Mount Everest is 15-50m taller than it would otherwise be because a river is eroding rock and soil at its base, helping push it upwards, according to a new study.

Loss of landmass in the Arun river basin 75km (47 miles) away is causing the world’s highest peak to rise by up to 2mm a year, University College London (UCL) researchers said.

“It’s a bit like throwing a load of cargo off a ship,” study co-author Adam Smith told the BBC. “The ship becomes lighter and so floats a little higher. Similarly, when the crust becomes lighter… it can float a little higher.”

Pressure from the collision of the Indian and the Eurasian plates 40-50 million years ago formed the Himalayas and plate tectonics remains the major reason for their continued rise.

But the Arun river network is a contributing factor to the mountains’ rise, the UCL team said.

As the Arun flows through the Himalayas it carves away material – the river bed in this case – from the Earth’s crust. This reduces the force on the mantle (the next layer under the crust), causing the thinned crust to flex and float upward.

It’s an effect called the isostatic rebound. The research, published in Nature Geoscience, adds that this upward pushing force is causing Everest and other neighbouring summits, including the world’s fourth and fifth highest peaks, Lhotse and Makalu, to move upward.

“Mount Everest and its neighbouring peaks are growing because the isostatic rebound is raising them up faster than erosion is wearing them down,” fellow co-author of the study Dr Matthew Fox told the BBC.

“We can see them growing by about two millimetres a year using GPS instruments and now we have a better understanding of what’s driving it.”

Some geologists not involved in the study said the theory was plausible but there was much in the research that was still uncertain.

Everest stands on the border between China and Nepal, and its northern part is on the Chinese side. The Arun river flows down from Tibet into Nepal and then merges with two other rivers to become the Kosi which then enters northern India to meet the Ganges.

It is a very high silt-yielding river given the steepness of the mountains it flows through and the force it has, allowing it to carve off so much rock and soil on its way.

But the UCL researchers say it most likely earned its real strength when it “captured” another river or water body in Tibet 89,000 years ago, which in geological timescales is a recent event.

A Chinese academic, Dr Xu Han of China University of Geosciences, was the lead author in the study during a scholarship visit at the UCL.

“The changing height of Mount Everest really highlights the dynamic nature of the Earth’s surface,” he said.

“The interaction between the erosion of the Arun river and the upward pressure of the Earth’s mantle gives Mount Everest a boost, pushing it up higher than it would otherwise be.”

The UCL study says the Arun river most likely gained the capacity to carve off an extraordinary amount of rocks and other materials after it captured another river or water system in Tibet.

Professor Hugh Sinclair with the School of Geosciences at University of Edinburgh, who was not involved in the study, said the underlying process identified by the UCL team was perfectly reasonable.

But, he added, the exact amounts and timescales of river incision (or how the river cuts downward into its bed and deepens its channel) and the consequent surface uplift of surrounding peaks had large uncertainties.

“Firstly, predicting river incision of such large catchments in response to drainage capture (one river capturing another river or lake) is challenging,” he said.

This uncertainty is something the authors have acknowledged in the study.

Secondly, said Prof Sinclair, the distance over which mountains uplift from a point of intensive localised erosion is extremely hard to predict.

“However, even accounting for these reservations, the possibility that some of Everest’s exceptional elevation is linked to the river, represents an exciting insight.”

Austria’s far-right Freedom Party (FPÖ) has opened the door to a new era, its leader Herbert Kickl has told supporters, as they celebrated an unprecedented election victory.

Kickl’s party won 29.1% of the vote according to provisional results – almost three points ahead of the conservative People’s Party (ÖVP) on 26.4%, but far short of a majority.

Kickl’s victory is only the latest in a string of far-right election successes in Europe and he praised voters for their “optimism, courage and trust” in delivering a “piece of history”.

The FPÖ has been in coalition before, but the second-placed ÖVP has refused to take part in a government led by Kickl.

Kickl’s main rival, incumbent Chancellor Karl Nehammer of the ÖVP, has said it was “impossible to form a government with someone who adores conspiracy theories”.

There was a high turnout of 74.9% as Austrian voters took part in an election dominated by the twin issues of migration and asylum, as well as a flagging economy and the war in Ukraine.

As half the map of Austria turned dark blue, FPÖ general secretary Michael Schnedlitz said “the men and women of Austria have made history today”, although he refused to say what kind of coalition his party would try to build.

Postal votes were still being counted on Monday morning, but an analysis of voters suggested those aged 35-59 were most likely to back the far right, and marginally more women than men.

Kickl’s party has won 56 seats in the 183-seat parliament, with the conservatives on 52 and the Social Democrats on 41, according to projected results.

The Freedom Party’s fiery leader had promised Austrians to build “Fortress Austria”, to restore their security, prosperity and peace.

The party wants firm rules on legal immigration and it has promoted the idea of remigration, which involves sending asylum seekers to their original countries. It also wants a bar on the right to asylum as a step towards citizenship.

Herbert Kickl has aligned himself closely with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban and his self-styled “illiberal democracy”. On Sunday night, Social Democrat leader Andreas Babler warned that Austria must not follow the same path as Hungary.

Kickl had also spoken of becoming (people’s chancellor) which for some Austrians carries echoes of the term used to describe Adolf Hitler in Nazi Germany.

The FPÖ was founded by former Nazis in the 1950s. Two days before the vote some of its candidates were caught on video at a funeral where an SS song was sung.

As the party’s victory became clear, a small group of protesters appeared outside parliament carrying anti-Nazi banners. One read “Nazis, get out of parliament”, while another said, “Don’t let Nazis govern, and never [let them] march”.

Forming a coalition is likely to prove complicated for Kickl, who is a divisive figure.

The Social Democrats, Greens and Neos have all ruled out a partnership with the far right.

The only possible coalition Kickl’s party could form is with the conservatives, although the FPÖ would have to find a solution to the ÖVP’s refusal to have Kickl as chancellor.

When Geert Wilders’ Freedom Party won the Netherlands’ election last November, he dropped his bid to become prime minister so that three other parties would agree to form a coalition. However, Kickl is keen to lead his country, promising Austrians to act as their “servant and protector”.

Political analyst Thomas Hofer told the BBC it was by no means clear that Austrian President Alexander Van der Bellen, who oversees the formation of government, would give Kickl a “direct mandate to form a coalition”.

The ÖVP could in theory scrape together a coalition with the Social Democrats if the latest projections are correct, and could attract the liberal Neos party or the Greens.

Equally, Karl Nehammer may come under pressure from within the ÖVP to drop his objection. One leading FPÖ figure said after such a historic defeat he should resign, although that was rejected by the general secretary of Nehammer’s party.

President Van der Bellen has voiced reservations in the past about the FPÖ because of its criticism of the EU and its failure to condemn Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The party opposes EU sanctions on Moscow, citing Austria’s neutrality, and many of its MPs walked out of a speech to the parliament in Vienna last year by Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky.

On Monday, Austrians had mixed feelings about the election results.

“I find it really sad that people get so close to radical right-wing ideas and ignore history,” Nikolai Selikovsky, a resident of Vienna – which predominantly voted for the Social Democrats – told AFP.

“It also shows the failure of the other parties that they can’t talk to each other constructively.”

“I’m asking myself what we did wrong in the past 75 years,” Karin Grobert, a commuter, told Reuters. She expressed concern that Austria will shift further to the right if coalition talks fail.

But Josef Binder, a 57-year-old carpenter who voted for FPÖ, said there was no reason other parties could not cooperate with Kickl.

“They also have to realise, the other parties, that if they negate 29% of voters, that that’s actually not okay, it’s undemocratic,” he added.

Some worried about what the FPÖ’s policy of remigration could mean for them.

Berat Oeztoprak, a 22-year-old kebab seller in Vienna, told Reuters: “What I might fear is that many will no longer be allowed to stay here.”

He added: “I was born in Austria and I know that I belong here. I also did two years in the army and I have a badge. And I also served for the state for two years, I pay my taxes, I’m nice to the people here, they’re just as nice to me.”

Kickl’s victory is the latest in almost a year of vote successes for radical right-wing parties in Europe.

Italy’s Giorgia Meloni heads a right-wing coalition as leader of the far-right Brothers of Italy party and Germany’s AfD topped the polls in the eastern state of Thuringia last month. France’s National Rally won the vote in European elections last June.

Unlike Kickl, Italy’s prime minister has given her full backing to the EU’s defence of Ukraine in the face of Russia’s full-scale invasion.

AfD co-leader Alice Weidel congratulated Kickl, posting a picture of the two together, and Marine le Pen of the National Rally said “this groundswell carrying the defence of national interests”, after the votes elsewhere in Europe, confirmed the “people’s triumphs everywhere”.

Geert Wilders said times were changing, and that “identity, sovereignty, freedom and no more illegal immigration/asylum” was what millions of Europeans were longing for.

Kickl has tapped into fears about immigration in Austria and he has made the most of anger at the government’s handling of the Covid pandemic, embracing conspiracy theories about obscure treatments for the virus.

For Kickl and his party, Sunday’s election victory represents a significant recovery from 2019, when they came a distant third in the wake of a video sting scandal that engulfed their former leader.

Marine Le Pen, long-time leader of France’s far-right National Rally and presidential hopeful, goes on trial in Paris on Monday accused of misusing European parliamentary funds.

More than 20 other senior figures in the party are also facing the same charges. They are accused of hiring assistants who worked on party affairs rather than for the European parliament which paid them.

If Le Pen is found guilty, she could face fines and imprisonment – and potentially be declared ineligible to run for office for up to 10 years, hitting her presidential ambitions.

She has denied wrongdoing, and party spokesman Laurent Jacobelli said “we are going to prove that there is no system to embezzle money from the EU”.

“We are going to prove that it is possible to be an assistant to a European parliamentarian and get involved in the life of the RN (National Rally),” the spokesman told French media on Monday.

Upon arriving in court, Le Pen said she was approaching the trial with calmness and insisted she and her associates had violated no political rules.

Le Pen’s father Jean-Marie Le Pen, 96, who founded the National Front, which became the RN, also faces charges, but will not attend the trial because of poor health.

The system of alleged fake jobs was first flagged in 2015 and covered contracts for parliamentary assistants between 2004 and 2016.

Le Pen faces trial as a long-time party leader and former EU lawmaker. Prosecutors allege that one of the people hired as a parliamentary assistant was actually working as a bodyguard for Le Pen and her father.

Prosecutors are seeking to recover more than 3m euros (£2.5m). The RN already paid back 1m euros (£834,000) – which it said was not an admission of guilt.

The trial is expected to last for nearly two months.

Le Pen stepped down as president of the then-National Front in 2017. She ran in presidential elections in 2012, 2017 and 2022, and is gearing up for another possible presidential run in 2027.

Her party has promoted policies against immigration – such as restricting social welfare to French citizens – and pushing for law and order and tax cuts.

She was re-elected to parliament during the first round of France’s parliamentary election in June.

Her party unexpectedly came third, despite having achieved a decisive victory in the European Parliament elections just weeks before.

The left ended up winning the most legislative seats.

Following the elections, President Emmanuel Macron appointed a right-wing government.

Netflix has failed in its attempt to persuade a judge to throw out a defamation lawsuit brought by the woman who inspired the stalker character in hit series Baby Reindeer.

Fiona Harvey claims the streaming giant told “brutal lies” about her to more than 50 million viewers around the world.

The show, created by Richard Gadd, is billed as “a true story”, but certain key events, like the conviction for stalking, did not happen in real life, the judge concluded.

Netflix said: “We intend to defend this matter vigorously and to stand by Richard Gadd’s right to tell his story.”

In his ruling, Judge Gary Klausner wrote: “There is a major difference between stalking and being convicted of stalking in a court of law.”

There were other substantial disparities between what really happened and what was shown on screen, he noted.

Ms Harvey says also she did not stalk a police officer, sexually assault Gadd, violently attack him in a pub by smashing a bottle over his head and gouging his eyes, or wait outside his home for up to 16 hours a day.

Netflix argued those things should be viewed as “substantially true” because she did arguably similar things in real life.

However, the judge wrote: “There are major differences between inappropriate touching and sexual assault, as well as between shoving and gouging another’s eyes.”

Gadd’s original stage play was billed slightly differently – as being “based on a true story” – which suggests “certain details were likely false”, the judge wrote.

A Sunday Times article from June quoted TV industry sources as saying Gadd “expressed concerns” with Netflix about presenting it as simply “a true story”.

The fact the company went ahead “suggests a reckless disregard of whether statements in the series were false”, Judge Klausner wrote.

Netflix argued that most viewers would understand the claims made in the show to be “not factual” because it was shot in the style of a drama.

However, the judge disagreed, writing: “While the statements were made in a series that largely has the trappings of a black comedy-drama, the very first episode states unequivocally that ‘this is a true story’, thereby inviting the audience to accept the statements as fact.”

Netflix also said the similarities between the real and fictionalised people were so broad that average viewers would not have been able to identify Ms Harvey as Martha.

“The court disagrees,” the judge wrote. “This is not the typical case where a plaintiff happens to be one of hundreds of people that match a fictional character’s broad characteristics.

“Rather, Martha and Plaintiff [Ms Harvey] have specific similarities that few others could claim to share.”

However, the judge did side with Netflix in some parts of Ms Harvey’s case, dismissing her negligence and gross negligence claims, and her request for punitive damages.

Baby Reindeer has been one of the biggest TV hits of the past year, and recently won six Emmy Awards in the US.

Kris Kristofferson was always modest about his talent.

He disliked being called a poet and preferred it when other people performed his songs.

“I sing like a bullfrog,” he once told record producer Fred Foster.

“Yeah,” Foster replied, “but a bullfrog who communicates.”

Kristofferson’s plainspoken vocals may have lacked range but they carried something more important – conviction.

When he sang of loss and love and sorrow and drunken nights and regret-filled mornings, you believed every word.

That is partly because he never forced a song into existence – “I always had to wait until something hit me, and I could write it,” he once said – but also because he could dig into the simple truth of a sentiment.

His songwriting was not especially complex but what he could do with a few chords and a well turned phrase caused a revolution in country music.

“You can look at Nashville pre-Kris and post-Kris, because he changed everything,” Bob Dylan once said.

To mark his death, at the age of 88, here’s a guide to some of his most memorable songs.

One of Kristofferson’s most enduring songs, Me and Bobby McGee, started out as a songwriting challenge.

Monument Records founder Foster had a crush on his secretary, Barbara “Bobbie” McKee, and wanted a song that would impress her.

Kristofferson accepted the assignment – but finding inspiration took time.

“I avoided him [Foster] for three or four months because there were only thoughts running through my head,” he said in 1973.

“I was driving back to New Orleans one night, the windshield wipers were going, and it started falling together.”

He based the song on the last scene of the Fellini film La Strada (The Road), in which a broken, inebriated man stares at the sea in despair at what his life has become, and the love he has lost.

Kristofferson turned that tale into the story of two drifters, who find love on the road and are separated, eventually, by death.

It contains one of his greatest lyrics:

Originally recorded by Roger Miller, it became a number-one hit for Janis Joplin, who recorded it weeks before her death in 1970.

The desolation of Kristofferson’s downbeat delivery tells you this song is about much more than a bad hangover.

And, as it progresses, the protagonist slowly reveals more about the causes of his booze-soaked existence.

The smell of fried chicken reminds him of “something that I’d lost”.

And he stops outside a Sunday school just to hear the children singing.

The loneliness and self-loathing are expressed vividly – and Kristofferson said he had written the lyrics as a struggling musician living in a tenement after his parents had disowned him and his wife and child moved to California without him.

“Sunday was the worst day of the week if you didn’t have a family,” he said.

According to legend, Kristofferson got the song into Johnny Cash’s hands by landing a helicopter in his backyard and refusing to leave until he had listened to his demo tape.

Cash was impressed enough to play the song on his US TV programme.

And the Country Music Association named his recording song of the year 1970.

Kristofferson’s own version appeared on his debut album the same year.

Along with artists such as Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings, Kristofferson was part of the “outlaw country” scene that fought Nashville’s commercial and creative control.

Discussing his place in the country firmament, in 1970, he told the New York Times: “I’m nobody’s best friend.

“People kept telling me that I’d never make it in Nashville, that I ought to head for California or New York.”

