The UN peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon says Israeli tanks forced their way into one of its positions early on Sunday morning, the latest in a series of incidents in recent days.

In a statement, the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (Unifil) said two Israel Defense Forces (IDF) tanks destroyed the main gate of a post in Ramyah, near the border with Israel, and “forcibly entered the position” to request it turn out its lights.

About two hours later, it said rounds were fired nearby that saw smoke enter the camp, causing 15 peacekeepers to suffer skin irritations and gastrointestinal reactions.

These incidents were “shocking violations”, it said.

The statement comes after Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu urged Unifil to move away from areas where fighting was taking place “immediately”.

In a video statement issued by his office on Sunday, Benjamin Netanyahu told Unifil to get its troops “out of harm’s way”, claiming that their presence in the region made them “hostages of Hezbollah”.

Israel has faced international condemnation for previous instances in which Unifil troops have been injured in southern Lebanon – with the IDF admitting responsibility for firing toward UN posts in some cases.

Unifil said: “For the fourth time in as many days, we remind the IDF and all actors of their obligations to ensure the safety and security of UN personnel and property and to respect the inviolability of UN premises at all times.”

It described the breach of its post in Ramyah as “a further flagrant violation of international law”.

Unifil added that on Saturday israeli troops had blocked them from carrying out a “critical” logistical movement near Meiss El Jebel, also near the border.

Israel has previously asked Unifil to withdraw north by 5km (3 miles) after it launched an invasion targeting the armed group Hezbollah. Unifil has so far refused that request.

Hezbollah and Israel have been trading near daily cross-border fire since last October, when the Palestinian militant group Hamas attacked communities in southern Israel.

Nearly 10,000 peacekeepers from 50 countries are stationed in Lebanon, alongside around 800 civilian staff.

Since 1978, they have patrolled the area between the Litani River and the UN-recognised boundary between Lebanon and Israel known as the “Blue Line”.

Prior to Sunday’s incidents, five peacekeepers had been injured in recent days.

On Saturday, Unifil said a soldier had been shot at its headquarters in the city of Naquora – though it did not know the origin of the bullet.

The day before, the IDF said its troops were responsible for an incident in which two Unifil troops from Sri Lanka were injured.

On Thursday, two Indonesian Unifil soldiers were injured falling from an observation tower after an Israeli tank fired towards it.

Those incidents prompted rebukes from several of Israel’s allies, including France, Italy and Spain. A Downing Street spokesperson said the UK was “appalled”.

In his comments on Sunday, Netanyahu said European leaders should direct their criticism towards Hezbollah, not Israel.

Israel argues that Unifil has failed to stabilise the region and prevent Hezbollah fighters from operating south of the Litani River – among the reasons for a UN presence there.

It has previously said that it was acting on a 2004 UN resolution calling for the disbanding of Lebanese and non-Lebanese militant groups, and that its request for peacekeepers to withdraw was so it could confront Hezbollah.

Netanyahu said these appeals had been “met with refusals”, and that Unifil was providing a “human shield to Hezbollah terrorists”.

“This endangers both them and the lives of our soldiers,” he added.

“We regret the injuring of Unifil soldiers and we are doing everything in our power to prevent this injuring. But the simple and obvious way to ensure this is simply to get them out of the danger zone.”

Unifil officials have repeatedly refused to withdraw troops from the region.

The body’s spokesman Andrea Tenenti told the AFP news agency on Saturday that there had been a “unanimous decision to stay because it’s important for the UN flag to still fly high in this region”.

Lebanon’s Prime Minister Nijab Mikati condemned Netanyahu’s position.

In a statement, he said the Israeli PM’s comments represented “a new chapter in the enemy’s approach of not complying with international legitimacy”.

Mikati urged other nations “to take a firm position that stops the Israeli aggression”.

An Indian politician has been shot dead in the commercial capital, Mumbai.

Gunmen opened fire on Baba Siddique, 66, near the office of his son, who is also a politician, according to local media reports.

Two people have been arrested in connection with the killing.

Siddique, a former local minister, was a senior figure in the politics of Maharashtra state, which is expected to hold legislative polls next month.

In February he defected from Congress, India’s main opposition party and joined the unrelated regional National Congress Party (NCP), which is part of the governing coalition of the BJP.

Maharashtra’s deputy chief minister Ajit Pawar, from the same party as Siddique, said he was shocked by the “cowardly attack”.

Siddique was known for lavish parties and for close ties to Bollywood superstars.

The shooting happened with high security in place due to a major Hindu festival in the city.

Opposition parties have criticised the government, saying there was a major lapse in security. The state government has promised a thorough inquiry.

Though two suspects have been taken into custody, the motive is not clear. Police are searching for a third suspect.

Some Indian media report the suspects have said they were from a gang run by notorious criminal Lawrence Bishnoi.

Bishnoi is currently serving a jail sentence for his involvement in several high-profile murder cases, including the killing of the Indian rapper Sidhu Moose Wala in 2022.

The shooting came weeks after Siddique’s security detail was upgraded following death threats.

Famed explorer Christopher Columbus was likely Spanish and Jewish, according to a new genetic study conducted by Spanish scientists that aimed to shed light on a centuries-old mystery.

Scientists believe the explorer, whose expedition across the Atlantic in 1492 changed the course of world history, was probably born in western Europe, possibly in the city of Valencia.

They think he concealed his Jewish identity, or converted to Catholicism, to escape religious persecution.

The study of DNA contradicts the traditional theory, which many historians had questioned, that the explorer was an Italian from Genoa.

Columbus led an expedition backed by Spain’s Catholic Monarchs seeking to establish a new route to Asia – but instead he reached the Caribbean.

His arrival there was the beginning of a period of European contact with the Americas, which would lead to conquest and settlement – and the deaths of many millions of indigenous people to diseases and war.

Countries have argued for years over the explorer’s origin, with many claiming him as one of their own.

There have been an estimated 25 conflicting theories of his birthplace, including Poland, Great Britain, Greece, Portugal, Hungary and Scandinavia.

These new findings are based on more than two decades of research.

The study began in 2003, when José Antonio Lorente, professor of forensic medicine at Granada University, and the historian Marcial Castro, exhumed what were believed to be the remains of Columbus from Seville Cathedral.

Columbus died in the Spanish city of Vallodalid in 1506 but wished to be buried on the Caribbean island of Hispaniola. His remains were taken there in 1542 but centuries later were transferred to Cuba before being finally laid to rest in Seville.

The researchers also took DNA samples from the tomb, and from the bones of Columbus’ son, Hernando, and brother, Diego.

Since then scientists have compared that genetic information with that of historical figures and the explorer’s relatives in order to try and solve the mystery.

The previously widely accepted theory was that Columbus was born in Genoa in 1451, to a family of wool weavers.

But they now believe he lived in Spain – likely in Valencia – and was Jewish. They think he hid his background to avoid persecution.

Around 300,000 practicing Jews lived in Spain, before they along with Muslims were ordered to either convert to Catholicism or leave the country in 1492, the year Columbus landed in the Americas.

Announcing the study’s results on the television documentary Columbus DNA: His True Origin, Professor Lorente said they were “almost absolutely reliable”.

The programme – which aired on Spain’s national broadcaster RTVE on Saturday night – coincided with Spain’s National Day.

The day celebrates the explorer’s arrival in the Americas.

Ukraine’s human rights ombudsman has denounced the alleged execution of nine captured Ukrainian troops by Russian forces in the Kursk border region.

Dmytro Lubinets said he had written to the United Nations and the Red Cross about the allegations, accusing Moscow of breaching “all the rules and customs of war”.

The intervention follows reporting by Ukrainian battlefield analysis site DeepState, which published drone footage purporting to show the dead troops who it said were drone operators. Officials in Russia have yet to comment on the allegations.

Kyiv is believed to have deployed thousands of troops into the Russian border region since it launched its shock incursion earlier this summer.

The images published by DeepState showed the dead Ukrainian troops stripped to their underwear and lying face down in what appeared to be farmland in Kursk. The BBC cannot indepenelty verify the images.

The outlet said the drone operators had been overrun by a rapid Russian advance.

“These actions must not go unpunished, and the enemy must bear full responsibility,” Mr Lubinets wrote in a message to Telegram. “The international community should not turn a blind eye to such crimes!”

Kyiv has frequently accused Russian of executing captured Ukrainian troops – a war crime under the Geneva Convention. Earlier this month the prosecutor general’s office alleged that Russian forces had executed 93 Ukrainian soldiers since the beginning of the conflict.

It added that an official investigation had been opened into reports that 16 Ukrainian soldiers were executed in the eastern Donetsk region near the city of Pokrovsk – where fighting has raged for months. Officials said the reports would mark the “largest mass execution” of Ukrainian prisoners of war by Russian troops since Moscow launched its invasion in February 2022.

The Kremlin denies that its soldiers have been committing war crimes in Ukraine.

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The reports come as Russian forces continue to attack Ukrainian positions in Kursk. President Volodymyr Zelensky said in his nightly address from Kyiv on Saturday that Ukrainian troops had fought off a renewed Russian advance in the region.

Analysts say that Kyiv launched the offensive to try and force Russia to redirect some of its troops from its offensive in eastern Ukraine. The Institute for the Study of War (ISW) has estimated that around 40,000 Russian forces are now active in Kursk – up from 11,000 when Ukrainian troops first crossed the border.

But the offensive has failed to slow Russian momentum in the eastern Donbas region, where relentless attacks has slowly pushed Ukrainian forces backwards.

The Ukrainian leader acknowledged that “there are very difficult conditions, with harsh enemy actions” in both Donetsk and Zaporizhzhia in his address on Saturday.

On Sunday morning, the Russian defence ministry said its forces had seized the village of Mykhailivka, which sits along a highway near the key city of Pokrovsk.

Russian forces have been advancing towards Pokrovsk – which is a key logistics hub – for months. Experts say if Russia can seize the city Ukraine’s ability to resupply units in other crucial towns would become far more difficult.

Meanwhile, Russian aerial attacks on Ukraine continued overnight. Air force officials in Kyiv said Moscow launched 68 drones and four missiles towards Ukrainian territory.

It was a phone call that ended a decades-long wait – of 56 years and eight months, to be precise.

The caller, from a police station in Pathanamthitta district in the southern Indian state of Kerala, gave unexpected news to Thomas Thomas – the body of his elder brother, Thomas Cherian, had finally been found.

Cherian, an army craftsman, was among 102 passengers on board an Indian Air Force aircraft that crashed in the Himalayas in 1968 after encountering severe weather conditions.

The plane went off the radar while it was flying over the Rohtang pass, which links the northern state of Himachal Pradesh to Indian-administered Kashmir.

For years, the IAF AN-12 aircraft was listed as missing and its fate remained a mystery.

Then in 2003, a team of mountaineers found the body of one of the passengers.

In the years since then, army search expeditions discovered eight more bodies and in 2019, the wreckage of the plane was recovered from the mountains.

A few days ago, the 1968 crash once again made headlines when the army recovered four bodies, including that of Cherian.

When the news reached the family, it felt like “the suffocation of 56 years had suddenly evaporated”, Mr Thomas told BBC Hindi.

“I was finally able to breathe again,” he says.

Cherian, the second of five children, was just 22 years old when he went missing. He had boarded the aircraft to get to his first field posting in the Himalayan region of Leh.

It was only in 2003, when the first body was found, that his status was moved from missing to dead.

“Our father died in 1990 and our mother in 1998, both waiting for news about their missing son,” says Mr Thomas.

Altogether, only 13 bodies have been recovered until now from the site of the crash.

