Beirut, President Biden and team were spectators.

His policy for the last year, as a lifelong supporter of Israel, was to try to influence Netanyahu by showing solidarity and support, delivering weapons and diplomatic protection.

Biden believed that he could persuade Netanyahu not just to change the way Israel fights – the president has said repeatedly that it is imposing too much suffering and killing too many Palestinian civilians – but to accept an American plan for the day after that rested on creating an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel.

Netanyahu rejected the idea out of hand and has ignored Joe Biden’s advice.

After the attack on Beirut, Blinken repeated his view that a combination of deterrence and diplomacy had staved off a wider war in the Middle East. But as events spiral out of US control, he is not sounding convincing.

Big decisions lie ahead.

First of all, Hezbollah is going to have to decide how to use its remaining arsenal. Do they try to mount a much heavier attack on Israel? If they don’t use their remaining rockets and missiles in storage, they might decide Israel will get around to destroying even more of them.

The Israelis also face highly consequential decisions. They have already talked about a ground operation against Lebanon, and while they haven’t yet mobilised all the reserves they might need, their military said on Saturday that they were “ready for a wider escalation”.

Some in Lebanon believe that in a ground war Hezbollah could negate some of Israel’s military strengths.

Western diplomats, among them Israel’s staunchest allies, were hoping to calm matters, urging Israel to accept a diplomatic solution. They will now be looking at events with dismay and also a sense of powerlessness.

At least 66 people have died and 69 others are missing, officials say, after intense rainfall in Nepal caused flooding and landslides.

The death toll in the South Asian nation is likely to rise as the rains – which have predominantly affected the valley surrounding the capital, Kathmandu – are expected to persist through to Tuesday.

Thousands of homes situated near rivers have been flooded and most highways have been blocked, while video footage has emerged of people stranded on rooftops.

The volume of rainfall within a short timespan – over 200mm (7.9in) since Friday evening – has inundated almost all rivers in the Kathmandu valley, where many of the deaths have occurred.

Landslides have also caused a number of the fatalities.

Five people, including a pregnant woman and a four-year-old girl, died when a house collapsed due to a landslide in Bhaktapur, to the east of Kathmandu, state media reports.

Two bodies have been removed from a bus buried by a landslide in Dhading, west of Kathmandu. Twelve people, including the driver, were said to be onboard.

Six football players were also killed by a landslide at a training centre operated by the All Nepal Football Association in Makwanpur, to the south-west of the capital.

Others have been swept up in floodwaters.

In one dramatic scene, four people desperate to be rescued were washed away by the Nakkhu River in the southern Kathmandu valley.

“For hours, they kept on pleading for help,” Jitendra Bhandari, an eyewitness, told the BBC. “We could do nothing.”

Three of those people were rescued downstream, but one is still missing.

Hari Om Malla lost his truck after it was submerged by water in Kathmandu.

He told the BBC that water had “gushed” into the cabin as the rain intensified on Friday night.

“We jumped out, swam, and got away from it – but my purse, bag and mobile have been swept away by the river. I have nothing now. We stayed the whole night in the cold.”

So far, more than 2,000 people have been rescued from floodwaters, while at least 200 houses have been damaged, according to the state-run Radio Nepal.

The Nepalese home affairs ministry said that as of Saturday, 60 people had been injured.

Private houses, offices, shopping centres, hospitals and police posts were seen inundated in videos posted in social media.

Government spokesperson Prithvi Subba Gurung told the state-run Nepal Television Corporation that the flooding had also broken waterpipes, and affected telephone and power lines.

According to state media, 10,000 police officers, as well as volunteers and members of the army, have been mobilised as part of search and rescue efforts.

The Nepalese government urged people to avoid unnecessary travel, and banned road travel at night in the Kathmandu valley to minimise road accidents.

Most highways – including the ones connecting Kathmandu valley with the rest of the country – have been blocked in several places.

Air travel was also affected on Friday and Saturday, with many domestic flights delayed or cancelled.

Monsoon season brings tragic floods and landslides every year in Nepal.

Scientists say, though, that rainfall events are becoming more intense due to climate change.

A warmer atmosphere can hold more moisture, while warmer ocean waters can energise storm systems, making them more erratic.

At least 63 people have died and millions have been left without power as Hurricane Helene roared through the south-eastern US.

In North Carolina, more than 400 roads remain closed with the mountain town of Asheville largely cut off. Supplies are being airlifted to residents, state governor Roy Cooper said.

Officials continued daring rescues with boats, helicopters and large vehicles to help those stranded in floodwaters – including about 50 workers and patients who crowded on the roof of a flooded Tennessee hospital.

It was the most powerful storm on record to hit Florida’s Big Bend and moved north into Georgia and the Carolinas after making landfall overnight on Thursday.

Insurers and financial institutions say damage caused by the storm could run into the billions of dollars.

Roads and houses were submerged on Friday, with one family describing to BBC News how they had to swim out of their home to safety.

Although Helene has weakened significantly, forecasters warn that high winds, flooding and the threat of tornadoes could continue.

Helene, which had been a category four storm, came ashore on Thursday night and remained a hurricane for six hours after it made landfall, according to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).

The National Hurricane Center (NHC) said a storm surge – heightened water levels mostly caused by high winds blowing water towards shore – reached more than 15ft (4.5m) above ground level across parts of the Florida coast.

The NHC said the surge should subside before the weekend but the threat from high winds and flooding would persist, including possible landslides.

Up to 20in (50cm) of rain is still possible in places.

The hurricane is the 14th most powerful to hit the US since records began. At approximately 420 miles (675 km) wide, it is behind only two other hurricanes – Ida in 2017 and Opal in 1996, both of which were 460 miles wide.

Because of its sheer size, the impact of strong winds and heavy rain have been widespread across Florida, Georgia, Tennessee and the Carolinas.

At least eight people have died in Florida since Friday, including at least five people in the coastal Pinellas County – which includes the city of St Petersburg – the county’s sheriff, Bob Gualtieri said.

He added that the nearby coastline had “never, ever looked like this before”, describing it as like a “war zone”.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis said one person died after a road sign fell on their car and another when a tree fell on a home.

• Hurricane Helene brings life-threatening conditions as it moves from Florida to Georgia

After hitting Florida, the storm continued on a deadly path north into Georgia – leaving at least 15 dead – including a first responder, Governor Brian Kemp said.

A suspected tornado that spawned in Wheeler County, central Georgia, left two people dead when it picked up and overturned a mobile home, authorities said.

Kemp ordered 1,000 National Guard troops to help with rescue efforts across the state. The Georgia governor said on Friday that people were still trapped in buildings.

In South Carolina, at least 17 people were killed, according to CBS News, the BBC’s US partner.

Neighbouring North Carolina saw at least seven fatalities in the storm, CBS News added.

Governor Roy Cooper said one had been killed in a vehicle collision and another when a tree fell on a home in Charlotte.

The state also saw two confirmed tornadoes, which damaged 11 buildings and injured 15 people, the National Weather Service said.

One person was also killed in Virginia, the state’s governor, Glenn Youngkin, said at a news conference on Friday.

Across the south-east, more than three million homes and businesses were without power as of Saturday morning, according to tracking site poweroutage.us.

Ahead of the storm, 1,500 federal emergency personnel were deployed to the region, including 940 search and rescue specialists.

At the same time, around 8,000 members of the US Coast Guard were assisting with rescue operations.

In North Carolina alone, more than 100 rescues have taken place, Cooper said.

In Tennessee, 58 patients and staff were left stranded on the roof of a hospital in the city of Erwin on Friday. Swift-moving water from the Nolichucky river prevented boats from being able to conduct rescue operations, and high winds prevented helicopter rescue.

The group was later taken to safety after helicopters from the Tennessee National Guard and the Virginia State Police intervened.

In Pasco County, north of Tampa on Florida’s Gulf coast, 65 people were rescued. Guests at a Ramada Inn in Manatee County were also rescued as floodwaters rushed into the hotel.

In Suwannee County to the north, authorities reported “extreme destruction”, with trees falling onto homes.

Along the Gulf Coast of Florida, Briana Gagnier told the BBC that she and her family saw water creeping into their home on Holmes Beach and started moving their belongings onto tables and beds before hearing a loud bang.

“My family and I all looked at one another,” she said. “Then water just started pouring in.”

Ms Gagnier said she grabbed her pets, her wallet and some portable chargers and swam out of their home with her family. The water was up to their shoulders.

On Friday, President Joe Biden said: “As we mourn the lives of those who were taken by this storm, I urge folks to heed the direction of local officials and take every precaution to keep themselves and their families safe.”

Officials have said the effects of the storm are “not over yet”, and urged residents to remain vigilant.

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

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

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

There could be as many as 25 named storms in 2024, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) warned earlier this year.

Between eight and 13 of those storms could develop into hurricanes and a handful already have including Helene.

More storms could be on the horizon, officials warned, as the official end of hurricane season is not until 30 November.

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SpaceX has launched its mission to bring back two astronauts stranded on the International Space Station (ISS) since June.

The Dragon capsule, which has two empty seats for Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, lifted off from Cape Canaveral, Florida on Saturday.

The pair’s mission at the space station had only been expected to last about eight days but after a fault was found on the new Boeing Starliner it returned to Earth empty as a precaution.

Nasa astronaut Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Alexander Gorbunov are flying with fresh supplies for Butch and Suni and expect to bring them home in February.

The Dragon launch had been scheduled for Thursday but was delayed because of Hurricane Helene, which has left a trail of destruction through Florida, north through Georgia and into Tennessee and the Carolinas.

SpaceX, founded by billionaire Elon Musk, has been ferrying crews to and from the ISS every six months.

The Dragon is expected to dock with the ISS on Sunday at around 21:30 GMT.

Under a contract between Nasa and Roscosmos, the Russian federal space agency, three-seat Russian Soyuz spacecraft carry one Nasa astronaut on each flight to the ISS and a cosmonaut flies on each four-seat Dragon.

In this closely fought US election, vice-presidential candidates JD Vance and Tim Walz were picked to sway Midwestern and rural voters who might be hesitating over Donald Trump or Kamala Harris. In Nebraska, owing to an electoral quirk, such voters could prove pivotal.

As an expert breeder, Wade Bennett can tell you the precise parentage of every one of the 140 head of Charolais cattle he keeps on a small holding on the edge of Nebraska’s rolling Sandhills.

Despite being a staunch Republican, he’s less certain, however, of the pedigree of the man once again vying for his vote.

Donald Trump, he says, would probably be “kicked out” of his voting shortlist if there were other conservative options available.

One of the least-populated states, Nebraska is, like much of rural America, not only deeply Republican but deeply Christian, too. And some here, like Wade, are uncomfortable with what they see as Donald Trump’s personal, moral failings.

But with Kamala Harris and a smattering of small-party candidates the only other options this November, Wade is putting his scruples to one side.

“Even as a Christian,” he tells me. “It is what it is.”

He’s focusing not on Trump’s character, but on his policies – and he likes the promises he hears to crack down on illegal immigration, cut the cost of living and put more tariffs on trade.

Even his slight hesitation, however, is enough to give Democrats hope.

The rightward drift of the American countryside over the past 25 years has been remarkable.

In 2000, Republicans had a six-point advantage over Democrats among registered rural voters, according to the Pew Research Center.

But by 2024, they had established a mammoth 25-point lead.

Even though only a fifth of Americans live outside the big towns and cities, the strength of their shift towards Donald Trump was key to his victory against Hillary Clinton in 2016.

But for Democrats, the rural vote is still worth fighting for, particularly where even small gains in already tight states just might make the difference.

So it’s no coincidence that both Kamala Harris and Donald Trump now have running mates whose white rural roots are being used to make the argument for who is best placed to speak on behalf of this country’s great Midwest.

Vice-presidential candidates don’t usually have much impact on how people vote, but when Tim Walz and JD Vance meet in a primetime televised debate on Tuesday night, they will be hoping their different backstories and visions resonate with voters still unsure about Harris, a California Democrat, and Trump, a New York real estate developer.

Walz, the current governor of Minnesota, was born in small-town Nebraska, and has made much of his background “working cattle, building fence”.

His time as a schoolteacher and football coach before politics, and his subsequent record in Minnesota, providing tax credits to families and free school meals, are precisely the kinds of things the Democrats hope will resonate with struggling rural voters.

Ohio Senator Vance, on the other hand, is a man who’s also made much of his rural roots, but with a far less optimistic framing.

Vance rose to national prominence with his best-selling book, Hillbilly Elegy, the story of his family’s origins in eastern Kentucky, their struggle with poverty, his mother’s fight with addiction and the joblessness and blight of Middletown, Ohio, where he grew up.

Where Tim Walz has emphasised individual freedom and what binds Americans, Vance has focused on a “ruling class” that he says has failed working families in small communities all over the country.

In writings and in interviews, he has stressed the need for individual responsibility, rather than welfare – although he does not support cutting programmes like Social Security. And he echoes Trump’s vision of protecting American jobs and workers with tariffs and border walls.

I meet 42-year-old Shana Callahan casting for catfish under a setting sun in the Two Rivers Recreation Area, just outside the city of Omaha. The cost of living, once again, is never far from mind.

“Everything costs more, everything sucks,” she says.

“I drive an F-150 and when Trump was in office, I was paying about 55 bucks for a tank of gas. Right now, it’s anywhere between 85 to 109, and, you know, the cost of groceries and everything has just gone through the roof.”

There were structural reasons for the depressed oil market during some of Trump’s presidential term, not least the Covid crisis, and prices had begun to climb steeply before he left office. Some economists also say President Joe Biden’s 2021 stimulus spending contributed to broader inflation.

But economics is a feeling in US elections, not a graph on a page, and Shana has made up her mind.

There’s nothing, she tells me, that would convince her to vote for Kamala Harris, especially not Tim Walz’s local backstory and his claims to represent people like her.

“For one thing, the man’s a goofball,” she says. “I can’t respect him. He comes out on the freaking stage like, ‘Oh, go, coach’.”

The story of JD Vance being raised by a grandmother because of the opioid crisis – which she knows from the film version of his book – resonates deeply, however.

“The beginning of the movie is like, you know, family is always going to back you up. I mean, that’s kind of the way it is out here.”

“I’m only 42 and I’ve had like, three friends die of fentanyl.”

Shana lives in the one small part of this vast, rural state that may find itself with an outsized impact on November’s election result.

Under the US system, each state is allocated a specific number of votes in what’s known as the electoral college. Presidential candidates need to reach 270 votes to win the White House.

Unlike most of the rest of America, where all the electoral college votes in each state go to the winner of the popular vote, Nebraska does things differently.

Three of its five votes are decided by whoever wins three individual districts.

Nebraska is a reliably Republican state but its second district – worth one vote – went to Trump in 2016, to Biden in 2020, and this time round there’s a scenario in which whoever wins it could win the whole election.

If Harris wins the Rust Belt swing states of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin and Trump takes the Sun Belt states of Georgia, North Carolina, Arizona and Nevada then the second district would provide the single tie-breaking vote.

District two is a microcosm of America, with the heavily Democrat-leaning city of Omaha balanced by the Republican-leaning outskirts and the countryside beyond.

In their backyard in the centre of Omaha, Jason Brown and Ruth Huebner-Brown are spraying giant blue dots on plain white lawn signs.

“We’re like a little swing state within a state,” Jason tells me. “It could absolutely, I guess you would say, be a history-changing moment. This could really be the ultimate one vote that matters.”

In an effort to keep the “blue dot” blue, the Harris-Walz campaign has been massively outspending Trump-Vance here, pouring millions into TV advertising.

Ruth tells me she believes it’s having an effect on the doorsteps.

“When they talk about Walz he’s very relatable. He’s, you know, one of us. And, you know, they just trust him.”

“And I think a lot of people are very tired of the divisiveness and the bitterness and he’s, he’s anything but that.”

There’s plenty of divisiveness in Nebraska.

Even here, deep in the American countryside, you can hear the unsubstantiated assertions that large numbers of immigrants are unlawfully claiming Social Security or engaging in ballot fraud.

One Republican voter admits his belief in such claims is based not on fact, but on what he’s heard, with echoes of JD Vance’s similar justification for his promotion of the debunked allegation that Haitian migrants are eating pets in Ohio.

A soybean farmer tells me that Kamala Harris is a “DEI hire”; another says it is white people who are being discriminated against in today’s America.

Yet, on the Democratic side, there are signs of groupthink too – the bafflement over the choices of their opponents and a readiness to see all Republican voters as motivated by the narrow politics of prejudice.

But there’s something else unique about Nebraska’s electoral system. Its state legislature is nonpartisan, meaning it does not recognise the party affiliations of its elected members nor organise them around formal party voting blocs.

In the city of Hastings, Michelle Smith is out canvassing for a seat in that local legislature.

She’s a Democrat fighting for votes in a very red district, but, she says, the system encourages compromise.

“My own father is one of those people who’s going to vote for Donald Trump, and I understand it,” she tells me.

“I’m a business owner. I paid less taxes when Donald Trump was president. Our prices were lower at the grocery store.”

How does she campaign?

“I bring it down to the local issues. I’m not a national candidate. I’m a local candidate, and I’m running to make things better here in Nebraska.”

For now, Nebraska is very much in the national spotlight.

There’s been a last-minute attempt by the Republican Party not to leave anything to chance, with several lawmakers pushing for a move to make the state a winner-takes-all system.

Barring the completely unexpected, that would mean all the state’s electoral college votes go to Donald Trump.

It foundered, though, on the opposition of a few local Republican senators, who refused to bow to the pressure this close to an election, placing what they saw as the interests of the state – given the rare bit of political leverage the system provides – over that of national partisan politics.

Even Lindsey Graham, the powerful Republican senator, flew in to meet with the holdouts, but to no avail.

“It was interesting,” he’s reported to have said back in Washington. “They have a different system. Everybody’s like a mini-governor.”

Whether or not Nebraska plays an outsized role in November’s deeply divided contest, it may offer something of an alternative to it.

• SIMPLE GUIDE: Everything you need to know about the vote
• EXPLAINER: Seven swing states that could decide election
• FACT CHECK: What latest FBI data shows about violent crime
• POLICIES: What Harris or Trump would do in power
• POLLS: Who is winning the race for the White House?

North America correspondent Anthony Zurcher makes sense of the race for the White House in his weekly US Election Unspun newsletter. Readers in the UK can sign up here. Those outside the UK can sign up here.

Michael Fortin was at the heart of Hollywood’s golden age of streaming.

The actor and aerial cinematographer turned his hobby of flying drones into a profitable business in 2012 just as the streaming wars were taking off. For a decade, he was flying high above film sets, creating sleek aerial shots for movies and TV shows on Netflix, Amazon and Disney.

Now he’s on the verge of becoming homeless – again. He was evicted from the Huntington Beach home he shared with his wife and two young children and now is being booted from the Las Vegas apartment they moved to because they could no longer afford to live in Southern California.

“We were saving to buy a house, we had money, we had done things the right way,” he says. “Two years ago, I didn’t worry about going out to dinner with my wife and kids and spending 200 bucks.”

“Now I worry about going out and spending $5 on a value meal at McDonald’s.”

For over a decade, business was booming in Hollywood, with studios battling to catch up to new companies like Netflix and Hulu. But the good times ground to a halt in May 2023, when Hollywood’s writers went on strike.

The strikes lasted multiple months and marked the first time since the 1960s that both writers and actors joined forces – effectively shutting down Hollywood production. But rather than roaring back, in the one year since the strikes ended, production has fizzled.

Projects have been cancelled and production was cut across the city as jobs have dried up, with layoffs at many studios – most recently at Paramount. It had a second round of layoffs this week, as the storied movie company moves to cut 15% of its workforce ahead of a merger with the production company Skydance.

Unemployment in film and TV in the United States was at 12.5% in August, but many think those numbers are actually much higher, because many film workers either do not file for unemployment benefits because they’re not eligible or they’ve exhausted those benefits after months of not working.

As a whole, the number of US productions during the second quarter of 2024 was down about 40% compared to the same period in 2022. Globally, there was a 20% decline over that period, according to ProdPro, which tracks TV and film productions.

That means less new movies and binge-worthy shows for us.

But experts say the streaming boom wasn’t sustainable. And studios are trying to figure out how to be profitable in a new world when people don’t pay for cable TV funded by commercials.

“The air has come out of the content bubble,” says Matthew Belloni, the founder of Puck News, which covers the entertainment industry. “Crisis is a good word. I try not to be alarmist, but crisis is what people are feeling.”

Part of the boom was fuelled by Wall Street, where tech giants like Netflix saw record growth and studios, like Paramount, saw their share prices soar for adding their own streaming service offers.

“It caused an overheating of the content market. There were 600 scripted live action series airing just a few years ago and then the stock market stopped rewarding that,” Mr Belloni says. “Netflix crashed – all the other companies crashed. Netflix has since recovered – but the others are really struggling to get to profitability.”

And along with the streaming bubble bursting, some productions are also being lured away from California by attractive tax incentives in other states and countries. Los Angeles leaders are so concerned about the slowdown that Mayor Karen Bass created a task force last month to consider new incentives for film production in Hollywood.

“The entertainment industry is critical to the economic vitality of the Los Angeles region,” Bass said announcing the plan, explaining it is a “cornerstone” of the city’s economy and supplies hundreds of thousands of jobs.

Recent data shows the entertainment industry contributes over $115bn (£86bn) annually to the region’s economy, with an employment base of over 681,000 people, the mayor said.

The writers’ and actors’ strikes lasted for months and resulted in union contracts that offer more money and protections against artificial intelligence.

Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, the chief negotiator with the Screen Actors Guild union, told the BBC that some consolidation in Hollywood was inevitable. He says he is optimistic that production will be ramping up soon.

“What makes these companies special, what gives them their unique ability to create value is their relationship with creative talent,” he said while visiting a picket line outside a Disney office in September, where video game voice actors are currently on strike fighting for similar protections.

Hollywood “always thinks it’s in crisis,” he says. “It is a town that constantly faces technological innovation – all kinds of change – which is part of the magic. Part of keeping content fresh is everyone having the idea that things don’t always have to be the way they’ve been.”

Mr Fortin’s drone company was operating nearly every day before the strikes. Now he’s flown the drones just 22 days in the year since the strikes ended. And as an actor – he often plays tough guys – he has worked just 10 days. He used to work as a background actor to get by, but the pay barely covers the gas money to get to Los Angeles from Las Vegas.