He had upset the establishment, with songs such as Blame It on the Stones and The Law Is for the Protection of the People, which took a swipe at American conservatism.

His most famous song also ruffled feathers for its unadorned depiction of sexual desire, especially when recorded (and taken to number one) by female country star Sammi Smith.

Kristofferson said the lyrics had been inspired by a Frank Sinatra interview.

When asked what he believed in, Old Blue Eyes had responded: “Booze, broads, or a bible… whatever helps me make it through the night.”

Smith’s sensuous delivery was a subversive step forward for country music but Kristofferson’s own version – croaky-voiced and dripping with hunger – is just as much of a thrill.

“The first good song I wrote,” Kristofferson said of Jody and the Kid, which he composed while working as a janitor at Columbia Records in the 1960s

Like Me and Bobby McGee, it is steeped in nostalgia and loss, as the musician describes a girl who used to walk everywhere with him, “her little blue jeans rolled up to her knees”.

Over time, they fall in love, and grow old, still walking hand in hand everywhere they go.

As the song ends, the narrator traces their old paths with their daughter – but when the locals greet them, he laments his wife is no longer there to join them.

Kristofferson’s sombre, emotional vocal is both spellbinding and heartbreaking.

It is also worth out checking out his 1999 re-recording of the song (on the album The Austin Sessions), where his older, craggier voice lends it added pathos.

If the character in Sunday Mornin’ Comin’ Down was at a low point, this represents them at rock bottom.

““

Kristofferson was moved to write the song after attending a service at Jimmie Snow’s church in Nashville.

“Everybody was kneeling down and Jimmy said something like, ‘If anybody’s lost, raise their hand,'” he said.

“I don’t go to church a lot and the notion of raising my hand was out of the question.

“I thought, ‘I can’t imagine who’s doing this,’ when all of a sudden I felt my hand going up.”

After talking to the preacher, Kristofferson said, “I found myself weeping in public” and felt a “forgiveness that I didn’t even know I needed”.

The song works as a reaction to that moment – a slow, mournful realisation of his past behaviour, and a soul-cry for forgiveness.

Recorded with his soon-to-be wife Rita Cooolidge, the gospel-infused ballad struck a chord with audiences in 1973, giving the star his only number one on the country charts.

6) I Hate Your Ugly Face – The first song Kristofferson wrote, aged 11. A sarcastic rejection of country tropes, it reveals the early development of his storytelling talent.

7) They Killed Him – A lament for Kristofferson’s heroes – Jesus, Ghandi and Martin Luther King – later reinterpreted by Dylan. “Having Dylan cover one of your songs is like being a playwright and having Shakespeare act in your play,” Kristofferson said.

8) Loving Her Was Easier (Than Anything I’ll Ever Do Again) – One of his most romantic songs and Kristofferson’s first chart hit, in 1971. He later re-recorded it with The Highwaymen, a supergroup of outlaw country artists that also featured Cash, Jennings and Nelson.

9) Here Comes that Rainbow Again – Inspired by a scene in John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, this touching ballad is about small acts of kindness being repaid. Cash once said it “might be my favourite song by any writer”.

10) Please Don’t Tell Me How the Story Ends – Two lovers spend one last night together, clinging on to their memories (and to one another) in the hope the inevitable break-up never comes. Written in the early 1970s, Kristofferson initially gave it to Billy Bare but later remade it with Rita Coolidge, just as their marriage was dissolving. Their duet is devastating.

Switzerland and Italy have redrawn part of their border in the Alps due to melting glaciers, caused by climate change.

Part of the area affected will be beneath the Matterhorn, one of Europe’s tallest mountains, and close to a number of popular ski resorts.

Large sections of the Swiss-Italian border are determined by glacier ridgelines or areas of perpetual snow, but melting glaciers have caused these natural boundaries to shift, leading to both countries seeking to rectify the border.

Switzerland officially approved the agreement on the change on Friday, but Italy is yet to do the same. This follows a draft agreement by a joint Swiss-Italian commission back in May 2023.

Statistics published last September showed that Switzerland’s glaciers lost 4% of their volume in 2023, the second biggest loss ever after 2022’s record melt of 6%.

An annual report is issued each year by the Swiss Glacier Monitoring Network (Glamos), which attributed the record losses to consecutive very warm summers, and 2022 winter’s very low snowfall. Researchers say that if these weather patterns continue, the thaw will only accelerate.

On Friday, Switzerland said that the redefined borders had been drawn up in accordance with the economic interests of both parties.

It is thought that clarifying the borders will help both countries determine which is responsible for the upkeep of specific natural areas.

Swiss-Italian boundaries will be changed in the region of Plateau Rosa, the Carrel refuge and Gobba di Rollin – all are near the Matterhorn and popular ski resorts including Zermatt.

The exact border changes will be implemented and the agreement published once both countries have signed it.

Switzerland says that the approval process for signing the agreement is under way in Italy.

Last year, Glamos warned that some Swiss glaciers are shrinking so fast that it is unlikely they can be saved, even if global temperatures are kept within the Paris climate agreement’s 1.5C target rise.

Experts say that without a reduction in greenhouse gases linked to global warning, bigger glaciers like the Aletsch – which is not on the border – could disappear within a generation.

A number of discoveries have been made on Swiss glaciers in recent years due to their melting and rapid shrinking.

Last July, human remains found close to Matterhorn were confirmed to be those of a German climber missing since 1986.

Climbers crossing the Theodul glacier above Zermatt noticed a hiking boot and crampons emerging from the ice.

In 2022, the wreckage of a plane that crashed in 1968 emerged from the Aletsch glacier.

And the body of missing British climber Jonathan Conville was discovered in 2014 by a helicopter pilot who spotted something unusual while delivering supplies to a mountain refuge on the Matterhorn.

A mere three days after being elected as the new leader of Japan’s ruling party, incoming Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba has announced plans for a snap election on 27 October.

Ishiba, 67, replaced outgoing prime minister, Fumio Kishida, as chief of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) on Friday, following a tight race that saw him securing more votes than any of the other eight candidates.

Since the LDP has a parliamentary majority, Ishiba will be approved as prime minister by parliament on Tuesday.

“It is important for the new administration to be judged by the people as soon as possible,” Ishiba said at a press conference in Tokyo on Monday, according to Reuters.

The election, which is set to take place more than a year before it is due, will decide which party controls parliament’s lower house.

Earlier in the day Ishiba began picking government and party officials who will contest the upcoming general election with him, including two influential former prime ministers: Taro Aso, as adviser, and Yoshihide Suga, as vice-president.

Ishiba also asked Shinjiro Koizumi, a popular rival in Friday’s leadership race who enjoys a favourable standing with the Japanese public, to serve as election strategy chief.

However, Sanae Takaichi, the hardline female conservative that Ishiba closely beat in the runoff to Friday’s poll, was not included in Ishiba’s picks.

After winning Friday’s leadership election, Ishiba said he would revitalise Japan’s economy, address security threats and clean up the LDP, whose approval ratings have plummeted in recent months amid public scandals and internal conflicts.

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 under-reported political funding over the course of several years.

The latter controversy fuelled mass public outrage and wounded then Prime Minister Kishida’s political standing, leading to his announcement in August that he would not seek re-election as LDP leader.

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

“For this, transparent and open elections and free and vigorous debate are important.”

Shortly after taking up the mantle on Friday, Ishida echoed his predecessor’s words.

“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 reporters.

Despite the scandals, the LDP, which has ruled Japan for most of the post-war era, remains the country’s most popular political party.

The last two weeks of campaigning for its leadership were also seen by experts as an audition for the general election – meaning candidates presented themselves not only to fellow party members but also to the public, in an attempt to win over the electorate.

Suga from K-pop boy band BTS has been fined 15 million won ($11,500; £8,600) for driving an electric scooter while intoxicated, according to media reports.

The singer, whose real name is Min Yoon-gi, was indicted in August after police found him trying to get up after falling off the scooter near his Seoul home and discovered he was drunk.

His blood alcohol level was 0.227%, far exceeding the 0.08% threshold, say local media reports quoting police.

A district court in Seoul imposed the fine last Friday.

The rapper, who also had his licence revoked, apologised in August, saying he had driven home in Seoul “thinking it was a close distance” and “[forgot] that you can’t use an electric scooter under the influence”.

“Although no one was harmed and no property was damaged, this is entirely my responsibility with no excuses.

“I apologise to those who have been hurt by my carelessness and wrongful behaviour, and I will ensure that this does not happen again in the future,” he had said in a statement.

Suga faced backlash in the days that followed, with some asking him to leave BTS. K-pop idols in South Korea are generally expected to project a squeaky clean image, though in this case, many of Suga’s fans had also rallied in his defence.

The 31-year-old is currently serving as a social service agent in the military as he had been ruled unfit for regular combat duty.

The UK is about to stop producing any electricity from burning coal – ending its 142-year reliance on the fossil fuel.

The country’s last coal power station, at Ratcliffe-on-Soar, finishes operations on Monday after running since 1967.

This marks a major milestone in the country’s ambitions to reduce its contribution to climate change. Coal is the dirtiest fossil fuel producing the most greenhouse gases when burnt.

Minister for Energy Michael Shanks said: “We owe generations a debt of gratitude as a country.”

The UK was the birthplace of coal power, and from tomorrow it becomes the first major economy to give it up.

“It’s a really remarkable day, because Britain, after all, built her whole strength on coal, that is the industrial revolution,” said Lord Deben – the longest serving environment secretary.

The first coal-fired power station in the world, the Holborn Viaduct power station, was built in 1882 in London by the inventor Thomas Edison – bringing light to the streets of the capital.

From that point through the first half of the twentieth century, coal provided pretty much all of the UK’s electricity, powering homes and businesses.

In the early 1990s, coal began to be forced out of the electricity mix by gas, but coal still remained a crucial component of the UK grid for the next two decades.

In 2012, it still generated 39% of the UK’s power.

But the science around climate change was growing – it was clear that the world’s greenhouse gas emissions needed to be reduced and as the dirtiest fossil fuel, coal was a major target.

In 2008, the UK established its first legally binding climate targets and in 2015 the then-energy and climate change secretary, Amber Rudd, told the world the UK would be ending its use of coal power within the next decade.

Dave Jones, director of global insights at Ember, an independent energy think tank, said this really helped to “set in motion” the end of coal by providing a clear direction of travel for the industry.

But it also showed leadership and set a benchmark for other countries to follow, according to Lord Deben.

“I think it’s made a big difference, because you need someone to point to and say, ‘There, they’ve done it. Why can’t we do it?'”, he said.

In 2010, renewables generated just 7% of the UK’s power. By the first half of 2024, this had grown to more than 50% – a new record.

The rapid growth of green power meant that coal could even be switched off completely for short periods, with the first coal-free days in 2017.

The growth of renewables has been so successful that the target date for ending coal power was brought forward a year, and on Monday, Ratcliffe-on-Soar, was set to close.

Chris Smith has worked at the plant for 28 years in the environment and chemistry team. She said: “It is a very momentous day. The plant has always been running and we’ve always been doing our best to keep it operating….It is a very sad moment.”

Lord Deben served in former prime minister Margaret Thatcher’s government when many of the UK’s coal mines were closed and thousands of workers lost their jobs. He said lessons had to be learnt from that for current workers in the fossil fuel industry.

“I’m particularly keen on the way in which this Government, and indeed the previous Government, is trying to make sure that the new jobs, of which there are very many green jobs, go to the places which are being damaged by the changes.

“So in the North Sea oil areas, that’s exactly where we should be doing carbon capture and storage, it’s where we should be putting wind and solar power,” he said.

Although coal is a very polluting source of energy, its benefit has been in being available at all times – unlike wind and solar which are limited by weather conditions.

Kayte O’Neill, the chief operating officer at the Energy System Operator – the body overseeing the UK’s electricity system – said: “There is a whole load of innovation required to help us ensure the stability of the grid. Keeping the lights on in a secure way.”

A crucial technology providing that stability Kayte O’Neill spoke of is battery technology.

Dr Sylwia Walus, research programme manager at the Faraday Institution, said that there has been significant progress in the science of batteries.

“There is always scope for a new technology, but more focus these days is really how to make it more sustainable and cheaper in production,” she said.

To achieve this the UK needs to become more independent of China in producing its own batteries and bringing in skilled workers for this purpose, she explained.

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At least 15 people have died in Mexico as a result of Hurricane John, the country’s President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has confirmed.

The storm first made landfall a week ago as a category three hurricane on Mexico’s Pacific coast, south-east of the resort of Acapulco.

It then weakened and dissipated over the mountains of Guerrero state before regaining strength over the waters of the Pacific and hitting the Mexican coast a second time, prompting meteorologists to describe it as a “zombie storm”.

Its heavy rains triggered landslides and flooding, cutting off many residents and killing more than a dozen.

The term “zombie storm” was first used by meteorologists from the US National Weather Service in 2020 to describe a storm which dissipates only to regenerate again.

On Sunday, President López Obrador said the number of dead in Guerrero had reached at least 15, but local media have put the total death toll across the three worst-hit states at more than 20, with some saying it is as high as 29.

Meteorologists said that while Hurricane John blew over trees and damaged buildings, the days of torrential rains it caused proved more deadly.

Some places had almost a year’s worth of rainfall over a matter of days.

In Oaxaca state, there were at least 80 landslides, some of which buried homes and their occupants. In some areas, entire communities were cut off as roads became impassable.

The resort of Acapulco, which is still struggling to recover from the impact of Hurricane Otis last year, was severely flooded.

City officials asked anyone who owned a boat to help rescue people trapped in flooded neighbourhoods.

Residents posted videos on social media of themselves wading through waters which reached their shoulders.

Some families climbed onto the roofs of their homes as the waters rose.

Officials said more than 5,000 people had to be evacuated and 3,800 had been sleeping in shelters.

Claudia Sheinbaum, who is due to be sworn in as Mexico’s new president on Tuesday, said she would visit Guerrero state with her ministers on Wednesday to ensure that those affected received “all the necessary assistance”.

Israel’s continuing air strikes may have forced as many as one million people from their homes across Lebanon, the country’s prime minister, Najib Mikati, has said.

Lebanon’s health ministry reported 105 people killed in Sunday’s strikes – two days after Israel assassinated Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in Beirut. Meanwhile, Hezbollah fired more rockets into northern Israel.

Lebanese families displaced by the air strikes have told the BBC of their fear and anxiety over what is to come.

We visited one school in a southern Beirut suburb housing around 2,000 people who have fled their homes. Many of them were having to sleep in the courtyard because they could not find space indoors.

Grandmother Um Ahmad says a building just next to their home in southern Lebanon was badly hit by an Israeli air strike. She and her family survived “magically”, she says.

“I just grabbed my grandchildren and ran. A part of our house was in flames.”

They jumped into their car and drove off while more buildings were being bombed in their street. They looked back to see their house was also levelled to the ground.

“At least we know for sure that we don’t have a home to go back to,” Um Ahmed says while trying not to break into tears.

“I don’t want to cry. There is nothing to cry about any more. We lost everything, but thanks to God, we survived.”

They fled to Beirut from a tiny village near the city of Tyre. Their refuge is a classroom that is now a shelter for hundreds of people.

Laundry is draped around the room, hanging off the whiteboard, walls and windows.

Um Ahmed’s two grandsons have disabilities and mental health issues.

She sounds frustrated and angry: “I’m sad for Gaza’s children, but what is our children’s fault?”

We hear a loud bang as emergency teams offload some supplies outside in the corridor. Her younger grandson starts crying.

• Live: Latest news on Israel and Hezbollah
• Analysis: What might Hezbollah, Israel and Iran do next?
• BBC Verify: Analysing footage of Israeli strikes on Beirut
• Bowen: Israel claims its biggest victory yet against Hezbollah

“Look how the child is scared. With every loud sound, every door slamming, he starts crying and screaming.”

She says her grandchildren can’t sleep at night any more, so she and her husband cannot either. “All the children here are reacting to any loud sound. They think it’s an air strike.”

Um’s husband Barakat joins us. He blames the politicians without mentioning Hezbollah.

“I know we needed to support the people of Gaza, but that wasn’t our war. We of course want to protect our land, but for us, for the Lebanese, we should fight for ourselves.”

Like many other families here, they have been displaced before. They lost their homes in 1982 and 2006 too. This is now the third time.