Harsh weather conditions and the icy terrain of the region make it hard for search teams to carry out expeditions there.

The bodies of Cherian and three others – Narayan Singh, Malkan Singh and Munshiram – were found 16,000ft above sea level near the Dhaka glacier. The latest operation was jointly conducted by the Dogra Scouts – a unit of the Indian army’s Dogra regiment – and members of the Tiranga Mountain Rescue.

Officials used satellite imagery, a Recco radar and drones to locate the bodies, says Colonel Lalit Palaria, commanding officer of the Dogra Scouts.

The Recco radar, which can detect metallic objects buried in the snow at depths of about 20m, identified debris from the aircraft in the area.

The team then manually dug through the wreckage and found one body.

Three more bodies were recovered from within the crevasses of the glacier.

It was the nametag on Cherian’s uniform – “Thomas C”, with only the C of his surname visible – along with a document in his pocket that helped officials identify him.

His family says that while the grief of losing him could never fade, they are relieved to finally get some closure.

On 3 October, officials handed over Cherian’s coffin, draped in the Indian flag, to his family. A funeral service was held at a church in their village Elanthoor, a day later.

Mr Thomas says that through all the years of waiting, army officials had told them that the search was still on and that they would let them know when they found Cherian’s body.

“We really appreciate that they kept us posted all these years,” he says, adding that many other members of the extended family had joined the armed forces even after Cherian’s disappearance.

Like the Odalil family, the relatives of the other soldiers whose bodies were found recently are also dealing with the grief and relief. Many of their closest relatives, including parents and spouses, died waiting for news of them.

In the northern state of Uttarakhand, Jaiveer Singh is still processing the news. He also received his uncle Narayan Singh’s body in early October.

Years after Narayan Singh went missing, his family lost hope. So with their consent, Singh’s wife, Basanti Devi, began a new life with one of his cousins. Jaiveer Singh was one of the children born of that relationship.

He says that for years, his mother held on to hopes of Narayan Singh’s return. She died in 2011.

“I don’t even have a photo of my uncle as a memory,” he says.

“Let’s smile so we look better in the pictures they are taking,” jokes Marwan, the chief waiter at a Beirut hotel.

He and a colleague are gazing at the sky, trying to spot the Israeli surveillance drone buzzing overhead.

Neither the music playing in the background nor birdsong can mask its deep, humming noise. It’s like someone has left a hairdryer on, or a motorbike is doing laps of the clouds.

Marwan’s hotel is not in an area with a strong Hezbollah presence.

It’s in Achrafieh, a wealthy Christian quarter that’s not been targeted by Israel in previous wars. It’s also where I am based.

Days later, two Israeli missiles roar over Achrafieh.

I hear children and adults in the neighbourhood scream. People run to their balconies or open their windows trying to figure out what’s just happened.

Within seconds a strong explosion shakes the tree-lined streets.

Everyone in my building looks towards Dahieh, the Hezbollah-dominated southern suburb of Beirut which is partly visible from Achrafieh.

But soon we realise the strike has hit an area just a five-minute drive away from us.

Local media say the target is Wafiq Safa, a high-ranking Hezbollah security official who’s also the brother-in-law of recently killed leader Hassan Nasrallah. He reportedly survives.

The building that was hit was full of people who’d recently fled to Beirut. No warning was issued by the Israeli army, and at least 22 people were killed. It was the deadliest attack yet.

“Oh my God. What if we were passing through that street?” a neighbour exclaims. “I pass that street to go to work.”

“What is the guarantee that next time they won’t hit a building on our street, if they have a target?” another asks.

The recent turmoil in Lebanon started on 17 and 18 September, when waves of pager blasts killed at least 32 and left more than 5,000 injured, both Hezbollah fighters and civilians. Many lost their eyes or hands, or both.

Air strikes intensified in the south, as well as on Beirut’s southern suburbs, killing high-rank Hezbollah commanders including Nasrallah. On 30 September, Israel invaded southern Lebanon.

Officials say more than 1,600 people have been killed in Israel’s bombardment over the past weeks.

I’ve seen many of the strikes from my own balcony.

The past three weeks have felt like a “fast-forward”, Marwan the waiter tells me. “We haven’t digested what exactly happened.”

I’ve spoken to him many times in the past 12 months since tensions erupted between Hezbollah and Israel.

He’s lived here his entire life and seen all the wars between the two sides. But he’s always been an optimist, and never believed that this round of fighting would escalate into a war.

“I withdraw what I was telling you,” he tells me now. “I didn’t want to believe it but we are at war.”

The face of Beirut has completely changed.

Streets are packed with cars, some parked in the middle of boulevards. Hundreds fleeing Israeli operations in the south of the country have fled to the capital’s suburbs, sheltering in schools in “safer” neighbourhoods. Many have found themselves sleeping on the streets.

On the motorway towards the airport and the south, billboards show Hassan Nasrallah’s face. Both pro- and anti-Hezbollah people tell me these feel surreal.

In other areas, posters that previously read “Lebanon doesn’t want war” now say “Pray for Lebanon”.

The city’s iconic Martyrs’ Square – usually host to protests and huge Christmas celebrations – has turned into a tent city.

Families squeeze under the skeleton of an iron Christmas tree. Around a cut-out clenched fist installed above the square after youth protests in 2019, there are blankets, mattresses and tents made of whatever else people could find.

More of the same awaits around every corner. Makeshift homes stretch from the square all the way down to the sea.

Most of the families here are Syrian refugees, who’ve found themselves displaced again and barred from shelters which are limited to Lebanese nationals.

But many Lebanese families have found themselves homeless too.

Just over a kilometre away, 26-year-old Nadine is trying to take her mind off everything for a few hours.

She’s one of very few customers at Aaliya’s Books, a bookshop-bar in Beirut’s Gemmayze neighbourhood.

“I don’t feel safe any more,” she tells me. “We keep hearing explosions all night.

“I keep asking myself: what if they bomb here? What if they target a car in front of us?”

For a long time, Beirutis believed that tensions would stay limited to Hezbollah-run border villages in southern Lebanon.

Nasrallah, who led the powerful Shia political and military organisation, said he didn’t want to take the country to war, and that the front against Israel was solely to support Palestinians in Gaza.

That all changed.

In Beirut, although strikes mostly land in the southern suburbs, where Hezbollah dominates, they send shockwaves across the city – resulting in sleepless nights.

Businesses are affected. Aaliya’s Books is usually a lively place, hosting local bands, podcasts and wine-tasting nights.

We were filming here for a report right after the first air strike on Dahieh, on 30 July, which killed Hezbollah’s second-in-command Fuad Shukr.

Intense sonic booms could be heard overhead as Israeli jets broke the sound barrier.

But a jazz band played all night, with dancing patrons crowding the bar. Now the place is empty, with no music and no dancing.

“It is sad and frustrating,” says bar manager Charlie Haber. “You come here to change your mood but again you will end up talking about the situation. Everyone is asking, what is next?”

His place closed for two weeks after Nasrallah’s killing. Now they’ve reopened, but shut at 20:00 instead of midnight.

Day by day, the psychological strain on staff and customers worsens, says Charlie. Even a post on Instagram takes half a day to write, he adds, because you “don’t want to look like ‘hey, come and enjoy and we’ll give you a discount on drinks’ in this situation”.

It’s hard to find anywhere open late any more in this area.

Loris, a well-loved restaurant, never used to shut before 01:00 – but now the streets are deserted by 19:00, says one of its owners, Joe Aoun.

Three weeks ago you couldn’t get a table here without a reservation. Now, barely two or three tables are taken each day.

“We take it day by day. We are sitting here and talking together now, but maybe in five minutes we’ll have to close down and leave.”

Most of Loris’s staff come from Beirut’s southern suburbs or villages in the country’s south. “Each day one of them hears that his house is destroyed,” says Joe.

One employee, Ali, didn’t come to work for 15 days as he was trying to find somewhere for his family to stay. They’d slept under olive trees in the south for weeks.

Joe says Loris is trying to stay open to help staff make a living but he’s not sure how long this can continue. Fuel for the generators is extremely expensive.

I see the frustration on his face.

“We are against war,” he says. “My staff from the south are Shia but they are against war too. But no one asked for our opinion. We can’t do anything else. We just need to to hold on.”

Back at Aaliya’s, both Charlie and Nadine are worried about community tensions rising.

These parts of Beirut are mostly Sunni Muslim and Christian – but the new arrivals are largely Shia.

“I personally try to help people regardless of their religion or sect but even in my family there are divisions over it. Part of my family only help and accommodate displaced Christians,” she says.

Out in the squares and alleys of Achrafieh and Gemmayze, more and more flags can be seen of Lebanese Forces, a Christian party that strongly opposes Hezbollah.

The party has a long history of armed conflict with Shia Muslims, as well as Muslim and Palestinian parties during the civil war, three decades ago.

Nadine thinks this is a message to displaced Shias who have recently arrived, saying “don’t come here”.

With the movement of people, there are also fears that Israel can now target any building in any neighbourhood in its search for Hezbollah fighters or members of allied groups.

Hezbollah says its high-ranking officials do not stay in places assigned to displaced people.

None of this bodes well for local businesses.

Many in Gemmayze were already badly affected by the Beirut port explosion four years ago, which killed 200 people and destroyed more than 70,000 buildings. They’d only recently started getting back on their feet.

Despite the financial crisis, new places were springing up in the area – but many of them have closed now.

Maya Bekhazi Noun, an entrepreneur and board member of the restaurant and bar owners’ syndicate, estimates that 85% of food and drink spots in downtown Beirut have shut down or limited their opening hours.

“Everything happened so fast and we couldn’t do any statistics yet but I can tell you more around 85 percent of food and beverage places in downtown Beirut are closed or working for limited hours only.”

“It is difficult to keep the places open for joy when there are many people are sleeping without enough food and supplies nearby.”

Despite the tough situation in Beirut, you can still find bustling restaurants and bars around a 15 minute-drive north. But Maya says that too is temporary.

“Strikes may happen in other locations too. There have been attacks on some places in the north. There is no guarantee they will be safe either.”

It’s like someone pressed a button and life stopped in Beirut, she says.

“We are on hold. We were aware of the war in the south – and somehow affected by it too – but many like me didn’t expect the war to come this close.”

At least eight people have died and thousands are stranded without power after violent storms swept across Brazil on Friday.

Central and south-eastern parts of the country have been hit by winds of up to 100km/h (60mph) and daily rainfall reaching up to 10cm (4in), according to the National Institute of Meteorology.

Seven people are known to have died in São Paulo, Brazil’s most populated state, mainly due to falling trees and infrastructure from the strong winds and heavy rainfall.

Residents in the south-eastern state described the unexpected downpour as brief but really intense.

Blackouts have engulfed large parts of São Paulo state since Friday, with water supply problems also reported.

The energy firm Enel has said that more than 1.3 million homes and businesses are still without electricity. The company said it was aiming to reconnect power by Monday.

This came after residents of the Parque São Roberto neighbourhood, in São Paulo state, held a pot-banging protest on Saturday after going more than 24 hours without electricity.

In the capital, Brasilia, one soldier was killed and another injured at the military police headquarters.

The rain was so intense local media reported that officials inside the Chamber of Deputies – the lower house of Brazil’s congress – were forced to use umbrellas inside as water leaked through the roof.

However, many people in Brasilia have welcomed the storm as long-awaited relief following a record of more than 165 days without rain.

In recent months, Brazil has experienced its worst drought since records began, which experts have largely linked to climate change and El Niño weather phenomenon.

Dry weather has fuelled wildfires across the country devastating large parts of the Amazon rainforest and Pantanal wetlands as well as choking major cities with smoke.