“It was a great wave, and it crashed,” Mr Fortin said after a day flying his drones on the AppleTV+ show Platonic – his first gig with drones since April.

“Things are coming in little by little,” he says in his van before driving back to Las Vegas for a court hearing to fight his eviction order.

“Hollywood gave me everything,” he says. “But it feels like the industry has turned its back on lots of people, not just me.”

If you were in India and had 900,000 rupees ($10,800; £8,000), what would you buy? A car? A trip around the world? Diamond jewellery? Or a Coldplay concert ticket?

The British rock band is set to perform three shows of their Music of the Spheres world tour in Mumbai next year and the tickets are being sold for obscene amounts on reselling platforms, after being sold out in minutes on BookMyShow (BMS) – the concert’s official ticketing platform.

The tickets went on sale last Sunday and were priced from 2,500 rupees to 12,000 rupees. More than 10 million people competed to buy some 180,000 tickets.

Fans complained about hours-long digital queues and site crashes, but many also alleged that the sales were rigged as resellers had begun selling tickets for five times the price – touching even 900,000 rupees – before they were released on the official site.

Earlier this month, something similar happened with tickets for Oasis’ concert in the UK, where resellers charged more than £350 for tickets that cost £135. But even then, the inflated prices of Coldplay tickets stand out. To put this in perspective, Madonna charged £1,306.75 for VIP passes to her Celebration tour and the best tickets for Beyoncé’s Renaissance concerts sold for £2,400.

The events have sparked a conversation around ticket scalping in India, where people use bots or automation tools to bypass queues and purchase multiple tickets to sell on reselling platforms. Fans are questioning whether the official site had taken adequate steps to prevent this, or whether it chose to look the other way.

BMS has denied any association with resellers and urged fans to avoid tickets from “unauthorised sources” as they could be fake, but this hasn’t stopped people from viewing the site suspiciously.

Fans have complained about having a similar experience while buying tickets for Punjabi singer Diljit Dosanjh’s upcoming concerts. Tickets were released on Zomato Live, the concert promoter, earlier this month and after getting sold out, they began popping up on reselling platforms for several times the original price.

Ticket scalping is illegal in India, and experts say that while it’s possible that it’s happening anyway, it’s also likely that legitimate ticket-holders are selling theirs through resellers to make a profit due to the massive demand.

Graphic designer Dwayne Dias was among the few lucky ones who managed to buy tickets for the Coldplay concert from the official site. He bought four tickets for 6,450 rupees each.

Since then, he’s been approached by people who are willing to pay up to 60,000 rupees for a ticket. “If I wanted to, I could sell all the tickets and watch the concert in South Korea [Coldplay’s upcoming touring destination]. The amount will cover my travel expenses and I’ll be able to experience a new city,” he says.

While the inflated prices of Coldplay tickets are shocking, the huge demand for tickets to see popular international artists perform is not uncommon. In fact, the live music business in India has been growing in leaps and bounds over the past couple of years.

According to a report, music concerts generated about 8,000m rupees in revenue last year and by 2025, this figure is set to increase by 25%. Brian Tellis, a veteran in the music business and one of the founders of the Mahindra Blues music festival, says concerts have become a part of an individual’s – and the country’s – cultural currency.

• ⁠Oasis ticket row: How Ticketmaster’s owner has grip on UK live music scene
• Why do concert tickets now cost as much as a games console?

Chart-toppers like Ed Sheeran, Alan Walker and Dua Lipa have performed in India in the recent past, and the latter two are set to perform again this year. “Like for other industries, India is a booming market for the music business as well. There’s a huge demographic that’s young and has money to spend. Everyone wants a piece of the pie,” he says.

The soaring demand is evident in ticket prices and sales. Tellis says about a decade ago, 80% of production costs were footed by sponsors and 20% through ticket sales, but the numbers have reversed today.

“Attending a concert is a mix of bragging rights, being a conformist and being part of the scene,” he says. “There are true music lovers as well in the mix, but many attend because they get swept up by the hype surrounding a performance and they don’t want to feel left out.”

Days before and after Coldplay concert tickets went on sale, social media was full of captivating Instagram reels of the band performing hits like and in packed stadiums, with fans singing along and turning the venue into with their LED bracelets. Influencers waxed eloquent about their love for the band and there was no dearth of Coldplay memes.

Industry sources told the BBC that targeted marketing plays a key role in ticket sales – a task handled by the promoter’s website. The more demand is created, the more ticket prices can be raised. Organising concerts is tough, as they often incur losses, so when the opportunity arises, bankable performers are exploited for profits.

While some fans argue that the government should take steps to control ticket prices, Tellis doesn’t agree. “This [selling tickets] is entrepreneurship – it won’t be right for the government to get involved. Because if you want to control revenue, then you’ll have to also control costs,” he says.

Despite the upward trajectory of India’s live music business, experts say the country still has a long way to go before it can be on a par with the international music scene.

• Oasis hit out at Ticketmaster’s dynamic pricing after backlash

“We have very few concert venues and they are not up to international standards,” Tellis says. “That’s why artists perform fewer shows in India despite the massive demand.”

Dias and his friends recently travelled to Singapore to attend a Coldplay concert. He says the ticket-booking experience was smooth, the venue was top-class and the crowd was well-managed.

He’s not sure he’ll have the same experience at DY Patil stadium – the venue for the band’s concerts in India. “For one, it’s much smaller and crowds in India can be quite indisciplined,” he says. He’s also worried about how safe the venue will be and whether the crowd will be managed properly at entry and exit points.

But for now, he’s holding on to his tickets and is prepared to endure whatever lies ahead, just to get a chance to watch Chris Martin and company perform again.

Nestled in the mountains of Indian-administered Kashmir, Shopian – once a hotbed of militancy – sees a steady stream of voters entering a polling booth.

The former state of Jammu and Kashmir – now divided into two federally administered territories – is holding its first assembly election in a decade. The third and last phase of voting is on Tuesday and results will be declared on 8 October.

Since the 1990s, an armed separatist insurgency against Indian rule in the region has claimed thousands of lives, including those of civilians and security forces.

Earlier, elections were marred by violence and boycotts as separatists saw polls as a means for Delhi to try and legitimise its control. The high voter turnout now signals a change – people here say they have waited long to be heard.

“The level of poverty in our area is severe,” says 52-year-old Mohammad Yusuf Ganai after casting his vote. He laments that the lack of jobs has forced educated young Kashmiris to “sit at home”.

The last elections a decade ago resulted in a coalition government that collapsed in 2018. Before new polls could be held, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government revoked the region’s autonomy and statehood, sparking widespread discontent among Kashmiris.

For five years, Jammu and Kashmir has been under federal control with no local representation, and this election offers people a long-awaited chance to voice their concerns.

“We will finally be able to go to the elected official with our problems,” says 65-year-old Mohammad Abdul Dar.

Nearly 150km (93 miles) away in Uri, the last town near the Line of Control – the de facto border with Pakistan-administered Kashmir – newly elected MP from the Awami Ittehad Party (AIP) Engineer Rashid addresses a frenzied crowd. In jail since 2019 on terror funding charges that he denies, Rashid was granted interim bail to campaign for the election.

People flock to his motorcade, one seeking a selfie, another offering a jacket, as Rashid’s personal struggles appear to resonate deeply with voters.

• Why Engineer Rashid’s return from jail has ruffled feathers

“I want development and a resolution to the Jammu and Kashmir issue,” Rashid says. Being part of the system now as a lawmaker, he adds, will help him raise these issues in Delhi.

Civil engineer Tanvir Chalkoo, 29, listens intently to Rashid.

Calling the scrapping of autonomy the “worst kind of injustice”, Tanvir asks why as an Indian he should be treated any differently.

“People have been deprived of their rights for the last 10 years,” he says.

The BJP government insists that scrapping the region’s special status and placing it under direct rule has brought peace and development, with Prime Minister Modi announcing $700m (£523m) in projects during a visit in March. It’s now up to BJP candidate Engineer Aijaz Hussain in Srinagar’s Lal Chowk to convince voters of this message.

“Previously, no one would go door to door [to campaign]. Today, they are. This is our achievement, isn’t it?” says Aijaz.

He points to the increased voter turnout as proof of faith in the election process, with the recent parliamentary elections seeing record participation. Yet, despite these claims, the BJP did not contest those elections and is now only fielding candidates in 19 of the 47 assembly seats in the Kashmir valley.

The party’s stronghold remains the Hindu-dominated Jammu region with 43 seats, where it is hoping to score well.

“Our organisation is weak in other constituencies,” admits Aijaz.

The Hindu nationalist BJP has been trying to make inroads in the Muslim-majority Kashmir valley, where it has had little presence.

• ‘Any story could be your last’ – India’s crackdown on Kashmir press

Aijaz’s cavalcade of nearly 50 BJP-flagged cars drove through Srinagar’s narrow lanes, a show of strength unimaginable in Kashmir just a few years ago.

While some come out of their homes to greet Aijaz with sweets, others refrain. The BJP is still seen by many here as the party in Delhi which took away their autonomy.

Maleha Sofi, 24, is disillusioned with the BJP, believing the touted peace has come at the cost of personal liberties, and has decided not to vote. “We are not allowed to say anything,” she says.

Legacy parties like the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) have made this central to their campaign.

“This election is an act of self-preservation for Kashmiris,” says Waheed Para, the party’s candidate from Pulwama. “It’s a step to reclaim what was lost and preserve what we have.”

In 2020, Para was jailed for nearly two years, accused of aiding banned separatist groups. India has long faced accusations of human rights violations in Kashmir – it denies this – but critics say this has intensified in the past few years.

Ahead of the assembly election, Amnesty International accused the government of fostering a “climate of fear” and urged an end to arbitrary detentions under strict anti-terror laws used to silence dissent on Jammu and Kashmir.

But the BJP government in Delhi has always taken a hard line on this. Aijaz says “all those people who are with separatists will be dealt with very seriously”.

While regional political parties promise change and say they are fighting for the rights of Kashmiris, how much influence will they have after these elections?

Lawyer Zafar Shah anticipates friction between the federal administration and the elected government which will soon assume charge.

Before 2019, when Jammu and Kashmir was a state, the chief minister could enact laws with the consent of the governor, who was bound by the state cabinet’s recommendations.

Now, as a federal territory under a Lieutenant Governor (LG), the chief minister must get the LG’s approval, especially on sensitive issues like public order, appointments and prosecutions. Power has shifted, says Mr Shah, as the LG won’t act without clearance from the federal home ministry.

“Whether the LG can create hurdles in the government’s working, that’s a matter to be seen when an actual situation arises,” adds Mr Shah.

Despite the challenges, many in Kashmir hope these elections will give them a chance to finally have their own representatives to voice their concerns.

There is a young woman sheltering under a tree between two busy roads clutching a pile of documents to her chest.

These pieces of paper are more important to Bibi Nazdana than anything in the world: they are the divorce granted to her after a two-year court battle to free herself from life as a child bride.

They are the same papers a Taliban court has invalidated – a victim of the group’s hardline interpretation on Sharia (religious law) which has seen women effectively silenced in Afghanistan’s legal system.

Nazdana’s divorce is one of tens of thousands of court rulings revoked since the Taliban took control of the country three years ago this month.

It took just 10 days from them sweeping into the capital, Kabul, for the man she was promised to at seven to ask the courts to overturn the divorce ruling she had fought so hard for.

Hekmatullah had initially appeared to demand his wife when Nazdana was 15. It was eight years since her father had agreed to what is known as a ‘bad marriage’, which seeks to turn a family “enemy” into a “friend”.

She immediately approached the court – then operating under the US-backed Afghan government – for a separation, repeatedly telling them she could not marry the farmer, now in his 20s. It took two years, but finally a ruling was made in her favour: “The court congratulated me and said, ‘You are now separated and free to marry whomever you want.'”

But after Hekmatullah appealed the ruling in 2021, Nazdana was told she would not be allowed to plead her own case in person.

“At the court, the Taliban told me I shouldn’t return to court because it was against Sharia. They said my brother should represent me instead,” says Nazdana.

“They told us if we didn’t comply,” says Shams, Nazdana’s 28-year-old brother, “they would hand my sister over to him (Hekmatullah) by force.”

Her former husband, and now a newly signed up member of the Taliban, won the case. Shams’ attempts to explain to the court in their home province of Uruzgan that her life would be in danger fell on deaf ears.

The siblings decided they had been left with no choice but to flee.

When the Taliban returned to power three years ago, they promised to do away with the corruption of the past and deliver “justice” under Sharia, a version of Islamic law.

Since then, the Taliban say they have looked at some 355,000 cases.

Most were criminal cases – an estimated 40% are disputes over land and a further 30% are family issues including divorce, like Nazdana’s.

Nazdana’s divorce ruling was dug out after the BBC got exclusive access to the back offices of the Supreme Court in the capital, Kabul.

Abdulwahid Haqani – media officer for Afghanistan’s Supreme Court – confirms the ruling in favour of Hekmatullah, saying it was not valid because he “wasn’t present”.

“The previous corrupt administration’s decision to cancel Hekmatullah and Nazdana’s marriage was against the Sharia and rules of marriage,” he explains.

But the promises to reform the justice system have gone further than simply reopening settled cases.

The Taliban have also systematically removed all judges – both male and female – and replaced them with people who supported their hardline views.

Women were also declared unfit to participate in the judicial system.

“Women aren’t qualified or able to judge because in our Sharia principles the judiciary work requires people with high intelligence,” says Abdulrahim Rashid, director of foreign relations and communications at Taliban’s Supreme Court.

For the women who worked in the system, the loss is felt heavily – and not just for themselves.

Former Supreme Court judge Fawzia Amini – who fled the country after the Taliban returned – says there is little hope for women’s protections to improve under the law if there are no women in the courts.

“We played an important role,” she says. “For example, the Elimination of Violence against Women law in 2009 was one of our achievements. We also worked on the regulation of shelters for women, orphan guardianship and the anti-human trafficking law, to name a few.”

She also rubbishes the Taliban overturning previous rulings, like Nazdana’s.

“If a woman divorces her husband and the court documents are available as evidence then that’s final. Legal verdicts can’t change because a regime changes,” says Ms Amini.

“Our civil code is more than half a century old,” she adds. “It’s been practised since even before the Taliban were founded.

“All civil and penal codes, including those for divorce, have been adapted from the Quran.”

But the Taliban say Afghanistan’s former rulers simply weren’t Islamic enough.

Instead, they largely rely on Hanafi Fiqh (jurisprudence) religious law, which dates back to the 8th Century – albeit updated to “meet the current needs”, according to Abdulrahim Rashid.

“The former courts made decisions based on a penal and civil code. But now all decisions are based on Sharia [Islamic law],” he adds, proudly gesturing at the pile of cases they have already sorted through.

Ms Amini is less impressed by the plans for Afghanistan’s legal system going forward.

“I have a question for the Taliban. Did their parents marry based on these laws or based on the laws that their sons are going to write?” she asks.

Under the tree between two roads in an unnamed neighbouring country, none of this is any comfort to Nazdana.

Now just 20, she has been here for a year, clutching her divorce papers and hoping someone will help her.

“I have knocked on many doors asking for help, including the UN, but no-one has heard my voice,” she says.

“Where is the support? Don’t I deserve freedom as a woman?”

A lot of us have been there, locked in a metal cylinder flying at more than 500mph (804km/h), gritting our teeth about the armrest the person to the left is hogging.

Or the person next to the window who keeps getting up to go to the toilet, or the person in front who has suddenly put their seat back, squashing your knees.

With roughly half of the UK’s households flying once a year, how people behave on planes is an ongoing bugbear.

And this week a Hong Kong couple were banned by Cathay Pacific after tensions flared over a reclined seat.

So how can we avoid getting in our fellow travellers’ bad books?

Someone putting their seat back on a long-haul flight can be frustrating – but it seems to trigger Britons and Americans to different degrees.

A 2023 survey by Skyscanner into the issue indicated that 40% of people in the UK find it annoying at any one time, but a YouGov survey earlier this year suggested that only a quarter of Americans view it as unacceptable.

Whatever the percentage, reclining seats “really are a problem”, according to Charmaine Davies, a former flight attendant.

She says cabin crew sometimes have to step in to stop anger boiling over between passengers.

The basic problem is how airlines cram seats onto planes, according to Prof Jim Salzman of University of California, Los Angeles. “[The airlines] are able to pass on the anger and frustration of cramped seating to passengers who blame each other for bad behaviour instead of the airlines who created the problem in the first place.”

William Hanson, an etiquette coach and author, says it’s a matter of choosing your time to recline your seat, which you shouldn’t do during a meal. Check whether the person behind is leaning on the table, or using a laptop – and recline slowly.

If in doubt just talk to your fellow passenger, he says. Don’t expect them to be a mind reader.

Another gripe linked to the amount of space people have on planes is double armrest hogging.

Mary, a flight attendant for a major US airline, says she is often given a middle seat between “two guys with both their arms on armrests” when she’s being transferred for work and doesn’t have a choice of seat.

Nearly a third of UK airline passengers found this annoying in 2023, the Skyscanner survey suggested.

Mary has had “a tussle with elbows”, she says, but has a strategy for reclaiming the space.

“I wait until they reach for a drink and take the armrest. One [guy] kept trying to push my arm, and I just had to give him a look: ‘We’re not doing that today.'”

To resolve any tension, Mr Hanson says people should get used to the idea of having “elbow rests” rather than armrests, and share them.

Many of us will be familiar with the dilemma of being in a window seat and needing to go to the toilet, but the person next to you has fallen asleep.

Do you nudge them to wake them up, or climb over them?

More than half of Americans responding to the YouGov survey said having to climb over someone in the seat next to them to go to the toilet was unacceptable.

Mr Hanson says he normally has an aisle seat, and before going to sleep he tells the passenger next to him it’s fine to wake him up or hop over if they need to.

If sat in the middle or window seat, you should just gently let the passenger in the aisle seat know you need to get past them – but be aware you might not speak the same language, he advises.

If a passenger has been drinking alcohol, it can make them need to go to the toilet more often too.

Zoe, a former flight attendant with Virgin Atlantic, was on a flight to Ibiza on a different carrier where many of the passengers had been drinking in the airport bar beforehand, she says.

As soon as the flight took off and the seatbelt light went off, “everybody stood up” and started queuing for the toilet. Some got “quite aggressive”, she says, leading to the cabin crew turning the seatbelt signs back on, forcing everybody to sit down.

Unfortunately, one passenger really couldn’t wait so had to “have a wee in a carrier bag”.

“He put some swimming shorts in there first to soak it up,” says Zoe.

About a third of Brits find people standing up as soon as the plane lands annoying, the Skyscanner survey indicated.

“Just stay in your seat,” says former flight attendant Ms Davies. “There’s no point jumping up because you’re not going anywhere.”

It normally takes the ground crew several minutes to either hook up the passenger boarding bridge or put boarding stairs in place.

Even after that, if you have checked baggage, you’re going to need to wait for it to get to the carousel, she says, “no matter how quickly you get off the plane”.

Mr Hanson says that in etiquette terms, there’s nothing wrong with wanting to get up to stretch your legs, and perhaps people just want to get off because they are unconsciously a bit scared of being on a plane.

But he adds that it is “faintly comical” when people all get up at once and then “stand there like a lemon”.

Other air passenger pet hates include people jumping queues, using phones or other devices without headphones, draping long hair over the backs of seats, and taking shoes or socks off on a plane.

If you become aware the flight attendants are using spray to “spritz” the aircraft near you, you may want to put some socks or deodorant on, Mary says, as cabin crew won’t say anything directly.

But with air travel continuing to grow, how can we get on with other passengers on planes?

The key is everyone being considerate, Mr Hanson says.

“If you don’t want to temper your behaviour to get along with other people then there’s something wrong with you, to be blunt.”

It was billed as a decisive week for Ukraine.

A chance for President Volodymyr Zelensky to present his boldly named “victory plan” to America’s most powerful politicians, during a visit to the US.

But it’s unclear if Kyiv is any closer to getting any of the key asks on its wish list.

And Zelensky has antagonised senior Republicans, including Donald Trump.

Zelensky told the New Yorker magazine he believed Trump “doesn’t really know how to stop the war”, while he described his vice-presidential running mate JD Vance as “too radical”.

His remarks about Trump and Vance were a “big mistake”, says Mariya Zolkina, a Ukrainian political analyst and research fellow at the London School of Economics (LSE).

Separately, Zelensky’s visit to meet top democrats at an ammunition factory in the swing state of Pennsylvania was labelled as election interference by a senior congressional Republican.

The backlash to the visit came as a “big surprise” to Zelensky’s team, adds Ms Zolkina – an operation normally known for its slick PR.

Zelensky’s much-hyped visit was carefully timed to try and secure crucial support for Ukraine’s war effort from President Joe Biden, who has just months left in office.

But that also meant walking straight into a highly-charged US election campaign – a tightrope act.

After reports that Trump had decided to freeze Zelensky out, the pair did eventually meet on Friday at Trump Tower in New York City.

Standing side by side in front of reporters it was, at times, an awkward encounter.

Trump declared he had a “very good relationship” with both Zelensky and Russia’s Vladimir Putin – an equivalence that is painful to Ukrainian ears.

Zelensky gently interjected to say he hoped relations were better with him than with Putin – a remark laughed off by Trump.

Trump had already been busy at rallies that week praising Russia’s historic military record, while lambasting the current US administration for giving “billions of dollars” to Zelensky who he claimed had “refused to make a deal” to end the conflict.

Later Zelensky hailed the talks as “very productive” but there’s little sign yet that he had managed to adjust Trump’s fundamental approach.

Although he told Fox News on Saturday that he’d received “very direct information” from Trump that “he will be on our side”.

At a rally in Michigan on Friday night, the Republican candidate again voiced his intention to quickly “settle” the war, a repeated claim that’s led many to conclude he could cut aid to Kyiv and press Ukraine into ceding territory.

Meanwhile, in a thinly veiled attack on Trump, the Democratic candidate Kamala Harris said this week that those who would have Ukraine swap land for peace are supporting “proposals for surrender”.

Standing alongside her was none other than Zelensky as he carried out a dizzying round of diplomatic speed-dating and media interviews all through the week – including at the United Nations.