Barakat says he and his family are exhausted and don’t want war. “We don’t wish for Israeli children to die, nor for our own children to die. We should live in peace.”

I ask him if he thinks that is possible. “I don’t think so. Netanyahu doesn’t want peace. It is now very clear and this war is going to be much harder than 2006 [when Israel and Hezbollah went to war], for sure.”

“Just as we cry for children in Gaza, we cry for our own children too. Just as the Israelis cry and are afraid for their children, so do we,” says Um.

Other families recall being warned by the Israeli military of impending attacks.

“We only had short notice. We received a message that was sent by the Israeli army to our phones, asking us to leave our house,” says 65-year-old Kamal Mouhsen.

“I just grabbed my car key and left with my family.”

He was one of many people who received the same message at about noon on Saturday. He says there was a series of air strikes on their neighbourhood soon afterwards.

He is wearing a T-shirt and shorts. “All we have now is what you see we are wearing.”

He is sitting with his daughter, grandson and two of his neighbours in the courtyard of the school where they took refuge.

“We are now among 16 people living in one room,” says Nada, Kamal’s daughter. “In the 2006 war, we also came here.”

Nada believes this war will be more difficult. “They [the Israelis] killed the leader of Hezbollah. This itself shows that this time is different.”

For others, leaving the country through war-torn Syria seemed like a better option than hoping to survive Israeli air strikes.

Sara Tohmaz, a 34-year-old Lebanese journalist, fled her house in Beirut’s southern suburbs with her mother and two siblings the Friday before last.

She told BBC News Arabic she feels relief that they took the decision to leave the country before Israel assassinated Hezbollah’s leader.

The family took almost 10 hours to reach Jordan through Syria by car.

“We are lucky enough to have a place to stay in Jordan, where my mother’s relatives are based,” she says.

“We don’t know what will happen next, and don’t know when we will be back.”

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 seek peace on Israel’s terms is likely to be misplaced.

• LIVE: Latest Israel-Lebanon updates as Israeli strikes continue

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.

In the hills of the Bekaa Valley – as in swathes of Lebanon – death can come from the sky these days, at any moment.

Israel has been bombing the area through the day, with more than 30 air strikes in just an hour.

Forty-six people are confirmed dead – and that toll is expected to rise.

Others are in critical condition in hospital, after Israeli attacks earlier this week.

Noor Mossawi is among them. The six-year-old is lying unconscious in a paediatric intensive care unit, in Rayak Hospital, with bandages wrapped around her fractured skull.

Her mother Rima is sitting by her bedside, holding a copy of the Quran and praying.

She tells us her daughter is very bright and very sociable.

“She creates such a fun atmosphere at home. The house feels empty when she’s not around. She loves meeting new people.”

All that changed last Monday, with an Israeli strike.

She shows us another video of her daughter – this time praying, shortly before the attack.

“I was soothing her, telling her not to be afraid, that nothing would happen. She was calling on God and the prophets for help,” Rima says.

As the bombing was getting closer, Rima was hunkering by her front door with Noor and her twin brother Mohammed.

“We weren’t brave enough to go inside,” she says, “because we thought the building would collapse on us if it was hit.

“When it got more intense, I picked up Noor and her brother and was about to take them in, but the missile was much faster than I was.”

That missile left Mohammed lightly wounded, and Noor fighting for her life.

As we speak, suddenly there is danger overhead. We hear a plane, and then an explosion which rattles the windows and knocks out the power for a few seconds.

It’s another air strike. Rima barely reacts.

Noor’s father Abdallah comes to visit, and is burning with rage.

“Please film my child,” he says.

“She doesn’t know what weapons are. She doesn’t know how to fight. She was playing at home when the bombing started. They [Israel] wanted to terrorise the people and get them to flee.”

• Live: Latest news on Israel and Hezbollah
• Analysis: What might Hezbollah, Israel and Iran do next?
• BBC Verify: Analysing footage of Israeli strikes on Beirut
• Bowen: Israel claims its biggest victory yet against Hezbollah

Israel says its strikes are targeting Hezbollah sites, including weapons stores and ammunition dumps.

Abdallah begs to differ.

“We have nothing to do with weapons. I am not involved with the resistance [Hezbollah]. But now I wish I was so that I could protect my children,” he tells us.

Minutes later, a few floors down, sirens wail as an ambulance brings in wounded from the latest strike.

Medical staff are rushing back and forward. The emergency department fills with tension. There are angry shouts, and shocked friends and relatives. We are asked to stop filming.

The hospital has admitted 400 casualties of Israeli strikes since Monday – all civilians – according to Dr Basil Abdallah, the medical director.

Of those, more than 100 have died, and several families had lost more than one person.

Dr Abdallah tells us there is trauma among the staff, as well as the patients.

“Seeing children bombed, seeing elderly patients and women bombed, it’s difficult,” he says. “Most of the nurses and the doctors are depressed. We have emotions. We are human.”

Most of the staff remain at the hospital around the clock as it is too dangerous to risk the journey home.

Israel is striking far and wide in Lebanon. There’s no-one to stop it.

For now, Hezbollah is putting up a limited fight, firing rockets across the border.

Its backer, Iran, is remaining on the sidelines.

Dr Abdallah is already worried about running out of drugs and essential supplies.

He fears this will be a long war.

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.”

Diego Garcia, a remote island in the Indian Ocean, is a paradise of lush vegetation and white-sand beaches, surrounded by crystal blue waters.

But this is no tourist destination. It is strictly out of bounds to most civilians – the site of a highly secretive UK-US military base shrouded for decades in rumour and mystery.

The island, which is administered from London, is at the centre of a long-running territorial dispute between the UK and Mauritius, and negotiations have ramped up in recent weeks.

The BBC gained unprecedented access to the island earlier this month.

___

“It’s the enemy,” a private security officer jokes as I return to my room one night on Diego Garcia, my name highlighted in yellow on a list he is holding.

For months, the BBC had fought for access to the island – the largest of the Chagos Archipelago.

We wanted to cover a historic court case being held over the treatment of Sri Lankan Tamils, the first people ever to file asylum claims on the island, who have been stranded there for three years. Complex legal battles have been waged over their fate and a judgement will soon determine if they have been unlawfully detained.

Up until this point, we could only cover the story remotely.

Diego Garcia, which is about 1,000 miles (1,600 km) from the nearest landmass, features on lists of the world’s most remote islands. There are no commercial flights and getting there by sea is no easier – permits for boats are only granted for the archipelago’s outer islands and to allow safe passage through the Indian Ocean.

To enter the island you need a permit, only granted to people with connections to the military facility or the British authority that runs the territory. Journalists have historically been barred.

UK government lawyers brought a legal challenge to try to block the BBC from attending the hearing, and even when permission was granted following a ruling by the territory’s Supreme Court, the US later objected, saying it would not provide food, transport or accommodation to all those attempting to reach the island for the case – including the judge and barristers.

Notes exchanged between the two governments this summer, seen by the BBC, suggested both were extremely concerned about admitting any media to Diego Garcia.

“As discussed previously, the United States agrees with the position of HMG [His Majesty’s Government] that it would be preferable for members of the press to observe the hearing virtually from London, to minimize risks to security of the Facility,” one note sent from the US government to British officials said.

When permission was finally granted for me to spend five days on the island, it came with stringent restrictions. These did not just cover the court reporting. They also extended to my movements on the island and even a ban on reporting what the actual restrictions were.

Requests for minor changes to the permit were denied by British and US officials.

Personnel from the security company G4S were flown to the territory to guard the BBC and lawyers who had flown out for the hearing.

But despite the constraints, I was still able to observe illuminating details, all of which helped to paint a picture of one of the most restricted locations in the world.

Approaching by plane, coconut trees and thick foliage are visible across the 44 sq km footprint-shaped atoll, the greenery punctuated by white military structures.

Diego Garcia is one of about 60 islands that make up the Chagos Archipelago or British Indian Ocean Territory (Biot) – the last colony established by the UK by separating it from Mauritius in 1965. It is located about halfway between East Africa and Indonesia.

Pulling on to the runway alongside grey military aircraft, a sign on a hangar greets you: “Diego Garcia. Footprint of Freedom,” above images of the US and British flags.

This is the first of many references to freedom on the island’s signage, a nod to the UK-US military base that has been there since the early 1970s.

Agreements signed in 1966 leased the island to the US for 50 years initially, with a possible extension for a further 20 years. The arrangement was rolled over and is set to expire in 2036.

As I make my way through airport security and beyond, US and UK influences jostle for predominance.

In the terminal, there is a door decorated with a union jack print and walls hung with photos of significant British figures, including Winston Churchill.

On the island itself, I spot British police cars and a nightclub called the Brit Club with a bulldog logo. We pass roads named Britannia Way and Churchill Road.

But cars drive on the right, as they do in the US. We are driven around in a bright yellow bus reminiscent of an American school bus.

The US dollar is the accepted currency and the electricity sockets are American. The food offered to us for the five days includes “tater tots” – a popular American fried-potato side dish – and American biscuits, similar to British scones.

While the territory is administered from London, most personnel and resources there are under the control of the US.

In the BBC’s bid to access the island, UK officials referred questions up to US staff. When the US blocked the court hearing from taking place on Diego Garcia this summer, a senior official at the Ministry of Defence said the UK “did not have the ability to grant access”.

“The US security assessment is classified… [they] have demonstrated that they have strict controls in place,” he wrote in an email to a Foreign Office colleague.

Biot’s acting commissioner has said it is not possible for him to “compel the US authorities” to grant access to any part of the military facility constructed by the US under the terms of the UK-US agreement, despite it being a British territory.

In recent years, the territory has been costing the UK tens of millions of pounds, with the bulk of this categorised under “migrant costs”. Communications obtained by the BBC between foreign office officials in July regarding the Sri Lankan Tamils warn that “the costs are increasing and the latest forecast is that these will be £50 million per annum”.

The atmosphere on the island feels relaxed. Troops and contractors ride past me on bikes, and I see people playing tennis and windsurfing in the late afternoon sun.

A cinema advertises screenings of Alien and Borderlands, and there is even a bowling alley and a museum with a gift shop attached, though I was not allowed inside.

We pass a fast-food spot called Jake’s Place, and a scenic patch of land next to the sea with a sign that reads: “Ye olde swimming hole and picnic area.” Diego Garcia-branded T-shirts and mugs are on sale on the island.

But there are also constant reminders of the sensitive base that is here. Military drills can be heard early in the morning, and near our accommodation block is a fenced-off building identified as an armoury.

All the time, US and British military officials keep a close eye on the court’s movements.

The island has startling natural beauty, from lush vegetation to pristine white beaches, and is also home to the world’s biggest terrestrial arthropod – the coconut crab. Military personnel warn of the dangers of sharks in the surrounding waters.

Biot’s website boasts that it has the “greatest marine biodiversity in the UK and its Overseas Territories, as well as some of the cleanest seas and healthiest reef systems in the world”.

But there are also clues pointing to its brutal past.

When the UK took control of the Chagos Islands – Diego Garcia is the southernmost – from former British colony Mauritius, it sought to rapidly evict its population of more than 1,000 people to make way for the military base.

Enslaved people were brought to the Chagos Islands from Madagascar and Mozambique to work on coconut plantations under French and British rule. In the following centuries, they developed their own language, music and culture.

I get to see a former plantation on the east of the island, where buildings stand in disrepair. The grand plantation manager’s house has a sign outside reading: “Danger unsafe structure. Do not enter. By order: Brit rep [representative].” A large crab crawls up the door of an abandoned guest house.

At a church on the plantation site, a sign, in French, beneath the crucifix reads: “Let us pray for our Chagossian brothers and sisters.”

Wild donkeys still roam in the area. David Vine, author of Island of Shame: The Secret History of the US Military Base on Diego Garcia, describes them as a “ghostly remnant of the society that had been there for almost 200 years”.

A Foreign Office memo in 1966 stated that the object of its plan “was to get some rocks which will remain ours; there will be no indigenous population except seagulls”.

A British diplomat responded that the islands were home only to “some few Tarzans or Man Fridays whose origins are obscure and are hopefully being wished on to Mauritius”.

Another government document stated that the islands were chosen “not only for their strategic location but also because they had, for all practical purposes, no permanent population”.

“The Americans in particular attached great importance to this freedom of manoeuvre, divorced from the normal considerations applying to a populated dependent territory,” it said.

Mr Vine says the plans came at a time when the “decolonisation movement was unfolding and accelerating” and the US was concerned about losing access to military bases around the world.

Diego Garcia was one of many islands that were considered, he says, but it became the “prime candidate” because of its relatively small population and strategic location in the middle of the Indian Ocean.

For the UK, he says, it was a chance to maintain close military ties with the US, even with only a “token British presence” there – but there was also financial motivation, he adds.

The US agreed to a $14m discount on the UK’s purchase of its Polaris nuclear missiles as part of the secret deal over the islands.

In 1967, the eviction of all residents from the Chagos islands began. Dogs, including pets, were rounded up and killed. Chagossians have described being herded onto cargo ships and taken to Mauritius or the Seychelles.

The UK granted citizenship to some Chagossians in 2002, and many of them came to live in the UK.

In testimony given to the International Court of Justice years later, Chagossian Liseby Elysé said people on the archipelago had lived a “happy life” that “did not lack anything” before the expulsions.

“One day the administrator told us that we had to leave our island, leave our houses and go away. All persons were unhappy. But we had no choice. They did not give us any reason,” she said. “Nobody would like to be uprooted from the island where he was born, to be uprooted like animals.”

Chagossians have fought for years to return to the land.

Mauritius, which won independence from the UK in 1968, maintains that the islands are its own and the United Nations’ highest court has ruled, in an advisory opinion, that the UK’s administration of the territory is “unlawful” and must end.

It said the Chagos Islands should be handed over to Mauritius in order to complete the UK’s “decolonisation”.

Clive Baldwin, senior legal adviser at Human Rights Watch, says the “forced displacement of the Chagossians by the UK and US, their persecution on the grounds of race, and the ongoing prevention of their return to their homeland amount to crimes against humanity”.

“These are the most serious crimes a state can be responsible for. It is an ongoing, colonial crime as long as they prevent the Chagossians from returning home.”

The UK government has previously stated that it has “no doubt” as to its claim over the islands, which had been “under continuous British sovereignty since 1814”.

However, in 2022, it agreed to open negotiations with Mauritius over the future of the territory, with then-Foreign Secretary James Cleverly saying he wanted to “resolve all outstanding issues”.

Earlier this month, the government announced that former Prime Minister Tony Blair’s chief of staff, Jonathan Powell, who played a central role in negotiating the Good Friday agreement in Northern Ireland, had been appointed to negotiate with Mauritius over the islands.

In a statement, new Foreign Secretary David Lammy – who has criticised previous governments for having for years “ignored the opinions” of various UN bodies over the islands – said the UK was endeavouring to “reach a settlement that protects UK interests and those of our partners”, as he stressed the need to protect the “long-term, secure and effective operation of the joint UK/US military base”.

Matthew Savill, military sciences director at leading UK defence think tank Rusi, says Diego Garcia is an “enormously important” base, “because of its position in the Indian Ocean and the facilities it has: port, storage and airfield”.

The nearest UK facility is some 3,400km (2,100 miles) away, and for the US, nearly 4,800km (3,000 miles), he explains, with the island also an important location for “space tracking and observation capabilities”.

Tankers operating from Diego Garcia refuelled US B-2 bombers that had flown from the US to carry out the first airstrikes on Afghanistan after the 9/11 attacks. And, during the subsequent “war on terror”, aircraft were also sent directly from the island itself to Afghanistan and Iraq.

The base is also one of an “extremely limited number of places worldwide available to reload submarines” with weapons like Tomahawk missiles, says Mr Savill, and the US has positioned a large amount of equipment and stores there for contingencies.

Walter Ladwig III, a senior lecturer in international relations at King’s College London, agrees the base fulfils “a lot of important roles” – but that “there is this level of secrecy that seems to go beyond what we see at other places”.

“There has been this hyper-focus on controlling access and on limiting access, which… seems to go beyond what, given what we publicly know about the assets, capabilities and units are based there.”

During my time on the island, I am required to wear a red visitor pass and am closely monitored at all times. My accommodation is guarded 24-hours-a-day and the men outside make a note of when I leave and return – always under escort.