The number of wildfires fires in the Amazon surged to a two-decade high for the month of July, according to government data.

Chris Brown’s forthcoming concert in South Africa has led to renewed focus on the country’s shocking levels of violence against women, with campaigners saying it sends the wrong message given his history of abuse.

In less than two hours, the Grammy-winner managed to sell out tickets to the FNB Stadium in Johannesburg – the largest stadium in Africa with over 94,000 seats. Demand was so high that a second December date was added.

Despite the massive interest, the R ‘n’ B star has experienced a backlash from people who did not want him to perform due to his violent past.

“When I saw the news that Chris Brown was coming to South Africa, I was shocked and deeply disappointed,” said Sabina Walter, executive director of Women for Change, an organisation that advocates for the rights of women and children in South Africa.

The group has started a petition to stop the US artist from performing. It currently has over 20,000 signatures.

“The petition was started to send a strong message that we will not tolerate the celebration of individuals with a history of violence against women,” said Ms Walter, especially in a country like South Africa.

South Africa has one of the highest rates of femicide and gender-based violence in the world.

A rape is reported in the country roughly every 12 minutes and it is assumed that many more go unrecorded.

“When someone like Chris Brown is given a platform in a country where GBV is at crisis levels, it sends a damaging message – that fame and power outweigh accountability,” said Ms Walters.

The most well-known instance in Chris Brown’s history of abuse is the domestic dispute with singer Rihanna in 2009.

Chris Brown, who was 19 at the time, pleaded guilty to assault and was sentenced to five years probation, community service and domestic violence counselling.

Although Rihanna forgave him and the pair briefly dated again after the incident, Chris Brown has also been accused of violence by other women – and men.

Women for Change says it wants to know how the Department of Home Affairs could grant “a convicted abuser” a visa.

For Ms Walter, the decision is “concerning and indicative of a systemic failure”.

According to South African law, having a previous conviction can result in a visa being denied. But there can be an exception for “good cause” and those are cleared by the Director General of the Department of Home Affairs.

Chris Brown has previously been banned from entering other countries, including the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand, although he has subsequently gone on to play in the UK and elsewhere in Europe.

But his South African fans are undeterred.

Former University of Cape Town vice-chancellor Prof Mamokgethi Phakeng shared on X that she would be attending the Chris Brown concert.

“I am totally against GBV and condemn it. I believe that those who perpetrate GBV should face the full might of the law without exceptions or leniency.

“But let me be clear, just in case the message didn’t sit well: I am going to attend Brown’s concert if he comes. These two things are not mutually exclusive.

“To suggest that enjoying a concert aligns you with every past action of the artist is, at best, simplistic and, at worst, intellectually dishonest,” she said.

Prof Phakeng explained that “music is bigger than the individual”.

She added that boycotting Chris Brown’s concert wouldn’t end GBV in South Africa.

“Attending the concert does not magically erase our moral stance on GBV.”

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Although this is not Chris Brown’s first concert in South Africa, there is huge excitement among his fans.

One said on X: “Chris Brown coming to South Africa??… I’ll take a loan for a meet & greet.”

“Chris Brown you don’t know us yet… but my wife and I will be those two microscopic fans in the stands singing and dancing to every jam!!!!” said another.

Ms Waters said she had even received threats because of her campaign against the US star.

“Supporters of Chris Brown seem ready to defend him at any cost,” she said.

“The criticism we are facing for our petition speaks volumes and actually reveals a deep disconnect in how we, as a society, view violence against women.”

She said that too often people were willing to “excuse abusive” behaviour when it comes to celebrities they admire.

Selective outrage is dangerous because it perpetuates the rape culture and high levels of violence women face every day, said Ms Walters.

President Cyril Ramaphosa accepts that South Africa has a huge problem with gender-based violence and in August, he called on the country’s men to take a stand.

“Our ultimate goal is to end gender-based violence altogether,” he said.

Yet this goal remains a distant one – little has changed five years after he called for action to tackle the country’s “rape crisis”.

This year alone, Women for Change has honoured over 200 women who have lost their lives to femicide.

“This fight isn’t just about this concert. It’s about changing the narrative in South Africa, where abusers are held accountable and where violence against women is never excused, overlooked, or forgotten.”

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Kamala Harris has released her medical records, which concluded she is in “excellent health” and fit for the presidency.

Following the disclosure, the Democratic Party’s nominee to be the next US president accused Donald Trump of a lack of transparency over not releasing his own health records.

The vice-president also claimed her Republican rival “doesn’t want the American people to see whether or not he’s fit to become president”.

Without revealing Trump’s medical records, the former president’s team responded by quoting his doctor as saying that he was in “perfect and excellent health”.

The Trump campaign said the Republican nominee had a “extremely busy and active campaign schedule” and claimed Harris “does not have the stamina of President Trump”.

The trading of barbs came after the White House published a medical report that said Vice-President Harris “possesses the physical and mental resiliency” necessary to serve as president.

Dr Joshua Simmons, a US Army colonel who has been Harris’ physician for over three years, wrote that her most recent physical in April was “unremarkable” – adding that she maintains a healthy and active lifestyle.

He also noted she has a family history of colon cancer and suffers from allergies – going on to say she keeps up recommended preventative care, including having colonoscopy and annual mammograms.

Following the release of the medical records, a Harris campaign spokesman said in a post on social media: “your turn, Donald Trump”.

Ahead of a campaign event in North Carolina, Harris also sought to cast doubt on her rival’s mental acuity and how he “goes off on tangents”.

Democrats have been on the attack about the 78-year-old Trump’s age and mental fitness, after months of Republicans directing similar criticisms at President Joe Biden before he exited the race.

If elected president again in November, Trump would end his second term as the oldest serving president in US history at 82 – albeit a record that would be shared with Biden, who will be the same age when he leaves office in January.

In response to the pressure from the Harris camp, the Trump’s campaign’s communications director Steven Cheung said he had “voluntarily released” updates from his personal physician and the doctor who treated him after the assassination attempt against him this summer in Butler, Pennsylvania.

“All have concluded he is in perfect and excellent health to be Commander in Chief,” Cheung added.

He also cited a November 2023 medical letter that said Trump’s “physical exams were well within the normal range and his cognitive exams were exceptional”.

National polls suggest Harris remains slightly ahead of Trump but the numbers in battleground states are extremely close.

A row over a luxury hotel, a mini-bar tab and two women who just cannot seem to agree.

Yes, you guessed it. Wagatha Christie is back.

The dispute between Coleen Rooney and Rebekah Vardy returned to court this week, exactly five years after the viral social media post that sparked their high-profile libel battle.

During the High Court trial in 2022, the world’s media watched on, gripped by details of a whodunit worthy of author Agatha Christie.

Rooney had accused her fellow footballer’s wife of leaking private information about her to the press, and eventually emerged victorious.

Vardy was ordered to pay 90% of her rival’s legal costs, which now stand at more than £1.8m.

This week, the showdown returned to court as Vardy tried to reduce that bill.

It’s a saga worthy of a soap opera, and one that taps into Brits’ fascination with the Wags (wives and girlfriends) of footballers. It has already spawned multiple documentaries. And it’s not over yet.

“We’ll be back again at some point next year for an excruciating line-by-line process of going through the costs,” says media lawyer Jonathan Coad, who has followed the case from the start.

“It’s ridiculous,” he adds. “It’s the last place you want to end up.”

Here is what we learned after another week of the now infamous Wagatha row.

This week’s hearing was a “close-run thing”, but in the end, “the winner appears to be Coleen again”, says Coad.

Vardy’s barrister argued there were various reasons why the amount of money she has to pay should be reduced.

But in a ruling on Tuesday, senior costs judge Andrew Gordon-Saker dismissed a number of Vardy’s claims.

He found that Rooney’s legal team had not committed any misconduct, but reached that decision “on balance and, I have to say, only just”. However, that meant it was “not an appropriate case” to reduce the amount of money that Vardy should pay.

The following day, the judge ordered Vardy to pay Rooney £100,000 this month.

That is not additional to what she already owes. Vardy has already paid £800,000 so far, and the £100,000 is a further payment towards the eventual total bill.

“Vardy took a risk. It hasn’t worked, and now she’s come away paying another £100,000,” says Coad.

In 2022, the world’s media descended on London as Rooney and Vardy, flanked by their husbands, arrived at the High Court.

Even the US press were gripped, as they tried to make sense of why two “soccer wives” were going head-to-head.

This week, neither woman showed up, leaving their barristers to fight it out for them.

Naturally, that meant less of a media circus outside the court. And inside, where I was, there were fewer fireworks than last time.

Britain’s tabloids still had a field day, of course. The headline of the week surely goes to Metro, which dubbed the whole affair “Wagatha Thrifty”.

But the tenor of this hearing was much more muted. There was no cross-examination, and the arguments were less incendiary – although the two KCs did still have a decent fight.

Cost hearings are dry at the best of times. Even with the famous names involved, there is only so excited anyone can get about the intricate details of chargeable rates.

Having said that, there were still some juicy details.

One of the headline-grabbing claims to emerge involved a stay at a five-star hotel in London.

Vardy’s lawyer said Rooney’s total legal bill from the 2022 case included costs for a lawyer staying “at the Nobu Hotel, incurring substantial dinner and drinks charges as well as mini-bar charges”.

The hotel brand – a spin-off from the high-end Japanese restaurants – advertises itself as being “among the top luxury lifestyle hotel chains”.

But on Tuesday, Rooney’s lawyer Robin Dunne, said the spending claims were “factually inaccurate”.

“Yesterday morning, the Sun ran a front-page headline which dealt with mini-bar charges,” he said.

“It also was reported around the world, over and over again on Twitter, or X,” he said, adding that the charges had been taken as “evidence of the defendant spending wildly”.

He said a “modest” hotel had initially been booked for the lawyer.

But on the first night, there had been no wi-fi or working shower, so the lawyer transferred to the Nobu after Rooney’s agent said she could get reduced rates, he said.

A room at Nobu ordinarily costs £600 but was charged at £295, which he said was the same price as a room at a Premier Inn.

There was also a claim that £225 had been spent on a food and mini-bar tab.

But Mr Dunne insisted the mini-bar bill actually came to just £7 for two bottles of water, and said the lawyer had not eaten at the Nobu restaurant during his stay.

Vardy’s team also claimed it was “unreasonable” for Rooney to use Stewarts, a London-based law firm, and that she should have sought one near where she lived in north-west England.

But that was rejected by the judge.

“This was always going to be a high-profile case and it attracted significant press coverage both here and elsewhere,” Mr Gordon-Saker said on Tuesday.

“Defamation is still a specialist area and most of the firms who specialise in defamation are based in central London.”

He added that it was a “reasonable choice” to instruct a solicitor in central London, given the size of the claim and the “reputations at stake”.

The judge also rejected Vardy’s claim that it had been unreasonable for Rooney to consult her barrister on 30 occasions, at a cost of nearly £500,000.

He said that Vardy’s conduct – in particular destroying evidence – “adds to the complexity” and “clearly justifies rates in excess of the guidelines” for the most experienced lawyers.

But he did say less experienced lawyers should have been charged at a lower hourly rate.

This battle is far from over yet.

This week’s hearing dealt with points of principle. There will now be a line-by-line assessment of costs, which will take place next spring at the earliest.

And it is still possible that Vardy will end up paying less than the estimated £1.6m she was instructed to pay, with some rulings yet to be made.

The irony is, as Coad notes, both sides will have invested even more money in this latest battle.

And the judge’s parting shot carried, perhaps, just a hint of exasperation.