There was news of some further financial support ahead of a meeting with Biden at the White House – talks which were cordial but ambiguous in terms of their outcome, as Zelensky handed in his “victory plan” to end the war to the outgoing president.

Its contents have not been published but Ukraine’s request to be able to use Western-made long-range missiles to strike military targets deep inside Russia is widely thought to be one element.

Zelensky has for some time been asking Western countries for permission – but so far has not been given the green light.

Also thought to be in the plan is a plea for more robust security guarantees, including a longed-for invitation to join the Nato military alliance.

While the alliance makes encouraging noises about Ukraine’s future membership prospects, it’s been made clear that won’t happen while the country’s still at war.

Moscow’s troops continue to be on the attack in Ukraine’s east, despite Kyiv’s surprise incursion into Russia’s Kursk region.

Overall, the “victory plan” pitch is to bolster Ukraine’s position on the battlefield and push Putin towards a diplomatic peace.

But it was another political mismatch, believes the LSE’s Ms Zolkina, with the suite of proposals failing to “raise much enthusiasm”.

“Ukraine has the idea that it should be doubling down on its ambitions,” she says.

Zelensky is “sticking to the idea of getting an invitation to Nato but the US just isn’t there yet,” she adds.

On the permission to use long-range missiles, critics of Biden have accused him of getting cold feet as he tries to help Harris into the White House.

However Ms Zolkina says big announcements this week weren’t necessarily on the cards – although hopes remain that permission could yet come through, despite further nuclear threats from Putin.

Here in Kyiv, people continue to insist they can’t conceive of giving up land to Russia – often on the basis that a truce would simply allow Putin to regroup and relaunch fresh attacks down the line.

However Ms Zolkina believes that conversation around a ceasefire could change if genuinely meaningful security guarantees were on the table.

“If Ukraine was promised membership of Nato or if Ukraine signed a really strong security agreement with a big international player, this discussion about a possible tactical ceasefire would turn in a different way and the political resistance would not be as strong as it now.”

It has been a week where Zelensky went and gave his “victory plan” a hard sell. But the reality is that Washington DC has yet to show great eagerness, while events in the Middle East continue to divert attention away from Russia’s bloody invasion.

She was a national treasure with multiple awards under her belt. But somewhat surprisingly, Dame Maggie Smith never loved the limelight.

“I’m never shy on stage, always shy off it,” is how she once described herself to the critic Nancy Banks Smith.

She never watched herself in Downton Abbey. She famously didn’t even turn up to accept her first Oscar.

And in a rare interview for the British Film Institute in 2017, she lamented no longer being able to walk down the street without being stopped by admiring fans.

Although she had been an acclaimed stage actress since the 1960s, and had a varied and successful career on the big screen, she insisted she had led “a perfectly normal life” until her role in Downton Abbey.

The ITV drama, which was loved by viewers all around the world, had elevated her to a new level of superstardom late in her life – and she indicated that she regretted what she had lost as a result.

In the drama, which aired between 2010 and 2015, Dame Maggie played Violet Crawley, the Dowager Countess of Grantham, the grand matriarch who excelled at withering one-liners.

“It’s ridiculous,” she said of the way public recognition changed during that time.

Recalling pre-Downton life, she said: “I’d go to theatres, I’d go to galleries, and things like that on my own. And now I can’t. And that’s awful.”

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She added that Fulham Road, in southwest London, was “dodgy” enough without being spotted walking down it.

That’s not to say she never liked being approached by fans.

Her role as the formidable Professor McGonagall in the Harry Potter films won her legions of younger fans – something she seemed to enjoy.

“A lot of very small people used to say hello to me and that was nice,” she said during an interview on the Graham Norton Show in 2015.

“It was a whole different lot of people,” she said, noting that, to them, it was like she had never existed before.

“She loved kids recognising her from Harry Potter,” added Nick Hytner, the stage and screen director who directed Dame Maggie in The Lady in the Van. “She loved that.”

For those who worked with her, it’s understandable they may have felt a bit of trepidation at first, given her enormous reputation.

Lesley Nichol, who acted as Downton Abbey’s cook, said she was “terrified” when she first heard she would be working with Dame Maggie.

“I’d never worked with someone of that calibre,” she told BBC Radio Ulster. “And I thought, I don’t know what I’ll say to her, it will be really tricky, God she’ll probably be really grand.”

But Nichol said she quickly realised none of that was true.

“She was not looking for anyone to be scared of her, or in awe of her, she just wanted to be in the gang.”

Nichol said that it was always “glorious” to spend time with Dame Maggie, and said they would spend time between takes playing the word game Bananagrams.

“She was fearsome at that and really competitive, and really good at it,” she said.

“But that’s the way she was, she was in with the crowd, and just very happy to be part of it all.”

Dame Maggie was known for her sharp tongue on screen and off.

But that didn’t spoil her sense of fun, Hytner told BBC News.

“Everyone knows how witty she was, she had an extraordinary quick, super intelligent acerbic wit,” he said.

“But she was fun to be with, even when you were at the receiving end of her acerbic wit, you had to laugh.

“She was so smart, she was also capable of extraordinary sweetness and was a wonderful companion at concerts, ballet and theatre.”

Harry Potter stars have also been remembering how much fun Dame Maggie was on set.

On Saturday, Rupert Grint, who played Ron Weasley in the film series, posted a picture of him awkwardly dancing with Dame Maggie.

“She was so special, always hilarious and always kind,” he wrote.

“I feel incredibly lucky to have shared a set with her and particularly lucky to have shared a dance.”

Of course, it wasn’t all fun and games.

Asked in her BFI interview to reflect on the most tormented thing she ever did, Dame Maggie recalled a time during the filming of Harry Potter, when she was stuck in a trailer in the snow for a week “with that daft hat on my head”.

“And sitting in that trailer day after day and not being used [while waiting for her next scene], that doesn’t make you feel that jolly. That was a horrid thing,” she said.

“But there were other people in the trailer also moaning like Miriam Margolyes. You’re not alone when you moan.”

• Watch: Dame Maggie Smith’s career highlights

Margolyes, who also shared the screen with Dame Maggie in Ladies in Lavender, said the actress always had a “glint of mischief”.

“I saw what a kind person she could be as well as absolutely terrifying,” she said.

“I wouldn’t say I was a friend of hers, I was an acolyte, and she allowed me to be so.”

Margolyes, who played Professor Sprout in the wizarding series, recalled a time when she was absent from filming, as she had finished her role on the show.

“[Dame Maggie] said ‘nonsense! If I’m in a scene, I want you there, so come back please’. And she talked to the producer and got me back, so I got a bit more money.”

She admitted that she was at times scared of her. “But you can forgive someone for being the best of the best can’t you, if they’ve got a bit of a temper.”

From small stage to big screen, Dame Maggie’s moving performances always stole the show.

But she was also immensely dedicated. Even in later life, she was known for never turning up on set without memorising her lines perfectly.

“I never saw her on set with a little script, she knew it before she got here,” Lady Carnarvon, who lives in Highclere Castle where Downton Abbey was filmed, told BBC Breakfast.

“She worked so hard, to get up at silly o’ clock… and to wear corsets for hours on end,” she said, adding that she continued working right up to the end of her life.

“I think inside, there was an anxiety to get it right,” Margoyles said. “But she always did.”

Throughout it all, she remained famously private.

She rarely did interviews. And Margolyes notes that Dame Maggie “didn’t like being on chat shows”, despite being good at them.

When she won her first Oscar in 1970, for her performance in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, she skipped the awards ceremony.

At the time, she was acting in a play in London. Many other actors would have let the understudy take over for the night, but not Dame Maggie.

She did show up to accept her Special Award Bafta in 1993, but her speech lasted a mere 30 seconds.

“If it’s possible to be in films without taking your clothes off or killing people with machine guns. I seem to have indeed managed,” she said.

It all paints a picture of an actress who found the whole idea of being a star faintly embarrassing, despite having an entire Wikipedia page dedicated to the number of awards she has won.

“She was a very private person,” Lady Carnarvon added.

“I always wanted to respect that and not overstep any boundaries. Which I think she was in that way, just like her character on TV.”

But despite being determined to go under the radar whenever possible, Dame Maggie absolutely made her mark on everyone she met.

Perhaps her old friend, the late actor Kenneth Williams, put it best, in his diary entry about Dame Maggie in December 1962.

“The weather cold and dreary and mediocre audiences made [Dame Maggie’s] departure drab and unexciting. I didn’t say goodbye or anything, ‘cos I’d have cried.

“But that girl has a magic, and a deftness of touch in comedy that makes you really grateful, and she’s capable of a generosity of spirit that is beautiful.

“She’s one of those rare people who make things and places suddenly marvellous, just by being there. She’s adorable.”

Rosie Duffield has told the BBC that Sir Keir Starmer’s team cares “more about greed and power than making a difference” in her first broadcast interview since resigning from the Labour Party.

In her resignation letter, published by the Sunday Times, the Canterbury MP lambasts the prime minister for accepting gifts worth tens of thousands of pounds while scrapping the winter fuel payment and keeping the two-child benefit cap.

In an interview appearing on tomorrow’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg, Duffield said Labour voters and MPs are being “exploited” and “taken for granted”.

Duffield, who will now sit as an independent MP, said leaving the party was “not at all where I wanted to be”.

Speaking to the BBC, Duffield said Labour was “in my heart and in my soul”.

“It is so profoundly disappointing to me as a Labour voter and an activist… to see this is what we have become,” she added.

She said after days of revelations about donations and the leadership’s refusal to apologise, that the leadership seemed “more about greed and power than making a difference… I just can’t take any more”.

Duffield, who has clashed previously with the party leadership over women’s rights, resigned on Saturday.

She said: “We all had our faith in Keir Starmer and a Labour government, and I feel that voters and activists and MPs are being completely laughed at and completely taken for granted.”

In her letter she said the “revelations” since the change of government in July had been “staggering and increasingly outrageous”.

“I cannot put into words how angry I and my colleagues are at your total lack of understanding about how you have made us all appear.”

First elected in 2017, Duffield’s decision to quit the party follows the suspension of seven other Labour MPs who rebelled on the King’s Speech by voting for a motion calling for the two-child benefit cap to be abolished.

The total number of independent MPs in parliament is now 14.

Duffield’s letter said she intended to sit as an independent MP “guided by my core Labour values”.

In July, the government said the winter fuel payment to pensioners would now be made only to those on low incomes who received certain benefits, prompting an outcry from MPs and campaigners.

It has come under criticism – internally and externally – over the move to means-test the payments, with the Unite union winning a non-binding vote at the party’s conference last week. But ministers argue “difficult decisions” had to be made because of “undisclosed” overspending by the previous Tory government.

The prime minister came under fire after it initially emerged he had received more than £16,000 for work clothing and spectacles for him, and further donations for his wife, from Labour peer Waheed Alli.

Sir Keir has also defended accepting £20,000 worth of accommodation from Lord Alli during the election campaign so his son could revise for his GCSEs without the media outside his home.

In her resignation letter Duffield continued: “The sleaze, nepotism and apparent avarice are off the scale. I am so ashamed of what you and your inner circle have done to tarnish and humiliate our once proud party.”

She added: “Someone with far-above-average wealth choosing to keep the Conservatives’ two-child limit to benefit payments which entrenches children in poverty, while inexplicably accepting expensive personal gifts of designer suits and glasses costing more than most of those people can grasp – this is entirely undeserving of holding the title of Labour prime minister.”

Duffield and Sir Keir have long had a strained relationship.

But that she has chosen to go so soon into his premiership, and with such bitter criticism of him, is a surprise and certainly damaging for the prime minister.

Her letter is not prefaced by any of the niceties that sometimes accompany such departures. Instead it is deliberately, publicly cutting about him, his leadership, his policies and his behaviour.

Those around Sir Keir were certainly hoping that the criticism over donations was dying down, and that his Downing Street could move on and focus on “delivery”.

Duffield’s letter has placed that issue, and the disquiet among Labour MPs over means-testing the winter fuel allowance, right back in the spotlight.

It has given ammunition to Sir Keir’s critics. Conservatives will no doubt quote them liberally at their Party Conference this week.

Ms Duffield may prove to be a lone dissenter choosing to resign so soon after Labour’s landslide.

But the manner of her departure will have repercussions that reverberate for some time.

In her letter, Duffield also criticised the prime minister for promoting people with “no proven political skills” and said he had been “elevated immediately to a shadow cabinet position without following the usual path of honing your political skills on the backbenches”.

Sir Keir was given a shadow home office cabinet role in 2015, just two months into his time as an MP, and in turn appointed several newly-elected MPs to junior ministerial positions in 2024.

One of those, Foreign Office minister Hamish Falconer, is the son of Sir Keir’s first shadow attorney general Lord Falconer, while Liam Conlon, son of Number 10 chief of staff Sue Gray, was made a parliamentary aid to Department for Transport.

Duffield relationship with senior figures in the party has especially been strained over her views on trans issues – where she had used social media to outline her own position.

She believes there should be protected spaces where those born male are not allowed to go, like domestic violence refuges and prisons, and she is against people being able to self-identify as trans to gain access to those spaces.

Differences with Sir Keir surfaced again during this year’s general election campaign, when he was questioned about his past criticism of her stance on trans issues.

She was previously placed under investigation by the party after she liked a tweet from comedy writer Graham Linehan.

In January 2024 she said the party’s National Executive Committee “completely exonerated” her of allegations of antisemitism and transphobia.

Responding to Duffield’s resignation, Nadia Whittom, Labour MP for Nottingham East, said: “It is deeply disappointing that she has been allowed the privilege of resigning, as she should have lost the whip a long time ago.”

But Dr Simon Opher, Labour’s MP for Stroud, said he was “really sorry” the party had lost her.

“While I may not share all her politics, I know that we have everything to gain by working together.”

Tory leadership contender Tom Tugendhat said Duffield “made her point very clear… Labour Party and Keir Starmer government is not about service. It’s not about delivering for the British people. It’s about self service.”

Asked by the BBC if Duffield would be welcomed into the Conservative Party, Tugendhat said: “That’s really a decision for her… but I strongly suspect she won’t be asking”.

Fellow Tory leadership challenger James Cleverly, who like Tugendhat is arriving in Birmingham for the Conservative Party conference, told the BBC: “She’s said it all.”

Tory leadership rival Robert Jenrick declined to comment.

Japan’s scandal-hit ruling party has elected Shigeru Ishiba as its new leader, positioning the former defence chief as Japan’s next leader.

Ishiba, 67, said he would clean up his Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), revitalise the economy and address security threats after winning Friday’s party election.

Since the LDP has a parliamentary majority, its party chief will become prime minister and Ishiba is expected to be appointed to the role on Tuesday.

The change of guard comes at a turbulent time for the party, which has been rocked by scandals and internal conflicts that disbanded its once-powerful factions.

Nine candidates contested for the party leadership after Prime Minister Fumio Kishida announced last month that he would not stand for re-election.

Ishiba led in most opinion polls, with this being his fifth and, he said, final bid to lead the LDP, which has ruled Japan for most of the post-war era. It headed into a run-off between Ishiba and Sanae Takaichi, 63, who vied to become Japan’s first female leader.

“We ought to be a party that lets members discuss the truth in a free and open manner, a party that is fair and impartial on all matters and a party with humility,” he told a press conference.

Ishiba is in favour of allowing female emperors – a hugely controversial issue opposed by many LDP member and successive governments.

His blunt candour and public criticism of Prime Minister Kishida – a rarity in Japanese politics – has rankled fellow party members while resonating with members of the public.

Ishiba is well-versed on the machinations of party politics as well as security policies. He said Japan must strengthen its security in view of recent incursions from Russia and China into Japan’s territory and North Korea’s missile tests.

At a moment of flux within the LDP, he offers a safe pair of hands and stability.

What he doesn’t offer is a fresh face for an organisation desperate to reinvent itself and regain public trust amid a stagnant economy, struggling households and a series of political scandals. His economic strategy includes boosting wages to counter rising prices.

He has said that he reads three books a day and that he prefers doing that instead of mingling with his party colleagues.

Takaichi, on the other hand, was one of two women vying for the LDP leadership, but was also among the more conservative of the candidates.

A close ally to late former prime minister Shinzo Abe, Takaichi’s positions on women’s issues are in line with the LDP’s policy of having women serve in their traditional roles of being good mothers and wives.

She opposes legislation allowing women to retain their maiden name as well as allowing female emperors.

Consistent among the frontrunners, however, was a pledge to overhaul the LDP – which has held power almost continuously since it was formed in 1955 – in the face of public fury and plummeting approval ratings.

“In the upcoming presidential election, it’s necessary to show the people that the Liberal Democratic Party will change,” Kishida said at a press conference last month, when announcing his decision not to run for another term.

The LDP leadership contest is not just a race for the top job, but also an attempt to regain public trust that the party has haemorrhaged over the past few months amid a stagnant economy, struggling households and a series of political scandals.

Chief among these scandals are revelations regarding the extent of influence that Japan’s controversial Unification Church wields within the LDP, as well as suspicions that party factions underreported political funding over the course of several years.

The fallout from the political funding scandal led to the dissolution of five out of six factions in the LDP – factions that have long been the party’s backbone, and whose support is typically crucial to winning an LDP leadership election.

Perhaps more salient in the minds of the Japanese public, however, are the country’s deepening economic woes.

In the wake of the Covid pandemic, average Japanese families have been feeling the pinch as they struggle with a weak yen, a stagnant economy and food prices that are soaring at the fastest rate in almost half a century.

Meanwhile, data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) shows that wages in Japan have barely changed in 30 years. That drawn-out slump, coupled with 30-year-high inflation, is tightening the screws on Japanese households and prompting calls for government help.

It’s also damaging the LDP’s historically favourable standing among voters.

“People are tired of the LDP,” Mieko Nakabayashi, former opposition MP and political science professor at Tokyo’s Waseda University, told the BBC. “They’re frustrated with the inflation that they are facing currently and the so-called ‘lost 30 years’. The Japanese currency is low, lots of imports got expensive with inflation, and many people see it.”

Another major agenda item is the issue of Japan’s ageing and shrinking population, which puts pressure on social and medical services and presents a real challenge for the country’s medium and long-term workforce. Whoever takes charge of the LDP, and in turn government, will have to rethink how Japan operates its labour market and whether it should shift its attitudes towards immigration.

It’s a desperately needed recalibration in the lead-up to the Japanese general election, which is set to take place by October 2025 – or sooner, as some of the candidates have indicated. Koizumi, for example, has said that he would call a general election soon after the LDP contest.

The last two weeks of campaigning for the LDP leadership are seen by experts as an audition for the general election. For that reason, candidates have been presenting themselves not only to fellow party members but also to the public, in an attempt to win over the electorate.

“The public are changing,” Kunihiko Miyake, a visiting professor at Kyoto’s Ritsumeikan University who has worked closely with both Abe and Kishida, told the BBC. “It’s time for the conservative politics in this country to adapt to a new political environment and political battlefield.”

The other seven candidates in the first round were 43-year-old Shinjiro Koizumi, the youngest candidate; Foreign Minister Yoko Kamikawa, 71, who is the other female candidate; Digital Transformation Minister Taro Kono, 61; Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi, 63; Toshimitsu Motegi, 68, the LDP’s secretary-general; Takayuki Kobayashi, 49, a former economic security minister; and Katsunobu Kato, 68, a former chief cabinet secretary.

Four of the nine have served as foreign minister; three as defence minister.

After the US, the EU and 10 other counties called for an immediate ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah, the White House went into spin mode trying to build momentum for its proposal.

On a late night Zoom briefing so packed with reporters that some had to be turned away, senior Biden administration officials described the announcement as a “breakthrough”.

What they meant was they saw getting an agreement from key European countries and Arab states, led by Washington, as a big diplomatic achievement during the current explosive escalation

But this was world powers calling for a ceasefire – not a ceasefire itself.

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The statement urges both Israel and Hezbollah to stop fighting now, using a 21-day truce, “to provide space” for further mediated talks. It then urges a diplomatic settlement consistent with United Nations Security Council Resolution 1701 – adopted to end the last Israel-Lebanon war of 2006, which was never properly implemented. It also calls for agreement on the stalled Gaza ceasefire deal.

Beyond the three-week truce, it packages up a series of already elusive regional objectives. Some have remained out of reach for diplomats for nearly two decades already.

To issue the agreed upon text, the Americans had the advantage of world leaders gathered in New York for the annual United Nations General Assembly.

But what the “breakthrough” did not mean – as it has become abundantly clear on the ground – was that Israel and Hezbollah had reached an agreement.

Here, it seemed like US officials were trying to present the position of the two sides as more advanced than it really was – likely an attempt to build public momentum behind the plan and to pressure both sides.

Asked whether Israel and Hezbollah were onboard, one of the senior officials said: “I can share that we have had this conversation with the parties and felt this was the right moment based on the [ceasefire] call, based on our discussion – and they are familiar with the text… We’ll let them speak to their actions of accepting the deal in the coming hours.”

Pressed again on whether this meant Israel and Hezbollah had signed on – especially given the fact that the US does not have direct contact with Hezbollah – the official clarified that the US had talked intensively about the text with Israeli officials and with Lebanon’s government (meaning its officials would have contact with Hezbollah).

“Our expectation is when the government of Lebanon and when the government of Israel both accept this, this will carry and to be implemented as a ceasefire on both sides,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

That sounded pretty promising. But after the late-night call, the diplomats woke to news of more Israeli airstrikes on Lebanon, including in Beirut, and more Hezbollah rocket fire into Israel. This week has seen Lebanon’s bloodiest day since its civil war; Israeli airstrikes killed more than 600 people including 50 children, according to Lebanese health officials.

So how significant is the diplomacy, and can it actually lead to a ceasefire?

The early signs don’t bode well. The office of Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu, as he boarded a flight to New York for his UN speech on Friday, issued a defiant statement saying he hadn’t agreed to anything yet. It added that he ordered Israeli military to continue fighting with “full force”.

Lebanon’s prime minister Najib Mikati dismissed reports that he signed on to the proposed ceasefire, saying they were “entirely untrue”.

Instead, the joint statement creates a baseline position for the international community to try to exert pressure on Israel and Hezbollah to pull back and stop.

More work will be done in New York before the week is up. And it likely will continue afterwards.