In the mid-1980s, British journalist Simon Winchester pretended his boat had run into trouble next to the island. He remained in the bay for about two days, and managed to briefly step on shore before being escorted away and told: “Go away and don’t come back.”

He tells me he remembers British authorities there being “incredibly hostile” and the island as “extraordinarily beautiful”. More than two decades later, a Time magazine journalist spent 90 minutes or so on the island when the US presidential plane stopped there to refuel.

Rumours have long swirled about the uses of Diego Garcia, including that it has been used as a CIA black-site – a facility used to house and interrogate terror suspects.

The UK government confirmed in 2008 that rendition flights carrying terror suspects had landed on the island in 2002, following years of assurances that they had not.

“The detainees did not leave the plane, and the US Government has assured us that no US detainees have ever been held on Diego Garcia. US investigations show no record of any other rendition through Diego Garcia or any other Overseas Territory or through the UK itself since then,” then-Foreign Secretary David Miliband told parliament at the time.

On the same day, former CIA director Michael Hayden said that information previously “supplied in good faith” to the UK about rendition flights – stating that they had never landed there – had “turned out to be wrong”.

“Neither of those individuals was ever part of [the] CIA’s high-value terrorist interrogation programme. One was ultimately transferred to Guantanamo, and the other was returned to his home country. These were rendition operations, nothing more,” he said, while denying reports that the CIA had a holding facility on Diego Garcia.

Years later, Lawrence Wilkerson, chief of staff to the former US Secretary of State Colin Powell, told Vice News that intelligence sources had told him that Diego Garcia had been used as a site “where people were temporarily housed and interrogated from time to time.”

I was not allowed near any of Diego Garcia’s sensitive military areas.

After leaving my island accommodation for the last time I received an email, thanking me for my recent stay and asking for feedback. “We want every guest to experience nothing less than a welcoming and comfortable experience,” it read.

Before flying out, my passport was stamped with the territory’s coat of arms. Its motto reads: “In tutela nostra Limuria”, meaning “Limuria is in our charge” – a reference to a mythical lost continent in the Indian Ocean.

A continent that doesn’t exist seems like a fitting symbol for an island whose legal status is in doubt and that few, since the Chagossians were expelled, have been allowed to see.

“Higher,” the little girl demands, her eyes bright with excitement. “Higher, higher.”

Zeina’s being pushed on a swing in a small playground in the suburbs of the northern Italian city of Padua.

A normal scene anywhere in the world.

But Zeina, two, can’t move her head properly. And the right side of her face, neck and scalp are marked with deep, still angry, scars.

Right now, though, she’s safe and fed. And she feels like she’s flying.

Zeina is one of the 5,000 people who have been allowed to leave Gaza for specialist treatment abroad since the war broke out in the aftermath of the Hamas attacks on 7 October in southern Israel.

The World Health Organization says more than 22,000 Gazans have suffered life-changing injuries as a result of the conflict – but very few have been allowed to leave the strip since the Rafah border crossing with Egypt was closed in May.

“It was a day of nightmares,” says Zeina’s mother, Shaimaa, describing the moments leading up to her daughter’s injury as she was playing in their family’s tent in al-Mawasi, southern Gaza, on 17 March.

The family had already fled twice from their home in Khan Younis, first to Rafah and then to the sprawling “humanitarian zone” in al-Mawasi, where they thought they would be safe.

Zeina and her four-year-old sister Lana had been playing together, hugging and telling each other “I love you, I love you” – Shaimaa recalls – when there was a huge air strike nearby.

Zeina, terrified, ran clutching at her mother, who was holding a pot of boiling soup which spilled all over her daughter.

“Her face and skin were melting in front of me,” Shaimaa says. “I picked her up and went barefoot into the street.”

Medical services were stretched, she says, but Zeina was eventually treated by Red Cross doctors at Gaza’s European hospital, where she underwent a skin graft from her father’s leg, followed by a more successful graft from the skin on her own leg after she reached Egypt.

Earlier this month she was flown from Egypt to Italy to access more specialised treatment.

Zeina was joined by Alaa, a 17-year-old who was severely injured in an air strike on her home in Gaza City late last year. When the two girls met, they formed a bond straight away.

“I took to her immediately,” Alaa says. “She’s endured so much pain for such a small child. I’m older and sometimes the pain was too much for me. So what about her?”

Alaa was trapped for 16 hours under rubble and, when she was rescued, she discovered her father, a tailor, was dead. So too were her brothers, Nael, who was a university student, and Wael, a nurse.

Their bodies have never been recovered from the ruins of their four-storey building.

“I was awake the whole time under the rubble,” she tells me.

“I couldn’t breathe properly because of the weight on my chest and body. I couldn’t move. I was just thinking about the rest of my family and what had happened to them.”

As well as her father and brothers, she also lost her grandparents and an aunt. She says they had nothing to do with Hamas.

“I lost the people most precious to my heart,” she says. “I’m happy to be in Italy for treatment but inside I’m sad for Gaza and its people.”

In a statement to the BBC, the Israel Defense Forces has denied targeting civilians and says it takes “feasible precautions to mitigate civilian harm” in its operation to dismantle Hamas military capabilities.

More than 41,000 people have been killed in Gaza since the conflict began nearly a year ago, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.

The World Health Organization has repeatedly called for “multiple medical evacuation corridors” for injured Palestinians. It says that only 219 patients have been allowed to leave since May.

Zeina and Alaa were evacuated thanks to the persistence of a British-based charity, Save a Child, and the US-based Kinder Relief. They worked for months to get them out – petitioning Israel, Egypt and the US state department for help.

“If I’m being honest, Zeina and Alaa are amongst the lucky ones who got out,” says Nadia Ali of Kinder Relief, who accompanied the girls from Egypt to Italy. “We have children who were referred to us who have died waiting to leave.”

It’s hard to speak of luck when you realise the repercussions of their injuries.

Months of painful physiotherapy lie ahead for both girls, followed by many rounds of surgery.

Zeina and Alaa are both under the care of one of Italy’s top burns specialists.

Dr Bruno Azzena is kind and gentle with them, but he has to break to them the most brutal of news – that the burns on Alaa’s legs are so deep that she will never walk normally again. And the hair on Zeina’s scarred scalp will not grow back.

Her mum, Shaimaa, is devastated. She had left Gaza hoping for a miracle.

Zeina has started to realise she is different from her sisters. And, when she asks Shaimaa to tie up her hair for her, like other girls, her mother doesn’t know what to do or say.

Looking after her girls alone – her husband wasn’t authorised for evacuation with them – is tough, physically and emotionally. But Shaimaa dotes on Zeina, calling her “princess,” hiding her tears – and her fears for the future – from her.

She is also grieving for her own mother who died of cancer which had spread, unchecked and untreated, through her body in the months after the war.

“The war has cost me so much,” she says. “Thank God we were able to leave. We left by a miracle. I hope that other injured Palestinians can leave for treatment. I always pray for God to protect them and the war to stop.”

Nikunj Tank, a worker in the world’s diamond polishing capital Surat in western India, had been desperate since losing his job in May.

The unit he worked at for seven years was facing a financial squeeze and closed down, leaving him and over a dozen others unemployed.

Tank was the family’s sole breadwinner – he was supporting his parents, wife and daughter and had no savings.

‘‘He couldn’t find a job and unable to bear the loss, he took the extreme step,” said his retired father Jayanti Tank.

Tank died by suicide in August.

The last few years have been tough for India’s recession-hit diamond industry. Surat, in Gujarat state, processes 90% of the world’s diamonds in over 5,000 units and employs more than 800,000 polishers. The city has 15 big polishing units with an annual turnover of more than $100m (£75m).

India’s exports of cut and polished stones fell from $23bn in 2022 to $16bn in 2023 and are expected to drop further to $12bn in 2024.

• The revolution underway in India’s diamond industry
• Debt-ridden India labourer digs up diamond worth $95,000

The price of polished diamonds dipped by 5%,s to 27% in 2023, due to lower demand and oversupply, say analysts. Mahesh Virani of Star Gems explained that oversupply occurred because polishing units continued production despite limited demand to keep operations running, ultimately increasing their losses.

The state’s Diamond Workers’ Union, a group representing polishers, told BBC Gujarati that more than 30,000 have lost their jobs in the past six months alone due to the downturn.

The union says that as per their data collected from victims’ families, police records and news reports, 65 workers have died by suicide in the state over one-and-a-half years due to this slowdown. The BBC could not independently verify this figure.

Experts say the Covid-19 lockdown, the Russia-Ukraine and Israel-Gaza wars, and falling demand in key markets have adversely impacted India’s diamond industry.

“The business of polished diamonds has gone down by more than 25-30% due to global recession,” said Vallabh Lakhani, chairman of Kiran Gems, a leading manufacturer.

India imports 30% of its rough diamonds from Russian mines – now under Western sanctions due to the war – and cuts and polishes them, then sells them mostly in Western markets.

In March, the European Union and G7 countries imposed a fresh ban on the import of Russian unpolished diamonds, including those processed in India and sold in the West via third countries.

After the fresh ban, India publicly raised concerns, with External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar stating in April that such measures hurt those lower in the supply chain more than Russia, as producers usually find alternative routes.

Traders in Surat echo that.

“India is at the low end of the value chain of the diamond industry. The country is highly dependent on the global market, both for raw materials as well as for final sales,” said exporter Kirti Shah.

• Ukraine war: Russian diamonds set for ban under new EU sanctions

Additionally, an economic downturn in G7 countries and the UAE and Belgium – India’s key export destinations – has impacted business.

The downturn is also attributed to a rise in demand for lab-grown diamonds, a cheaper alternative to natural diamonds, and to the war in Gaza, as the gems form a sizeable chunk of India’s trade with Israel.

“The diamond sector in Surat is passing through a bad phase,” said Kumar Kanani, a lawmaker from the state’s governing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). He said the police were investigating the suicide cases attributed to job losses.

“The government is ready to provide all possible help to polishers, traders and businessmen,” he said.

But the families of at least nine workers, who recently took their lives, said they had received little help from the government.

• Will a Russian diamond ban be effective?

The majority of layoffs have occurred in small and medium-sized units, which typically hire workers for quality checks of rough diamonds and for polishing and shaping them.

But bigger players are impacted too. Last month, Kiran Gems asked its 50,000 employees to go on a 10-day vacation, citing the slowdown as a reason.

In July, the Diamond Workers’ Union started a helpline which received over 1,600 distress calls from polishers seeking jobs or financial help.

But there have been others who couldn’t get help in time.

Vaishali Patel, 38, lost her husband Nitin two years back. The polishing unit he worked for had laid off a majority of its staff because of a lack of business.

Brokers and traders too are facing the brunt.

“We have been sitting idle for days. There is hardly any sale or purchase,” said Dilip Sojitra, one of the 5,000 brokers in Surat who sell diamonds to customers, traders and other brokers.

• India’s jobs crisis is more serious than it seems

Lab-grown diamonds, once in high demand, have also seen prices drop from $300 to $78 per carat due to overproduction, impacting the market. Surat Diamond Brokers Association president Nandlal Nakrani believes the situation will improve when rough diamond prices decrease and polished diamond prices rise.

Despite the slowdown, some hope the industry will recover, as it did after the 2008 Great Recession, which shut hundreds of polishing units and left thousands jobless.

Mr Sojitra says he believes the upcoming festival season, including Diwali, Christmas, and New Year, will help boost business momentum.

“This too shall pass,” he says.

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, 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, with passengers having less space than they did in the past, 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 climbing over someone 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 sitting 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.”

For Daniel Guerra, an aspiring Brazilian sailor keen to travel the world, the job ad was a dream come true.

A British yacht owner was seeking two deck-hands to help sail his boat from Brazil across the Atlantic, one of the great ocean journeys.

There would be no salary, but all expenses paid – and, crucially, Mr Guerra would gain some of the sailing experience he needed to qualify as a sea captain.

“My dream was to become a captain and go work in Europe,” remembers the 43-year-old, who saw the advert from an online sailing recruitment agency.

“So I was super happy, knowing that my path to my dream was beginning.”

Things looked even better when Mr Guerra and his fellow recruit, Rodrigo Dantas, 32, met their new British employer.

They had feared he might be some snobbish yachtie or posing Instagrammer, who would make sure they knew who was boss.

But no. George Saul was a smiling, friendly figure, who did not insist on formalities. The sailors, he said, could even call him by his nickname – “Fox”.

“I used to work on some boats and the owners were old, super demanding, super rude and talked down to me,” adds Mr Dantas. “He was like, very cool, very friendly.”

Fox even passed the approval test of Mr Dantas’s parents, who were worried about their son doing such a long journey on a yacht owned by a total stranger, and asked to meet him for themselves.

To borrow the old sailing expression, they liked the cut of his jib. They learned that Fox had brought the Rich Harvest over to Brazil for renovations, and wanted a competent crew to sail it back to Europe on his behalf.

As well as the rookies, Mr Dantas and Mr Guerra, there would be two others, including a qualified captain.

“I said: ‘Look, watch out for my son’,” remembers Mr Dantas’s father, João. “He said: ‘Don’t worry, I’ll take care of Rodrigo.’”

As it turned out, his parents were not the only ones who wanted to check that all was well on board the Rich Harvest.

Before the departure from Brazil, local police spent around six hours searching the yacht for drugs, with the help of a sniffer dog.

They did not find what they were looking for, though, and the sailors assumed it was just a routine check.

They had heard stories about cocaine being planted on boats, and now at least knew they were in the clear.

“When you travel through an airport… your bags go through the X-ray machine,” says Mr Dantas. “So I thought, well, it’s an international trip and they’re coming to inspect the boat.”

Such worries were far from their mind when they eventually embarked on their epic journey on 4 August 2017, the Brazilian coastline slowly receding behind them.

With them were an additional crew member from Brazil and the yacht’s newly hired French captain, a replacement for a previous British captain whose sailing skills had not proved up to scratch.

Fox, meanwhile, had made his way back to Europe by plane two days before.

“It was a beautiful day, perfect weather, sun,” recalls Mr Guerra, who posted a message of thanks to Fox on his Facebook page.

It read: “I’m really grateful, Fox, for this… chance to learn and for our bond that has made me stronger. Thanks mate.”

After two weeks of sailing, the yacht developed engine problems, forcing it to stop in Cape Verde, an archipelago off the coast of West Africa.

Once more, Mr Guerra and Mr Dantas found reasons to look on the bright side. The islands are a tourist paradise, and Fox said he would wire them money to enjoy themselves while repairs were done at a local marina.

And when yet more police came to search the vessel, Mr Guerra was not worried.

“They didn’t find anything in Brazil,” he thought to himself. “They won’t find anything in Cape Verde either.”

The Cape Verdean police were even more thorough than their Brazilian counterparts, using specialist cutting equipment to open up the yacht’s innards.

Hidden inside below false floors, they found nearly 1.2 tonnes of cocaine – worth an estimated £100m ($134m) if sold on Europe’s streets.

“I felt that all my freedom was going down the drain,” said Mr Guerra. “I was furious, couldn’t accept what was happening, you know? I’d been really fooled.”

Finding Mr Fox – a BBC investigation into a plot to smuggle cocaine valued at more than $100m to Europe.

Find it on iPlayer (UK only) or on the BBC Africa YouTube channel (outside the UK)

In March 2018, the crew went on trial in Cape Verde, protesting their innocence.

They had never even heard of Rich Harvest or its owner until they answered the job advert, they insisted.

They were sentenced, however, to 10 years in jail each – in what was hailed as one of the country’s biggest busts.

But while the haul was impressive, the man Brazilian police regarded as the big catch got away.

They believed that the mastermind of the operation was Fox, whose yacht was first drawn to their attention by a tip-off from the UK’s National Crime Agency (NCA).

Brazilian police believe he was the leader of the operation to smuggle the drugs.

In August 2018, Fox was arrested in Italy, where Brazilian police filed extradition proceedings. They wanted him to be returned to Brazil to answer the allegations against him.

But the paperwork arrived too late, and he was freed – much to the frustration of Brazilian police inspector Andre Gonçalves.

He feared that Fox had subsequently gone into hiding.

“We were left with that feeling that after all our work, we’d never get to the bottom of it,” he told the BBC. “It was very, very frustrating.”