“The parties need to get on with this and put it behind them.”

King Charles has confirmed that it is up to the Australian people to decide whether the country remains a constitutional monarchy or becomes a republic.

Ahead of the King’s visit to Australia next week, the Australian Republic Movement exchanged letters with Buckingham Palace officials, writing on the King’s behalf.

Correspondence from the palace, first revealed by the Daily Mail, says that “whether Australia becomes a republic” is a “matter for the Australian public to decide”.

The future of the monarchy in Australia is likely to be an issue during the royal visit by King Charles and Queen Camilla, which includes events in Sydney and Canberra.

• King’s Australia trip is biggest since cancer diagnosis
• Australia puts republic referendum plan on hold

The letter sent by palace officials restates the existing position, rather than marking any new change in policy – and Buckingham Palace is not saying anything further to the letter’s contents.

But it is an amicable exchange, following a request by a group campaigning for a republic to have a meeting with the King during his visit.

“The King appreciated that you took the time to write and asked me to reply on his behalf,” says the letter from Buckingham Palace to the Australian Republic Movement, written in March.

“Please be assured that your views on this matter have been noted very carefully.

“His Majesty, as a constitutional monarch, acts on the advice of his Ministers, and whether Australia becomes a republic is therefore a matter for the Australian public to decide.”

The letter adds that the King and Queen have a “deep love and affection” for Australia and “your thoughtfulness in writing as you did is warmly appreciated”.

A referendum on the issue was held in Australia in 1999, where people voted to remain a constitutional monarchy.

Earlier this year Australia’s government said plans for another referendum were “not a priority”.

But campaigners for a republic argue that Australia’s head of state shouldn’t be the monarch but someone chosen by Australians.

When the King’s visit was announced, Isaac Jeffrey of the Australian Republic Movement said: “While we respect the role the royals have played in the nation to date, it’s time for Australia to elect a local to serve as our head of state. Someone who can work for Australia full time.”

It is a campaign that has commended King Charles as an individual but is opposed to the role of the monarchy in Australia.

“We’re keen to tell him we’ll stay in the Commonwealth and a republic is about us, not about him or his family,” said Mr Jeffrey.

The visit to Australia will be the King’s biggest trip since his cancer diagnosis earlier this year. His only other international trip since then has been to France for D-Day commemorations.

His treatment is expected to be paused during the trip, which after Australia will include attending a Commonwealth heads of government meeting in Samoa.

The visit, from 18 to 26 October, will include a review of the Australian naval fleet in Sydney harbour, attending a community barbecue, supporting environmental projects and meeting two award-winning cancer experts.

This week it was also announced that in December King Charles will host a two-day state visit to the UK by the Amir of Qatar.

On Saturday morning, a message was posted on social media by the Israeli military’s Arabic spokesman warning people living in the ‘D5’ area of northern Gaza to move south. D5 is a square on the grid superimposed over maps of Gaza by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). It is a block that is split into several dozen smaller areas.

The message, the latest in a series, said: “The IDF is operating with great force against the terrorist organisations and will continue to do so for a long time. The designated area, including the shelters located there, is considered a dangerous combat zone. The area must be evacuated immediately via Salah al-Din Road to the humanitarian area.”

A map is attached with a large yellow arrow pointing from block D5 down to the south of Gaza. Salah al-Din Road is the main north-south route. The message is not promising a swift return to the places people have been living in, an area that has been pulverised by a year of repeated Israeli attacks. The heart of the message is that the IDF will be using “great force… for a long time”. In other words, don’t expect to come back any time soon.

The humanitarian area designated by Israel in the message is al-Mawasi, previously an agricultural area on the coast near Rafah. It is overcrowded and no safer than many other parts of Gaza. BBC Verify has tracked at least 18 airstrikes on the area.

Hamas has sent out its own messages to the 400,000 people left in northern Gaza, an area that was once the urban heartland of the Strip with a population of 1.4m. Hamas is telling them not to move. The south, they are told, is just as dangerous. As well as that, Hamas is warning them that they will not be allowed back.

Many people appear to be staying put, despite Israeli airstrikes and artillery bombardments. When I went down to an area overlooking northern Gaza I could hear explosions and see columns of smoke rising. The intensity reminded me of the first months of the war.

Some of the people who have stayed in northern Gaza when so many others have already fled south are doing so to remain with vulnerable relatives. Others are from families with connections to Hamas. Under the laws of war, that does not automatically make them belligerents.

One tactic that has been used over the last year by civilians who want to avoid IDF operations without taking their chances in the overcrowded and dangerous south of Gaza is to move elsewhere in the north, for example from Beit Hanoun to Gaza City, while the IDF is operating near their homes or shelters. When the army moves on, they return.

The IDF is trying to stop that happening, according to BBC colleagues who are daily contact with Palestinians in Gaza. It is channelling families who are moving in one direction only, down Salah al-Din, the main road to the south.

Israel does not allow journalists to enter Gaza to report the war, except for brief, rare and closely supervised trips with the IDF. Palestinian journalists who were there on 7 October still do brave work. The Committee to Protect Journalists says at least 128 Palestinian media workers in Gaza have been killed since the war began. In northern Gaza, since Israel went back on the offensive, they have been filming panic-stricken families as they flee, often with small children helping out by carrying oversized backpacks.

One of them sent out a brief interview with a woman called Manar al-Bayar who was rushing down the street carrying a toddler. She was saying as she half-walked, half-ran on the way out of Jabalia refugee camp that “they told us we had five minutes to leave the Fallujah school. Where do we go? In southern Gaza there are assassinations. In western Gaza they’re shelling people. Where do we go, oh God? God is our only chance.”

The journey is hard. Sometimes, Palestinians in Gaza say, people on the move are fired on by the IDF. It insists that Israeli soldiers observe strict rules of engagement that respect international humanitarian law.

But Medical Aid for Palestinians’ head of protection, Liz Allcock, says the evidence presented by wounded civilians suggest that they have been targeted.

“When we’re receiving patients in hospitals, a large number of those women and children and people of, if you like, non-combatant age are receiving direct shots to the head, to the spine, to the limbs, very indicative of the direct targeted attack.”

Once again, the UN and aid agencies who work in Gaza are saying that Israeli military pressure is deepening what is already a humanitarian catastrophe.

Desperate messages are being relayed from the remaining hospitals in northern Gaza, saying that they are running low on fuel to power the generators that keep the hospitals going, and keep badly wounded patients alive. Some hospitals report that their buildings have been attacked by the Israelis.

The suspicion among Palestinians, the UN and relief agencies is that the IDF is gradually adopting some or all of a new tactic to clear northern Gaza known as the “Generals’ Plan”. It was proposed by a group of retired senior officers led by Maj-Gen (ret) Giora Eiland, who is a former national security adviser.

Like most Israelis they are frustrated and angry that a year into the war Israel still has not achieved its war aims of destroying Hamas and freeing the hostages. The Generals’ Plan is a new idea that its instigators believe can, from Israel’s perspective, break the deadlock.

At its heart is the idea that Israel can force the surrender of Hamas and its leader Yahya Sinwar by increasing the pressure on the entire population of the north. The first step is to order civilians to leave along evacuation corridors that will take them south of Wadi Gaza, an east-west stream that has become a dividing line in Gaza since the Israeli invasion last October.

Giora Eiland believes Israel should have done a deal straight away to get the hostages back, even if it meant pulling out of Gaza entirely. A year later, other methods, he says, are necessary.

In his office in central Israel, he laid out the heart of the plan.

“Since we already encircled the northern part of Gaza in the past nine or 10 months, what we should do is the following thing to tell all the 300,000 residents [that the UN estimates is 400,000] who still live in the northern part of Gaza that they have to leave this area and they should be given 10 days to leave through safe corridors that Israel will provide.

“And after that time, all this area will become to be a military zone. And all the Hamas people will still, though, whether some of them are fighters, some of them are civilians… will have two choices either to surrender or to starve.”

Eiland wants Israel to seal the areas once the evacuation corridors are closed. Anyone left behind would be treated as an enemy combatant. The area would be under siege, with the army blocking all supplies of food, water or other necessities of life from going in. He believes the pressure would become unbearable and what is left of Hamas would rapidly crumble, freeing the surviving hostages and giving Israel the victory it craves.

The UN World Food Programme says that the current offensive in Gaza is having a “disastrous impact on food security for thousands of Palestinian families”. The main crossings into northern Gaza, it says, have been closed and no food aid has entered the strip since 1 October. Mobile kitchens and bakeries have been forced to stop work because of air strikes. The only functioning bakery in the north, which is supported by WFP, caught fire after it was hit by an explosive munition. The position in the south is almost as dire.

It is not clear whether the IDF has adopted the Generals’ Plan in part or in full, but the circumstantial evidence of what is being done in Gaza suggests it is at the very least a strong influence on the tactics being used against the population. The BBC submitted a list of questions to the IDF, which were not answered.

The ultra-nationalist extremists in Benjamin Netanyahu’s cabinet want to replace Palestinians in northern Gaza with Jewish settlers. Among many statements he’s made on the subject, the finance minister Bezalel Smotrich has said “Our heroic fighters and soldiers are destroying the evil of Hamas, and we will occupy the Gaza Strip… to tell the truth, where there is no settlement, there is no security.”

Israeli army vehicles had already pounded the dirt road into dust where we crossed into Lebanon, breaking through a hole in the fence that marks the ceasefire line drawn between the two countries a generation ago.

The ceasefire itself is already in tatters.

Israel’s ground invasion along this border last week was launched, it said, to destroy Hezbollah weapons and infrastructure in “limited, localised, targeted raids”.

Ten days on, the army was taking us to a village a couple of miles into Lebanese territory, where it had just established “some level of control”.

We were told not to reveal where it is, for military reasons, and our movements were restricted.

Israeli artillery was blasting through the air as we arrived. The brigade commander, Col Yaniv Malka, told us the area was still not clear of Hezbollah fighters.

Bursts of small-arms fire were from fighting that was taking place 500m away, he said, describing “face-to-face combat” with Hezbollah fighters inside the village just a couple of days before – meaning, he said, “my troops seeing in their eyes, and fighting them in the streets”.

All along the central path through the village, houses lay demolished; piles of rubble leaching glimpses of family life. Buildings left standing were shot through with artillery, missing corners or walls and peppered with gunshot and shrapnel holes.

Two tanks sat in churned up earth near what was once a village square. The level of destruction around them is reminiscent of Gaza.

Our movements on the ground were restricted by the army to a limited area of the village, but neighbouring buildings and communities appeared, from a distance, to be untouched.

These incursions seem – so far – to be more “limited and targeted” geographically than militarily.

The graffiti on a building commandeered by troops read: “We wanted peace, you wanted war”.

“Most of the terrorists ran away,” Col Malka told me. “[But] dozens of houses were booby-trapped. When we went house to house, we discovered booby-traps and weapons. We had no choice but to destroy them.”

We only have the army’s account of what happened here.

I asked an army spokesman whether any women or children were present when the operation here began. He replied that all civilians had been given ample warning to leave.

The human rights group Amnesty International this week described Israel’s evacuation warnings in southern Lebanon as inadequate and overly general, and said they did not absolve the country of its obligations under international law.

We were also shown three caches of weapons it said were found inside civilian homes here, including boxes of brand-new mortars, new anti-tank missiles and mines, as well as sophisticated shoulder launched rockets and night-scopes.

One anti-tank missile we saw was already semi-assembled.

The chief of staff for the 91st Division, Roy Russo, also showed us a garage he said had been used as an equipment warehouse, with sleeping bags, body armour, rifles and ammunition hidden in a large barrel.