It is significant that the Americans, leading the charge along with the French, have used the words “immediate ceasefire”. After 7 October, the US for months actively blocked resolutions from the UN Security Council calling for such a ceasefire in Gaza, until President Biden unexpectedly used the word and the US position shifted.

Since then, intensive diplomacy led by Washington has failed to reach a ceasefire and hostage release deal between Israel and Hamas, with the US currently blaming a lack of “political will” by Hamas and Israel. Meanwhile, the US has continued to arm Israel.

That doesn’t inspire confidence that Washington and its allies can now strong-arm Israel and Hezbollah into a quick truce, especially given the fighting on the ground, the intensity of Israel’s air strikes and last week’s explosive pager attacks on Hezbollah, which has continued to fire into Israel.

On the other hand, the difference between this and the Gaza ceasefire is that the Israel-Lebanon agreement doesn’t involve hostage negotiations, which contributed to the deadlock over a Gaza deal.

But the objectives for each side are still very significant. Israel wants to be able to return 60,000 displaced residents from the north and maintain security there free from Lebanon’s daily rocket fire.

Hezbollah seeks to stop Israeli strikes on Lebanon where more than 90,000 people also are displaced from the south.

The Shia militant group will aim to maintain its dominance in the country and its presence in the south while trying to ensure the bloody events of the last week don’t invoke more internal resentment of the group amid Lebanon’s fractious sectarian divisions.

Finding agreement between these two sides has already evaded Amos Hochstein, Washington’s envoy on the Israel-Lebanon crisis, for months.

And here is where the US-led desire to get an immediate truce gets complicated.

My understanding of the negotiations to reach the joint statement is that Washington pushed to make sure it linked the 21-day ceasefire to creating the negotiating time for a longer-term settlement.

Namely, that the two sides negotiate to implement Resolution 1701, which implements multiple conditions on Israel and Hezbollah. These include the group’s retreat from a strip of Lebanon south of the Litani River and, in the long term, Hezbollah’s disarmament.

Ever since 2006, each side has long accused the other of breaking the terms of 1701.

All of this means that an objective, which has already evaded diplomats for nearly two decades, is now being wrapped into the short-term plan for calm between these two sides. As the missiles continue to fall, the current diplomacy is asking a lot.

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.

“I saw five people smiling, looking forward to their journey.”

That was Renata Rojas’ recollection of her time on a support ship with five people bound for the Titanic wreck. They were about to climb into a submersible made by Oceangate.

Just 90 minutes later, these five would become the victims of a deep sea disaster: an implosion. Images from the depths of the Atlantic show the wreckage of the sub crushed, mangled, and scattered across the sea floor.

The photos were released by the US Coast Guard during an inquiry to establish what led to its catastrophic failure in June 2023.

The inquiry finished on Friday and over the past two weeks of hearings, a picture has emerged of ignored safety warnings and a history of technical problems. We have also gained new insight into the final hours of those on board.

It has shown us that this story won’t go away any time soon.

British explorer Hamish Harding and British-Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood, who’d brought his 19-year-old son Suleman along, had paid Oceangate for a dive to see the Titanic which lies 3,800m down.

The sub was piloted by the company’s CEO Stockton Rush with French Titanic expert Paul-Henri Nargeolet as co-pilot.

Once the craft had slipped beneath the waves, it could send short text messages to the surface. A message sent from about 2,300m said “All good here”.

About an hour and a half into the dive, from 3,346m, Titan’s final message reported it had released two weights to slow its descent as it neared the sea floor.

Communications were then lost – the sub had imploded.

The US Coast Guard said nothing in the messages that indicated that the passengers knew their craft was failing.

The implosion was instantaneous. There would have been no time to even register what was happening.

Mr Rush proudly described the Titan as “experimental”. But others had voiced their concerns to him about its unconventional design in the years prior to the dive.

At the hearing David Lochridge, Oceangate’s former director of marine operations, described Titan as an “abomination”.

In 2018, he’d compiled a report highlighting multiple safety issues, but said these concerns were dismissed and he was fired.

Titan had several unusual features.

The shape of its hull – the part where the passengers were – was cylindrical rather than spherical so the effects of the pressure were not distributed evenly.

A window was installed but only considered safe down to 1,300m. The US Coast Guard also heard about problems with the joins between different parts of the sub.

The hull’s material attracted the most attention – it was made from layers of carbon fibre mixed with resin.

Roy Thomas from the American Bureau of Shipping said carbon fibre was not approved for deep sea subs because it can weaken with every dive and fail suddenly without warning.

The National Transportation and Safety Board (NTSB) presented an analysis of samples of Titan’s hull left over from its construction.

It showed areas where the carbon fibre layers had separated – a known problem called delamination – as well as wrinkles, waviness and voids within its structure.

This suggests the material contained imperfections before the sub had even made a dive.

The NTSB team also saw this delamination in wreckage found on the seafloor.

Most of the hull was destroyed, but in the pieces that survived, the carbon fibre has split into layers and in some places had cracked.

Officials are not currently saying the hull’s failure caused the implosion, but it’s a key focus of the investigation.

A place on the sub cost up to $250,000 (£186,000) – and over the course of 2021 and 2022 Titan made 23 dives, 12 of which successfully reached the wreck of the Titanic.

But these descents were far from problem free. A dive log book recorded 118 technical faults, ranging from thrusters failing, to batteries dying – and once the front dome of the sub fell off.

The investigation focused on a dive that took place in 2022, when paying passenger Fred Hagen heard an “alarming” noise as the sub was returning to the surface.

“We were still underwater and there was a large bang or cracking sound,” he said.

“We were all concerned that maybe there was a crack in the hull.”

He said Mr Rush thought the noise was the sub shifting in the metal frame that surrounded it.

The US Coast Guard inquiry was shown new analysis of data from the sub’s sensors, suggesting the noise was caused by a change in the fabric of the hull.

This affected how Titan was able to respond to the pressures of the deep.

Phil Brooks, Oceangate’s former Engineering Director, said the craft wasn’t properly checked after that dive because the company was struggling financially, and instead it was left for months on the dockside in Canada.

“I’m not dying. No-one is dying on my watch – period.”

These were the words of Mr Rush in a 2018 transcript of a meeting at Oceangate HQ.

When questioned about Titan’s safety, he replied: “I understand this kind of risk, and I’m going into it with eyes open and I think this is one of the safest things I will ever do.”

According to some witnesses Mr Rush had an unwavering belief in his sub. They described a dominating personality who wouldn’t tolerate dissenting views.

“Stockton would fight for what he wanted… and he wouldn’t give an inch much at all,” said Tony Nissen, a former engineering director.

“Most people would just eventually back down from Stockton.”

Passenger Fred Hagen disagreed, describing Mr Rush as a “brilliant man”.

“Stockton made a very conscious and astute effort to maintain a perceptible culture of safety around a high risk environment.”

Former employee David Lochridge was so worried about Titan that he went to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA).

This is the US government body that sets and enforces workplace safety standards.

Correspondence reveals that he provided extensive information about the sub’s problems – and was placed on OSHA’s whistleblower witness protection scheme.

But he said OSHA were slow and failed to act, and after increasing pressure from Oceangate’s lawyers, he dropped the case and signed a non disclosure agreement.

He told the hearing: “I believe that if OSHA had attempted to investigate the seriousness of the concerns I raised on multiple occasions this tragedy may have been prevented.”

Deep-sea subs can undergo an extensive safety assessment by independent marine organisations such as the American Bureau of Shipping (ABS) or DNV (a global accreditation organisation based in Norway).

Almost all operators complete this certification process, but Oceangate chose not to for Titan. At the hearing, some industry experts called for it to become compulsory.

“I think as long as we insist on certification as a requirement for continued human occupied exploration in the deep sea we can avoid these kinds of tragic outcomes,” said Patrick Lahey, CEO of Triton submarines.

Witnesses at the hearing included former Oceangate employees, paying passengers who’d made dives in the sub, industry experts and those involved in the search and rescue effort.

But some key people were noticeably missing.

Mr Rush’s wife Wendy, who was Oceangate’s communications director and played a central role in the company, did not appear. Nor did director of operations and sub pilot Scott Griffith or former US Coast Guard Rear Admiral John Lockwood, who was on Oceangate’s board.

The reasons for their absences were not given and their version of events remain unheard.

The US Coast Guard will now put together a final report with the aim of preventing a disaster like this from ever happening again.

But the story will not end there.

Criminal prosecutions may follow. And private lawsuits too – the family of French diver PH Nargeolet is already suing for more than $50 million.

The ripples from this deep sea tragedy are likely to continue for many years.

The US and China are the two largest economies in the world. They have the two most powerful militaries in the world. The US-China rivalry, in the view of many international analysts, will be the defining global theme of the 21st Century.

But at the moment, only one of the two major party presidential candidates is regularly talking about US-China policy – as he has done consistently for years.

According to a review by BBC Verify, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has mentioned China 40 times in his five rallies since the presidential debate earlier this month. In just one hour at a town hall forum last week in Michigan, he brought up the country 27 times.

And when he talks about China, Trump focuses on matters of tension between the two global powers, painting the country and the world’s second-largest economy, as a kind of economic predator.

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He has talked about the new tariffs he plans to impose on imports from Chinese companies – and those from other nations – should he return to the White House.

He has said he wants to prevent Chinese-made cars from being sold because he believes they will destroy the American auto industry. He has warned China not to attempt to replace the US dollar as the world’s reserve currency. And he has blamed the Chinese government for the Covid pandemic.

Many economists question the effectiveness of Trump’s tariff plans and warn that they would ultimately be harmful to US consumers. The Biden-Harris administration, however, has maintained, and even at times increased, the more narrowly focused tariffs that Trump imposed on China during his first term in office.

Trump’s protectionist message is tailored to blue-collar voters in the key industrial Midwest battleground states who have felt the impact of increased competition from Chinese manufacturers.

Meanwhile, BBC Verify finds, Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris did not mention China at all in her six rallies since the 10 September debate. Although, in a speech on the economy in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on Wednesday afternoon, she made a handful of references to the country.

“I will never hesitate to take swift and strong measures when China undermines the rules of the road at the expense of our workers, communities, and companies,” she said at that event.

Asked for comment, an aide to the vice-president told the BBC that even if Harris does not talk about China regularly, she has a record of working to counter what they described as China’s efforts to undermine global stability and prosperity.

But when it comes to discussing China, the contrast between Trump and Harris on the campaign trail is unmistakable.

On Monday afternoon, at a barn in Smithton, a small town in rural western Pennsylvania, Trump sat down with a group of local farmers and ranchers for a roundtable discussion specifically about China.

The town may be just an hour outside of Pittsburgh, a Democratic Party urban stronghold, but this was decidedly Republican territory. Cows grazed peacefully on grasslands lined with dozens of “Trump for President signs”, while Trump supporters decorated two donkeys in “Make America Great Again” gear.

The topic of the event, hosted by the Protecting America Initiative, a conservative think-tank, was “the Chinese Communist Party’s growing threat to the US food supply”.

The forum ended up being a more open-ended conversation about the threat of China, full stop. The farmers, ranchers and business executives on the panel complained about having to compete with heavily subsidised Chinese imports and about the low quality of Chinese goods.

While the former president didn’t spend much time discussing the perceived dangers of Chinese ownership of US farmland – he instead promised that he would convince Chinese President Xi Jinping to buy more US agriculture exports – he again emphasised that he would use tariffs to shield the American economy from China.

At one point, he spoke of the need to protect the US steel industry – in order to prepare for a hypothetical war with China.

“If we’re in a war, and we need army tanks and we need ships and we need other things that happen to be made of steel, what are we going to do, go to China and get the steel?” he asked. “We’re fighting China, but would you mind selling us some steel?”

Some of the heavier lifting on China during the forum was left to Richard Grenell, a roundtable panelist and senior advisor for the Protecting America Initiative.

He warned the country has “quietly but strategically” worked against the US – particularly when Americans were distracted by other global issues.

“They go after our local and state politicians; they go after our manufacturing,” he said. “There is no question they are looking to, at some point, leverage that investment and activity.”

Grenell, who served as US ambassador to Germany and acting director of national intelligence while Trump was in office, is considered a possible secretary of state – America’s top diplomat – if Trump wins another term in November.

If Harris wins, on the other hand, there may not be a significant change from the current Biden administration, even if the current president has frequently deployed sharper rhetoric to describe the US-China rivalry.

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Since the start of his presidency, Joe Biden has identified China as one of the autocracies competing with the world’s leading democracies in what he describes as a historic global inflection point.

According to public opinion surveys, China ranks low on the list of issues American voters care about – dwarfed by the economy, immigration and healthcare.

In a recent National Security Action survey of voters in key electoral battleground states, only 14% listed China as the top national security priority for the next president. Immigration led the list at 38%, followed by the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, both at 28%.

That could in part explain Harris’s seeming lack of interest in talking about China.

In this abbreviated presidential campaign for her, she has a shorter timeframe to define herself in the eyes of voters, so focusing on America’s main economic competitor may be less of a priority for the Democrat.

After the Trump event in Smithton, Bill Bretz, chair of the local county Republican Party committee, said that while China may not be at the top of voter concerns in Pennsylvania, it was important for Trump to talk about it.

As the largest up-for-grabs electoral prize, Pennsylvania is perhaps the pivotal state in the 2024 presidential election. Both Trump and Harris will be hard-pressed to win the White House without it in their column. Polls currently show the two candidates in a dead heat there.

“The majority of people have already picked the camp that they’re in, but there are those group of people that are undecided,” he said. “If China is a straw that sways the scale one way or another, I think it’s a great thing to bring up.”

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.

It was January 1998 and Robert Bourgi was waiting to see the Gabonese president Omar Bongo, in an antechamber at his seaside palace in Libreville.

He was there to collect funds for the approaching French presidential election on behalf of the centre-right Gaullist candidate Jacques Chirac, who was mayor of Paris at the time.

Who should then be ushered into the same antechamber but Roland Dumas, former French foreign minister and right-hand man of ruling Socialist President François Mitterrand, Chirac’s arch-rival.

“Good day, Bourgi,” said Dumas. “I believe we are here for the same purpose.”

Claiming seniority, Dumas went into Bongo’s office first. Emerging a short time later, he said to Bourgi: “Don’t worry, there’s still a bit left!”

Recounted in Bourgi’s newly-published memoirs , the anecdote says everything about the money-grabbing and mutual dependence that for so long linked French and African politics.

For four decades Robert Bourgi was at the centre of it all.

Born in Senegal in 1945 to Lebanese Shiite parents, he rose to become a confidant of a generation of African leaders – from Omar Bongo in Gabon to Denis Sassou Nguesso of the Republic of Congo and Blaise Compaoré of Burkina Faso.

And in Paris, he inherited the mantle of the legendary Jacques Foccart – the Gaullist who oversaw the post-colonial system, with its arrangements of influence and protection, markets, materials, muscle… and money.

From the early years after World War Two – during which it had been a centre of activism in favour of France’s post-war leader Charles de Gaulle – Africa and its former French colonies had been a source of financing for all French political parties. By the 1980s, when Bourgi came onto the scene, it was routine.

Bourgi says that he himself never imported the bags of cash.

“The procedure was simple. When there was an election approaching, Chirac made it clear that I should deliver a message in various African capitals,” he said in an interview in Le Figaro newspaper this week.

“The [African] heads of state then sent an emissary to my office in Paris with a large sum. Several million in francs or dollars.”

In each of the 1995 and 2002 presidential elections – both won by Chirac – he says around $10m (£7.5m) was given by African leaders.

The 2002 race provided Bourgi with another colourful story, when a representative of Burkinabe leader Blaise Compaoré arrived in Paris with a large sum of money concealed in djembe drums.

According to Bourgi, he accompanied the envoy to the Elysée Palace, where they were greeted by Chirac. They opened the sealed drums using a pair of scissors, upon which a rain of banknotes fell out.

“Typical Blaise,” Bourgi quotes Chirac as saying. “He’s sent us small denominations.” The money was apparently all in fives and tens.

Handling the cash was not always easy. Remembering a big donation to Chirac from another African leader, Bourgi says: “The money arrived in Puma sports bags. I wanted to put the wads in paper so I went into my daughter’s room and took down one of her posters, and wrapped the money in that.”

The system was so widespread that it gave rise to a verb – from the Frenchmeaning a present.

When Bourgi’s allegations first surfaced in 2011 they were denied by officials in Burkina Faso and elsewhere, although a former presidential adviser in Ivory Coast conceded they were “historical practice”.

Jacques Chirac and his then chief of staff Dominique de Villepin also strenuously denied Bourgi’s claims.

A preliminary investigation was opened but later dropped without further action, because the payments were considered too long ago.

For African leaders at the time, says Bourgi, it was normal, and they did it among themselves. Giving large sums of money was a way of establishing trust and support.

But in a changing world it was unsustainable and Bourgi says he grew disillusioned. Nicolas Sarkozy came to power in 2007 vowing not to take a single franc from Africa, and Bourgi says he kept to his word.

Sarkozy has since been placed under investigation for allegedly taking campaign funds from Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi – which he denies. Bourgi, a Sarkozy loyalist, says he does not believe the charges.

The former lawyer, now aged 79, also reflects on his rather different role in another election – that of Emmanuel Macron in 2017. That was when Bourgi helped scupper the chances of the man who was for a time the runaway favourite, the conservative François Fillon.

Once close to Fillon, Bourgi had become estranged: he accused the former prime minister of being rude and stingy. So he released to a journalist the fact that he had made Fillon a gift of two very expensive suits.

Campaigning on a message of probity, Fillon never recovered. Later he was convicted of giving a fake parliamentary job to his British wife.

But Africa is Bourgi’s love.

He reflects that though the corruption at the heart of Françafrique was wrong, the system at the time brought stability, and a bond – often personal – between French and African leaders.

Today, that is gone.

France has a worsening image in its former colonies, and its influence is on the wane. Witness the recent retreat from its former army bases in Mali and Niger.

“I note with sadness the disintegration of French relations with the continent,” Bourgi says.

“But it is too easy to put all the blame on Françafrique… Africa has globalised. France has been unable to adapt to this new fact. And it keeps making the same mistake: arrogance.”

How do you tell a family who lost someone to genocide that they may have buried the wrong body?

That is the extremely delicate challenge facing missing persons organisations in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

They are trying to trace around 7,000 people who still have not been found, almost 30 years on from the end of the Bosnian war, which lasted from 1992-95.

Meanwhile, the remains of almost 2,000 people are lying unidentified in the country’s mortuaries.

The obvious conclusion would be that some of the missing might be found in these locations.

But another agonising possibility is that no relatives have claimed the bodies because they believe they have already buried their family members.

“Between 1992 and 2001, 8,000 cases were identified without the use of DNA,” says Matthew Holliday, the Programme Director in Europe for the International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP).

He says that while the vast majority were correct, “there is an element of risk if you don’t use dental records, fingerprints or DNA. Misidentification can be between 15 and 20%. So it’s a sizeable issue”.

The ICMP has been at the vanguard of efforts to find and identify the remains of victims since its foundation in 1996. Its pioneering DNA lab started work in Sarajevo in 2001.

Now it is part of a new drive in Bosnia to obtain blood tests from the family members of missing people. That includes some of those whose cases were previously declared resolved.

“It’s important to reach out to families and get a reference sample, to exclude the possibility that their relative might be in a mortuary,” says Mr Holliday.

“We talk and walk them through the process. The key thing is, if you provide blood, you may actually find that your relative is on a rack in a mortuary. Wouldn’t you rather find that out?”

The missing still include around 800 victims of the 1995 Srebrenica Massacre, when Bosnian-Serb forces systematically murdered more than 8,000 Bosniak Muslim men and boys.

Every summer, a few more victims are laid to rest, thanks to the work of the ICMP and its partners, including Bosnia’s Missing Persons Institute. This year, 14 people were buried in a ceremony at Potocari Cemetery – close to Srebrenica.

That can make an enormous difference to the relatives of those who died.

“It’s hard not to have a place where you can pay tribute to your loved ones,” says Mirela Osmanovic, who works at the Srebrenica Memorial Centre.

Her two teenage brothers, Velid and Ahmedin, both died in the massacre two years before she was born.

“Thankfully, we found their bodies,” she says, “and we buried them at the Memorial Centre in Srebrenica. But finding their bones and accepting what had happened was a really long process.”

Mirela never knew her brothers, though she has heard tales about them from her family. And she was keenly aware of the anguish, mixed with hope, that her parents felt in the decade before their sons’ bodies were found and identified.

She says the moment marked the closure of a painful chapter of their lives, because until then they were hoping someone would knock on the door and say her brothers were alive.

“They were buried in 2006 and 2008. That was actually quite early. Even 30 years after the genocide, there are families who have not found their loved ones,” says Mirela.

Zekija Avdibegovic is from such a family. She chairs the missing persons association in the town of Ilijas, near Sarajevo.

More than 30 years on from their disappearance, she’s still hoping for news of her husband, son and seven other family members.

“Honestly, it’s an extremely difficult process,” she tells me. “We were two young people trying to build a house and bring up a family. Now the purpose of our lives is just to learn about our loved ones’ fates and bury them”.

Zekija hopes the latest drive for blood tests may bring some answers and what she calls relief.

“I am aware that they were killed,” she says of her family members. “But knowing someone knows where their bodies are troubles me. With no grave to visit, it’s difficult. It adds to my grief.”

Time is another element. Zekija points out that in an increasing number of cases, there may be no suitable living relatives to provide blood samples.

The ICMP’s Matthew Holliday notes that there is no time limit to the work of either his organisation or the Missing Persons Institute. And he acknowledges that while “some people will never be found, with additional effort, we can still find many more”.

If the blood sample drive produces results, some bereaved families may finally be able to bury the misidentified remains of their relatives. And some of the mystery remains in the mortuaries may be identified at last.

A nature reserve in the Philippines, which has been lauded by top climate activists and film stars, has come under a concerted disinformation attack on social media as it fights to continue its work, a BBC investigation has found.

A network of nearly 100 fake Facebook accounts and pages were found to be spreading misleading claims about the Masungi Georeserve and its keepers. Most were taken down after the BBC asked Meta, Facebook’s parent company, about these accounts.