Mr Gonçalves said his team had kept both Fox and the yacht under surveillance in Brazil. They believe the “renovations” on the boat were partly to fit it with secret compartments, and that the drugs were loaded on to the vessel before the sailors were hired.

Mr Gonçalves admits that at first, he presumed the four sailors were involved too.

“If someone is on a boat that’s full of drugs, you think that person must have something to do with it,” he said.

But as he dug into their backgrounds, he could find nothing previously linking them to the drug world or to Fox.

“The deeper I went I still couldn’t find a connection… but at the same time it strengthened the evidence we had against Fox.”

The sailors’ pleas of innocence also got backing from an unlikely source – fellow Briton Robert Delbos, a man who was alleged to be an accomplice of Fox.

Delbos, 71, is a convicted drug trafficker, having been jailed for 12 years in 1988 for attempting to smuggle 1.5 tonnes of cannabis into the UK.

Before the Rich Harvest left Brazil, Mr Gonçalves’s team observed Delbos supervising the first stages of the yacht’s renovations.

They initially suspected he was fitting secret compartments, and filed successful extradition proceedings for him around the same time as those against Fox.

Delbos spent months in a Brazilian supermax prison awaiting trial, but he too said the drugs were later planted without his knowledge.

He was acquitted after the judge in his case ruled it could not be proved that he knew about the smuggling plan.

In an interview with the BBC, he claimed that even drug traffickers had codes of ethics, and that Fox had violated them by using innocent sailors as mules rather than hiring professional smugglers.

“This is completely beyond the pale. I mean, you don’t do this,” he said.

“He was a stupid man who was greedy. Instead of paying the crew properly and getting himself a professional, bloody smuggling crew – he hired four innocent guys.”

As doubts about the sailors’ guilt grew, their families began a campaign on their behalf, which became a cause célèbre in Brazil.

In 2019 their convictions in Cape Verde were overturned, and they were allowed to go home.

Fox, meanwhile, has never faced trial, and returned to the UK.

The 41-year-old lives in Norwich in eastern England where he grew up, attended college locally, and was an accomplished amateur yachtsman – sailing off the nearby Norfolk coast.

Today, he resides in a Norwich suburb and runs a property firm.

He belonged to a local business networking association, and on his social media feed last March, posted photos of himself with the city’s then Lord Mayor, James Wright.

There is no suggestion that Mr Wright was aware of the accusations against Fox.

The BBC tracked Fox down as he arrived at one of his networking association’s weekly business breakfasts, at a Norwich hotel.

He declined to comment on the Rich Harvest and the sailors’ ordeal.

Asked about the allegations that he was a drug trafficker, he replied: “I’m not.”

An NCA spokesperson said if Brazilian police still wished to pursue the case, they would have to file an extradition request.

Brazil’s ministry of justice said it did not comment on individual cases.

Meanwhile, Rodrigo Dantas and Daniel Guerra are trying to rebuild their lives in Brazil, their dreams of becoming yacht captains abandoned.

Mr Dantas says he struggled to find sailing work on his return home, with some employers assuming he must have been guilty after all.

Mr Guerra’s round-the-world sailing ambitions “stayed locked up in Cape Verde”.

He says he lost his ability to trust people, vital during the challenges on any long yacht voyage.

Even now, he still wonders who Fox really was – that “cool” British guy he once felt so grateful to, whose job advert then turned his life upside down.

He says that he would “really like to see justice done”, but has no wish to meet Fox ever again.

“If I meet him, it won’t be me who’s going to talk. It will be another Daniel. All the bad feelings I had in jail will come up and I won’t be able to be a civilised person.”

Coming in October World of Secrets, Season 5: Finding Mr Fox.

A joint BBC Africa Eye, BBC Brasil and World of Secrets podcast investigation into a plot to smuggle cocaine valued at more $100m to Europe.

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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?”

The Irish economy has been increasingly attracting Chinese investment, but does it come with a reputational cost?

In 2020, 25 Chinese companies had operations in the Republic of Ireland. By this year the number had jumped to 40.

For some this new flood of yuan into the country offers Ireland an opportunity to reduce its reliance on being the European base for US tech giants such as Apple and Alphabet. And it creates additional jobs.

But for an increasing number of critics, Ireland being home to Chinese firms links the country to the human rights abuse allegations levelled against some such companies. These include Chinese clothing firm Shein, which since May 2023 has had its European headquarters in Dublin.

Shein has long been attacked for how the workers who makes its clothes are treated. And earlier this year it had to admit that it found child labour in its supply chain.

The Irish government is also in the diplomatically awkward position of luring many of the very Chinese companies that the US has sanctioned.

Two cases in point – telecoms firm Huawei and drugs company WuXi Biologics.

In May, Ireland’s Minister of State for Trade Promotion, Dara Calleary, welcomed a report celebrating how Huawei was contributing €800m ($889m; £668m) per year to the Irish economy. The firm has three research and development centres in Ireland.

This is the same Huawei whose telecoms network equipment the US has banned since 2022 due to concerns over national security. The UK has moved in the same direction, ordering phone networks to remove Huawei components. And mobile phone networks in many Western nations, including Ireland, no longer offer Huawei handsets.

Meanwhile, WuXi has, since 2018, invested more than €1bn in a facility in Dundalk, near the border with Northern Ireland.

Earlier this month the US House of Representatives passed a bill to restrict US firms’ ability to work with WuXi, again citing national security concerns. The bill now has to go to the US Senate.

Ireland’s Industrial Development Authority is the government agency whose mandate is to attract foreign investment into the country. It has three offices in China, and says it seeks “to promote Ireland as a gateway to Europe for Chinese investors”.

Another Chinese firm that has its European headquarters in Ireland is social media video app TikTok, which is owned by Beijing-based parent firm ByteDance. And the parent of Chinese online retailer Temu moved its global headquarters from China to Ireland last year.

Prominent critics of Ireland rolling out a “green carpet” to Chinse firms include Barry Andrews, one of Ireland’s members of the European Parliament. “Human rights and environmental abuses should not be allowed in Irish shopping baskets,” says the Fianna Fáil MEP.

He points to a US Congress report from last year, which said there was “an extremely high risk that Temu’s supply chains are contaminated with forced labour”.

Temu had told the investigation that it had a “zero-tolerance policy” towards the practice.

“One person’s bargain is another’s back-breaking work for poverty wages,” adds Mr Andrews, whose party is part of the current Irish government coalition.

Critics also argue that there are substantial differences between US tech firms operating in Ireland and Chinese ones – for example, about openness.

For instance, Huawei and WuXi declined an opportunity to be interviewed for this article. Shein provided a spokesperson who was only prepared to speak off the record, then did not reply to follow-up questions.

Some leading economists question whether Ireland even needs the few thousand jobs that the Chinese firms provide.

“Ireland’s economy has been running at near full employment for the best part of a decade,” says Dan O’Brien, chief economist at Ireland’s Institute of International and European Affairs.

Irish unemployment was 4.3% in August 2024, only slightly above its all-time low of 3.90% in October 2020. Economists generally consider an unemployment rate of around 4 to 5% to represent full employment.

Mr O’Brien also points to the fact that a fifth of Ireland’s private-sector employment is directly, or indirectly, attributable to foreign direct investment (FDI), according to official figures. He says this is too high.

It is so elevated because Ireland has one of the lowest standard corporation tax rates in Europe, at 12.5%. This is the tax that all but the very biggest firms have to pay on their profits. By comparison, the UK rate is 25%.

Mr O’Brien says that Ireland’s level of FDI was already too high without the Chinese investment on top. “Given we are already overly dependent on FDI in a world that is at risk of deglobalisation, we don’t need another major source of FDI on top of that from the United States.”

He adds EU rules should be “actively used to discourage Chinese FDI” in Ireland.

The Irish government tells the BBC that it “supports the common EU approach to China on de-risking… [but] the government has been clear that de-risking is not decoupling”.

Irish Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment, Peter Burke adds: “In an era of continuous global uncertainty, Ireland offers a stable and pro-business environment. Multinational companies, including Chinese companies, recognise these opportunities.”

Given how much Ireland’s economy does depend on FDI, some economists say Chinese investment in Ireland can be seen as a welcome insurance policy in case some US firms pull out.

“There is a huge pressure on US tech companies to re-domicile and re-invest in the US,” says Constantin Gurdgiev, an economist at Trinity College Dublin and the University of Northern Colorado.

Meanwhile, other European countries, such as Poland, Estonia, Slovakia, and Malta, have made inroads in courting US investments, presenting Ireland with new competition from countries with cheaper housing and less rain.

Dr Gurdgiev also points to “the forever-looming threat of global corporate tax reforms”, further eroding Ireland’s low corporation tax. The country has already signed up to Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development rules, and as a result, this year introduced a 15% corporation tax rate for firms with an annual turnover of more than €750m ($835m; £625m).

And earlier this month, the European Court of Justice ruled that Apple had to pay Ireland €13bn in unpaid taxes. It followed after the European Commission accused Ireland of giving Apple illegal tax advantages.

Dublin consistently argued against the need for the tax to be paid, but said it would respect the ruling.

Dr Gurdgiev adds that Ireland is acting “with some strategic foresight” in courting Beijing. And that even if Dublin is welcoming the likes of Huawei, he says that the strength and influence of the Irish diaspora in the US means that Washington will turn something of a blind eye.

He argues that this is why the US authorities have been “largely laissez-faire in their approach to chasing tax optimization schemes that Dublin has been developing over decades”.

Plus, he says Ireland provides the US, EU and China with a useful “neutral ground” where both US and Chinese tech firms can operate.

Dr Gurdgiev adds that by putting itself in such a position, Ireland is playing a “dangerous geopolitical game” for a small economy.

However, he says its diplomatic closeness to the US should make its position “relatively safe”.

A mere three days after being elected as the new leader of Japan’s ruling party, incoming Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba has announced plans for a snap election on 27 October.

Ishiba, 67, replaced outgoing prime minister, Fumio Kishida, as chief of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) on Friday, following a tight race that saw him securing more votes than any of the other eight candidates.

Since the LDP has a parliamentary majority, Ishiba will be approved as prime minister by parliament on Tuesday.

“It is important for the new administration to be judged by the people as soon as possible,” Ishiba said at a press conference in Tokyo on Monday, according to Reuters.

The election, which is set to take place more than a year before it is due, will decide which party controls parliament’s lower house.

Earlier in the day Ishiba began picking government and party officials who will contest the upcoming general election with him, including two influential former prime ministers: Taro Aso, as adviser, and Yoshihide Suga, as vice-president.

Ishiba also asked Shinjiro Koizumi, a popular rival in Friday’s leadership race who enjoys a favourable standing with the Japanese public, to serve as election strategy chief.

However, Sanae Takaichi, the hardline female conservative that Ishiba closely beat in the runoff to Friday’s poll, was not included in Ishiba’s picks.

After winning Friday’s leadership election, Ishiba said he would revitalise Japan’s economy, address security threats and clean up the LDP, whose approval ratings have plummeted in recent months amid public scandals and internal conflicts.

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 under-reported political funding over the course of several years.

The latter controversy fuelled mass public outrage and wounded then Prime Minister Kishida’s political standing, leading to his announcement in August that he would not seek re-election as LDP leader.

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

“For this, transparent and open elections and free and vigorous debate are important.”

Shortly after taking up the mantle on Friday, Ishida echoed his predecessor’s words.

“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 reporters.

Despite the scandals, the LDP, which has ruled Japan for most of the post-war era, remains the country’s most popular political party.

The last two weeks of campaigning for its leadership were also seen by experts as an audition for the general election – meaning candidates presented themselves not only to fellow party members but also to the public, in an attempt to win over the electorate.

Suga from K-pop boy band BTS has been fined 15 million won ($11,500; £8,600) for driving an electric scooter while intoxicated, according to media reports.

The singer, whose real name is Min Yoon-gi, was indicted in August after police found him trying to get up after falling off the scooter near his Seoul home and discovered he was drunk.

His blood alcohol level was 0.227%, far exceeding the 0.08% threshold, say local media reports quoting police.

A district court in Seoul imposed the fine last Friday.

The rapper, who also had his licence revoked, apologised in August, saying he had driven home in Seoul “thinking it was a close distance” and “[forgot] that you can’t use an electric scooter under the influence”.

“Although no one was harmed and no property was damaged, this is entirely my responsibility with no excuses.

“I apologise to those who have been hurt by my carelessness and wrongful behaviour, and I will ensure that this does not happen again in the future,” he had said in a statement.

Suga faced backlash in the days that followed, with some asking him to leave BTS. K-pop idols in South Korea are generally expected to project a squeaky clean image, though in this case, many of Suga’s fans had also rallied in his defence.

The 31-year-old is currently serving as a social service agent in the military as he had been ruled unfit for regular combat duty.

Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan has told fans “it’s good to be back” after winning the best actor award at the International Indian Film Academy Awards.

Khan was referring to his return to movies in 2023 after a hiatus lasting four years.

“I think I have a little happiness from the audience this year because I worked (again) after a long time,” he declared to crowds at a star-studded show in Abu Dhabi.

Khan, a household name in India, is also one of the country’s most popular stars with millions of fans domestically and abroad.

He not only won the prize for his role in action thriller Jawan but also co-hosted the event in in the capital of the United Arab Emirates, a city with a big Indian population.

Fireworks greeted his arrival on stage, and the whole event was peppered with tributes to him.

“I love awards, I’m greedy about awards,” he announced. “I just want to tell you it’s good to be back.”

Khan’s return to the big screen was Bollywood’s biggest success story last year. He also starred in the spy film Pathaan.

The roles – in which he portrayed a rugged action hero – marked a departure for the 58-year-old, who, over three decades of his movie career, has been best known for playing the tender romantic hero.

His comeback on the big screen comes after a series of setbacks in his personal and professional life. They include the arrest of his son Aryan Khan on fake charges of drug possession – the charges were eventually dropped – and a number of films that didn’t do well.

But his break from the limelight is unlikely to have dented his popularity. Charming and funny, the actor is often described as Bollywood’s “most important cultural export”, with millions of fans who endearingly refer to him as King Khan or the King of Bollywood.

Other Bollywood megastars also attended the event on Saturday, including Rani Mukerji, Anil Kapoor and Bobby Deol.

Mukerji won the best actress award for the child-custody drama Mrs Chatterjee vs Norway while Vidhu Vinod Chopra won best director for 12th Fail.

Meanwhile, Sandeep Reddy Vanga’s Animal scooped up six awards including best picture, and best supporting actor for Anil Kapoor.

Bollywood, India’s dominant film business, produces hundreds of films every year and has a huge following among Indians globally.

But like others across the world, it has seen ups and downs since the coronavirus pandemic shuttered cinemas for months and led many to turn to streaming services. It is yet to return to its former glory.

This year has been particular difficult, thanks to a lacklustre pipeline of new releases.

In comparison, 2023 was a stellar year, helped in part by the return of “King Khan”.

It is the third time Abu Dhabi has hosted the event, which is running over three days this year.

Karan Johar co-hosted the ceremony alongside Khan. The renowned filmmaker also scooped up a special award marking his 25 years in cinema.

Oasis have announced they will ditch dynamic pricing for the American leg of their reunion tour, after it caused “an unacceptable experience” for UK fans.

The system raises the price of concert tickets at times of high demand. When Oasis’ UK dates went on sale, some fans were charged more than £350 for tickets with an initial face value of £150.

The band faced significant backlash, and the UK’s competition regulator launched an investigation into whether Ticketmaster breached consumer protection law.

In a statement announcing dates in the US, Canada and Mexico, the group’s managers said they wanted to “avoid a repeat of the issues” faced by fans in the UK and Ireland.

“It is widely accepted that dynamic pricing remains a useful tool to combat ticket touting and keep prices for a significant proportion of fans lower than the market rate and thus more affordable,” they wrote.

“But, when unprecedented ticket demand (where the entire tour could be sold many times over at the moment tickets go on sale) is combined with technology that cannot cope with that demand, it becomes less effective and can lead to an unacceptable experience for fans.”

Previously, Noel and Liam Gallagher said they had not been aware that dynamic pricing would be used for their UK stadium shows next summer.

In a statement earlier this month, the band said: “It needs to be made clear that Oasis leave decisions on ticketing and pricing entirely to their promoters and management.”