“This is what we call an exchange zone,” he said. “They’re morphing from civilians into combatants. All this gear is designed to manoeuvre into [Israel] and conduct operations on the Israeli side. This is not defensive equipment.”

This, Israel says, is why it launched its invasion of southern Lebanon; that Hezbollah’s stockpiles of weapons and equipment along this border were planning for a cross-border attack similar to last year’s 7 October attacks by Hamas in southern Israel.

At the start of this invasion, the army revealed that Israeli special forces had been operating across the Lebanese border in small tactical units for almost a year, conducting more than 70 raids to find and destroy Hezbollah infrastructure, including underground tunnels – one of which, it said, stopped 30m (100ft) before the ceasefire line with Israel and was unfinished.

Col Malka showed me some of the weapons he said the army found on the day we arrived. They include a large IED, an anti-personnel mine, and a high-tech night-scope.

He said troops were finding “two to three times” the number of weapons they found in Gaza, with “thousands” of weapons and thousands of pieces of ammunition found in this village alone.

“We don’t want to hold these places,” he told me. “We want to take all the ammunition and fighting equipment out. After that, we expect the people will come back, and understand that peace is better for them, and terrorist control over them in a bad thing.”

“But I’ll leave that to the diplomats to solve,” he smiled.

After the last ground war between Israel and Hezbollah in 2006, the UN ruled that Hezbollah must pull back north of the Litani River. A previous resolution also ordered its disarmament. Neither decision has been enforced.

That ground war in 2006 was a wake-up call for Israel. The Iran-backed militia fought its army to standstill. For almost 20 years, both sides have been avoiding – and preparing for – the next one.

Col Malka fought in Lebanon during that war. “This one is different,” he said.

When I asked why, he replied: “Because of 7th October.”

As we were speaking, the sound of small-arms fire grew louder. He gestured towards it. “That’s my guys fighting in the casbah,” he said.

Israel’s ground invasion is part of a dramatic escalation against Hezbollah over the past three weeks that has also seen it intensify air strikes on southern Lebanon and parts of Beirut.

Lebanon says more than 2,200 people have been killed, mainly during the recent escalation, and more than a million people displaced.

Hezbollah began firing rockets into northern Israel on 8 October last year, the day after Hamas’s deadly attack on southern Israel. The Iran-backed group says it is acting in solidarity with the Palestinians and has said it will stop firing if there is a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas in Gaza.

Israel accuses Hezbollah of using civilians as human shields. One commander described the ground war as an offensive operation to defend Israeli citizens – an invasion to stop an invasion, in other words.

But the speed with which Israel’s forces have been moving through villages along this border may only be the first chapter in this story.

Hezbollah tactics have shifted since the ground invasion began, with Israeli towns like Metula – surrounded on three sides by Lebanon – reporting a drop in direct fire from anti-tank missiles, and a rise in rockets fired out of sight from further away.

The assessment of many is that Hezbollah fighters have not run away, but simply withdrawn further back into Lebanon.

Israel already has four divisions lined up at this border – and a growing chorus of voices inside the country who say this is the moment, not just to push back Hezbollah, but to remake the Middle East.

As the fighting near the village intensified, we were told to leave immediately, hurried out to the waiting convoy.

Under the shadow of a growing conflict with Iran, Israel’s small successes along this frontier don’t change one key fact: this is not actually a border war, it’s a regional war being fought along a border.

A UN peacekeeper has been wounded in southern Lebanon after being hit by gunfire, the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (Unifil) has said, the fifth member of the multinational force to be injured in recent days.

In a statement on Saturday, Unifil said the peacekeeper was injured at its headquarters in the southern city of Naquora on Friday night amid “ongoing military activity nearby”, though added that it did not know the origin of the fire.

“He underwent surgery at our Naqoura hospital to remove the bullet and is currently stable,” it said.

On Friday US President Joe Biden has said he was “absolutely, positively” urging Israel to stop firing at UN peacekeepers in Lebanon following two earlier incidents on Thursday and Friday.

Israeli troops have launched a ground invasion in southern Lebanon as part of its escalation against the Lebanese armed group Hezbollah, with which it has been trading cross-border fire on a near daily basis for the past year.

Israeli forces have urged UN peacekeepers to leave their positions. A spokesperson for Unifil said on Saturday that there had been a “unanimous decision” to stay in the border region.

Separately, Unifil said buildings at a position in the village of Ramyah sustained “significant damage due to explosions from nearby shelling” on Friday night.

“We remind all actors of their obligations to ensure the safety and security of UN personnel and premises, including avoiding combat activities near Unifil positions,” the mission said.

On Friday, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) acknowledged that its troops were responsible for an incident in which two Sri Lankan soldiers, also in Naqoura, were injured.

The IDF said soldiers operating near the base opened fire after identifying a threat and that the incident would be investigated “at the highest levels”.

Sri Lanka’s foreign ministry said it “strongly condemned” the attack.

On Thursday, two Indonesian peacekeepers were injured falling from an observation tower after Israeli tanks fired towards it.

Lt Gen Seán Clancy, chief of staff of the Irish Defence Forces, has said he does not believe the strike on Thursday was accidental. Some 340 Irish troops are currently operating in Lebanon with Unifil.

“An observer tower with a round from a tank directly into it, which is a very small target, has to be very deliberate,” he told Irish broadcaster RTÉ.

“So from a military perspective, this is not an accidental act. It’s a direct act.

“Whether its indiscipline or directed, either way it is not conscionable or allowable.”

The leaders of France, Italy, and Spain have also condemned Israel’s actions, saying in a joint statement that they were unjustifiable and should immediately end.

On Saturday Lebanon’s health ministry said Israeli strikes on villages to the north and south of the capital Beirut had killed nine people.

The IDF also told residents of 23 southern Lebanese villages to evacuate to areas north of the Awali river.

Hezbollah continued to fire into Israel, with the IDF saying that about 320 projectiles had been identified and a number of them intercepted.

On Saturday, the IDF announced that the areas around the northern towns of Zar’it, Shomera, Shtula, Netu’a, and Eben Menachem would be closed to civilians from 20:00 local time (18:00 BST).

About 10,000 peacekeepers from 50 countries are stationed in Lebanon, alongside around 800 civilian staff.

Since 1978, they have patrolled the area between the Litani River and the UN-recognised boundary between Lebanon and Israel, known as the “Blue Line”.

Hezbollah began firing rockets into northern Israel on 8 October last year, the day after Hamas’s deadly attack on southern Israel. The Iran-backed group says it is acting in solidarity with the Palestinians and has said it will stop firing if there is a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas in Gaza.

Over the past three weeks, Israel has dramatically escalated its campaign against Hezbollah, intensifying air strikes against southern Lebanon and southern parts of Beirut, assassinating Hezbollah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah and launching a ground invasion.

Lebanon says more than 2,000 people have been killed, mainly in the recent escalation, and hundreds of thousands have been displaced. This week Hezbollah rocket fire has killed two Israeli civilians and a Thai national, Israeli authorities say.

Israel’s ground invasion of Lebanon is about to end its second week, as Israel’s war has already entered its second year. Appeals for a ceasefire have increased following an air strike in Beirut on Thursday night, and the wounding on Friday, for the second day running, of UN peacekeepers in southern Lebanon by Israeli military fire.

A new offensive is taking place in Jabalia, in northern Gaza, despite persistent calls for the conflict there to end. Israel’s allies are also urging restraint as the country prepares to retaliate against Iran, following last week’s ballistic missile attack.

However, Israel will continue to pursue its own path, and resist this pressure, because of three factors: 7 October, Benjamin Netanyahu and the United States.

It was in January 2020 when Iranian general Qassem Soleimani landed at Baghdad airport on a night-time flight from Damascus. Soleimani was the head of Iran’s notorious Quds Force, an elite, clandestine unit of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps specialising in overseas operations.

The group – whose name means Jerusalem, and whose main adversary was Israel – was responsible for arming, training, funding and directing proxy forces abroad in Iraq, Lebanon, the Palestinian Territories and beyond. At the time, Soleimani was perhaps the second most powerful man in Iran, after the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

As Soleimani’s convoy left the airport, it was destroyed by missiles fired from a drone that killed him instantly.

Although Israel provided intelligence to help locate its arch-adversary, the drone belonged to the United States. The assassination order had been given by then US President Donald Trump, not Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

“I never forget that Bibi Netanyahu let us down,” former President Trump would later say in a speech referring to the Soleimani assassination. In a separate interview, Trump also suggested that he had expected Israel to play a more active role in the attack and complained that Netanyahu was “willing to fight Iran to the last American soldier”.

While Trump’s account of events is disputed, at the time it was believed that Netanyahu, who praised the killing, was concerned that direct Israeli involvement could provoke a large-scale attack against Israel, either from Iran directly, or its proxies in Lebanon and the Palestinian Territories. Israel was fighting a shadow war with Iran, but each side was careful to keep the fighting within certain bounds, for fear of provoking the other into a larger-scale conflict.

Just over four years later, in April of this year, the same Benjamin Netanyahu ordered Israeli jets to bomb a building in the Iranian diplomatic compound in Damascus, killing two Iranian generals amongst others.

Then in July, the Israeli prime minister authorised the assassination of Fuad Shukr, Hezbollah’s top military commander, in an air strike on Beirut. The response of the current US president was reportedly to swear at him, according to a new book by Bob Woodward, who claims that President Joe Biden was aghast that Israel’s prime minister was prepared to escalate a conflict the White House had been trying to bring to an end for months.

“You know, the perception of Israel around the world increasingly is that you’re a rogue state, a rogue actor,” President Biden is reported to have said.

The same prime minister, characterised as being too cautious by one US president, was then castigated as being too aggressive by his successor.

What separates the two episodes is of course 7 October 2023 – the bloodiest day in the history of Israel and a political, military and intelligence failure of catastrophic proportions.

What unites the two moments, however, is Netanyahu defying the will of a US president.

Both factors help to explain the way Israel continues to prosecute the current war.

Israel’s most recent wars concluded after a few weeks, once international pressure built so much that the United States insisted on a ceasefire.

The ferocity and scale of the Hamas attack against Israel, the impact on Israeli society and its sense of security, mean that this war was always going to be unlike any recent conflict.

For a US administration pouring billions of dollars’ worth of weapons into Israel, Palestinian civilian deaths and suffering in Gaza have been deeply uncomfortable, and politically damaging for the administration. For America’s critics in the region, the apparent impotence of the superpower when it comes to influencing the largest recipient of US aid is baffling.

Even after US jets were involved in repelling Iranian attacks on Israel in April – a clear sign of how Israel’s security is underwritten by its larger ally – Israel continued to bat away attempts to change the course of its war.

This summer, Israel chose to escalate its conflict with Hezbollah, without seeking prior approval from the United States.

As Israel’s longest-serving prime minister, Netanyahu has learned from more than 20 years of experience that US pressure is something he can withstand, if not ignore. Netanyahu knows that the US, particularly in an election year, will not take action that forces him to divert from his chosen course (and believes, in any event, that he is fighting America’s enemies too).

Especially when it comes to the latest escalation, it would be wrong to assume that Netanayhu is operating outside the Israeli political mainstream. If anything, the pressure on him is to be tougher to strike harder against Hezbollah, but also Iran.

When a ceasefire plan in Lebanon was mooted by the US and France last month, criticism of the proposed 21-day truce came from the opposition, and the main left-wing grouping in Israel, as well as the right-wing parties.

Israel is determined to continue its wars now, not just because it feels it can withstand international pressure, but also because Israel’s tolerance of the threats it faces has shifted after 7 October.