Despite gaining international recognition for its reforestation efforts in the fight against climate change, the reserve is under pressure from illegal loggers, land grabbers, and quarrying companies.

A spokesperson for the reserve said it was being “ganged up on” by local politicians, businesses and some officials in government. The environment department, which has proposed ending a reforesting contract with the reserve, denied the claim.

It is not clear who controlled the network, but evidence seen by the BBC suggests that a public relations consultant who states on his social media profile that he has expertise in “reputation management” was linked to pages involved in the campaign.

Located east of Manila, the Masungi reserve is a popular eco-tourism destination, known for its lush rainforest and gravity-defying limestone formations. Supporters include climate activist Greta Thunberg and Hollywood superstar Leonardo DiCaprio.

The reserve has been trying to fend off illegal business activities for years, but this particular smear campaign is understood to have started in recent months.

“We’ve seen misleading information, trying to manufacture dissent against work that we do as environment defenders,” says Billie Dumaliang from the Masungi Georeserve Foundation.

These online attacks have appeared against a backdrop of physical violence against people involved in protecting the environment in the Philippines.

Two forest rangers who work for the Masungi Georeserve were shot and wounded in 2021. And campaigning group Global Witness says the Philippines ranks as the most dangerous place in Asia for environmental defenders, with 298 people killed since 2012.

”Online propaganda can be quite important in creating a fear factor for the people who work in Masungi,” says Regine Cabato, a Filipino journalist with experience covering disinformation.

By investigating this propaganda, BBC Verify identified a pattern of fake accounts and pages seemingly working together as part of the smear campaign.

Suspicious features included profile pictures showing K-pop stars, cats and models, rather than real people. Many of these accounts were created within hours of each other, and had very few friends.

But it was the content that they posted which made them stand out the most: in the last few months, they repeatedly posted content critical of the Masungi Georeserve Foundation.

“Suddenly the owners are making a lot of money,” posted one user, questioning the Masungi Georeserve’s entire operation.

“This protected area is owned by the people. Don’t be arrogant!” wrote another, along with an image telling the reserve to “stop masquerading as a protector of nature”.

“This is something we’ve seen play out during elections against certain political targets, and sometimes it’s something we’ve also seen deployed against private individuals,” says Ms Cabato.

“There is a lot of power and a lot of money that goes into turning the wheels of this machine.”

The campaign appears to have begun this year, around the time the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) proposed scrapping the 2017 contract that handed the Masungi Georeserve Foundation control over the vast majority of the land it holds – some 2,700 hectares – for reforestation purposes.

The move was criticised by a number of international celebrities, including Filipino actress and singer Nadine Lustre, Greta Thunberg and Leonardo DiCaprio – who, in an Instagram post, called on the Philippine president to “protect Masungi”.

When news outlets posted on Facebook about celebrity calls to “#SaveMasungi”, their posts drew the attention of the small army of fake accounts identified by the BBC.

Under those posts, they left comments defending the environment department’s proposal and attacking celebrities like DiCaprio over their intervention.

“Don’t be a loser Leonardo,” wrote one user.

“The DENR saw sketchy behaviour a long time ago,” posted another.

In addition, several of these accounts went on to share content from the DENR’s own social media accounts, or from pages supportive of the department’s work.

The DENR denies having any links to these accounts and pages.

But the department plays a dual role in the Philippines, which critics say is contradictory: it issues mining and quarrying permits, while also employing hundreds of forest rangers to protect the Sierra Madre, the country’s longest mountain range.

Podcast: An (online) storm in a Philippine rainforest

The BBC asked Meta about the accounts that seemed to be operating as an organised network, and the company confirmed that a cluster of accounts was engaging in inauthentic activity.

It took down most of the accounts and pages identified as part of the BBC investigation, saying they “engaged in deceptive, spammy activity, including amplifying content using fake accounts to make it appear more popular than it was”.

But it stopped short of linking this network to any third party.

“It seems like we’re being ganged up on by local politicians together with some people from the DENR, together with their cohorts in these destructive industries,” says Ms Dumaliang from the Masungi Geoserve Foundation.

The environment department denies this claim.

In a statement, the DENR told the BBC it had “no involvement in any social media campaign, activity, or other online tactics aimed at influencing public opinion in a negative manner”. It also described its communication efforts as transparent, accurate and fair.

While we do not know who ultimately controlled the network of accounts and pages, the BBC found evidence linking one individual to the campaign.

On social media, Ben Pablo described himself as a public relations consultant who specialised in “reputation management” and “social media marketing”.

But he placed ads on behalf of pages that were part of the campaign, according to Meta’s ad library, which lists all adverts placed on Facebook.

Mr Pablo did not respond to the BBC’s repeated requests for comment.

But since we first approached him, several of the pages that we believe he was linked to have been deleted, along with Mr Pablo’s own social media accounts.

In recent months, Mr Pablo has also bought Facebook adverts promoting Senator Imee Marcos, the sister of the current president, Ferdinand Marcos Jr.

Although there is no evidence linking her to this campaign, the BBC asked the senator’s team whether she had ever employed Mr Pablo, but did not get a response. Whether Mr Pablo was acting alone remains unclear.

But, despite the impact that online disinformation may have on the lives of those looking after Masungi, Billie Dumaliang seems undeterred.

“Every time we see the landscape, the sunset unobstructed, we are reminded of the reason why we’re doing this: it is to preserve this special place.”

Dame Maggie Smith was one of Britain’s best-loved and most celebrated actresses, with a career spanning eight decades.

Her first performances came on stage in the 1950s, and her last screen role was just a year ago, when she starred in The Miracle Club.

She was one of a select group of actors to win the treble of big US awards, with two Oscars, four Emmys and a Tony – as well as seven Baftas and an honorary Olivier Award in her home country.

Here are six of her best-known performances:

One of Dame Maggie’s most iconic early roles was as Desdemona in Shakespeare’s Othello.

Sir Laurence Olivier, who was playing the title role, offered her the part at the National Theatre in 1963.

The production, with the original cast, was made into a film two years later, and Smith nominated for an Academy Award for best supporting actress.

Reflecting on the role much later, Dame Maggie told the Guardian she did the role “with great discomfort and was terrified all the time”.

Shakespeare, she added, “is not my thing”.

The role that brought Dame Maggie international fame came in 1969 when she played the determinedly non-conformist teacher in the title role of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie.

The film was adapted from the 1961 novel by Muriel Spark, set in 1930s Edinburgh, and the character was based on the author’s inspirational teacher.

The part won Dame Maggie a best actress Oscar, and she later married co-star Robert Stephens.

Dame Maggie won critical acclaim for her role as Betsey Trotwood in a BBC adaptation of David Copperfield at the turn of the century.

The part also brought her Bafta and Emmy nominations.

She starred alongside a young Daniel Radcliffe, who she would later act with again in the Harry Potter films.

At the age of 67, a whole new generation was introduced to the acting marvels of Dame Maggie.

In 2001, she took on the role of Professor Minerva McGonagall in Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone.

Her formidable character was in all eight films and she was reportedly the only actor that author JK Rowling specifically asked for.

In 2007, while working on Harry Potter and The Half-Blood Prince, Dame Maggie was diagnosed with breast cancer but continued filming. She was given the all-clear after two years of treatment.

At the same time as appearing in Harry Potter, Dame Maggie also starred in another huge hit – Downton Abbey.

Between 2010 and 2015 she played Violet Crawley, Dowager Countess of Grantham, in ITV’s British period drama.

Her performance as the quick-witted matriarchal figure won her three Primetime Emmy awards, a Bafta, a Golden Globe and four Screen Actors Guild awards.

She reprised her role of Violet in the Downton Abbey films in 2019 and 2022.

In the final film, her character’s health deteriorates and she dies.

One of Dame Maggie’s most famous later roles was as a homeless woman in The Lady In The Van.

In the 2015 film, she starred as Miss Shepherd, who lived in a battered van in playwright Alan Bennett’s driveway for 15 years.

Her performance in the comedy-drama was described as “terrifically good” and “magnificent” by critics. She received a Golden Globe award and was nominated for a Bafta.

But it wasn’t the first time she had played Miss Shepherd.

Dame Maggie also starred as the lead character in 1999 when the play, based on Bennett’s memoir, opened in London’s West End.

Her performance earned her an Olivier Award nomination for best actress in 2000.

Nestled in the mountains of Indian-administered Kashmir, Shopian – once a hotbed of militancy – sees a steady stream of voters entering a polling booth.

The former state of Jammu and Kashmir – now divided into two federally administered territories – is holding its first assembly election in a decade. The third and last phase of voting is on Tuesday and results will be declared on 8 October.

Since the 1990s, an armed separatist insurgency against Indian rule in the region has claimed thousands of lives, including those of civilians and security forces.

Earlier, elections were marred by violence and boycotts as separatists saw polls as a means for Delhi to try and legitimise its control. The high voter turnout now signals a change – people here say they have waited long to be heard.

“The level of poverty in our area is severe,” says 52-year-old Mohammad Yusuf Ganai after casting his vote. He laments that the lack of jobs has forced educated young Kashmiris to “sit at home”.

The last elections a decade ago resulted in a coalition government that collapsed in 2018. Before new polls could be held, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government revoked the region’s autonomy and statehood, sparking widespread discontent among Kashmiris.

For five years, Jammu and Kashmir has been under federal control with no local representation, and this election offers people a long-awaited chance to voice their concerns.

“We will finally be able to go to the elected official with our problems,” says 65-year-old Mohammad Abdul Dar.

Nearly 150km (93 miles) away in Uri, the last town near the Line of Control – the de facto border with Pakistan-administered Kashmir – newly elected MP from the Awami Ittehad Party (AIP) Engineer Rashid addresses a frenzied crowd. In jail since 2019 on terror funding charges that he denies, Rashid was granted interim bail to campaign for the election.

People flock to his motorcade, one seeking a selfie, another offering a jacket, as Rashid’s personal struggles appear to resonate deeply with voters.

• Why Engineer Rashid’s return from jail has ruffled feathers

“I want development and a resolution to the Jammu and Kashmir issue,” Rashid says. Being part of the system now as a lawmaker, he adds, will help him raise these issues in Delhi.

Civil engineer Tanvir Chalkoo, 29, listens intently to Rashid.

Calling the scrapping of autonomy the “worst kind of injustice”, Tanvir asks why as an Indian he should be treated any differently.

“People have been deprived of their rights for the last 10 years,” he says.

The BJP government insists that scrapping the region’s special status and placing it under direct rule has brought peace and development, with Prime Minister Modi announcing $700m (£523m) in projects during a visit in March. It’s now up to BJP candidate Engineer Aijaz Hussain in Srinagar’s Lal Chowk to convince voters of this message.

“Previously, no one would go door to door [to campaign]. Today, they are. This is our achievement, isn’t it?” says Aijaz.

He points to the increased voter turnout as proof of faith in the election process, with the recent parliamentary elections seeing record participation. Yet, despite these claims, the BJP did not contest those elections and is now only fielding candidates in 19 of the 47 assembly seats in the Kashmir valley.

The party’s stronghold remains the Hindu-dominated Jammu region with 43 seats, where it is hoping to score well.

“Our organisation is weak in other constituencies,” admits Aijaz.

The Hindu nationalist BJP has been trying to make inroads in the Muslim-majority Kashmir valley, where it has had little presence.

• ‘Any story could be your last’ – India’s crackdown on Kashmir press

Aijaz’s cavalcade of nearly 50 BJP-flagged cars drove through Srinagar’s narrow lanes, a show of strength unimaginable in Kashmir just a few years ago.

While some come out of their homes to greet Aijaz with sweets, others refrain. The BJP is still seen by many here as the party in Delhi which took away their autonomy.

Maleha Sofi, 24, is disillusioned with the BJP, believing the touted peace has come at the cost of personal liberties, and has decided not to vote. “We are not allowed to say anything,” she says.

Legacy parties like the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) have made this central to their campaign.

“This election is an act of self-preservation for Kashmiris,” says Waheed Para, the party’s candidate from Pulwama. “It’s a step to reclaim what was lost and preserve what we have.”

In 2020, Para was jailed for nearly two years, accused of aiding banned separatist groups. India has long faced accusations of human rights violations in Kashmir – it denies this – but critics say this has intensified in the past few years.

Ahead of the assembly election, Amnesty International accused the government of fostering a “climate of fear” and urged an end to arbitrary detentions under strict anti-terror laws used to silence dissent on Jammu and Kashmir.

But the BJP government in Delhi has always taken a hard line on this. Aijaz says “all those people who are with separatists will be dealt with very seriously”.

While regional political parties promise change and say they are fighting for the rights of Kashmiris, how much influence will they have after these elections?

Lawyer Zafar Shah anticipates friction between the federal administration and the elected government which will soon assume charge.

Before 2019, when Jammu and Kashmir was a state, the chief minister could enact laws with the consent of the governor, who was bound by the state cabinet’s recommendations.

Now, as a federal territory under a Lieutenant Governor (LG), the chief minister must get the LG’s approval, especially on sensitive issues like public order, appointments and prosecutions. Power has shifted, says Mr Shah, as the LG won’t act without clearance from the federal home ministry.

“Whether the LG can create hurdles in the government’s working, that’s a matter to be seen when an actual situation arises,” adds Mr Shah.

Despite the challenges, many in Kashmir hope these elections will give them a chance to finally have their own representatives to voice their concerns.

Austrians vote on Sunday in a general election that could see the far-right opposition Freedom Party (FPÖ) top the polls for the first time.

Five years ago, the party crashed out of a coalition government with the conservative People’s Party because of a corruption scandal dubbed Ibiza-gate.

But now, led by Herbert Kickl, the FPÖ is within reach of a historic victory. It narrowly leads the ruling conservatives in the opinion polls, and the opposition Social Democrats are in third place.

Even if the Freedom Party manages to come first, no party is expected to win enough seats for an outright majority, and building a coalition is likely to be difficult.

The FPÖ has successfully tapped into concerns about migration, rising inflation, the war in Ukraine and anger over the way the Covid pandemic was handled, and for months has been hovering around 27% in the polls, up to two points ahead of the conservative Österreichische Volkspartei (ÖVP) or Austrian People’s Party, which is predicting a photo finish.

“The chances have never been so great,” one of its campaign videos says. “As (people’s chancellor) Herbert Kickl will do everything to give you back your freedom, your security, your (prosperity) and your peace… Let’s build Fortress Austria!”

It then shows Kickl saying that he wants to be “your servant and your protector”.

Kickl’s use of the term , which was used to describe Adolf Hitler in the 1930s, has worried some Austrians.

For them it is an uncomfortable reminder of the FPÖ’s origins. It was founded by former Nazis in the 1950s. Protesters at the party’s final election rally on Friday night waved banners reading “Nazis out of parliament”.

Like other far-right European parties, the FPÖ combines tough rhetoric on immigration and Islam with promises to reduce what it regards as interference from Brussels in national affairs.

But Kickl has also aligned his party closely with Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban, the self-styled champion of “illiberal democracy” and expressed a more conciliatory tone when it comes to Russia.

The Freedom Party leader has called European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen a “warmonger” and opposes sanctions on Russia over its invasion of Ukraine.

Political analyst Thomas Hofer says Kickl’s rhetoric has always been “very harsh and divisive”, but he believes election victory would not necessarily clear the way to heading a coalition government.

“Of course it would be a totally new situation in the history of the Second Republic in Austria, because the Freedom Party came close a couple of times, but was never in first place, at least not on the general election level,” he told the BBC.

The party stunned European politicians under leader Jörg Haider in 1999, coming second in elections and joined a conservative-led government. When it joined a coalition in 2018, Herbert Kickl was interior minister, until the party became engulfed in corruption revelations.

Now as leader the fiery Kickl has steered his party to what could be its best result yet.

“It would be a kind of shockwave for the other parties, but it doesn’t mean if the FPÖ comes in first, that they also will get the position of chancellor. This is by no means clear,” Thomas Hofer said.

The FPÖ leader is widely disliked by other parties in Austria.

The conservative People’s Party, led by Austria’s current chancellor Karl Nehammer, has repeatedly excluded joining a Kickl-led government, although it has not ruled out an alliance with his party.

Austria’s President, Alexander Van der Bellen, has also expressed his reluctance to see Kickl lead the country.

Other parties including the Social Democrats and Greens have also said they won’t form a government with the FPÖ.

“No coalition with the far right,” the Greens’ Climate Action Minister Leonore Gewessler told the BBC.

“We will not work in a coalition with the far right FPÖ, which denies climate change, which only works on dividing our society and spreading fear and conspiracy theories.”

Under Karl Nehammer, the conservatives have framed the vote as a choice between the incumbent chancellor or Kickl, seeking to attract centrist voters with slogans like “Vote Stability” and “Vote Centre”.

Nehammer has said it is “impossible to form a government with someone who adores conspiracy theories”.

Thomas Hofer highlights a lack of vision from both the conservatives and Social Democrats: “One big reason why [the FPÖ] could have this comeback is certainly the weakness of the others.”

He says forming a coalition government could take months.

Although some 6.3 million Austrians aged 16 or over will be able to vote in Sunday’s election, another 1.5 million long-term residents will not have the right, because of Austria’s highly restrictive citizenship laws.

Across the country that means almost one in five is excluded, whereas in Vienna the proportion is as high as one in three.

To highlight the issue, a charity organised an unofficial vote that attracted almost 20,000 people called – which translates as a passport-doesn’t-matter election.

Elisabeth Scherzenlehner, who teaches refugees German, brought her class along to the campaign group’s rally in Vienna.

“I think the FPÖ is a really strong negative voice, and I think there will be no mercy if they will come to rule Austria,” she said.

Nita Morton turned up at a Bridgerton-themed ball expecting glitz, glamour and fabulous food.

The event in Detroit, Michigan, on Sunday night invited fans to “step into the enchanting world of the Regency era” with “sophistication, grace, and historical charm”.

So far, so good – but what happened next could almost make a Netflix drama itself.

Guests say they found soggy noodles, chicken bones, melancholy decor, a single violin and a pole dancer.

“I was brought to tears,” 25-year-old Nita told the BBC. “It was the worst event I’ve been to. My high school parties were better.”

“Bridgerton food is turkey and ham and grand dessert tables with things like macaroons,” she told the BBC.

“But we got soggy noodles with tomato sauce and small chicken wings.”

The blunder has gone viral on social media, as attendees who paid nearly $200 (£150) for a ticket complained it was a “scam”.

Guests in fancy ballgowns say they were reduced to sitting on the floor due to a lack of chairs – and some left early for McDonald’s or Burger King when food ran out.

People have been quick to note the similarities with other viral flops, including the Fyre festival in the Bahamas and the Willy Wonka experience in Glasgow.

The ball – in no way associated with Netflix or production company Shondaland – was organised by Uncle & Me LLC. It did not respond to the BBC’s request for comment but told local media it was working to address concerns.

The BBC has spoken to some of those who attended to hear how high society turned to bitter disappointment.

The itinerary for the ball, seen by the BBC, included photo opportunities, dance lessons and a fashion show.

People who had purchased a more expensive ticket were also promised dinner and a violinist.

But alarm bells started ringing for guests when they arrived and found no-one at the door to greet them.

Kimberley Pineda, who posted a TikTok video about her experiences, told the BBC “anyone could’ve walked in” due to the lack of a check-in process.

She said guests were walking out as she arrived, with one warning her not to bother going in.

Once inside, she said she was faced with “cheap” decorations, and said the ballroom was completely sparse.

“There were just a few vendors, who I felt sorry for. They had been booked and had no idea either what was going on.

“Plates were being stacked on top of each other, glasses were being reused, whole plates of food were being left too, and someone told me the chicken wasn’t cooked properly and the beans smelled like fish.”

Like Kimberley, Andi Bell found the food and drink options woefully inadequate.

“Hors d’oeuvres were meant to be available to all guests. And the leftovers from the dinner were the promised hors d’oeuvres.”

Then came the entertainment – which for some proved to be the final straw.

“As the night wore on, we were presented with an exotic dancer with a pole, which very much appeared to be a stripper; a lack of dance lessons at the scheduled time despite most of us being in the ballroom waiting; and eventually club music was blasted from the stage,” Andi said.

“At that point, my sister and I left.”

Kimberley, meanwhile, said her “jaw dropped” when the pole dancer’s performance began.

“We were promised a Bridgerton-themed musical performance, but we were not expecting a pole dance,” she said.

Other entertainment included a Queen Charlotte act, one of the characters from the show.

But another guest, Amanda Sue Mathis, felt she was hardly regal – sitting in “a cheap costume” with a backdrop that looked like it was “purchased at a dollar store”, with a “fake stuffed dog” sitting on her lap.

The photographer, meanwhile, was only able to airdrop pictures, says Nita.

It meant people with Android phones resorted to taking pictures of his phone.

And while there was a violinist, she was having to perform across three floors, Nita said.

In a statement to WXYZ-TV, Uncle & Me LLC said: “We understand that not everyone had the experience they hoped for at our most recent event on Sunday night at The Harmonie Club, and for that, we sincerely apologise.

“Our intention was to provide a magical evening, but we recognise that organisational challenges affected the enjoyment of some guests.

“We take full responsibility and accountability for these shortcomings.”

The company said it was working to address all concerns raised by guests, adding: “We are reviewing resolution options, which will be communicated shortly.”

The company’s website does not appear to be working, while the event site – which was available until the middle of the week – now also appears to be down, adding to fans’ frustration.

Nita claims the statement was “gaslighting” attendees: “We’ve had no contact with the company for days.”

Andi claims communication from the organisers had been “non-existent”.

Kimberley says she feels “robbed” of her money and time, having spent $440 on her outfit alone.

And Amanda – a superfan who has watched Bridgerton six times from start to finish – described it as “a dream come true, until it wasn’t”.

Similar recent debacles might offer a clue as to how things will pan out.

After the spectacular failure of the Wonka experience earlier this year in Glasgow, where police were called as tempers flared at a near-empty warehouse, organisers said full refunds would be given to ticket holders.

Meanwhile, the Fyre festival promised a luxury two-week music event in the Bahamas – but fans arrived to find no musical acts, no planning and only disaster relief tents to sleep in.

Just months after being released from prison over the 2017 event, organiser Billy McFarland announced a reboot. Fyre II is due to take place in April 2025.