The band’s reunion shows next summer follow a break of almost 16 years.

The Britpoppers broke up at a gig in Paris in 2009 after an altercation that began with Liam throwing a plum at his older brother’s head.

The siblings kept their distance for more than a decade, engaging instead in an arms-length war of words in the press, on stage and on social media.

Liam repeatedly called Noel a “massive potato” on Twitter and accused him of deliberately missing the One Love concert for victims of the Manchester Arena bombing.

Noel responded by saying Liam was a “village idiot” who “needs to see a psychiatrist”.

“He’s the angriest man you’ll ever meet,” he added. “He’s like a man with a fork in a world of soup.”

The brothers have yet to give an interview explaining how they repaired their relationship, and fans are waiting to see whether tensions will boil over again when they return to the stage.

For now, however, they are due to play seven concerts at Wembley Stadium next summer, as well as shows in Manchester, Cardiff, Edinburgh and Dublin.

Dates were announced on Monday for the band to play in Canada, Mexico and the US, as follows:

• Rogers Stadium in Toronto, Canada, on 24 August
• Soldier Field in Chicago, Illinois, on 28 August
• MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey, on 31 August
• Rose Bowl Stadium in Los Angeles, California, on 6 September
• Estadio GNP Seguros in Mexico City, Mexico, on 12 September

Announcing the concerts, the band said: “America. Oasis is coming. You have one last chance to prove that you loved us all along.”

A zookeeper has been mauled to death by a lion in south-western Nigeria after he failed to secure the locks on its enclosure when he went to feed it, police say.

The victim, a 35-year-old man, worked at the Presidential Library Wildlife Park, owned by former Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo, in Abeokuta, capital of Ogun state.

Local police spokesperson Omolola Odutola said in a statement that “the lion inflicted serious fatal injuries to the man’s neck”.

He said the lion was then shot to “release its grip on the handler”.

According to a statement from the Olusegun Obasanjo Presidential Library, the zookeeper had taken some guests to see the lion’s feeding routine after hours on Saturday evening.

“The zookeeper, apparently, feeling comfortable with the animal, left the safety protection gate open and proceeded to feed the animal. He was mauled by the animal and died on the spot.

“To prevent further mutilation of the body, the animal was put down immediately by personnel of the park.”

The victim has been named as Babaji Daule, described by police as a trained lion handler.

It comes less than a year after another zookeeper was attacked and killed by a lion at the Obafemi Awolowo University, also in south-western Nigeria.

The incident has triggered concerns with people raising questions about the country’s regulations and management of zoos and handling of wild animals.

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“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, 13 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.

Netflix has failed in its attempt to persuade a judge to throw out a defamation lawsuit brought by the woman who inspired the stalker character in hit series Baby Reindeer.

Fiona Harvey claims the streaming giant told “brutal lies” about her to more than 50 million viewers around the world.

The show, created by Richard Gadd, is billed as “a true story”, but certain key events, like the conviction for stalking, did not happen in real life, the judge concluded.

Netflix said: “We intend to defend this matter vigorously and to stand by Richard Gadd’s right to tell his story.”

In his ruling, Judge Gary Klausner wrote: “There is a major difference between stalking and being convicted of stalking in a court of law.”

There were other substantial disparities between what really happened and what was shown on screen, he noted.

Ms Harvey says also she did not stalk a police officer, sexually assault Gadd, violently attack him in a pub by smashing a bottle over his head and gouging his eyes, or wait outside his home for up to 16 hours a day.

Netflix argued those things should be viewed as “substantially true” because she did arguably similar things in real life.

However, the judge wrote: “There are major differences between inappropriate touching and sexual assault, as well as between shoving and gouging another’s eyes.”

Gadd’s original stage play was billed slightly differently – as being “based on a true story” – which suggests “certain details were likely false”, the judge wrote.

A Sunday Times article from June quoted TV industry sources as saying Gadd “expressed concerns” with Netflix about presenting it as simply “a true story”.

The fact the company went ahead “suggests a reckless disregard of whether statements in the series were false”, Judge Klausner wrote.

Netflix argued that most viewers would understand the claims made in the show to be “not factual” because it was shot in the style of a drama.

However, the judge disagreed, writing: “While the statements were made in a series that largely has the trappings of a black comedy-drama, the very first episode states unequivocally that ‘this is a true story’, thereby inviting the audience to accept the statements as fact.”

Netflix also said the similarities between the real and fictionalised people were so broad that average viewers would not have been able to identify Ms Harvey as Martha.

“The court disagrees,” the judge wrote. “This is not the typical case where a plaintiff happens to be one of hundreds of people that match a fictional character’s broad characteristics.

“Rather, Martha and Plaintiff [Ms Harvey] have specific similarities that few others could claim to share.”

However, the judge did side with Netflix in some parts of Ms Harvey’s case, dismissing her negligence and gross negligence claims, and her request for punitive damages.

Baby Reindeer has been one of the biggest TV hits of the past year, and recently won six Emmy Awards in the US.

The UK is about to stop producing any electricity from burning coal – ending its 142-year reliance on the fossil fuel.

The country’s last coal power station, at Ratcliffe-on-Soar, finishes operations on Monday after running since 1967.

This marks a major milestone in the country’s ambitions to reduce its contribution to climate change. Coal is the dirtiest fossil fuel producing the most greenhouse gases when burnt.

Minister for Energy Michael Shanks said: “We owe generations a debt of gratitude as a country.”

The UK was the birthplace of coal power, and from tomorrow it becomes the first major economy to give it up.

“It’s a really remarkable day, because Britain, after all, built her whole strength on coal, that is the industrial revolution,” said Lord Deben – the longest serving environment secretary.

The first coal-fired power station in the world, the Holborn Viaduct power station, was built in 1882 in London by the inventor Thomas Edison – bringing light to the streets of the capital.

From that point through the first half of the twentieth century, coal provided pretty much all of the UK’s electricity, powering homes and businesses.

In the early 1990s, coal began to be forced out of the electricity mix by gas, but coal still remained a crucial component of the UK grid for the next two decades.

In 2012, it still generated 39% of the UK’s power.

But the science around climate change was growing – it was clear that the world’s greenhouse gas emissions needed to be reduced and as the dirtiest fossil fuel, coal was a major target.

In 2008, the UK established its first legally binding climate targets and in 2015 the then-energy and climate change secretary, Amber Rudd, told the world the UK would be ending its use of coal power within the next decade.

Dave Jones, director of global insights at Ember, an independent energy think tank, said this really helped to “set in motion” the end of coal by providing a clear direction of travel for the industry.

But it also showed leadership and set a benchmark for other countries to follow, according to Lord Deben.

“I think it’s made a big difference, because you need someone to point to and say, ‘There, they’ve done it. Why can’t we do it?'”, he said.

In 2010, renewables generated just 7% of the UK’s power. By the first half of 2024, this had grown to more than 50% – a new record.

The rapid growth of green power meant that coal could even be switched off completely for short periods, with the first coal-free days in 2017.

The growth of renewables has been so successful that the target date for ending coal power was brought forward a year, and on Monday, Ratcliffe-on-Soar, was set to close.

Chris Smith has worked at the plant for 28 years in the environment and chemistry team. She said: “It is a very momentous day. The plant has always been running and we’ve always been doing our best to keep it operating….It is a very sad moment.”

Lord Deben served in former prime minister Margaret Thatcher’s government when many of the UK’s coal mines were closed and thousands of workers lost their jobs. He said lessons had to be learnt from that for current workers in the fossil fuel industry.

“I’m particularly keen on the way in which this Government, and indeed the previous Government, is trying to make sure that the new jobs, of which there are very many green jobs, go to the places which are being damaged by the changes.

“So in the North Sea oil areas, that’s exactly where we should be doing carbon capture and storage, it’s where we should be putting wind and solar power,” he said.

Although coal is a very polluting source of energy, its benefit has been in being available at all times – unlike wind and solar which are limited by weather conditions.

Kayte O’Neill, the chief operating officer at the Energy System Operator – the body overseeing the UK’s electricity system – said: “There is a whole load of innovation required to help us ensure the stability of the grid. Keeping the lights on in a secure way.”

A crucial technology providing that stability Kayte O’Neill spoke of is battery technology.

Dr Sylwia Walus, research programme manager at the Faraday Institution, said that there has been significant progress in the science of batteries.

“There is always scope for a new technology, but more focus these days is really how to make it more sustainable and cheaper in production,” she said.

To achieve this the UK needs to become more independent of China in producing its own batteries and bringing in skilled workers for this purpose, she explained.

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Switzerland and Italy have redrawn part of their border in the Alps due to melting glaciers, caused by climate change.

Part of the area affected will be beneath the Matterhorn, one of Europe’s tallest mountains, and close to a number of popular ski resorts.

Large sections of the Swiss-Italian border are determined by glacier ridgelines or areas of perpetual snow, but melting glaciers have caused these natural boundaries to shift, leading to both countries seeking to rectify the border.

Switzerland officially approved the agreement on the change on Friday, but Italy is yet to do the same. This follows a draft agreement by a joint Swiss-Italian commission back in May 2023.

Statistics published last September showed that Switzerland’s glaciers lost 4% of their volume in 2023, the second biggest loss ever after 2022’s record melt of 6%.

An annual report is issued each year by the Swiss Glacier Monitoring Network (Glamos), which attributed the record losses to consecutive very warm summers, and 2022 winter’s very low snowfall. Researchers say that if these weather patterns continue, the thaw will only accelerate.

On Friday, Switzerland said that the redefined borders had been drawn up in accordance with the economic interests of both parties.

It is thought that clarifying the borders will help both countries determine which is responsible for the upkeep of specific natural areas.

Swiss-Italian boundaries will be changed in the region of Plateau Rosa, the Carrel refuge and Gobba di Rollin – all are near the Matterhorn and popular ski resorts including Zermatt.

The exact border changes will be implemented and the agreement published once both countries have signed it.

Switzerland says that the approval process for signing the agreement is under way in Italy.

Last year, Glamos warned that some Swiss glaciers are shrinking so fast that it is unlikely they can be saved, even if global temperatures are kept within the Paris climate agreement’s 1.5C target rise.

Experts say that without a reduction in greenhouse gases linked to global warning, bigger glaciers like the Aletsch – which is not on the border – could disappear within a generation.

A number of discoveries have been made on Swiss glaciers in recent years due to their melting and rapid shrinking.

Last July, human remains found close to Matterhorn were confirmed to be those of a German climber missing since 1986.

Climbers crossing the Theodul glacier above Zermatt noticed a hiking boot and crampons emerging from the ice.

In 2022, the wreckage of a plane that crashed in 1968 emerged from the Aletsch glacier.

And the body of missing British climber Jonathan Conville was discovered in 2014 by a helicopter pilot who spotted something unusual while delivering supplies to a mountain refuge on the Matterhorn.

Mount Everest is 15-50m taller than it would otherwise be because a river is eroding rock and soil at its base, helping push it upwards, according to a new study.

Loss of landmass in the Arun river basin 75km (47 miles) away is causing the world’s highest peak to rise by up to 2mm a year, University College London (UCL) researchers said.

“It’s a bit like throwing a load of cargo off a ship,” study co-author Adam Smith told the BBC. “The ship becomes lighter and so floats a little higher. Similarly, when the crust becomes lighter… it can float a little higher.”

Pressure from the collision of the Indian and the Eurasian plates 40-50 million years ago formed the Himalayas and plate tectonics remains the major reason for their continued rise.

But the Arun river network is a contributing factor to the mountains’ rise, the UCL team said.

As the Arun flows through the Himalayas it carves away material – the river bed in this case – from the Earth’s crust. This reduces the force on the mantle (the next layer under the crust), causing the thinned crust to flex and float upward.

It’s an effect called the isostatic rebound. The research, published in Nature Geoscience, adds that this upward pushing force is causing Everest and other neighbouring summits, including the world’s fourth and fifth highest peaks, Lhotse and Makalu, to move upward.

“Mount Everest and its neighbouring peaks are growing because the isostatic rebound is raising them up faster than erosion is wearing them down,” fellow co-author of the study Dr Matthew Fox told the BBC.

“We can see them growing by about two millimetres a year using GPS instruments and now we have a better understanding of what’s driving it.”

Some geologists not involved in the study said the theory was plausible but there was much in the research that was still uncertain.

Everest stands on the border between China and Nepal, and its northern part is on the Chinese side. The Arun river flows down from Tibet into Nepal and then merges with two other rivers to become the Kosi which then enters northern India to meet the Ganges.

It is a very high silt-yielding river given the steepness of the mountains it flows through and the force it has, allowing it to carve off so much rock and soil on its way.

But the UCL researchers say it most likely earned its real strength when it “captured” another river or water body in Tibet 89,000 years ago, which in geological timescales is a recent event.

A Chinese academic, Dr Xu Han of China University of Geosciences, was the lead author in the study during a scholarship visit at the UCL.

“The changing height of Mount Everest really highlights the dynamic nature of the Earth’s surface,” he said.

“The interaction between the erosion of the Arun river and the upward pressure of the Earth’s mantle gives Mount Everest a boost, pushing it up higher than it would otherwise be.”

The UCL study says the Arun river most likely gained the capacity to carve off an extraordinary amount of rocks and other materials after it captured another river or water system in Tibet.

Professor Hugh Sinclair with the School of Geosciences at University of Edinburgh, who was not involved in the study, said the underlying process identified by the UCL team was perfectly reasonable.

But, he added, the exact amounts and timescales of river incision (or how the river cuts downward into its bed and deepens its channel) and the consequent surface uplift of surrounding peaks had large uncertainties.

“Firstly, predicting river incision of such large catchments in response to drainage capture (one river capturing another river or lake) is challenging,” he said.

This uncertainty is something the authors have acknowledged in the study.

Secondly, said Prof Sinclair, the distance over which mountains uplift from a point of intensive localised erosion is extremely hard to predict.

“However, even accounting for these reservations, the possibility that some of Everest’s exceptional elevation is linked to the river, represents an exciting insight.”

A SpaceX capsule sent to bring back two astronauts stranded on the International Space Station (ISS) has docked.

The Dragon capsule, which has two empty seats for Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, docked at 17:30 eastern time (22:30 BST).

The pair arrived at the station on Boeing’s new Starliner capsule for an eight-day mission in June, but were forced to remain there because of a fault discovered during the flight.

They are now expected to return to Earth in February.

The Dragon capsule lifted off from Cape Canaveral, Florida on Saturday carrying Nasa astronaut Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Alexander Gorbunov.

Hague, who has done a previous stint on the ISS, and Gorbunov will join the space station’s crew before taking Wilmore and Williams back to Earth.

The launch had been scheduled for Thursday but was delayed because of Hurricane Helene, which has caused huge destruction across the south-eastern US, including Florida, in recent days.

The docking occurred as the space station flew 265 miles (426km) above Botswana in southern Africa.

Footage from inside the ISS showed Hague and Gorbunov smiling and posing for photos with the rest of the crew after their arrival.

The original Starliner flight, which launched on 5 June, was that capsule’s first test flight with astronauts on board and Boeing’s first attempt to take astronauts to the ISS.

During the flight it experienced a number of problems, including leaks of helium – which is used in its propulsion system – and issues with several of its thrusters.

Engineers at Boeing and Nasa spent months investigating, but in late August Nasa decided that it would not be safe to try to bring Wilmore and Williams home aboard the Starliner.

The capsule had already been delayed for several years because of setbacks during its development, as well as issues discovered during uncrewed test flights in 2019 and 2022.

Nasa retired its space shuttle fleet in 2011, leaving it reliant on Russia’s Soyuz craft to get to and from the ISS.

Having two American companies to perform the missions has been a key goal of the agency’s for some time, and in 2014 Boeing and SpaceX were awarded contracts worth $4.2bn (£3.2bn) and $2.6bn (£2bn) respectively.

In 2020, SpaceX – founded by billionaire Elon Musk – became the first private company to take astronauts to the ISS.

Tributes have been paid to Kris Kristofferson, the award-winning country singer and actor following his death at the age of 88.

Dolly Parton wrote: “What a great loss. What a great writer. What a great actor. What a great friend.”

She finished her post on social media with the words “I will always love you”, a nod to one of her most famous songs.

Barbra Streisand said she “knew he was something special” the first time she saw him perform.