Hezbollah has for years stated its aim to invade the Galilee in northern Israel. Now that the Israeli public has experienced the reality of gunmen infiltrating homes, that threat cannot be contained, it must be removed.

Israel’s perception of risk has also changed. Long-held notions of military red lines in the region have evaporated. Several acts have been committed in the past year that could, until recently, have led to an all-out conflict, raining bombs and missiles on Tehran, Beirut, Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.

Israel has assassinated the head of Hamas while he was a guest of the Iranians in Tehran; it has also killed the entire leadership of Hezbollah, including Hassan Nasrallah; it has assassinated senior Iranian officials inside diplomatic buildings in Syria.

Hezbollah has fired more than 9,000 missiles, rockets and drones at Israeli cities, including ballistic missiles at Tel Aviv. The Iranian-backed Houthis in Yemen have also launched large missiles at Israel’s cities, intercepted by Israeli defences as they re-entered the Earth’s atmosphere above central Israel. Iran has launched not one, but two attacks against Israel in the past six months involving more than 500 drones and missiles. Israel has invaded Lebanon.

Any one of these might, in the past, have precipitated a regional war. The fact that they have not will change the way a normally cautious, risk-averse Israeli prime minister decides on his next move.

Amid acrid smoke and cries from residents, rescue workers were searching Friday morning for signs of anyone left trapped in the rubble from two Israeli air strikes that hit central Beirut overnight.

According to the Lebanese Ministry of Public Health, 22 people died and 117 were wounded, making these the deadliest strikes in central Beirut of the recent escalation.

At the site of the heaviest of the two, in the Shia neighbourhood of Basta, the head of the Civil Defence rescue team Youssef Al-Mallah told the BBC that five people were still unaccounted for.

The Civil Defence has appealed for family members of the missing to come forward with any information on their whereabouts, Al-Mallah said.

Unconfirmed reports Friday said that Wafiq Safa, the head of Hezbollah’s liaison and coordination unit, was the target of one of the strikes but managed to survive.

Israeli authorities have not commented. They issued no warnings ahead of the strikes, as they have in some instances.

Both the strikes on Beirut hit residential buildings in densely packed neighbourhoods. The missile that hit Basta fell close to the site of an earlier strike that killed nine people last week. It destroyed a four-storey building completely and severely damaged or destroyed at least three adjacent buildings.

The other strike, on the mostly Shia neighbourhood of Nweiri, hit the third floor of an eight-storey building, ejecting large pieces of rubble into the street and destroying cars and shopfronts below.

The timing of the strikes – at about 20:00 local time, 18:00 BST – meant that many residents of the neighbourhoods were at home or on the street in the vicinity.

Hassan Jaafar, a 22-year-old security guard, was at home with friends just 50m from the Basta strike. He told the BBC they heard a “roar that seemed to grow closer with every second”.

“The shockwave knocked us off our feet, sending us backwards as dust and debris filled the air,” he said. “For a moment, everything vanished in a cloud of ash.”

Jaafar said he and his friends were bruised and cut in the strike by flying debris and glass. “In that moment, it felt like the war had expanded into our lives,” he said.

On the massive pile of rubble left by the strike on Friday morning, distraught residents looked on at their destroyed apartments and pleaded with members of the Civil Defence team to help them retrieve surviving possessions.

One group of women was searching for a missing relative – a mother of young children who was last seen on a stretcher at the site. The Civil Defence team told the group they needed to check at every hospital in person.

“If she left here on a gurney she will be at a hospital somewhere,” a rescue worker said.

Ibtisam Mazloum, 42, was in her building nearby when the strike hit. “If they want to fight they should fight at the border,” she said, angrily. “The civilians in Beirut are not part of this.”

At the site of the Nweiri strike, Musa Araf, who works for the Civil Defence, described being in his apartment on the sixth floor of the target building when the missile hit.

“I didn’t panic because of my job, I am used to it,” he said. “But my children were screaming and clinging on to me. One of my grandchildren was cut by flying glass.”

This is the third time Israel has launched air strikes on Beirut outside of the city’s southern suburb of Dahieh, where the Iran-backed armed group Hezbollah has a strong presence.

The previous strikes on central Beirut targeted members of Hezbollah and the People’s Front for the Liberation of Palestine, according to the IDF. One hit a health clinic which the IDF described as Hezbollah-affiliated and killed nine people.

Meanwhile, Human Rights Watch called on Friday for an inquiry into Israeli attacks on UN peacekeepers in south Lebanon. Reports said that an observation post belonging to the United Nations peacekeeping mission (Unifil) had been fired at by Israeli forces.

The incident would mark the fourth time in recent days that Israeli troops have fired at Unifil bases. Yesterday, two Indonesian peacekeepers were injured after an Israeli tank fired at a watchtower at the force’s headquarters in Ras al-Naqoura.

Hezbollah said on Friday it had launched an attack on an Israeli military base in the northern city of Haifa using explosive-laden drones.

The Iran-backed group said the attack was a retaliation for Israeli strikes on Beirut.

Edinburgh awoke on 19 September 2014 with a blanket of mist soaking the stones of the old city.

The cacophony of an independence referendum campaign which had echoed through Scotland for three years had died away and Alex Salmond, so often the embodiment of pugnacious self-confidence, appeared pale and drained.

Overnight it had become clear that the nation had voted decisively, although not overwhelmingly, to stay in the United Kingdom, retaining its 307-year-old union with England.

Soon, we squeezed into the drawing room of the first minister’s official residence, Bute House, to watch Salmond announce his resignation as leader of the devolved government which he had run since 2007, and of the Scottish National Party, which he had dominated for far longer.

Salmond was clear that he accepted the democratic verdict of the people but while there was a hint of dejection in his manner, there was a flash of defiance in his words.

“For me, as leader, my time is nearly over but for Scotland the campaign continues, and the dream shall never die,” he said.

Earlier he had delivered a similar message to his devastated supporters, telling them: “Let us not dwell on the distance we have fallen short. Let us dwell on the distance we have travelled.”

It was indeed some distance.

Although Salmond joined the SNP at a time of relative success in the 1970s, the party and the independence movement were still shadows of what they would become under his leadership from 1990 to 2000 and, even more so, from 2004 to 2014.

Salmond modernised and professionalised the SNP, ensuring its machinery was overhauled and its message was polished until it glinted like granite in the sun.

He loved the cut and thrust of Westminster politics – as well as the intrigue – and he could wield words with the best of them.

Salmond’s interviews, his speeches and his contributions in the House of Commons and the Scottish Parliament were strewn with shrewd and highly quotable little nuggets – politics boiled down to their essence.

Those nuggets would often be accompanied with a historical reference, a poetic flourish or both.

During the referendum campaign he took to quoting Fletcher of Saltoun, noting approvingly that the Scottish noble had spoken out against the 1707 union with England.

It sounded as if he were hoping that his name would soon appear in the same history books.

At the time that did not seem an entirely fanciful hope for the boy from Linlithgow who had grown into a master of the strategically savvy soundbite, and of turning defence into attack.

His stock response to tough questions about the economic challenges which might face an independent Scotland was to scoff that, “of course”, independence would not lead to the installation of three taps in every home – one for oil, one for whisky and one for water.

It was pure deflection, skilfully deployed, inviting the listener to smile with him rather than to think about the question, while also somehow conveying the vague impression that maybe one’s home could indeed have all three of those taps in an independent Scotland.

Some voters found this approach patronising, disingenuous or even smug. But many others delighted in his ability to stick it to pesky journalists, particularly the ones from “down south” who wore their support for the union on their sleeves.

As recently as last month Salmond was making mischief on BBC Radio 4’s Any Questions? He noted that Labour, the SNP and the Conservatives were all blaming each other for the unpopular withdrawal of benefits for some pensioners, before pausing and, to laughter, delivering his punchline: “I agree with them all.”

He could still be a thorn in the side of both unionist opponents and former nationalist allies.

Of course he was not always a strategic genius.

Under Salmond’s leadership the pro-independence Alba Party had very little electoral success.

His judgment on international affairs could be questionable. In 1999, his dismissal of Nato’s military action in Yugoslavia as “unpardonable folly” was widely criticised.

The then Foreign Secretary Robin Cook accused him of failing “to see the clear distinction between the resolve of a democracy defending itself against dictatorship, and a dictatorship engaged in ethnic cleansing.”

More than two decades later, Salmond’s protege and successor as First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, declared herself “appalled” at his decision to host a chat show on the Kremlin-backed broadcaster, RT.

There were other flaws which some have chosen to ignore as inconvenient and others to dismiss as irrelevant.

His trial on sexual assault charges revealed that his behaviour with women was sometimes inappropriate.

At the High Court in Edinburgh, he was acquitted by a jury of his peers. He goes to his grave without a criminal record.

But his admitted conduct in office – pouring alcoholic spirits for younger, female members of staff in the bedroom of the first minister’s official residence late at night and, on at least one occasion, apologising for the manner in which he had touched them – was shocking.

His characterisation of one such encounter as a “sleepy cuddle” drew particular scorn from his critics.

Even his lawyer did not try to excuse his behaviour entirely, saying that Salmond “could certainly have been a better man”.

He not only walked free from court but he also won a civil action against the Scottish government for its handling of complaints against him, and to the end he continued to insist that there were those in the SNP who had conspired against him. There may yet be further fallout from the whole affair.

Considering Alex Salmond’s career in purely political terms, perhaps his most consequential call was to throw the SNP’s weight behind the campaign for a Scottish Parliament as a stepping stone on the road to independence, siding with the so-called gradualists in his party rather than those known as fundamentalists who saw devolution as a diversion.

Whether or not this decision eventually leads to the realisation of Salmond’s dream will be for historians to judge.

For now, Scottish politics is in flux.

After 17 years in power at Holyrood, the SNP under John Swinney heads towards the 2026 Scottish Parliamentary election on the heels of a thumping by Labour in this year’s general election.

After the UK Supreme Court ruled that Westminster’s permission was required for any future referendum on independence to be held, there is no obvious mechanism for the SNP to advance its constitutional preference any time soon.

And Salmond leaves behind a deeply fractured movement – most vividly demonstrated by the total breakdown in his political partnership with Ms Sturgeon – and a party traumatised by its own internal battles, not least about his judgment and conduct.

And yet.

On the day he resigned as first minister he talked of “the energised activism of tens of thousands of people who I predict will refuse to meekly go back into the political shadows”.

In the decade since the vote, that has proved prescient.

There is no immediate prospect of Scotland becoming independent but few would deny that Alex Salmond advanced the cause more than anyone else in modern Scottish history, taking it from a fringe pursuit to the mainstream aspiration of nearly half the electorate.

Social media algorithms, in their commonly known form, are now 15 years old.

They were born with Facebook’s introduction of ranked, personalised news feeds in 2009 and have transformed how we interact online.

And like many teenagers, they pose a challenge to grown-ups who hope to curb their excesses.

It’s not for want of trying. This year alone, governments around the world have attempted to limit the impacts of harmful content and disinformation on social media – effects that are amplified by algorithms.

In Brazil, authorities briefly banned X, formerly known as Twitter, until the site agreed to appoint a legal representative in the country and block a list of accounts that the authorities accused of questioning the legitimacy of the country’s last election.

Meanwhile, the EU has introduced new rules threatening to fine tech firms 6% of turnover and suspend them if they fail to prevent election interference on their platforms.

In the UK, a new online safety act aims to compel social media sites to tighten content moderation.

And in the US, a proposed law could ban TikTok if the app isn’t sold by its Chinese parent company.

• Listen to Nicholas read this article

The governments face accusations that they are restricting free speech and interfering with the principles of the internet as laid down in its early days.