Should another Bridgerton-themed ball be arranged in the near future, fans in Detroit might be coining a phrase from Anthony Bridgerton himself: “You are the bane of my existence and the object of all my desires.”

Cairo Nakhate-Chirwa had a non-surgical Brazilian butt-lift (BBL) in June.

She’s happy with the results – but says that she now regrets it after finding out the procedure was unregulated and potentially risky.

This comes after arrests were made following the death of Alice Webb, who is thought to have undergone the procedure.

A non-surgical BBL most often involves filler being injected into the buttock to make it bigger, more rounded or lifted, and is not regulated in the UK.

Experts have called the lack of rules in the UK the “wild west” while NHS England has warned against the procedure entirely.

The Department of Health and Social Care says it is currently exploring regulatory options of the non-surgical cosmetics sector and says it will provide an update in due course.

Cairo used Instagram to find someone to give her a liquid BBL – another name for for a non-surgical BBL – in late June.

She found one page that was advertising the procedure for £1,200.

Twenty-four hours later, she arrived at a London flat for her appointment.

She did not check whether the person performing the procedure was a qualified medical professional.

“When they’re advertising themselves, you just assume they are [qualified],” Cairo said.

But non-surgical cosmetic procedures are not regulated in the UK – this includes liquid BBLs.

The BBC contacted the person who performed Cairo’s BBL for comment, but they did not respond.

Cairo said the only drawback, aside from the “pain” of the procedure, was some leaking from the site of the injections two weeks later.

She said she looked into the risks for the first time after hearing about Alice Webb’s death – and that while her experience “wasn’t all negative”, she regretted it and wished she had done more research.

“I’m happy with how I look.

“It made sense, it was cheaper. But now I’m questioning.”

Non-surgical BBLs can be done using local anaesthetic and generally take place in a clinic room – rather than a sterile operating theatre.

There are even reports of procedures taking place in hotel rooms.

Recent research by organisation Save Face, suggests many people don’t know what is injected into their bodies.

The filler used could be hyaluronic acid & PLLA (Poly-L-lactic acid), for example.

NHS England strongly advises against having a non-surgical BBL “because it is unregulated”.

Surgical BBLs meanwhile often involve transferring fat from one part of the body into the buttock.

This most often happens under general anaesthetic in an operating theatre, and can involve extensive liposuction, with large volumes of fat being transferred.

In 2018, because of concerns around high death rates linked to surgical BBLs, the British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons asked for a four-year pause on its members carrying out the procedure.

In 2022 it published new guidelines, encouraging surgeons to use a different technique – called superficial gluteal lipofilling (SGL).

While it uses fat collected from the body, this is only injected below the skin whereas BBLs insert fat deep into the muscles.

It also recommends surgeons should only carry out SGLs while simultaneously using ultrasound scans so they can see where the cannulas are going.

This procedure carries its own risks.

Mr Marc Pacifico of the British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons said the lack of regulation meant the UK was “known as the wild west”.

In the UK, the filler injected during non-surgical procedures is not classed as a medicine, and so it does not need to be prescribed. Instead, it’s classed as a device.

“That’s one of the biggest loopholes we have in the country,” Mr Pacifico believes.

“And that’s why anyone and everyone could have access to get hold of them.”

This makes the UK “the most outlying country” in Europe, he said.

Dr Sophie Shotter, who runs her own private clinics and is a trustee of the British College of Aesthetic Medicine, said “a lot of people don’t have a clue” about the risks before signing up for a liquid BBL.

She says she does not offer non-surgical BBLs because of the potential risks – and although Cairo was OK, this isn’t the case for everyone.

A serious concern is that the injection can cause a blockage in a blood vessel that can in turn lead to a blood clot travelling to the lungs – what is known as a pulmonary embolism.

This can be lethal.

Infections, scarring, significant deformities and reactions to local anaesthetic, including toxicity, are also risks.

There is no data on the death rate of liquid BBLs, but the British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons said the procedure was associated with a higher complication rate than other non-surgical procedures.

Dr Shotter said regulatory action had been slow “because the people in power don’t take it seriously”.

“I think it’s because of a little bit of inherent misogyny,” she said, since the procedures are more popular with women.

She said she wanted to see regulation of who can administer fillers and where this is allowed to take place.

“It feels like it’s spiralling and spiralling.

“Alice’s case is absolutely tragic – but many of us feel like we’ve been expecting it for a while.”

NHS England advises against having a non-surgical BBL altogether.

“There is no guarantee that the right safety measures are being taken,” the NHS’s National Medical Director Prof Sir Stephen Powis said.

Referring to all cosmetic procedures, a Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson said: “The safety of patients is paramount, and we would urge anyone considering a cosmetic procedure to consider the possible health impacts and find a reputable, insured, and qualified practitioner.”

Cairo, who performs as rapper Lavida Loca, said she wanted a BBL because of pressure to look a certain way: “In the hip hop world… women are meant to be curvy.”

“I fell into the pressure. I tried to do it naturally and it wasn’t working, and I didn’t have enough fat on my body for a surgical BBL.”

According to Prof Elizabeth Daniels, director of the Centre for Appearance Research at the University of West England, people who have cosmetic procedures often feel dissatisfied with their body image.

But she stressed that relationships and societal factors, like laws and mental health resources, also come into play.

“It’s important not to pathologise people or make assumptions about their motivations and instead think about – this is a big social issue and how can we make the situation better?”

A couple who were left with life-changing injuries after their Uber crashed have been told they cannot sue the company because of the terms they accepted when using the app.

Georgia and John McGinty, from New Jersey, in the US, are bound by a clause saying they could not take the case to a jury in a court of law.

State judges ruled they had clicked a “confirm” button on the app on more than one occasion when asked if they agreed with Uber’s terms of use.

The McGintys argue they had not understood they were forfeiting their right to sue the company.

They told the BBC the most recent time the terms were agreed to was when their daughter, then 12, had accepted them prior to ordering a pizza on Uber Eats.

“How would I ever remotely think that my ability to protect my constitutional rights to a trial would be waived by me ordering food?” said Mrs McGinty.

Uber told BBC News: “Our Terms of Use are clear that these types of claims should be resolved in arbitration. It’s important to highlight that the court concluded the plaintiff herself, not her daughter, agreed to Uber’s Terms of Use on multiple occasions.”

Arbitration means the dispute is settled through a third party rather than in court – in this case a lawyer appointed by Uber.

Legal experts say it tends to result in smaller financial settlements.

The case has parallels with Disney’s attempt to avoid being sued over a death at Disney World – in its case over the terms of a Disney+ membership – before the company changed its mind.

In March 2022, Georgia and John McGinty were riding in an Uber in New Jersey when it crashed, and they suffered extensive injuries.

Mrs McGinty’s injuries included spine fractures and traumatic injuries to her abdominal wall.

“I was in the critical care unit for a week,” she told the BBC.

“I had a horrible post-operative infection and almost died during this time, I wasn’t able to care for my child who was suffering from unrelated injury,” she said.

John fractured his sternum and sustained injuries to his hand.

“I shattered my wrist, broke my hand, and I have a steel rod with about nine pins in it. I don’t have full function of my left hand,” he said.

“I am in pain every day.”

He added that they “accumulated a tremendous amount of medical debt” and still need further medical treatment in the future, including a possible third operation for Georgia.

The couple attempted to sue Uber over the crash, citing the seventh amendment of the US Constitution, which grants people the right to a trial by jury.

But the tech firm argued that the couple could not take the case in front of a jury because of a clause in Uber’s US Terms of Use.

New Jersey’s Supreme Court agreed.

“We hold that the arbitration provision contained in the agreement under review, which Georgia or her minor daughter, while using her cell phone agreed to, is valid and enforceable,” its judgement says.

The judgment found the child had clicked the button to say she was 18 despite not being.

Referring to her daughter’s use of Uber Eats, Mrs McGinty says she does not know how it can be right that she is considered to have “authorised my child to waive our rights to go to a trial if we’re injured in a car accident.”

“I don’t know how anybody makes that leap,” she said.

Arbitration clauses are “very common,” especially when dealing with large corporations, said Ted Spaulding, a personal injury lawyer based in the state of Georgia.

An arbitrator is “most often a lawyer who does this for a living,” he said, who can “act like a judge and a jury”.

They decide on an outcome after weighing up arguments from both sides, and their fee is often split between both parties.

In the US, the enforceability of arbitration clauses differs state by state.

In its case, Disney used the arbitration clause in their terms to argue that a man whose wife died at Disney World could not sue them in a court of law.

Jeffrey Piccolo filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Disney after his wife, Dr Kanokporn Tangsuan, died following an allergic reaction at a restaurant, run by a third party, at Disney World Florida in 2023.

Disney said Mr Piccolo had waived his right to a jury trial when he signed up to a free trial of Disney+ in 2019.

Disney later withdrew its claim to arbitration and opted to proceed with a jury trial after media coverage of the lawsuit.

“We believe this situation warrants a sensitive approach to expedite a resolution for the family who have experienced such a painful loss,” Disney executive Josh D’Amaro told the BBC in a statement in August.

Mr Spaulding says: “The law understandably says, ‘Look, you have the duty to know what you’re signing’,” referring to the terms and conditions people often accept when using a product or a service.

However, he says “the scope should be within the transaction that you’re agreeing to”.

Georgia and John McGinty say the Uber case has been “absolutely devastating” to their family.

Georgia says their daughter, now 14, “suffered a lot of trauma as a result”.

She had a separate physical health issue which she was going through at the time, which her parents found difficult to help with while going through their own injuries.

“Years of her life with her parents… were taken away,” she says.

“Luckily, she’s a fighter, like her parents are,” says John.

“We are inadvertently teaching her adversity and strength and family and prayer and resilience.”

Uber told BBC News: “The court concluded that on multiple occasions the plaintiff herself agreed to Uber’s Terms of Use, including the arbitration agreement.”

The company added: “We are dedicated to road safety.”

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

In May a huge iceberg broke off from an Antarctic ice shelf, drifted, and came to a stop – right in front of “maybe the world’s unluckiest” penguins.

Like a door shutting, the iceberg’s huge walls sealed off the Halley Bay colony from the sea.

It seemed to spell the end for hundreds of newly-hatched fluffy chicks whose mothers, out hunting for food, may no longer have been able to reach them.

Then, a few weeks ago, the iceberg shifted and got on the move again.

Scientists have now discovered that the tenacious penguins found a way to beat the colossal iceberg – satellite pictures seen exclusively by BBC News this week show life in the colony.

But scientists endured a long, anxious wait until this point – and the chicks face another potentially deadly challenge in the coming months.

In August, when we asked the British Antarctic Survey if the emperor penguins had survived, they couldn’t tell us.

“We will not know until the sun comes up,” said scientist Peter Fretwell.

It was still Antarctic winter so satellites couldn’t penetrate the total darkness to take pictures of the birds.

This label of “maybe the world’s unluckiest penguins” comes from Peter, who has shared the penguins’ ups and downs for years.

These creatures teeter on the edge of life and death, and this was just the latest in a string of near-misses.

It was once a stable colony and with 14,000 – 25,000 breeding pairs annually, the second biggest in the world.

But in 2019, news came of a catastrophic breeding failure. Peter and his colleagues discovered that for three years the colony had failed to raise any chicks.

Baby penguins need to live on sea ice until they are strong enough to survive in open water. But climate change is warming the oceans and air, contributing to sea ice becoming more unstable and prone to sudden disintegration in storms.

With no sea ice, the chicks drowned.

A few hundred stragglers moved their home to the nearby MacDonald Ice rumples and kept the group going.

That is until A83 iceberg, which at 380 sq km (145 sq miles) is roughly the size of the Isle of Wight, calved off the Brunt Ice Shelf in May.

Peter feared a total wipe-out. It has happened to other penguin colonies – an iceberg blocked a group in the Ross Sea for several years, leading to no breeding success, he explains.

A few days ago, the sun rose again in Antarctica. The Sentinel-1 satellites that Peter uses orbited over Halley Bay, taking pictures of the ice sheet.

Peter opened the files. “I was dreading seeing that there wouldn’t be anything there at all,” he says. But, against the odds, he found what he hoped for – a brown smudge on the white ice sheet. The penguins are alive.

“It was a huge relief,” he says.

But how they survived remains a mystery. The iceberg could be around 15m (49ft) tall, meaning the penguins could not climb it.

“There’s an ice crack, so they might have been able to dive through it,” he says.

The iceberg probably extends more than 50m beneath the waves, but penguins can dive up to 500m, he explains.

“Even if there is just a small crack, they might have dived underneath it,” he says.

The team will now wait for higher-resolution pictures that show exactly how many penguins are there.

Scientists at the British research base at Halley will visit to verify the size and health of the colony.

But Antarctica remains a rapidly changing region affected by our warming planet, as well as natural phenomena that make life difficult there.

The MacDonald Ice rumples where the penguins now live is dynamic and unpredictable, and Antarctic seasonal sea ice levels are close to record lows.

As A83 moved, it changed the ice topography, meaning the penguins’ breeding site is now “more exposed”, Peter says.

Cracks have appeared in the ice and the edge with the sea is getting closer day-by-day.

If the ice breaks up under the chicks before they are able to swim, in around December, Peter warns they will perish.

“They’re such incredible animals. It’s a bit bleak. Like many animals in Antarctica, they live on the sea ice. But it is changing, and if your habitat changes then it’s never good,” he says.

A controversial women’s-only museum exhibit could soon re-open in Australia, after an appeal judge overturned a ruling that it breached anti-discrimination laws.

The luxurious Ladies Lounge at the Museum of Old and New Art (Mona) in Hobart had sought to highlight historic misogyny by banning male visitors from entering.

It was forced to shut in May when one affected patron sued the gallery for gender discrimination and won.

But on Friday, Tasmanian Supreme Court Justice Shane Marshall found that men could be excluded from the Ladies Lounge, because the law allows for discrimination if it promotes “equal opportunity” for a marginalised group.

“(The Ladies Lounge provides) women with a rare glimpse of what it is like to be advantaged rather than disadvantaged,” he said.

Kirsha Kaechele, the artist who created the exhibit, called the ruling a “big win”.

“It took 30 seconds for the decision to be delivered – 30 seconds to quash the patriarchy,” she said in a statement.

“Today’s verdict demonstrates a simple truth: women are better than men.”

Mona has a longstanding reputation for being provocative, and the exclusive opulence and pageantry of the the Ladies Lounge – which opened in 2020 and housed some of the museum’s most acclaimed works – is no different.

Ms Kaechele said that she had created the space to highlight the exclusion Australian women faced for decades, such as the decision to ban them from drinking in the main section of bars until 1965.

She described the exhibit as a “flipped universe” that provided a much needed “reset from this strange and disjointed world of male domination”.

But one man felt that the message was unlawful, and after being denied entry into the lounge last year, New South Wales native Jason Lau took his case to the Tasmania’s civil and administrative tribunal.

Representing himself throughout the case, he argued that the museum had violated the state’s anti-discrimination act by failing to provide “a fair provision of goods and services in line with the law” to him and other ticket holders who didn’t identify as female.

Mona had responded by claiming the rejection Mr Lau had felt was part of the artwork – so he hadn’t missed out – but the tribunal dismissed that reasoning. Further, it found that women no longer experienced the same level of exclusion from public spaces as they had in the past.

The new ruling will now send the case back to the tribunal, which will have to reconsider its judgement.

A spokesperson from Mona said that several steps remain before the lounge can officially re-open – including the tribunal’s updated ruling.

But the legal team representing the museum said Friday’s decision recognised the intended purpose of the Ladies Lounge “to highlight and challenge inequality that exists for woman in all spaces today”.

“I look forward to sharing what comes next. I think a celebration is in store,” Ms Kaechele added.

Israel’s assassination of Hassan Nasrallah, the long–standing leader of Hezbollah, is a major escalation in its war with the Lebanese militant group.

It has, potentially, brought the region one step closer to a much wider and even more damaging conflict, one that pulls in both Iran and the US.

So where is it likely to go from here?

That largely depends on three basic questions.

Hezbollah is reeling from blow after blow.

Its command structure has been decapitated, with more than a dozen top commanders assassinated. Its communications have been sabotaged with the shocking detonations of its pagers and walkie-talkies, and many of its weapons have been destroyed in air strikes.

The US-based Middle East security analyst Mohammed Al-Basha says: “The loss of Hassan Nasrallah will have significant implications, potentially destabilising the group and altering its political and military strategies in the short term.”

But any expectation that this vehemently anti-Israel organisation is going to suddenly give up and sue for peace on Israel’s terms is likely to be misplaced.

Hezbollah has already vowed to continue the fight. It still has thousands of fighters, many of them recent veterans of combat in Syria, and they are demanding revenge.

It still has a substantial arsenal of missiles, many of them long-range, precision-guided weapons which can reach Tel Aviv and other cities. There will be pressure within its ranks to use those soon, before they too get destroyed.

But if they do, in a mass attack that overwhelms Israel’s air defences and kills civilians, then Israel’s response is likely to be devastating, wreaking havoc on Lebanon’s infrastructure, or even extending to Iran.

This assassination is as much of a blow to Iran as it is to Hezbollah. It’s already announced five days of mourning.

It’s also taken emergency precautions, hiding away its leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamanei, in case he too gets assassinated.

Iran has yet to retaliate for the humiliating assassination in July of the Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh in a Tehran guesthouse. What has happened now will be causing hardliners in the regime to contemplate some kind of response.

Iran has a whole galaxy of allied heavily-armed militias around the Middle East, the so-called “Axis of Resistance“.

As well as Hezbollah, it has the Houthis in Yemen, and numerous groups in Syria and Iraq. Iran could well ask these groups to step up their attacks on both Israel and US bases in the region.

But whatever response Iran chooses, it will likely calibrate it to be just short of triggering a war that it cannot hope to win.

If anyone was in any doubt before this assassination, they won’t be now.

Israel clearly has no intention of pausing its military campaign for the 21-day ceasefire proposed by 12 nations, including its closest ally, the United States.

Its military reckon they have Hezbollah on the back foot now, so it will want to press on with its offensive until the threat of those missiles is removed.

Short of a capitulation by Hezbollah – which is unlikely – it is hard to see how Israel can achieve its war aim of removing the threat of Hezbollah attacks without sending in troops on the ground.

The Israel Defense Forces have released footage of its infantry training close to the border for this very purpose.

But Hezbollah has also spent the last 18 years, since the end of the last war, training to fight the next one. In his final public speech before his death, Nasrallah told his followers that an Israeli incursion into south Lebanon would be, in his words, “a historic opportunity”.

For the IDF, going into Lebanon would be relatively easy. But getting out could – like Gaza – take months.

Michael Fortin was at the heart of Hollywood’s golden age of streaming.

The actor and aerial cinematographer turned his hobby of flying drones into a profitable business in 2012 just as the streaming wars were taking off. For a decade, he was flying high above film sets, creating sleek aerial shots for movies and TV shows on Netflix, Amazon and Disney.

Now he’s on the verge of becoming homeless – again. He was evicted from the Huntington Beach home he shared with his wife and two young children and now is being booted from the Las Vegas apartment they moved to because they could no longer afford to live in Southern California.

“We were saving to buy a house, we had money, we had done things the right way,” he says. “Two years ago, I didn’t worry about going out to dinner with my wife and kids and spending 200 bucks.”

“Now I worry about going out and spending $5 on a value meal at McDonald’s.”

For over a decade, business was booming in Hollywood, with studios battling to catch up to new companies like Netflix and Hulu. But the good times ground to a halt in May 2023, when Hollywood’s writers went on strike.

The strikes lasted multiple months and marked the first time since the 1960s that both writers and actors joined forces – effectively shutting down Hollywood production. But rather than roaring back, in the one year since the strikes ended, production has fizzled.

Projects have been cancelled and production was cut across the city as jobs have dried up, with layoffs at many studios – most recently at Paramount. It had a second round of layoffs this week, as the storied movie company moves to cut 15% of its workforce ahead of a merger with the production company Skydance.

Unemployment in film and TV in the United States was at 12.5% in August, but many think those numbers are actually much higher, because many film workers either do not file for unemployment benefits because they’re not eligible or they’ve exhausted those benefits after months of not working.

As a whole, the number of US productions during the second quarter of 2024 was down about 40% compared to the same period in 2022. Globally, there was a 20% decline over that period, according to ProdPro, which tracks TV and film productions.

That means less new movies and binge-worthy shows for us.

But experts say the streaming boom wasn’t sustainable. And studios are trying to figure out how to be profitable in a new world when people don’t pay for cable TV funded by commercials.

“The air has come out of the content bubble,” says Matthew Belloni, the founder of Puck News, which covers the entertainment industry. “Crisis is a good word. I try not to be alarmist, but crisis is what people are feeling.”

Part of the boom was fuelled by Wall Street, where tech giants like Netflix saw record growth and studios, like Paramount, saw their share prices soar for adding their own streaming service offers.

“It caused an overheating of the content market. There were 600 scripted live action series airing just a few years ago and then the stock market stopped rewarding that,” Mr Belloni says. “Netflix crashed – all the other companies crashed. Netflix has since recovered – but the others are really struggling to get to profitability.”

And along with the streaming bubble bursting, some productions are also being lured away from California by attractive tax incentives in other states and countries. Los Angeles leaders are so concerned about the slowdown that Mayor Karen Bass created a task force last month to consider new incentives for film production in Hollywood.

“The entertainment industry is critical to the economic vitality of the Los Angeles region,” Bass said announcing the plan, explaining it is a “cornerstone” of the city’s economy and supplies hundreds of thousands of jobs.

Recent data shows the entertainment industry contributes over $115bn (£86bn) annually to the region’s economy, with an employment base of over 681,000 people, the mayor said.

The writers’ and actors’ strikes lasted for months and resulted in union contracts that offer more money and protections against artificial intelligence.

Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, the chief negotiator with the Screen Actors Guild union, told the BBC that some consolidation in Hollywood was inevitable. He says he is optimistic that production will be ramping up soon.

“What makes these companies special, what gives them their unique ability to create value is their relationship with creative talent,” he said while visiting a picket line outside a Disney office in September, where video game voice actors are currently on strike fighting for similar protections.

Hollywood “always thinks it’s in crisis,” he says. “It is a town that constantly faces technological innovation – all kinds of change – which is part of the magic. Part of keeping content fresh is everyone having the idea that things don’t always have to be the way they’ve been.”