Kristofferson and Streisand went on to share top billing in the 1976 remake of the film A Star Is Born.

In the film, they sang together on love theme Evergreen, which won an Oscar for best original song, and Kristofferson won a Golden Globe for his acting.

Streisand also asked him to appear on stage with her in London’s Hyde Park in 2019.

“He was as charming as ever, and the audience showered him with applause. It was a joy seeing him receive the recognition and love he so richly deserved,” she wrote on Instagram.

Kristofferson was known for his songwriting, notably credited for Me and Bobby McGee, and Help Me Make It Through the Night, among others.

“He created a body of work that gave voice not only to his soul but to ours,” Country Music Hall of Fame chief executive Kyle Young said in a statement.

A representative for Kristofferson said he passed away “peacefully” at his home in Hawaii on Saturday, surrounded by family.

The statement described Kristofferson as “a peacenik, a revolutionary, an actor, a superstar, a sex symbol, and a family man.”

A message from his family said they were all “so blessed” for the time they had with him.

“Thank you for loving him all these many years, and when you see a rainbow, know he’s smiling down at us all,” said the message.

Adding her tribute, singer LeAnn Rimes posted a photo of the pair with the message: “An epic human with the biggest heart. You will be so, so missed. Rest easy, my friend.”

Melissa Etheridge added: “Loved this man, his talent, his mind and his beautiful heart.”

Reba McEntire wrote: “What a gentleman, kind soul, and a lover of words. I am so glad I got to meet him and be around him. One of my favorite people. Rest in peace, Kris.”

Born in Brownsville, Texas, on 22 June, 1936, Kristofferson became a leading figure in country music.

“When I got started, I was one of the people hoping to bring respect to country music,” he said, according to the family message.

“Some of the songs I had that got to be hits did that. I imagine that’s why somebody might vote me into a Hall of Fame. I know it’s not because of my golden throat.”

Kristofferson studied writing at Pomona College in California and later went to Oxford as a Rhodes scholar. He earned his masters from Oxford in 1960, then returned to the US and joined the army.

He was assigned by the military to teach literature, which he said “sounded like hell”.

In 1965 he visited Nashville, and within two weeks had resigned from his army post and moved to the country music hub to pursue his music career.

The head of the Country Hall of Fame and Museum said he left behind “a resounding legacy”.

“Kris Kristofferson believed creativity is God-given, and those who ignore such a gift are doomed to unhappiness,” Kyle Young wrote on X. “He preached that a life of the mind gives voice to the soul, and his work gave voice not only to his soul but to ours.”

He won three Grammys for best country song, Help Me Make It Through the Night in 1972, and two separate duets with Rita Coolidge (1974, 1976), to whom he was married in the 1970s.

His acting career saw him take on numerous roles, including in Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, Lone Star, and the Blade franchise.

He also starred as John Norman Howard in A Star Is Born opposite Streisand’s Ester Hoffman.

He was nominated for an Oscar in 1985 for best original score for Songwriter, in which he co-starred with Willie Nelson.

The same year, Kristofferson and Nelson joined friends Johnny Cash and Waylon Jennings to form a supergroup called The Highwaymen.

“Every time I look at a picture of Willie and me and John and Waylon, I find it amazing that they let the janitor in there,” he told journalist Mikal Gilmore, referring to his former job at CBS’s Nashville studio.

In 2003, Kristofferson received the Free Speech Award from the Americana Music Association.

A year later, he became a member of the Country Music Hall of Fame.

He also received multiple lifetime achievement honours, including from The Recording Academy, the Country Music Association and the Academy of Country Music.

Kristofferson is survived by his wife Lisa, his eight children, and seven grandchildren.

Kris Kristofferson was always modest about his talent.

He disliked being called a poet and preferred it when other people performed his songs.

“I sing like a bullfrog,” he once told record producer Fred Foster.

“Yeah,” Foster replied, “but a bullfrog who communicates.”

Kristofferson’s plainspoken vocals may have lacked range but they carried something more important – conviction.

When he sang of loss and love and sorrow and drunken nights and regret-filled mornings, you believed every word.

That is partly because he never forced a song into existence – “I always had to wait until something hit me, and I could write it,” he once said – but also because he could dig into the simple truth of a sentiment.

His songwriting was not especially complex but what he could do with a few chords and a well turned phrase caused a revolution in country music.

“You can look at Nashville pre-Kris and post-Kris, because he changed everything,” Bob Dylan once said.

To mark his death, at the age of 88, here’s a guide to some of his most memorable songs.

One of Kristofferson’s most enduring songs, Me and Bobby McGee, started out as a songwriting challenge.

Monument Records founder Foster had a crush on his secretary, Barbara “Bobbie” McKee, and wanted a song that would impress her.

Kristofferson accepted the assignment – but finding inspiration took time.

“I avoided him [Foster] for three or four months because there were only thoughts running through my head,” he said in 1973.

“I was driving back to New Orleans one night, the windshield wipers were going, and it started falling together.”

He based the song on the last scene of the Fellini film La Strada (The Road), in which a broken, inebriated man stares at the sea in despair at what his life has become, and the love he has lost.

Kristofferson turned that tale into the story of two drifters, who find love on the road and are separated, eventually, by death.

It contains one of his greatest lyrics:

Originally recorded by Roger Miller, it became a number-one hit for Janis Joplin, who recorded it weeks before her death in 1970.

The desolation of Kristofferson’s downbeat delivery tells you this song is about much more than a bad hangover.

And, as it progresses, the protagonist slowly reveals more about the causes of his booze-soaked existence.

The smell of fried chicken reminds him of “something that I’d lost”.

And he stops outside a Sunday school just to hear the children singing.

The loneliness and self-loathing are expressed vividly – and Kristofferson said he had written the lyrics as a struggling musician living in a tenement after his parents had disowned him and his wife and child moved to California without him.

“Sunday was the worst day of the week if you didn’t have a family,” he said.

According to legend, Kristofferson got the song into Johnny Cash’s hands by landing a helicopter in his backyard and refusing to leave until he had listened to his demo tape.

Cash was impressed enough to play the song on his US TV programme.

And the Country Music Association named his recording song of the year 1970.

Kristofferson’s own version appeared on his debut album the same year.

Along with artists such as Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings, Kristofferson was part of the “outlaw country” scene that fought Nashville’s commercial and creative control.

Discussing his place in the country firmament, in 1970, he told the New York Times: “I’m nobody’s best friend.

“People kept telling me that I’d never make it in Nashville, that I ought to head for California or New York.”

He had upset the establishment, with songs such as Blame It on the Stones and The Law Is for the Protection of the People, which took a swipe at American conservatism.

His most famous song also ruffled feathers for its unadorned depiction of sexual desire, especially when recorded (and taken to number one) by female country star Sammi Smith.

Kristofferson said the lyrics had been inspired by a Frank Sinatra interview.

When asked what he believed in, Old Blue Eyes had responded: “Booze, broads, or a bible… whatever helps me make it through the night.”

Smith’s sensuous delivery was a subversive step forward for country music but Kristofferson’s own version – croaky-voiced and dripping with hunger – is just as much of a thrill.

“The first good song I wrote,” Kristofferson said of Jody and the Kid, which he composed while working as a janitor at Columbia Records in the 1960s

Like Me and Bobby McGee, it is steeped in nostalgia and loss, as the musician describes a girl who used to walk everywhere with him, “her little blue jeans rolled up to her knees”.

Over time, they fall in love, and grow old, still walking hand in hand everywhere they go.

As the song ends, the narrator traces their old paths with their daughter – but when the locals greet them, he laments his wife is no longer there to join them.

Kristofferson’s sombre, emotional vocal is both spellbinding and heartbreaking.

It is also worth out checking out his 1999 re-recording of the song (on the album The Austin Sessions), where his older, craggier voice lends it added pathos.

If the character in Sunday Mornin’ Comin’ Down was at a low point, this represents them at rock bottom.

““

Kristofferson was moved to write the song after attending a service at Jimmie Snow’s church in Nashville.

“Everybody was kneeling down and Jimmy said something like, ‘If anybody’s lost, raise their hand,'” he said.

“I don’t go to church a lot and the notion of raising my hand was out of the question.

“I thought, ‘I can’t imagine who’s doing this,’ when all of a sudden I felt my hand going up.”

After talking to the preacher, Kristofferson said, “I found myself weeping in public” and felt a “forgiveness that I didn’t even know I needed”.

The song works as a reaction to that moment – a slow, mournful realisation of his past behaviour, and a soul-cry for forgiveness.

Recorded with his soon-to-be wife Rita Cooolidge, the gospel-infused ballad struck a chord with audiences in 1973, giving the star his only number one on the country charts.

6) I Hate Your Ugly Face – The first song Kristofferson wrote, aged 11. A sarcastic rejection of country tropes, it reveals the early development of his storytelling talent.

7) They Killed Him – A lament for Kristofferson’s heroes – Jesus, Ghandi and Martin Luther King – later reinterpreted by Dylan. “Having Dylan cover one of your songs is like being a playwright and having Shakespeare act in your play,” Kristofferson said.

8) Loving Her Was Easier (Than Anything I’ll Ever Do Again) – One of his most romantic songs and Kristofferson’s first chart hit, in 1971. He later re-recorded it with The Highwaymen, a supergroup of outlaw country artists that also featured Cash, Jennings and Nelson.

9) Here Comes that Rainbow Again – Inspired by a scene in John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, this touching ballad is about small acts of kindness being repaid. Cash once said it “might be my favourite song by any writer”.

10) Please Don’t Tell Me How the Story Ends – Two lovers spend one last night together, clinging on to their memories (and to one another) in the hope the inevitable break-up never comes. Written in the early 1970s, Kristofferson initially gave it to Billy Bare but later remade it with Rita Coolidge, just as their marriage was dissolving. Their duet is devastating.

Diego Garcia, a remote island in the Indian Ocean, is a paradise of lush vegetation and white-sand beaches, surrounded by crystal blue waters.

But this is no tourist destination. It is strictly out of bounds to most civilians – the site of a highly secretive UK-US military base shrouded for decades in rumour and mystery.

The island, which is administered from London, is at the centre of a long-running territorial dispute between the UK and Mauritius, and negotiations have ramped up in recent weeks.

The BBC gained unprecedented access to the island earlier this month.

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“It’s the enemy,” a private security officer jokes as I return to my room one night on Diego Garcia, my name highlighted in yellow on a list he is holding.

For months, the BBC had fought for access to the island – the largest of the Chagos Archipelago.

We wanted to cover a historic court case being held over the treatment of Sri Lankan Tamils, the first people ever to file asylum claims on the island, who have been stranded there for three years. Complex legal battles have been waged over their fate and a judgement will soon determine if they have been unlawfully detained.

Up until this point, we could only cover the story remotely.

Diego Garcia, which is about 1,000 miles (1,600 km) from the nearest landmass, features on lists of the world’s most remote islands. There are no commercial flights and getting there by sea is no easier – permits for boats are only granted for the archipelago’s outer islands and to allow safe passage through the Indian Ocean.

To enter the island you need a permit, only granted to people with connections to the military facility or the British authority that runs the territory. Journalists have historically been barred.

UK government lawyers brought a legal challenge to try to block the BBC from attending the hearing, and even when permission was granted following a ruling by the territory’s Supreme Court, the US later objected, saying it would not provide food, transport or accommodation to all those attempting to reach the island for the case – including the judge and barristers.

Notes exchanged between the two governments this summer, seen by the BBC, suggested both were extremely concerned about admitting any media to Diego Garcia.

“As discussed previously, the United States agrees with the position of HMG [His Majesty’s Government] that it would be preferable for members of the press to observe the hearing virtually from London, to minimize risks to security of the Facility,” one note sent from the US government to British officials said.

When permission was finally granted for me to spend five days on the island, it came with stringent restrictions. These did not just cover the court reporting. They also extended to my movements on the island and even a ban on reporting what the actual restrictions were.

Requests for minor changes to the permit were denied by British and US officials.

Personnel from the security company G4S were flown to the territory to guard the BBC and lawyers who had flown out for the hearing.

But despite the constraints, I was still able to observe illuminating details, all of which helped to paint a picture of one of the most restricted locations in the world.

Approaching by plane, coconut trees and thick foliage are visible across the 44 sq km footprint-shaped atoll, the greenery punctuated by white military structures.

Diego Garcia is one of about 60 islands that make up the Chagos Archipelago or British Indian Ocean Territory (Biot) – the last colony established by the UK by separating it from Mauritius in 1965. It is located about halfway between East Africa and Indonesia.

Pulling on to the runway alongside grey military aircraft, a sign on a hangar greets you: “Diego Garcia. Footprint of Freedom,” above images of the US and British flags.

This is the first of many references to freedom on the island’s signage, a nod to the UK-US military base that has been there since the early 1970s.

Agreements signed in 1966 leased the island to the US for 50 years initially, with a possible extension for a further 20 years. The arrangement was rolled over and is set to expire in 2036.

As I make my way through airport security and beyond, US and UK influences jostle for predominance.

In the terminal, there is a door decorated with a union jack print and walls hung with photos of significant British figures, including Winston Churchill.

On the island itself, I spot British police cars and a nightclub called the Brit Club with a bulldog logo. We pass roads named Britannia Way and Churchill Road.

But cars drive on the right, as they do in the US. We are driven around in a bright yellow bus reminiscent of an American school bus.

The US dollar is the accepted currency and the electricity sockets are American. The food offered to us for the five days includes “tater tots” – a popular American fried-potato side dish – and American biscuits, similar to British scones.

While the territory is administered from London, most personnel and resources there are under the control of the US.

In the BBC’s bid to access the island, UK officials referred questions up to US staff. When the US blocked the court hearing from taking place on Diego Garcia this summer, a senior official at the Ministry of Defence said the UK “did not have the ability to grant access”.

“The US security assessment is classified… [they] have demonstrated that they have strict controls in place,” he wrote in an email to a Foreign Office colleague.

Biot’s acting commissioner has said it is not possible for him to “compel the US authorities” to grant access to any part of the military facility constructed by the US under the terms of the UK-US agreement, despite it being a British territory.

In recent years, the territory has been costing the UK tens of millions of pounds, with the bulk of this categorised under “migrant costs”. Communications obtained by the BBC between foreign office officials in July regarding the Sri Lankan Tamils warn that “the costs are increasing and the latest forecast is that these will be £50 million per annum”.

The atmosphere on the island feels relaxed. Troops and contractors ride past me on bikes, and I see people playing tennis and windsurfing in the late afternoon sun.

A cinema advertises screenings of Alien and Borderlands, and there is even a bowling alley and a museum with a gift shop attached, though I was not allowed inside.

We pass a fast-food spot called Jake’s Place, and a scenic patch of land next to the sea with a sign that reads: “Ye olde swimming hole and picnic area.” Diego Garcia-branded T-shirts and mugs are on sale on the island.

But there are also constant reminders of the sensitive base that is here. Military drills can be heard early in the morning, and near our accommodation block is a fenced-off building identified as an armoury.

All the time, US and British military officials keep a close eye on the court’s movements.

The island has startling natural beauty, from lush vegetation to pristine white beaches, and is also home to the world’s biggest terrestrial arthropod – the coconut crab. Military personnel warn of the dangers of sharks in the surrounding waters.

Biot’s website boasts that it has the “greatest marine biodiversity in the UK and its Overseas Territories, as well as some of the cleanest seas and healthiest reef systems in the world”.

But there are also clues pointing to its brutal past.

When the UK took control of the Chagos Islands – Diego Garcia is the southernmost – from former British colony Mauritius, it sought to rapidly evict its population of more than 1,000 people to make way for the military base.

Enslaved people were brought to the Chagos Islands from Madagascar and Mozambique to work on coconut plantations under French and British rule. In the following centuries, they developed their own language, music and culture.

I get to see a former plantation on the east of the island, where buildings stand in disrepair. The grand plantation manager’s house has a sign outside reading: “Danger unsafe structure. Do not enter. By order: Brit rep [representative].” A large crab crawls up the door of an abandoned guest house.

At a church on the plantation site, a sign, in French, beneath the crucifix reads: “Let us pray for our Chagossian brothers and sisters.”