In a 1996 essay that was republished by 500 websites – the closest you could get to going viral back then – US poet and cattle rancher John Perry Barlow argued: “Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind. On behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone. You are not welcome among us. You have no sovereignty where we gather.”

Adam Candeub is a law professor and a former advisor to President Trump, who describes himself as a free speech absolutist.

Social media is “polarising, it’s fractious, it’s rude, it’s not elevating – I think it’s a terrible way to have public discourse”, he tells the BBC. “But the alternative, which I think a lot of governments are pushing for, is to make it an instrument of social and political control and I find that horrible.”

Professor Candeub believes that, unless “there is a clear and present danger” posed by the content, “the best approach is for a marketplace of ideas and openness towards different points of view”.

This idea of a “marketplace of ideas” feeds into a view of social media as offering a level playing field, allowing all voices to be heard equally. When he took over Twitter (now rebranded as X) in 2022, Elon Musk said that he saw the platform as a “digital town square”.

But does that fail to take into account the role of algorithms?

According to US lawyer and Yale University global affairs lecturer Asha Rangappa, Musk “ignores some important differences between the traditional town square and the one online: removing all content restrictions without accounting for these differences would harm democratic debate, rather than help it.”

Introduced in an early 20th-Century Supreme Court case, the concept of a “marketplace of ideas”, Rangappa argues, “is based on the premise that ideas should compete with each other without government interference”. However, she claims, “the problem is that social media platforms like Twitter are nothing like a real public square”.

Rather, argues Rangappa, “the features of social media platforms don’t allow for free and fair competition of ideas to begin with… the ‘value’ of an idea on social media isn’t a reflection of how good it is, but is rather the product of the platform’s algorithm.”

Algorithms can watch our behaviour and determine what millions of us see when we log on – and, for some, it is algorithms that have disrupted the free exchange of ideas possible on the internet when it was first created.

“In its early days, social media did function as a kind of digital public sphere, with speech flowing freely,” Kai Riemer and Sandra Peter, professors at the University of Sydney Business School, tell the BBC.

However, “algorithms on social media platforms have fundamentally reshaped the nature of free speech, not necessarily by restricting what can be said, but by determining who gets to see what content”, argue Professors Riemer and Peter, whose research looks at why we need to rethink free speech on social media.

“Rather than ideas competing freely on their merits, algorithms amplify or suppress the reach of messages… introducing an unprecedented form of interference in the free exchange of ideas that is often overlooked.”

Facebook is one of the pioneers of recommendation algorithms on social media, and with an estimated three billion users, its Feed is arguably one of the biggest.

When the platform rolled out a ranking algorithm based on users’ data 15 years ago, instead of seeing posts in chronological order, people saw what Facebook wanted them to see.

Determined by the interactions on each post, this came to prioritise posts about controversial topics, as those garnered the most engagement.

Because contentious posts are more likely to be rewarded by algorithms, there is the possibility that the fringes of political opinion can be overrepresented on social media. Rather than free and open public forums, critics argue that social media instead offers a distorted and sensationalised mirror of public sentiment that exaggerates discord and muffles the views of the majority.

So while social media platforms accuse governments of threatening free speech, is it the case that their own algorithms might also inadvertently pose a threat?

“Recommendation engines are not blocking content – instead it is the community guidelines that restrict freedom of speech, according to the platform’s preference,” Theo Bertram, the former vice president of public policy at TikTok, tells the BBC.

“Do recommendation engines make a big difference to what we see? Yes, absolutely. But whether you succeed or fail in the market for attention is not the same thing as whether you have the freedom to speak.”

Yet is “free speech” purely about the right to speak, or also about the right to be heard?

As Arvind Narayanan, professor of Computer Science at Princeton University, has said: “When we speak online – when we share a thought, write an essay, post a photo or video – who will hear us? The answer is determined in large part by algorithms.”

By determining the audience for each piece of content that’s posted, platforms “sever the direct relationship between speakers and their audiences”, argue Professors Riemer and Peter. “Speech is no longer organised by speaker and audience, but by algorithms.”

It’s something that they claim is not acknowledged in the current debates over free speech – which focus on “the speaking side of speech”. And, they argue, it “interferes with free speech in unprecedented ways”.

Our era has been labelled “the algorithmic society” – one in which, it could be argued, social media platforms and search engines govern speech in the same way nation states once did.

This means straightforward guarantees of freedom of speech in the US constitution can only get you so far, according to Jack Balkin of Yale University: “the First Amendment, as normally construed, is simply inadequate to protect the practical ability to speak”.

Professors Riemer and Peter agree that the law needs to play catch-up. “Platforms play a much more active role in shaping speech than the law currently recognises.”

And, they claim, the way in which harmful posts are monitored also needs to change. “We need to expand how we think about free speech regulation. Current debates focused on content moderation overlook the deeper issue of how platforms’ business models incentivise them to algorithmically shape speech.”

While Professor Candeub is a “free speech absolutist”, he’s also wary of the power concentrated in the platforms that can be gatekeepers of speech via computer code. “I think that we would do well to have these algorithms made public because otherwise we’re just being manipulated.”

Yet algorithms aren’t going away. As Bertram says, “The difference between the town square and social media is that there are several billion people on social media. There is a right to freedom of speech online but not a right for everyone to be heard equally: it would take more than a lifetime to watch every TikTok video or read every tweet.”

What, then, is the solution? Could modest tweaks to the algorithms cultivate more inclusive conversations that more closely resemble the ones we have in person?

New microblogging platforms like Bluesky are trying to offer users control over the algorithm that displays content – and to revive the chronological timelines of old, in the belief that offers an experience which is less mediated.

In testimony she gave to the Senate in 2021, Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen said: “I’m a strong proponent of chronological ranking, ordering by time… because we don’t want computers deciding what we focus on, we should have software that is human-scaled, or humans have conversations together, not computers facilitating who we get to hear from.”

However, as Professor Narayanan has pointed out, “Chronological feeds are not … neutral: They are also subject to rich-get-richer effects, demographic biases, and the unpredictability of virality. There is, unfortunately, no neutral way to design social media.”

Platforms do offer some alternatives to algorithms, with people on X able to choose a feed from only those they follow. And by filtering huge amounts of content, “recommendation engines provide greater diversity and discovery than just following people we already know”, argues Bertram. “That feels like the opposite of a restriction of freedom of speech – it’s a mechanism for discovery.”

According to the US political scientist Francis Fukuyama, “neither platform self-regulation, nor the forms of state regulation coming down the line” can solve “the online freedom of speech question”. Instead, he has proposed a third way.

“Middleware” could offer social media users more control over what they see, with independent services providing a form of curation separate from that inbuilt on the platforms. Rather than being fed content according to the platforms’ internal algorithms, “a competitive ecosystem of middleware providers … could filter platform content according to the user’s individual preferences,” writes Fukuyama.

“Middleware would restore that freedom of choice to individual users, whose agency would return the internet to the kind of diverse, multiplatform system it aspired to be back in the 1990s.”

In the absence of that, there could be ways we can currently improve our sense of agency when interacting with algorithms. “Regular TikTok users are often very deliberate about the algorithm – giving it signals to encourage or discourage the recommendation engine along avenues of new discovery,” says Bertram.

“They see themselves as the curator of the algorithm. I think this is a helpful way of thinking about the challenge – not whether we need to switch the algorithms off but how do we ensure users have agency, control and choice so that the algorithms are working for them.”

Although, of course, there’s always the danger that even when self-curating our own algorithms, we could still fall into the echo chambers that beset social media. And the algorithms might not do what we ask of them – a BBC investigation found that, when a young man tried to use tools on Instagram and TikTok to say he was not interested in violent or misogynistic content, he continued to be recommended it.

Despite that, there are signs that as social media algorithms move towards maturity, their future could not be in the hands of big tech, nor politicians, but with the people.

According to a recent survey by the market-research company Gartner, just 28% of Americans say they like documenting their life in public online, down from 40% in 2020. People are instead becoming more comfortable in closed-off group chats with trusted friends and relatives; spaces with more accountability and fewer rewards for shocks and provocations.

Meta says the number of photos sent in direct messages now outnumbers those shared for all to see.

Just as Barlow, in his 1996 essay, told governments they were not welcome in Cyberspace, some online users might have a similar message to give to social media algorithms. For now, there remain competing visions on what to do with the internet’s wayward teen.

“Now I think about it, I definitely chose the wrong industry.”

Xiao Chen*, who works in a private equity firm in China’s financial hub, Shanghai, says he is having a rough year.

For his first year in the job, he says he was paid almost 750,000 yuan ($106,200; £81,200). He was sure he would soon hit the million-yuan mark.

Three years on, he is earning half of what he made back then. His pay was frozen last year, and an annual bonus, which had been a big part of his income, vanished.

The “glow” of the industry has worn off, he says. It had once made him “feel fancy”. Now, he is just a “finance rat”, as he and his peers are mockingly called online.

China’s once-thriving economy, which encouraged aspiration, is now sluggish. The country’s leader, Xi Jinping, has become wary of personal wealth and the challenges of widening inequality.

Crackdowns on billionaires and businesses, from real estate to technology to finance, have been accompanied by socialist-style messaging on enduring hardship and striving for China’s prosperity. Even celebrities have been told to show off less online.

Loyalty to the Communist Party and country, people are told, now trumps the personal ambition that had transformed Chinese society in the last few decades.

Mr Chen’s swanky lifestyle has certainly felt the pinch from this U-turn. He traded a holiday in Europe for a cheaper option: South East Asia. And he says he “wouldn’t even think about” buying again from luxury brands like “Burberry or Louis Vuitton”.

But at least ordinary workers like him are less likely to find themselves in trouble with the law. Dozens of finance officials and banking bosses have been detained, including the former chairman of the Bank of China.

On Thursday, the former vice-governor of the People’s Bank of China, Fan Yifei, was sentenced to death with a two-year reprieve, according to state media.

Fan was found guilty of accepting bribes worth more than 386 million yuan ($54.6m; £41.8m).

The industry is under pressure. While few companies have publicly admitted it, pay cuts in banking and investment firms are a hot topic on Chinese social media.

Posts about falling salaries have generated millions of views in recent months. And hashtags like “changing career from finance” and “quitting finance” have gained more than two million views on the popular social media platform Xiaohongshu.

Some finance workers have been seeing their income shrink since the start of the pandemic but many see one viral social media post as a turning point.

In July 2022, a Xiaohongshu user sparked outrage after boasting about her 29-year-old husband’s 82,500-yuan monthly pay at top financial services company, China International Capital Corporation.

People were stunned by the huge gap between what a finance worker was getting paid and their own wages. The average monthly salary in the country’s richest city, Shanghai, was just over 12,000 yuan.

It reignited a debate about incomes in the industry that had been started by another salary-flaunting online user earlier that year.

Those posts came just months after Xi called for “common prosperity” – a policy to narrow the growing wealth gap.

In August 2022, China’s finance ministry published new rules requiring firms to “optimise the internal income distribution and scientifically design the salary system”.

The following year, the country’s top corruption watchdog criticised the ideas of “finance elites” and the “only money matters” approach, making finance a clearer target for the country’s ongoing anti-corruption campaign.

The changes came in a sweeping but discreet way, according to Alex*, a manager at a state-controlled bank in China’s capital, Beijing.

“You would not see the order put into written words – even if there is [an official] document it’s certainly not for people on our level to see. But everyone knows there is a cap on it [salaries] now. We just don’t know how much the cap is.”

Alex says employers are also struggling to deal with the pace of the crackdown: “In many banks, the orders could change unexpectedly fast.”