Mr Fortin’s drone company was operating nearly every day before the strikes. Now he’s flown the drones just 22 days in the year since the strikes ended. And as an actor – he often plays tough guys – he has worked just 10 days. He used to work as a background actor to get by, but the pay barely covers the gas money to get to Los Angeles from Las Vegas.

“It was a great wave, and it crashed,” Mr Fortin said after a day flying his drones on the AppleTV+ show Platonic – his first gig with drones since April.

“Things are coming in little by little,” he says in his van before driving back to Las Vegas for a court hearing to fight his eviction order.

“Hollywood gave me everything,” he says. “But it feels like the industry has turned its back on lots of people, not just me.”

A lot of us have been there, locked in a metal cylinder flying at more than 500mph (804km/h), gritting our teeth about the armrest the person to the left is hogging.

Or the person next to the window who keeps getting up to go to the toilet, or the person in front who has suddenly put their seat back, squashing your knees.

With roughly half of the UK’s households flying once a year, how people behave on planes is an ongoing bugbear.

And this week a Hong Kong couple were banned by Cathay Pacific after tensions flared over a reclined seat.

So how can we avoid getting in our fellow travellers’ bad books?

Someone putting their seat back on a long-haul flight can be frustrating – but it seems to trigger Britons and Americans to different degrees.

A 2023 survey by Skyscanner into the issue indicated that 40% of people in the UK find it annoying at any one time, but a YouGov survey earlier this year suggested that only a quarter of Americans view it as unacceptable.

Whatever the percentage, reclining seats “really are a problem”, according to Charmaine Davies, a former flight attendant.

She says cabin crew sometimes have to step in to stop anger boiling over between passengers.

The basic problem is how airlines cram seats onto planes, according to Prof Jim Salzman of University of California, Los Angeles. “[The airlines] are able to pass on the anger and frustration of cramped seating to passengers who blame each other for bad behaviour instead of the airlines who created the problem in the first place.”

William Hanson, an etiquette coach and author, says it’s a matter of choosing your time to recline your seat, which you shouldn’t do during a meal. Check whether the person behind is leaning on the table, or using a laptop – and recline slowly.

If in doubt just talk to your fellow passenger, he says. Don’t expect them to be a mind reader.

Another gripe linked to the amount of space people have on planes is double armrest hogging.

Mary, a flight attendant for a major US airline, says she is often given a middle seat between “two guys with both their arms on armrests” when she’s being transferred for work and doesn’t have a choice of seat.

Nearly a third of UK airline passengers found this annoying in 2023, the Skyscanner survey suggested.

Mary has had “a tussle with elbows”, she says, but has a strategy for reclaiming the space.

“I wait until they reach for a drink and take the armrest. One [guy] kept trying to push my arm, and I just had to give him a look: ‘We’re not doing that today.'”

To resolve any tension, Mr Hanson says people should get used to the idea of having “elbow rests” rather than armrests, and share them.

Many of us will be familiar with the dilemma of being in a window seat and needing to go to the toilet, but the person next to you has fallen asleep.

Do you nudge them to wake them up, or climb over them?

More than half of Americans responding to the YouGov survey said having to climb over someone in the seat next to them to go to the toilet was unacceptable.

Mr Hanson says he normally has an aisle seat, and before going to sleep he tells the passenger next to him it’s fine to wake him up or hop over if they need to.

If sat in the middle or window seat, you should just gently let the passenger in the aisle seat know you need to get past them – but be aware you might not speak the same language, he advises.

If a passenger has been drinking alcohol, it can make them need to go to the toilet more often too.

Zoe, a former flight attendant with Virgin Atlantic, was on a flight to Ibiza on a different carrier where many of the passengers had been drinking in the airport bar beforehand, she says.

As soon as the flight took off and the seatbelt light went off, “everybody stood up” and started queuing for the toilet. Some got “quite aggressive”, she says, leading to the cabin crew turning the seatbelt signs back on, forcing everybody to sit down.

Unfortunately, one passenger really couldn’t wait so had to “have a wee in a carrier bag”.

“He put some swimming shorts in there first to soak it up,” says Zoe.

About a third of Brits find people standing up as soon as the plane lands annoying, the Skyscanner survey indicated.

“Just stay in your seat,” says former flight attendant Ms Davies. “There’s no point jumping up because you’re not going anywhere.”

It normally takes the ground crew several minutes to either hook up the passenger boarding bridge or put boarding stairs in place.

Even after that, if you have checked baggage, you’re going to need to wait for it to get to the carousel, she says, “no matter how quickly you get off the plane”.

Mr Hanson says that in etiquette terms, there’s nothing wrong with wanting to get up to stretch your legs, and perhaps people just want to get off because they are unconsciously a bit scared of being on a plane.

But he adds that it is “faintly comical” when people all get up at once and then “stand there like a lemon”.

Other air passenger pet hates include people jumping queues, using phones or other devices without headphones, draping long hair over the backs of seats, and taking shoes or socks off on a plane.

If you become aware the flight attendants are using spray to “spritz” the aircraft near you, you may want to put some socks or deodorant on, Mary says, as cabin crew won’t say anything directly.

But with air travel continuing to grow, how can we get on with other passengers on planes?

The key is everyone being considerate, Mr Hanson says.

“If you don’t want to temper your behaviour to get along with other people then there’s something wrong with you, to be blunt.”

It is time to stop talking about the Middle East being on the brink of a much more serious war. After the devastating Israeli attack on Lebanon – which killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah – it feels as if they’re tumbling over it.

It was a huge series of blasts, according to people who were in Beirut. A friend of mine in the city said it was the most powerful she had heard in any of Lebanon’s wars.

As rescue workers searched among the rubble, Hezbollah remained silent on the fate of their leader – before confirming his death on Saturday afternoon.

• FOLLOW LIVE: Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah killed

It will reinforce Israel’s belief that this is their greatest triumph yet against their great enemy.

They have mobilised more soldiers, and seem to want to pick up the pace. They may even be thinking about a ground incursion into Lebanon.

It is a massively escalatory action. Over the last eleven months there has been an ongoing tit-for-tat between both sides, though with more pressure from the Israelis.

But now they have decided they are going to push.

They will be delighted with what they have done because – unlike the war against Hamas, which they did not expect – they have been planning this war since 2006. They are now putting those plans into effect.

There are now huge challenges for Hezbollah.

Their rockets landed again in Israeli territory on Saturday morning, targeting areas further south, so they are pushing back, but this is an uncertain period.

That uncertainty is part of the danger. The predictability of the war of attrition that went on for months and months meant people knew where they were – they absolutely do not now.

Earlier on Friday there had been hopes, admittedly faint ones, that Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was at least prepared to discuss a proposal for a 21-day ceasefire. It came from the US and France and was backed by Israel’s most significant Western allies.

But in a typically defiant and at times aggressive speech to the UN General Assembly in New York, Netanyahu did not talk about diplomacy.

Israel, he said, had no choice but to fight savage enemies who sought its annihilation. Hezbollah would be defeated – and there would be total victory over Hamas in Gaza, which would ensure the return of Israeli hostages.

Far from being lambs led to the slaughter – a phrase sometimes used in Israel to refer to the Nazi Holocaust – Israel, he said, was winning.

• 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

The huge attack in Beirut that occurred as he finished his speech was an even more emphatic sign that a truce in Lebanon was not on Israel’s agenda.

It seemed more than feasible that the attack was timed to follow up Mr Netanyahu’s threats that Israel could, and would, hit its enemies, wherever they were.

The Pentagon, the US defence department, said it had no advance warning from Israel about the raid.

A photo released by the prime minister’s office in Jerusalem showed him at a bank of communications equipment in what looked like his hotel in New York City. The image’s caption said it showed the moment that he authorised the raid.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken defended the policy he has worked on for months. He said there was still room for negotiation. That assertion is looking hollow.

The Americans have very few levers to use against any side. They cannot, by law, talk to Hezbollah and Hamas as they are classified as foreign terrorist organisations. With the US elections only weeks away, they are even less likely to put pressure on Israel than they have been in the last year.

Powerful voices in the Israeli government and military wanted to attack Hezbollah in the days after the Hamas attacks last October. They argued that they could deal their enemies in Lebanon a decisive blow. The Americans persuaded them not to do it, arguing that the trouble it might set off across the region offset any potential security benefit for Israel.

But in the course of the last year Netanyahu has made a habit of defying President Joe Biden’s wishes about the way Israel is fighting. Despite providing Israel with the aircraft and bombs used in the raid on Beirut, President Biden and team were spectators.

His policy for the last year, as a lifelong supporter of Israel, was to try to influence Netanyahu by showing solidarity and support, delivering weapons and diplomatic protection.

Biden believed that he could persuade Netanyahu not just to change the way Israel fights – the president has said repeatedly that it is imposing too much suffering and killing too many Palestinian civilians – but to accept an American plan for the day after that rested on creating an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel.

Netanyahu rejected the idea out of hand and has ignored Joe Biden’s advice.

After the attack on Beirut, Blinken repeated his view that a combination of deterrence and diplomacy had staved off a wider war in the Middle East. But as events spiral out of US control, he is not sounding convincing.

Big decisions lie ahead.

First of all, Hezbollah is going to have to decide how to use its remaining arsenal. Do they try to mount a much heavier attack on Israel? If they don’t use their remaining rockets and missiles in storage, they might decide Israel will get around to destroying even more of them.

The Israelis also face highly consequential decisions. They have already talked about a ground operation against Lebanon, and while they haven’t yet mobilised all the reserves they might need, their military said on Saturday that they were “ready for a wider escalation”.

Some in Lebanon believe that in a ground war Hezbollah could negate some of Israel’s military strengths.

Western diplomats, among them Israel’s staunchest allies, were hoping to calm matters, urging Israel to accept a diplomatic solution. They will now be looking at events with dismay and also a sense of powerlessness.

It was billed as a decisive week for Ukraine.

A chance for President Volodymyr Zelensky to present his boldly named “victory plan” to America’s most powerful politicians, during a visit to the US.

But it’s unclear if Kyiv is any closer to getting any of the key asks on its wish list.

And Zelensky has antagonised senior Republicans, including Donald Trump.

Zelensky told the New Yorker magazine he believed Trump “doesn’t really know how to stop the war”, while he described his vice-presidential running mate JD Vance as “too radical”.

His remarks about Trump and Vance were a “big mistake”, says Mariya Zolkina, a Ukrainian political analyst and research fellow at the London School of Economics (LSE).

Separately, Zelensky’s visit to meet top democrats at an ammunition factory in the swing state of Pennsylvania was labelled as election interference by a senior congressional Republican.

The backlash to the visit came as a “big surprise” to Zelensky’s team, adds Ms Zolkina – an operation normally known for its slick PR.

Zelensky’s much-hyped visit was carefully timed to try and secure crucial support for Ukraine’s war effort from President Joe Biden, who has just months left in office.

But that also meant walking straight into a highly-charged US election campaign – a tightrope act.

After reports that Trump had decided to freeze Zelensky out, the pair did eventually meet on Friday at Trump Tower in New York City.

Standing side by side in front of reporters it was, at times, an awkward encounter.

Trump declared he had a “very good relationship” with both Zelensky and Russia’s Vladimir Putin – an equivalence that is painful to Ukrainian ears.

Zelensky gently interjected to say he hoped relations were better with him than with Putin – a remark laughed off by Trump.

Trump had already been busy at rallies that week praising Russia’s historic military record, while lambasting the current US administration for giving “billions of dollars” to Zelensky who he claimed had “refused to make a deal” to end the conflict.

Later Zelensky hailed the talks as “very productive” but there’s little sign yet that he had managed to adjust Trump’s fundamental approach.

Although he told Fox News on Saturday that he’d received “very direct information” from Trump that “he will be on our side”.

At a rally in Michigan on Friday night, the Republican candidate again voiced his intention to quickly “settle” the war, a repeated claim that’s led many to conclude he could cut aid to Kyiv and press Ukraine into ceding territory.

Meanwhile, in a thinly veiled attack on Trump, the Democratic candidate Kamala Harris said this week that those who would have Ukraine swap land for peace are supporting “proposals for surrender”.

Standing alongside her was none other than Zelensky as he carried out a dizzying round of diplomatic speed-dating and media interviews all through the week – including at the United Nations.

There was news of some further financial support ahead of a meeting with Biden at the White House – talks which were cordial but ambiguous in terms of their outcome, as Zelensky handed in his “victory plan” to end the war to the outgoing president.

Its contents have not been published but Ukraine’s request to be able to use Western-made long-range missiles to strike military targets deep inside Russia is widely thought to be one element.

Zelensky has for some time been asking Western countries for permission – but so far has not been given the green light.

Also thought to be in the plan is a plea for more robust security guarantees, including a longed-for invitation to join the Nato military alliance.

While the alliance makes encouraging noises about Ukraine’s future membership prospects, it’s been made clear that won’t happen while the country’s still at war.

Moscow’s troops continue to be on the attack in Ukraine’s east, despite Kyiv’s surprise incursion into Russia’s Kursk region.

Overall, the “victory plan” pitch is to bolster Ukraine’s position on the battlefield and push Putin towards a diplomatic peace.

But it was another political mismatch, believes the LSE’s Ms Zolkina, with the suite of proposals failing to “raise much enthusiasm”.

“Ukraine has the idea that it should be doubling down on its ambitions,” she says.

Zelensky is “sticking to the idea of getting an invitation to Nato but the US just isn’t there yet,” she adds.

On the permission to use long-range missiles, critics of Biden have accused him of getting cold feet as he tries to help Harris into the White House.

However Ms Zolkina says big announcements this week weren’t necessarily on the cards – although hopes remain that permission could yet come through, despite further nuclear threats from Putin.

Here in Kyiv, people continue to insist they can’t conceive of giving up land to Russia – often on the basis that a truce would simply allow Putin to regroup and relaunch fresh attacks down the line.

However Ms Zolkina believes that conversation around a ceasefire could change if genuinely meaningful security guarantees were on the table.

“If Ukraine was promised membership of Nato or if Ukraine signed a really strong security agreement with a big international player, this discussion about a possible tactical ceasefire would turn in a different way and the political resistance would not be as strong as it now.”

It has been a week where Zelensky went and gave his “victory plan” a hard sell. But the reality is that Washington DC has yet to show great eagerness, while events in the Middle East continue to divert attention away from Russia’s bloody invasion.

There is a young woman sheltering under a tree between two busy roads clutching a pile of documents to her chest.

These pieces of paper are more important to Bibi Nazdana than anything in the world: they are the divorce granted to her after a two-year court battle to free herself from life as a child bride.

They are the same papers a Taliban court has invalidated – a victim of the group’s hardline interpretation on Sharia (religious law) which has seen women effectively silenced in Afghanistan’s legal system.

Nazdana’s divorce is one of tens of thousands of court rulings revoked since the Taliban took control of the country three years ago this month.

It took just 10 days from them sweeping into the capital, Kabul, for the man she was promised to at seven to ask the courts to overturn the divorce ruling she had fought so hard for.

Hekmatullah had initially appeared to demand his wife when Nazdana was 15. It was eight years since her father had agreed to what is known as a ‘bad marriage’, which seeks to turn a family “enemy” into a “friend”.

She immediately approached the court – then operating under the US-backed Afghan government – for a separation, repeatedly telling them she could not marry the farmer, now in his 20s. It took two years, but finally a ruling was made in her favour: “The court congratulated me and said, ‘You are now separated and free to marry whomever you want.'”

But after Hekmatullah appealed the ruling in 2021, Nazdana was told she would not be allowed to plead her own case in person.

“At the court, the Taliban told me I shouldn’t return to court because it was against Sharia. They said my brother should represent me instead,” says Nazdana.

“They told us if we didn’t comply,” says Shams, Nazdana’s 28-year-old brother, “they would hand my sister over to him (Hekmatullah) by force.”

Her former husband, and now a newly signed up member of the Taliban, won the case. Shams’ attempts to explain to the court in their home province of Uruzgan that her life would be in danger fell on deaf ears.

The siblings decided they had been left with no choice but to flee.

When the Taliban returned to power three years ago, they promised to do away with the corruption of the past and deliver “justice” under Sharia, a version of Islamic law.

Since then, the Taliban say they have looked at some 355,000 cases.

Most were criminal cases – an estimated 40% are disputes over land and a further 30% are family issues including divorce, like Nazdana’s.

Nazdana’s divorce ruling was dug out after the BBC got exclusive access to the back offices of the Supreme Court in the capital, Kabul.

Abdulwahid Haqani – media officer for Afghanistan’s Supreme Court – confirms the ruling in favour of Hekmatullah, saying it was not valid because he “wasn’t present”.

“The previous corrupt administration’s decision to cancel Hekmatullah and Nazdana’s marriage was against the Sharia and rules of marriage,” he explains.

But the promises to reform the justice system have gone further than simply reopening settled cases.

The Taliban have also systematically removed all judges – both male and female – and replaced them with people who supported their hardline views.

Women were also declared unfit to participate in the judicial system.

“Women aren’t qualified or able to judge because in our Sharia principles the judiciary work requires people with high intelligence,” says Abdulrahim Rashid, director of foreign relations and communications at Taliban’s Supreme Court.

For the women who worked in the system, the loss is felt heavily – and not just for themselves.

Former Supreme Court judge Fawzia Amini – who fled the country after the Taliban returned – says there is little hope for women’s protections to improve under the law if there are no women in the courts.

“We played an important role,” she says. “For example, the Elimination of Violence against Women law in 2009 was one of our achievements. We also worked on the regulation of shelters for women, orphan guardianship and the anti-human trafficking law, to name a few.”

She also rubbishes the Taliban overturning previous rulings, like Nazdana’s.

“If a woman divorces her husband and the court documents are available as evidence then that’s final. Legal verdicts can’t change because a regime changes,” says Ms Amini.

“Our civil code is more than half a century old,” she adds. “It’s been practised since even before the Taliban were founded.

“All civil and penal codes, including those for divorce, have been adapted from the Quran.”

But the Taliban say Afghanistan’s former rulers simply weren’t Islamic enough.

Instead, they largely rely on Hanafi Fiqh (jurisprudence) religious law, which dates back to the 8th Century – albeit updated to “meet the current needs”, according to Abdulrahim Rashid.

“The former courts made decisions based on a penal and civil code. But now all decisions are based on Sharia [Islamic law],” he adds, proudly gesturing at the pile of cases they have already sorted through.

Ms Amini is less impressed by the plans for Afghanistan’s legal system going forward.

“I have a question for the Taliban. Did their parents marry based on these laws or based on the laws that their sons are going to write?” she asks.

Under the tree between two roads in an unnamed neighbouring country, none of this is any comfort to Nazdana.

Now just 20, she has been here for a year, clutching her divorce papers and hoping someone will help her.

“I have knocked on many doors asking for help, including the UN, but no-one has heard my voice,” she says.

“Where is the support? Don’t I deserve freedom as a woman?”

If you were in India and had 900,000 rupees ($10,800; £8,000), what would you buy? A car? A trip around the world? Diamond jewellery? Or a Coldplay concert ticket?

The British rock band is set to perform three shows of their Music of the Spheres world tour in Mumbai next year and the tickets are being sold for obscene amounts on reselling platforms, after being sold out in minutes on BookMyShow (BMS) – the concert’s official ticketing platform.

The tickets went on sale last Sunday and were priced from 2,500 rupees to 12,000 rupees. More than 10 million people competed to buy some 180,000 tickets.

Fans complained about hours-long digital queues and site crashes, but many also alleged that the sales were rigged as resellers had begun selling tickets for five times the price – touching even 900,000 rupees – before they were released on the official site.

Earlier this month, something similar happened with tickets for Oasis’ concert in the UK, where resellers charged more than £350 for tickets that cost £135. But even then, the inflated prices of Coldplay tickets stand out. To put this in perspective, Madonna charged £1,306.75 for VIP passes to her Celebration tour and the best tickets for Beyoncé’s Renaissance concerts sold for £2,400.

The events have sparked a conversation around ticket scalping in India, where people use bots or automation tools to bypass queues and purchase multiple tickets to sell on reselling platforms. Fans are questioning whether the official site had taken adequate steps to prevent this, or whether it chose to look the other way.

BMS has denied any association with resellers and urged fans to avoid tickets from “unauthorised sources” as they could be fake, but this hasn’t stopped people from viewing the site suspiciously.

Fans have complained about having a similar experience while buying tickets for Punjabi singer Diljit Dosanjh’s upcoming concerts. Tickets were released on Zomato Live, the concert promoter, earlier this month and after getting sold out, they began popping up on reselling platforms for several times the original price.

Ticket scalping is illegal in India, and experts say that while it’s possible that it’s happening anyway, it’s also likely that legitimate ticket-holders are selling theirs through resellers to make a profit due to the massive demand.

Graphic designer Dwayne Dias was among the few lucky ones who managed to buy tickets for the Coldplay concert from the official site. He bought four tickets for 6,450 rupees each.

Since then, he’s been approached by people who are willing to pay up to 60,000 rupees for a ticket. “If I wanted to, I could sell all the tickets and watch the concert in South Korea [Coldplay’s upcoming touring destination]. The amount will cover my travel expenses and I’ll be able to experience a new city,” he says.

While the inflated prices of Coldplay tickets are shocking, the huge demand for tickets to see popular international artists perform is not uncommon. In fact, the live music business in India has been growing in leaps and bounds over the past couple of years.

According to a report, music concerts generated about 8,000m rupees in revenue last year and by 2025, this figure is set to increase by 25%. Brian Tellis, a veteran in the music business and one of the founders of the Mahindra Blues music festival, says concerts have become a part of an individual’s – and the country’s – cultural currency.

• ⁠Oasis ticket row: How Ticketmaster’s owner has grip on UK live music scene
• Why do concert tickets now cost as much as a games console?

Chart-toppers like Ed Sheeran, Alan Walker and Dua Lipa have performed in India in the recent past, and the latter two are set to perform again this year. “Like for other industries, India is a booming market for the music business as well. There’s a huge demographic that’s young and has money to spend. Everyone wants a piece of the pie,” he says.

The soaring demand is evident in ticket prices and sales. Tellis says about a decade ago, 80% of production costs were footed by sponsors and 20% through ticket sales, but the numbers have reversed today.