Wild donkeys still roam in the area. David Vine, author of Island of Shame: The Secret History of the US Military Base on Diego Garcia, describes them as a “ghostly remnant of the society that had been there for almost 200 years”.

A Foreign Office memo in 1966 stated that the object of its plan “was to get some rocks which will remain ours; there will be no indigenous population except seagulls”.

A British diplomat responded that the islands were home only to “some few Tarzans or Man Fridays whose origins are obscure and are hopefully being wished on to Mauritius”.

Another government document stated that the islands were chosen “not only for their strategic location but also because they had, for all practical purposes, no permanent population”.

“The Americans in particular attached great importance to this freedom of manoeuvre, divorced from the normal considerations applying to a populated dependent territory,” it said.

Mr Vine says the plans came at a time when the “decolonisation movement was unfolding and accelerating” and the US was concerned about losing access to military bases around the world.

Diego Garcia was one of many islands that were considered, he says, but it became the “prime candidate” because of its relatively small population and strategic location in the middle of the Indian Ocean.

For the UK, he says, it was a chance to maintain close military ties with the US, even with only a “token British presence” there – but there was also financial motivation, he adds.

The US agreed to a $14m discount on the UK’s purchase of its Polaris nuclear missiles as part of the secret deal over the islands.

In 1967, the eviction of all residents from the Chagos islands began. Dogs, including pets, were rounded up and killed. Chagossians have described being herded onto cargo ships and taken to Mauritius or the Seychelles.

The UK granted citizenship to some Chagossians in 2002, and many of them came to live in the UK.

In testimony given to the International Court of Justice years later, Chagossian Liseby Elysé said people on the archipelago had lived a “happy life” that “did not lack anything” before the expulsions.

“One day the administrator told us that we had to leave our island, leave our houses and go away. All persons were unhappy. But we had no choice. They did not give us any reason,” she said. “Nobody would like to be uprooted from the island where he was born, to be uprooted like animals.”

Chagossians have fought for years to return to the land.

Mauritius, which won independence from the UK in 1968, maintains that the islands are its own and the United Nations’ highest court has ruled, in an advisory opinion, that the UK’s administration of the territory is “unlawful” and must end.

It said the Chagos Islands should be handed over to Mauritius in order to complete the UK’s “decolonisation”.

Clive Baldwin, senior legal adviser at Human Rights Watch, says the “forced displacement of the Chagossians by the UK and US, their persecution on the grounds of race, and the ongoing prevention of their return to their homeland amount to crimes against humanity”.

“These are the most serious crimes a state can be responsible for. It is an ongoing, colonial crime as long as they prevent the Chagossians from returning home.”

The UK government has previously stated that it has “no doubt” as to its claim over the islands, which had been “under continuous British sovereignty since 1814”.

However, in 2022, it agreed to open negotiations with Mauritius over the future of the territory, with then-Foreign Secretary James Cleverly saying he wanted to “resolve all outstanding issues”.

Earlier this month, the government announced that former Prime Minister Tony Blair’s chief of staff, Jonathan Powell, who played a central role in negotiating the Good Friday agreement in Northern Ireland, had been appointed to negotiate with Mauritius over the islands.

In a statement, new Foreign Secretary David Lammy – who has criticised previous governments for having for years “ignored the opinions” of various UN bodies over the islands – said the UK was endeavouring to “reach a settlement that protects UK interests and those of our partners”, as he stressed the need to protect the “long-term, secure and effective operation of the joint UK/US military base”.

Matthew Savill, military sciences director at leading UK defence think tank Rusi, says Diego Garcia is an “enormously important” base, “because of its position in the Indian Ocean and the facilities it has: port, storage and airfield”.

The nearest UK facility is some 3,400km (2,100 miles) away, and for the US, nearly 4,800km (3,000 miles), he explains, with the island also an important location for “space tracking and observation capabilities”.

Tankers operating from Diego Garcia refuelled US B-2 bombers that had flown from the US to carry out the first airstrikes on Afghanistan after the 9/11 attacks. And, during the subsequent “war on terror”, aircraft were also sent directly from the island itself to Afghanistan and Iraq.

The base is also one of an “extremely limited number of places worldwide available to reload submarines” with weapons like Tomahawk missiles, says Mr Savill, and the US has positioned a large amount of equipment and stores there for contingencies.

Walter Ladwig III, a senior lecturer in international relations at King’s College London, agrees the base fulfils “a lot of important roles” – but that “there is this level of secrecy that seems to go beyond what we see at other places”.

“There has been this hyper-focus on controlling access and on limiting access, which… seems to go beyond what, given what we publicly know about the assets, capabilities and units are based there.”

During my time on the island, I am required to wear a red visitor pass and am closely monitored at all times. My accommodation is guarded 24-hours-a-day and the men outside make a note of when I leave and return – always under escort.

In the mid-1980s, British journalist Simon Winchester pretended his boat had run into trouble next to the island. He remained in the bay for about two days, and managed to briefly step on shore before being escorted away and told: “Go away and don’t come back.”

He tells me he remembers British authorities there being “incredibly hostile” and the island as “extraordinarily beautiful”. More than two decades later, a Time magazine journalist spent 90 minutes or so on the island when the US presidential plane stopped there to refuel.

Rumours have long swirled about the uses of Diego Garcia, including that it has been used as a CIA black-site – a facility used to house and interrogate terror suspects.

The UK government confirmed in 2008 that rendition flights carrying terror suspects had landed on the island in 2002, following years of assurances that they had not.

“The detainees did not leave the plane, and the US Government has assured us that no US detainees have ever been held on Diego Garcia. US investigations show no record of any other rendition through Diego Garcia or any other Overseas Territory or through the UK itself since then,” then-Foreign Secretary David Miliband told parliament at the time.

On the same day, former CIA director Michael Hayden said that information previously “supplied in good faith” to the UK about rendition flights – stating that they had never landed there – had “turned out to be wrong”.

“Neither of those individuals was ever part of [the] CIA’s high-value terrorist interrogation programme. One was ultimately transferred to Guantanamo, and the other was returned to his home country. These were rendition operations, nothing more,” he said, while denying reports that the CIA had a holding facility on Diego Garcia.

Years later, Lawrence Wilkerson, chief of staff to the former US Secretary of State Colin Powell, told Vice News that intelligence sources had told him that Diego Garcia had been used as a site “where people were temporarily housed and interrogated from time to time.”

I was not allowed near any of Diego Garcia’s sensitive military areas.

After leaving my island accommodation for the last time I received an email, thanking me for my recent stay and asking for feedback. “We want every guest to experience nothing less than a welcoming and comfortable experience,” it read.

Before flying out, my passport was stamped with the territory’s coat of arms. Its motto reads: “In tutela nostra Limuria”, meaning “Limuria is in our charge” – a reference to a mythical lost continent in the Indian Ocean.

A continent that doesn’t exist seems like a fitting symbol for an island whose legal status is in doubt and that few, since the Chagossians were expelled, have been allowed to see.

Austria’s far-right Freedom Party (FPÖ) has opened the door to a new era, its leader Herbert Kickl has told supporters, as they celebrated an unprecedented election victory.

Kickl’s party won 29.1% of the vote according to provisional results – almost three points ahead of the conservative People’s Party (ÖVP) on 26.4%, but far short of a majority.

Kickl’s victory is only the latest in a string of far-right election successes in Europe and he praised voters for their “optimism, courage and trust” in delivering a “piece of history”.

The FPÖ has been in coalition before, but the second-placed ÖVP has refused to take part in a government led by Kickl.

Kickl’s main rival, incumbent Chancellor Karl Nehammer of the ÖVP, has said it was “impossible to form a government with someone who adores conspiracy theories”.

There was a high turnout of 74.9% as Austrian voters took part in an election dominated by the twin issues of migration and asylum, as well as a flagging economy and the war in Ukraine.

As half the map of Austria turned dark blue, FPÖ general secretary Michael Schnedlitz said “the men and women of Austria have made history today”, although he refused to say what kind of coalition his party would try to build.

Postal votes were still being counted on Monday morning, but an analysis of voters suggested those aged 35-59 were most likely to back the far right, and marginally more women than men.

Kickl’s party has won 56 seats in the 183-seat parliament, with the conservatives on 52 and the Social Democrats on 41, according to projected results.

The Freedom Party’s fiery leader had promised Austrians to build “Fortress Austria”, to restore their security, prosperity and peace.

The party wants firm rules on legal immigration and it has promoted the idea of remigration, which involves sending asylum seekers to their original countries. It also wants a bar on the right to asylum as a step towards citizenship.

Herbert Kickl has aligned himself closely with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban and his self-styled “illiberal democracy”. On Sunday night, Social Democrat leader Andreas Babler warned that Austria must not follow the same path as Hungary.

Kickl had also spoken of becoming (people’s chancellor) which for some Austrians carries echoes of the term used to describe Adolf Hitler in Nazi Germany.

The FPÖ was founded by former Nazis in the 1950s. Two days before the vote some of its candidates were caught on video at a funeral where an SS song was sung.

As the party’s victory became clear, a small group of protesters appeared outside parliament carrying anti-Nazi banners. One read “Nazis, get out of parliament”, while another said, “Don’t let Nazis govern, and never [let them] march”.

Forming a coalition is likely to prove complicated for Kickl, who is a divisive figure.

The Social Democrats, Greens and Neos have all ruled out a partnership with the far right.

The only possible coalition Kickl’s party could form is with the conservatives, although the FPÖ would have to find a solution to the ÖVP’s refusal to have Kickl as chancellor.

When Geert Wilders’ Freedom Party won the Netherlands’ election last November, he dropped his bid to become prime minister so that three other parties would agree to form a coalition. However, Kickl is keen to lead his country, promising Austrians to act as their “servant and protector”.

Political analyst Thomas Hofer told the BBC it was by no means clear that Austrian President Alexander Van der Bellen, who oversees the formation of government, would give Kickl a “direct mandate to form a coalition”.

The ÖVP could in theory scrape together a coalition with the Social Democrats if the latest projections are correct, and could attract the liberal Neos party or the Greens.

Equally, Karl Nehammer may come under pressure from within the ÖVP to drop his objection. One leading FPÖ figure said after such a historic defeat he should resign, although that was rejected by the general secretary of Nehammer’s party.

President Van der Bellen has voiced reservations in the past about the FPÖ because of its criticism of the EU and its failure to condemn Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The party opposes EU sanctions on Moscow, citing Austria’s neutrality, and many of its MPs walked out of a speech to the parliament in Vienna last year by Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky.

On Monday, Austrians had mixed feelings about the election results.

“I find it really sad that people get so close to radical right-wing ideas and ignore history,” Nikolai Selikovsky, a resident of Vienna – which predominantly voted for the Social Democrats – told AFP.

“It also shows the failure of the other parties that they can’t talk to each other constructively.”

“I’m asking myself what we did wrong in the past 75 years,” Karin Grobert, a commuter, told Reuters. She expressed concern that Austria will shift further to the right if coalition talks fail.

But Josef Binder, a 57-year-old carpenter who voted for FPÖ, said there was no reason other parties could not cooperate with Kickl.

“They also have to realise, the other parties, that if they negate 29% of voters, that that’s actually not okay, it’s undemocratic,” he added.

Some worried about what the FPÖ’s policy of remigration could mean for them.

Berat Oeztoprak, a 22-year-old kebab seller in Vienna, told Reuters: “What I might fear is that many will no longer be allowed to stay here.”

He added: “I was born in Austria and I know that I belong here. I also did two years in the army and I have a badge. And I also served for the state for two years, I pay my taxes, I’m nice to the people here, they’re just as nice to me.”

Kickl’s victory is the latest in almost a year of vote successes for radical right-wing parties in Europe.

Italy’s Giorgia Meloni heads a right-wing coalition as leader of the far-right Brothers of Italy party and Germany’s AfD topped the polls in the eastern state of Thuringia last month. France’s National Rally won the vote in European elections last June.

Unlike Kickl, Italy’s prime minister has given her full backing to the EU’s defence of Ukraine in the face of Russia’s full-scale invasion.

AfD co-leader Alice Weidel congratulated Kickl, posting a picture of the two together, and Marine le Pen of the National Rally said “this groundswell carrying the defence of national interests”, after the votes elsewhere in Europe, confirmed the “people’s triumphs everywhere”.

Geert Wilders said times were changing, and that “identity, sovereignty, freedom and no more illegal immigration/asylum” was what millions of Europeans were longing for.

Kickl has tapped into fears about immigration in Austria and he has made the most of anger at the government’s handling of the Covid pandemic, embracing conspiracy theories about obscure treatments for the virus.

For Kickl and his party, Sunday’s election victory represents a significant recovery from 2019, when they came a distant third in the wake of a video sting scandal that engulfed their former leader.

Voters in the US go to the polls on 5 November to elect their next president.

The election was initially a rematch of 2020 but it was upended in July when President Joe Biden ended his campaign and endorsed Vice-President Kamala Harris.

The big question now is – will America get its first woman president or a second Donald Trump term?

As election day approaches, we’ll be keeping track of the polls and seeing what effect the campaign has on the race for the White House.

Harris has been ahead of Trump in the national polling averages since she entered the race at the end of July, as shown in the chart below with the latest figures rounded to the nearest whole number.

The two candidates went head to head in a televised debate in Pennsylvania on 10 September that just over 67 million people tuned in to watch.

A majority of national polls carried out in the week after suggested Harris’s performance had helped her make some small gains, with her lead increasing from 2.5 percentage points on the day of the debate to 3.3 points just over a week later.

That marginal boost was mostly down to Trump’s numbers though. His average had been rising ahead of the debate, but it fell by half a percentage point in the week afterwards.

You can see those small changes in the poll tracker chart below, with the trend lines showing how the averages have changed and the dots showing the individual poll results for each candidate.

While these national polls are a useful guide as to how popular a candidate is across the country as a whole, they’re not necessarily an accurate way to predict the result of the election.

That’s because the US uses an electoral college system, in which each state is given a number of votes roughly in line with the size of its population. A total of 538 electoral college votes are up for grabs, so a candidate needs to hit 270 to win.

There are 50 states in the US but because most of them nearly always vote for the same party, in reality there are just a handful where both candidates stand a chance of winning. These are the places where the election will be won and lost and are known as battleground states.

• What is the electoral college?

Right now, the polls are very tight in the seven states considered battlegrounds in this election with just one or two percentage points separating the candidates.

That includes Pennsylvania, which is key as it has the highest number of electoral votes of the seven states and therefore winning it makes it easier to reach the 270 votes needed.

In a sign of how the race has changed since Harris became the Democratic nominee, on the day Biden quit the race he was trailing Trump by nearly five percentage points on average in these seven states.

One thing to note is that there are fewer state polls than national polls being carried out at the moment so we have less data to go on and every poll has a margin of error that means the numbers could be higher or lower.

But looking at the trends since Harris joined the race does help highlight the states in which she seems to be in a stronger position, according to the polling averages.

In the chart below you can see that Harris has been leading in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin since the start of August.

All three had all been Democratic strongholds before Trump turned them red on his path to winning the presidency in 2016. Biden retook them in 2020 and if Harris can do the same this year then she will be on course to win the election.

The figures we have used in the graphics above are averages created by polling analysis website 538, which is part of American news network ABC News. To create them, 538 collects the data from individual polls carried out both nationally and in battleground states by lots of polling companies.

As part of its quality control, 538 only includes polls from companies that meet certain criteria, like being transparent about how many people they polled, when the poll was carried out and how the poll was conducted (telephone calls, text message, online, etc).

You can read more about the 538 methodology here.

At the moment, the polls suggest that Kamala Harris and Donald Trump are within a couple of percentage points of each other in battleground states – and when the race is that close, it’s very hard to predict winners.

Polls underestimated support for Trump in both 2016 and 2020. Polling companies will be trying to fix that problem in a number of ways, including how to make their results reflect the make-up of the voting population.

Those adjustments are difficult to get right and pollsters still have to make educated guesses about other factors like who will actually turn up to vote on 5 November.

• SIMPLE GUIDE: Everything you need to know about the vote
• ANALYSIS: Harris goads Trump into flustered performance
• EXPLAINER: Seven swing states that could decide election
• IMMIGRATION: Could Trump really deport a million migrants?
• FACT CHECK: Was US economy stronger or weaker under Trump?
• Read more about: Kamala Harris | Donald Trump | US election