“Attending a concert is a mix of bragging rights, being a conformist and being part of the scene,” he says. “There are true music lovers as well in the mix, but many attend because they get swept up by the hype surrounding a performance and they don’t want to feel left out.”

Days before and after Coldplay concert tickets went on sale, social media was full of captivating Instagram reels of the band performing hits like and in packed stadiums, with fans singing along and turning the venue into with their LED bracelets. Influencers waxed eloquent about their love for the band and there was no dearth of Coldplay memes.

Industry sources told the BBC that targeted marketing plays a key role in ticket sales – a task handled by the promoter’s website. The more demand is created, the more ticket prices can be raised. Organising concerts is tough, as they often incur losses, so when the opportunity arises, bankable performers are exploited for profits.

While some fans argue that the government should take steps to control ticket prices, Tellis doesn’t agree. “This [selling tickets] is entrepreneurship – it won’t be right for the government to get involved. Because if you want to control revenue, then you’ll have to also control costs,” he says.

Despite the upward trajectory of India’s live music business, experts say the country still has a long way to go before it can be on a par with the international music scene.

• Oasis hit out at Ticketmaster’s dynamic pricing after backlash

“We have very few concert venues and they are not up to international standards,” Tellis says. “That’s why artists perform fewer shows in India despite the massive demand.”

Dias and his friends recently travelled to Singapore to attend a Coldplay concert. He says the ticket-booking experience was smooth, the venue was top-class and the crowd was well-managed.

He’s not sure he’ll have the same experience at DY Patil stadium – the venue for the band’s concerts in India. “For one, it’s much smaller and crowds in India can be quite indisciplined,” he says. He’s also worried about how safe the venue will be and whether the crowd will be managed properly at entry and exit points.

But for now, he’s holding on to his tickets and is prepared to endure whatever lies ahead, just to get a chance to watch Chris Martin and company perform again.

“I saw five people smiling, looking forward to their journey.”

That was Renata Rojas’ recollection of her time on a support ship with five people bound for the Titanic wreck. They were about to climb into a submersible made by Oceangate.

Just 90 minutes later, these five would become the victims of a deep sea disaster: an implosion. Images from the depths of the Atlantic show the wreckage of the sub crushed, mangled, and scattered across the sea floor.

The photos were released by the US Coast Guard during an inquiry to establish what led to its catastrophic failure in June 2023.

The inquiry finished on Friday and over the past two weeks of hearings, a picture has emerged of ignored safety warnings and a history of technical problems. We have also gained new insight into the final hours of those on board.

It has shown us that this story won’t go away any time soon.

British explorer Hamish Harding and British-Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood, who’d brought his 19-year-old son Suleman along, had paid Oceangate for a dive to see the Titanic which lies 3,800m down.

The sub was piloted by the company’s CEO Stockton Rush with French Titanic expert Paul-Henri Nargeolet as co-pilot.

Once the craft had slipped beneath the waves, it could send short text messages to the surface. A message sent from about 2,300m said “All good here”.

About an hour and a half into the dive, from 3,346m, Titan’s final message reported it had released two weights to slow its descent as it neared the sea floor.

Communications were then lost – the sub had imploded.

The US Coast Guard said nothing in the messages that indicated that the passengers knew their craft was failing.

The implosion was instantaneous. There would have been no time to even register what was happening.

Mr Rush proudly described the Titan as “experimental”. But others had voiced their concerns to him about its unconventional design in the years prior to the dive.

At the hearing David Lochridge, Oceangate’s former director of marine operations, described Titan as an “abomination”.

In 2018, he’d compiled a report highlighting multiple safety issues, but said these concerns were dismissed and he was fired.

Titan had several unusual features.

The shape of its hull – the part where the passengers were – was cylindrical rather than spherical so the effects of the pressure were not distributed evenly.

A window was installed but only considered safe down to 1,300m. The US Coast Guard also heard about problems with the joins between different parts of the sub.

The hull’s material attracted the most attention – it was made from layers of carbon fibre mixed with resin.

Roy Thomas from the American Bureau of Shipping said carbon fibre was not approved for deep sea subs because it can weaken with every dive and fail suddenly without warning.

The National Transportation and Safety Board (NTSB) presented an analysis of samples of Titan’s hull left over from its construction.

It showed areas where the carbon fibre layers had separated – a known problem called delamination – as well as wrinkles, waviness and voids within its structure.

This suggests the material contained imperfections before the sub had even made a dive.

The NTSB team also saw this delamination in wreckage found on the seafloor.

Most of the hull was destroyed, but in the pieces that survived, the carbon fibre has split into layers and in some places had cracked.

Officials are not currently saying the hull’s failure caused the implosion, but it’s a key focus of the investigation.

A place on the sub cost up to $250,000 (£186,000) – and over the course of 2021 and 2022 Titan made 23 dives, 12 of which successfully reached the wreck of the Titanic.

But these descents were far from problem free. A dive log book recorded 118 technical faults, ranging from thrusters failing, to batteries dying – and once the front dome of the sub fell off.

The investigation focused on a dive that took place in 2022, when paying passenger Fred Hagen heard an “alarming” noise as the sub was returning to the surface.

“We were still underwater and there was a large bang or cracking sound,” he said.

“We were all concerned that maybe there was a crack in the hull.”

He said Mr Rush thought the noise was the sub shifting in the metal frame that surrounded it.

The US Coast Guard inquiry was shown new analysis of data from the sub’s sensors, suggesting the noise was caused by a change in the fabric of the hull.

This affected how Titan was able to respond to the pressures of the deep.

Phil Brooks, Oceangate’s former Engineering Director, said the craft wasn’t properly checked after that dive because the company was struggling financially, and instead it was left for months on the dockside in Canada.

“I’m not dying. No-one is dying on my watch – period.”

These were the words of Mr Rush in a 2018 transcript of a meeting at Oceangate HQ.

When questioned about Titan’s safety, he replied: “I understand this kind of risk, and I’m going into it with eyes open and I think this is one of the safest things I will ever do.”

According to some witnesses Mr Rush had an unwavering belief in his sub. They described a dominating personality who wouldn’t tolerate dissenting views.

“Stockton would fight for what he wanted… and he wouldn’t give an inch much at all,” said Tony Nissen, a former engineering director.

“Most people would just eventually back down from Stockton.”

Passenger Fred Hagen disagreed, describing Mr Rush as a “brilliant man”.

“Stockton made a very conscious and astute effort to maintain a perceptible culture of safety around a high risk environment.”

Former employee David Lochridge was so worried about Titan that he went to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA).

This is the US government body that sets and enforces workplace safety standards.

Correspondence reveals that he provided extensive information about the sub’s problems – and was placed on OSHA’s whistleblower witness protection scheme.

But he said OSHA were slow and failed to act, and after increasing pressure from Oceangate’s lawyers, he dropped the case and signed a non disclosure agreement.

He told the hearing: “I believe that if OSHA had attempted to investigate the seriousness of the concerns I raised on multiple occasions this tragedy may have been prevented.”

Deep-sea subs can undergo an extensive safety assessment by independent marine organisations such as the American Bureau of Shipping (ABS) or DNV (a global accreditation organisation based in Norway).

Almost all operators complete this certification process, but Oceangate chose not to for Titan. At the hearing, some industry experts called for it to become compulsory.

“I think as long as we insist on certification as a requirement for continued human occupied exploration in the deep sea we can avoid these kinds of tragic outcomes,” said Patrick Lahey, CEO of Triton submarines.

Witnesses at the hearing included former Oceangate employees, paying passengers who’d made dives in the sub, industry experts and those involved in the search and rescue effort.

But some key people were noticeably missing.

Mr Rush’s wife Wendy, who was Oceangate’s communications director and played a central role in the company, did not appear. Nor did director of operations and sub pilot Scott Griffith or former US Coast Guard Rear Admiral John Lockwood, who was on Oceangate’s board.

The reasons for their absences were not given and their version of events remain unheard.

The US Coast Guard will now put together a final report with the aim of preventing a disaster like this from ever happening again.

But the story will not end there.

Criminal prosecutions may follow. And private lawsuits too – the family of French diver PH Nargeolet is already suing for more than $50 million.

The ripples from this deep sea tragedy are likely to continue for many years.

In this closely fought US election, vice-presidential candidates JD Vance and Tim Walz were picked to sway Midwestern and rural voters who might be hesitating over Donald Trump or Kamala Harris. In Nebraska, owing to an electoral quirk, such voters could prove pivotal.

As an expert breeder, Wade Bennett can tell you the precise parentage of every one of the 140 head of Charolais cattle he keeps on a small holding on the edge of Nebraska’s rolling Sandhills.

Despite being a staunch Republican, he’s less certain, however, of the pedigree of the man once again vying for his vote.

Donald Trump, he says, would probably be “kicked out” of his voting shortlist if there were other conservative options available.

One of the least-populated states, Nebraska is, like much of rural America, not only deeply Republican but deeply Christian, too. And some here, like Wade, are uncomfortable with what they see as Donald Trump’s personal, moral failings.

But with Kamala Harris and a smattering of small-party candidates the only other options this November, Wade is putting his scruples to one side.

“Even as a Christian,” he tells me. “It is what it is.”

He’s focusing not on Trump’s character, but on his policies – and he likes the promises he hears to crack down on illegal immigration, cut the cost of living and put more tariffs on trade.

Even his slight hesitation, however, is enough to give Democrats hope.

The rightward drift of the American countryside over the past 25 years has been remarkable.

In 2000, Republicans had a six-point advantage over Democrats among registered rural voters, according to the Pew Research Center.

But by 2024, they had established a mammoth 25-point lead.

Even though only a fifth of Americans live outside the big towns and cities, the strength of their shift towards Donald Trump was key to his victory against Hillary Clinton in 2016.

But for Democrats, the rural vote is still worth fighting for, particularly where even small gains in already tight states just might make the difference.

So it’s no coincidence that both Kamala Harris and Donald Trump now have running mates whose white rural roots are being used to make the argument for who is best placed to speak on behalf of this country’s great Midwest.

Vice-presidential candidates don’t usually have much impact on how people vote, but when Tim Walz and JD Vance meet in a primetime televised debate on Tuesday night, they will be hoping their different backstories and visions resonate with voters still unsure about Harris, a California Democrat, and Trump, a New York real estate developer.

Walz, the current governor of Minnesota, was born in small-town Nebraska, and has made much of his background “working cattle, building fence”.

His time as a schoolteacher and football coach before politics, and his subsequent record in Minnesota, providing tax credits to families and free school meals, are precisely the kinds of things the Democrats hope will resonate with struggling rural voters.

Ohio Senator Vance, on the other hand, is a man who’s also made much of his rural roots, but with a far less optimistic framing.

Vance rose to national prominence with his best-selling book, Hillbilly Elegy, the story of his family’s origins in eastern Kentucky, their struggle with poverty, his mother’s fight with addiction and the joblessness and blight of Middletown, Ohio, where he grew up.

Where Tim Walz has emphasised individual freedom and what binds Americans, Vance has focused on a “ruling class” that he says has failed working families in small communities all over the country.

In writings and in interviews, he has stressed the need for individual responsibility, rather than welfare – although he does not support cutting programmes like Social Security. And he echoes Trump’s vision of protecting American jobs and workers with tariffs and border walls.

I meet 42-year-old Shana Callahan casting for catfish under a setting sun in the Two Rivers Recreation Area, just outside the city of Omaha. The cost of living, once again, is never far from mind.

“Everything costs more, everything sucks,” she says.

“I drive an F-150 and when Trump was in office, I was paying about 55 bucks for a tank of gas. Right now, it’s anywhere between 85 to 109, and, you know, the cost of groceries and everything has just gone through the roof.”

There were structural reasons for the depressed oil market during some of Trump’s presidential term, not least the Covid crisis, and prices had begun to climb steeply before he left office. Some economists also say President Joe Biden’s 2021 stimulus spending contributed to broader inflation.

But economics is a feeling in US elections, not a graph on a page, and Shana has made up her mind.

There’s nothing, she tells me, that would convince her to vote for Kamala Harris, especially not Tim Walz’s local backstory and his claims to represent people like her.

“For one thing, the man’s a goofball,” she says. “I can’t respect him. He comes out on the freaking stage like, ‘Oh, go, coach’.”

The story of JD Vance being raised by a grandmother because of the opioid crisis – which she knows from the film version of his book – resonates deeply, however.

“The beginning of the movie is like, you know, family is always going to back you up. I mean, that’s kind of the way it is out here.”

“I’m only 42 and I’ve had like, three friends die of fentanyl.”

Shana lives in the one small part of this vast, rural state that may find itself with an outsized impact on November’s election result.

Under the US system, each state is allocated a specific number of votes in what’s known as the electoral college. Presidential candidates need to reach 270 votes to win the White House.

Unlike most of the rest of America, where all the electoral college votes in each state go to the winner of the popular vote, Nebraska does things differently.

Three of its five votes are decided by whoever wins three individual districts.

Nebraska is a reliably Republican state but its second district – worth one vote – went to Trump in 2016, to Biden in 2020, and this time round there’s a scenario in which whoever wins it could win the whole election.

If Harris wins the Rust Belt swing states of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin and Trump takes the Sun Belt states of Georgia, North Carolina, Arizona and Nevada then the second district would provide the single tie-breaking vote.

District two is a microcosm of America, with the heavily Democrat-leaning city of Omaha balanced by the Republican-leaning outskirts and the countryside beyond.

In their backyard in the centre of Omaha, Jason Brown and Ruth Huebner-Brown are spraying giant blue dots on plain white lawn signs.

“We’re like a little swing state within a state,” Jason tells me. “It could absolutely, I guess you would say, be a history-changing moment. This could really be the ultimate one vote that matters.”

In an effort to keep the “blue dot” blue, the Harris-Walz campaign has been massively outspending Trump-Vance here, pouring millions into TV advertising.

Ruth tells me she believes it’s having an effect on the doorsteps.

“When they talk about Walz he’s very relatable. He’s, you know, one of us. And, you know, they just trust him.”

“And I think a lot of people are very tired of the divisiveness and the bitterness and he’s, he’s anything but that.”

There’s plenty of divisiveness in Nebraska.

Even here, deep in the American countryside, you can hear the unsubstantiated assertions that large numbers of immigrants are unlawfully claiming Social Security or engaging in ballot fraud.

One Republican voter admits his belief in such claims is based not on fact, but on what he’s heard, with echoes of JD Vance’s similar justification for his promotion of the debunked allegation that Haitian migrants are eating pets in Ohio.

A soybean farmer tells me that Kamala Harris is a “DEI hire”; another says it is white people who are being discriminated against in today’s America.

Yet, on the Democratic side, there are signs of groupthink too – the bafflement over the choices of their opponents and a readiness to see all Republican voters as motivated by the narrow politics of prejudice.

But there’s something else unique about Nebraska’s electoral system. Its state legislature is nonpartisan, meaning it does not recognise the party affiliations of its elected members nor organise them around formal party voting blocs.

In the city of Hastings, Michelle Smith is out canvassing for a seat in that local legislature.

She’s a Democrat fighting for votes in a very red district, but, she says, the system encourages compromise.

“My own father is one of those people who’s going to vote for Donald Trump, and I understand it,” she tells me.

“I’m a business owner. I paid less taxes when Donald Trump was president. Our prices were lower at the grocery store.”

How does she campaign?

“I bring it down to the local issues. I’m not a national candidate. I’m a local candidate, and I’m running to make things better here in Nebraska.”

For now, Nebraska is very much in the national spotlight.

There’s been a last-minute attempt by the Republican Party not to leave anything to chance, with several lawmakers pushing for a move to make the state a winner-takes-all system.

Barring the completely unexpected, that would mean all the state’s electoral college votes go to Donald Trump.

It foundered, though, on the opposition of a few local Republican senators, who refused to bow to the pressure this close to an election, placing what they saw as the interests of the state – given the rare bit of political leverage the system provides – over that of national partisan politics.

Even Lindsey Graham, the powerful Republican senator, flew in to meet with the holdouts, but to no avail.

“It was interesting,” he’s reported to have said back in Washington. “They have a different system. Everybody’s like a mini-governor.”

Whether or not Nebraska plays an outsized role in November’s deeply divided contest, it may offer something of an alternative to it.

• SIMPLE GUIDE: Everything you need to know about the vote
• EXPLAINER: Seven swing states that could decide election
• FACT CHECK: What latest FBI data shows about violent crime
• POLICIES: What Harris or Trump would do in power
• POLLS: Who is winning the race for the White House?

North America correspondent Anthony Zurcher makes sense of the race for the White House in his weekly US Election Unspun newsletter. Readers in the UK can sign up here. Those outside the UK can sign up here.

Rosie Duffield has told the BBC that Sir Keir Starmer’s team cares “more about greed and power than making a difference” in her first broadcast interview since resigning from the Labour Party.

In her resignation letter, published by the Sunday Times, the Canterbury MP lambasts the prime minister for accepting gifts worth tens of thousands of pounds while scrapping the winter fuel payment and keeping the two-child benefit cap.

In an interview appearing on tomorrow’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg, Duffield said Labour voters and MPs are being “exploited” and “taken for granted”.

Duffield, who will now sit as an independent MP, said leaving the party was “not at all where I wanted to be”.

Speaking to the BBC, Duffield said Labour was “in my heart and in my soul”.

“It is so profoundly disappointing to me as a Labour voter and an activist… to see this is what we have become,” she added.

She said after days of revelations about donations and the leadership’s refusal to apologise, that the leadership seemed “more about greed and power than making a difference… I just can’t take any more”.

Duffield, who has clashed previously with the party leadership over women’s rights, resigned on Saturday.

She said: “We all had our faith in Keir Starmer and a Labour government, and I feel that voters and activists and MPs are being completely laughed at and completely taken for granted.”

In her letter she said the “revelations” since the change of government in July had been “staggering and increasingly outrageous”.

“I cannot put into words how angry I and my colleagues are at your total lack of understanding about how you have made us all appear.”

First elected in 2017, Duffield’s decision to quit the party follows the suspension of seven other Labour MPs who rebelled on the King’s Speech by voting for a motion calling for the two-child benefit cap to be abolished.

The total number of independent MPs in parliament is now 14.

Duffield’s letter said she intended to sit as an independent MP “guided by my core Labour values”.

In July, the government said the winter fuel payment to pensioners would now be made only to those on low incomes who received certain benefits, prompting an outcry from MPs and campaigners.

It has come under criticism – internally and externally – over the move to means-test the payments, with the Unite union winning a non-binding vote at the party’s conference last week. But ministers argue “difficult decisions” had to be made because of “undisclosed” overspending by the previous Tory government.

The prime minister came under fire after it initially emerged he had received more than £16,000 for work clothing and spectacles for him, and further donations for his wife, from Labour peer Waheed Alli.

Sir Keir has also defended accepting £20,000 worth of accommodation from Lord Alli during the election campaign so his son could revise for his GCSEs without the media outside his home.

In her resignation letter Duffield continued: “The sleaze, nepotism and apparent avarice are off the scale. I am so ashamed of what you and your inner circle have done to tarnish and humiliate our once proud party.”

She added: “Someone with far-above-average wealth choosing to keep the Conservatives’ two-child limit to benefit payments which entrenches children in poverty, while inexplicably accepting expensive personal gifts of designer suits and glasses costing more than most of those people can grasp – this is entirely undeserving of holding the title of Labour prime minister.”

Duffield and Sir Keir have long had a strained relationship.

But that she has chosen to go so soon into his premiership, and with such bitter criticism of him, is a surprise and certainly damaging for the prime minister.

Her letter is not prefaced by any of the niceties that sometimes accompany such departures. Instead it is deliberately, publicly cutting about him, his leadership, his policies and his behaviour.

Those around Sir Keir were certainly hoping that the criticism over donations was dying down, and that his Downing Street could move on and focus on “delivery”.

Duffield’s letter has placed that issue, and the disquiet among Labour MPs over means-testing the winter fuel allowance, right back in the spotlight.

It has given ammunition to Sir Keir’s critics. Conservatives will no doubt quote them liberally at their Party Conference this week.

Ms Duffield may prove to be a lone dissenter choosing to resign so soon after Labour’s landslide.

But the manner of her departure will have repercussions that reverberate for some time.

In her letter, Duffield also criticised the prime minister for promoting people with “no proven political skills” and said he had been “elevated immediately to a shadow cabinet position without following the usual path of honing your political skills on the backbenches”.

Sir Keir was given a shadow home office cabinet role in 2015, just two months into his time as an MP, and in turn appointed several newly-elected MPs to junior ministerial positions in 2024.

One of those, Foreign Office minister Hamish Falconer, is the son of Sir Keir’s first shadow attorney general Lord Falconer, while Liam Conlon, son of Number 10 chief of staff Sue Gray, was made a parliamentary aid to Department for Transport.

Duffield relationship with senior figures in the party has especially been strained over her views on trans issues – where she had used social media to outline her own position.

She believes there should be protected spaces where those born male are not allowed to go, like domestic violence refuges and prisons, and she is against people being able to self-identify as trans to gain access to those spaces.

Differences with Sir Keir surfaced again during this year’s general election campaign, when he was questioned about his past criticism of her stance on trans issues.

She was previously placed under investigation by the party after she liked a tweet from comedy writer Graham Linehan.

In January 2024 she said the party’s National Executive Committee “completely exonerated” her of allegations of antisemitism and transphobia.

Responding to Duffield’s resignation, Nadia Whittom, Labour MP for Nottingham East, said: “It is deeply disappointing that she has been allowed the privilege of resigning, as she should have lost the whip a long time ago.”

But Dr Simon Opher, Labour’s MP for Stroud, said he was “really sorry” the party had lost her.

“While I may not share all her politics, I know that we have everything to gain by working together.”

Tory leadership contender Tom Tugendhat said Duffield “made her point very clear… Labour Party and Keir Starmer government is not about service. It’s not about delivering for the British people. It’s about self service.”

Asked by the BBC if Duffield would be welcomed into the Conservative Party, Tugendhat said: “That’s really a decision for her… but I strongly suspect she won’t be asking”.

Fellow Tory leadership challenger James Cleverly, who like Tugendhat is arriving in Birmingham for the Conservative Party conference, told the BBC: “She’s said it all.”

Tory leadership rival Robert Jenrick declined to comment.