“They would issue the annual guidance in February, and by June or July, they would realise that the payment of salaries has exceeded the requirement. They then would come up with ways to set up performance goals to deduct people’s pay.”

Mr Chen says his workload has shrunk significantly as the number of companies launching shares on the stock market has fallen. Foreign investment has decreased in China, and domestic businesses have also turned cautious – because of the crackdowns and weak consumption.

In the past his work often involved new projects that would bring money into his firm. Now his days are mostly filled with chores like organising the data from his previous projects.

“The morale of the team has been very low, the discussion behind the bosses backs are mostly negative. People are talking what to do in three to five years.”

It’s hard to estimate if people are leaving the industry in large numbers, although there have been some layoffs. Jobs are also scarce in China now, so even a lower-paying finance job is still worth keeping.

But the frustration is evident. A user on Xiaohongshu compared switching jobs to changing seats – except, he wrote, “if you stand up you might find your seat is gone.”

Mr Chen says that it’s not just the authorities that have fallen out of love with finance workers, it’s Chinese society in general.

“We are no longer wanted even for a blind date. You would be told not to go once they hear you work in finance.”

What if someone told you mermaids were real?

Forget the fish tails, we mean women capable of holding their breath for minutes on end as they dive under the sea several hundred times a day.

These are the haenyeo divers of South Korea, a community of women from Jeju Island who have been free-diving (without oxygen) to harvest seafood for centuries.

Now, with most of them in their 60s, 70s and 80s, their traditions and way of life are in danger as fewer younger women take up the profession, and with the ocean potentially changing beyond recognition.

It’s these facts that prompted US-Korean film-maker Sue Kim to team up with female education advocate and Nobel Peace Prize winner Malala Yousafazai to share their story with the world, in their film The Last of the Sea Women.

The daughter of Korean immigrants, US-born Kim first came across the haenyeo when she was a child, holidaying in South Korea.

“I was so struck by them for the same reasons that you see in the film – they were so incredibly bold and vibrant and confident. They were also so loud… fighting and laughing, and they just gave off this very big energy and occupied their space so unapologetically,” says Kim.

“I just fell in love with that entire vibe and big energy when I was a little girl. And so I grew up staying fascinated with them. They were a version of Korean womanhood that I was inspired by and wanted to emulate,” she adds.

“I was so shocked that I did not know about the haenyeo, like so many people did not know, I said yes straight away,” explains Malala, who was a producer on the film.

“The story really took on an urgency about 10 years ago when I found out that this was probably the last generation of the haenyeo,” explains Kim. “It became more of an urgent mandate to make sure someone documented… while we still had them and while they could still tell us their own story in their own words.”

The film follows the women going about their gruelling work during the harvest season and examines the challenges they face both in and out of the water.

They head out to dive at 6am daily. They hold their breath for a couple of minutes, come back up to the surface and go back down again – between 100 and 300 times a session.

Just imagine the fitness levels. They harvest for four hours and then spend another three or four shelling and preparing their catch.

There are various theories as to why women began to take over this traditionally male job so many years ago. The Visit Jeju website states that the number of men was low overall in the population due to a high portion of them dying on the rough seas while boat fishing.

As a result, there weren’t many men to harvest the ocean, so women gradually took over the job.

This is the first major documentary about the haenyeo and Kim says it was hard to gain access.

“The haenyeo communities, they’re very insular,” she explains.

“They’re rural communities that live in fishing villages. They don’t interact with the cities of Jeju much.”

Kim found a researcher who had a history with NGOs and had contacts in the community.

“So this woman… introduced us, then I went down and I basically spent two weeks with… the Haenyeo communities and really gaining their trust. And I did that by mostly listening.

“They actually wanted to talk about all the things that were happening to them.

“They wanted to talk about the fact that they felt that they were on the verge of extinction. They wanted to talk about what was happening to the ocean that no-one seemed to know about or care about.”

Kim says she had to reassure the women that she wouldn’t stereotype them or pity them for working into old age.

“They love working! They think they’re so strong and empowered by doing so.”

Kim told them she would show them in their “true power.”

“‘I promise I will not take on this sad grandma trope because that’s not how I see you, I see you as heroes’,” she explained to the group.

“After that, we became a family.”

The risks are big. There is no insurance available for the job, as it’s too dangerous. And now the ocean – and the women’s livelihood – is under threat.

Global warming is resulting in less sea life, particularly in shallow water; diving deeper is more difficult without oxygen.

Much of the film focuses on the women’s protests against the radioactive water from Japan’s Fukishima plant being discharged into the ocean (Jeju borders Japan), which takes one of the haeneyeos, Soon Deok Jang, directly to the UN’s Human Rights Council in Geneva.

The message from experts is, overwhelmingly, that the release is safe and it got the green light from the International Atomic Energy Agency – but not all scientists agree on the impact it will have.

While the haenyeo do harvest marine life, there are regulations in place about when they’re allowed to harvest certain seafood, which helps to protect the ecosystem.

Another reason they don’t use oxygen tanks is because “they believe that by holding their breath, that will allow them the natural amount of marine life that they should harvest”, Kim explains, which helps avoid overfishing.

Perhaps the bigger threat though, is from within, with fewer younger women choosing to pursue this difficult profession.

A training school was set up in the early 2000s to try to stem the dwindling numbers but only 5% of those attending go on to become haenyeos.

All is not lost though. The film introduces us to two young women from another island who have found a following on social media and point out the flexible hours the job can offer around family life. One of them had to learn to swim at the age of 30 to do the job.

The older women meet with them for festivals and protests – they call them “their babies” while they are named “aunties” in return.

Yousafzai is inspired: “When I look at the haenyeo and how they work together, it just reminds me of the collective work that women are doing everywhere else, including the advocacy that Afghan woman are doing to raise awareness of the systematic oppression they are facing.”

“When a girl is watching this documentary, I want her to believe in herself and realise that she can do anything. She can stay under the water for two to three minutes without oxygen,” she says. “And of course I still have to take some swimming classes to learn how to swim! I’m at point zero, but it has inspired me to consider swimming.”

A man who was kicked and punched, made to sleep on the floor and refused access to a toilet by his abusive ex-girlfriend says he wants to tell his story to help other victims.

Gareth Jones, 41, said it took more than a year of therapy to begin to recover from months of emotional and physical abuse from a woman he met online in July 2021.

A charity whose helpline he turned to said male domestic abuse was not as rare as some people may think – and one in six or seven men will be a victim in their lifetime.

The Mankind Initiative also found one in 25 men would suffer at the hands of a partner in Wales every year.

Earlier this year, 41-year-old Sarah Rigby, from Winsford in Cheshire, was given a 20-month prison sentence suspended for two years, at Chester Crown Court, after pleading guilty to coercive and controlling behaviour.

Det Con Sophie Ward of Cheshire Police described Rigby having a “stranglehold” over her victim, adding: “Many people think that only women can be victims of controlling and coercive behaviour, but as this case demonstrates, that is not always the case.”

Mr Jones, an NHS manager originally from Pontypridd, Rhondda Cynon Taf, described being isolated from friends and family during their nine-month relationship, losing control of his finances and about £40,000.

He was subjected to daily verbal abuse and humiliation – not allowed to use the toilet in the house or shower without Rigby’s permission.

Strict controls on his diet meant he lost 4.5 stone (28kg) in two months, while Rigby repeatedly told him she would tell the police he had assaulted her if he spoke to anyone about the abuse.

Speaking five months after the sentencing, he said at first the relationship seemed “normal”, though in hindsight he could see that she was “overly affectionate”.

“I guess they call it love bombing,” he said.

“I thought ‘how can this person be so loving?’.

“I think it takes you aback… you think this could really be the one, and this could work out.

“It was overly powerful.”

He gave up his apartment and moved in to Rigby’s home just four months after they met. It was then the abuse accelerated.

Rigby made him pay for all the time he previously spent at the house.

He also paid £700 a month in rent, plus all the bills, but was not allowed a key, and could only be in the property when she was home.

Restrictions were also placed on his use of the bathroom, and what he could and could not eat.

“She made me sleep on the floor with no covers if things weren’t going her way, as a punishment,” he said.

“I wasn’t allowed to shower or shave, or use the toilet.

“I had to hold it in and try to make it down to the local supermarket or a pub or a restaurant.

“If she wanted to go out, I had to leave, even if I was trying to work.”

Rigby would go through his phone, and tell him not to associate with family and friends, telling him “you are with me now”.

Any texts he sent his mum, he would delete immediately to avoid repercussions.

There was physical abuse, including biting, kicking, scratching and clawing.

He described an occasion in London on a long weekend, when Rigby demanded he buy her a designer handbag.

“We were in Harrods and she said ‘we’re not leaving until you buy me something expensive’,” he said.

“She clawed me through my jumper, my arm was actually bleeding, until she forced me into buying something expensive for her.”

Five months after he moved in with Rigby, things came to a head when he met his mum in secret for a cup of coffee.

“She broke down in front of me,” he said.

“I thought ‘I can’t put my family though it any longer’… they were imploring me to leave.”

Around that time, Gareth made a call to the Mankind Initiative.

It confirmed he was suffering domestic violence – and hearing it from someone neutral helped him understand he needed to get out.

Gareth’s mum Diane Debens said the family was “proud” of him for speaking out.

She said it put a huge strain on them, adding: “You go through a gamut of emotions.

“There’s frustration. You want to shake them and say ‘just get out of this’.

“You know they are going through pain. It’s your child, no matter what age. And you feel helpless, really.”

Ms Debens said they would see Gareth with bruises, which he would brush off, and on one occasion, a cut across his nose.

“I couldn’t believe that one human being could treat another human being like this,” she added.

Mankind Initiative chairman Mark Brooks praised Gareth’s bravery in telling his story, and said the experience of men like him was not often heard about.

“There isn’t much about male victims of domestic abuse,” he said.

“It’s not often talked about.

“So there isn’t always that awareness, even for men that domestic abuse actually does and can actually happen to them.”

Both Gareth and his mum hope he will feel ready to find love in the future, but he said he was not there yet.

Gareth left his abuser with “only the clothes on my back” and has had to start from scratch financially, make a new home, and build friendships back up – not to mention work he has had to put in rebuilding himself.

“It knocked my confidence for a long time… I had low self-esteem because of the constant abuse,” he said.

“I had to go through therapy.”

He added there was a stigma around men talking about being abused – and wanted to tell his story to try and change that.

“The drama of a player shouting and making a challenge, and the crowd watching the screen and waiting for Hawk-Eye to make a decision, all of that drama is now lost.”

David Bayliss is describing a scene he saw play out many times as a Wimbledon line judge – and one which the Championships won’t witness again.

Just as with the many other sports that have embraced technology, the All England Club is waving goodbye to human line judges from next summer, after 147 years, in the name of “maximum accuracy”.

But does this risk minimising the drama Mr Bayliss fondly remembers being involved in – and which so many of us love watching?

“It is sad that we won’t be going back as line judges,” he says. “The game has moved on, but never say never.”

He served as a line judge and umpire at Wimbledon for 22 years, calling the lines when Roger Federer won his first Grand Slam, in 2003. Being hit by the ball at over 100mph is, he jokes, “quite sore”.

While he’s sad to see line judges go, he says it’s hard to argue with the logic.

“Essentially, we have a human being and technology calling the same line. The electronic line call can overrule the human eye. Therefore, why do we need the line judge to make a call at all?”

Of course, even before Wimbledon’s announcement this week, technology played a big part at the tournament through Hawk-Eye, the ball-tracking system, and organisers are following the example set by others.

It was announced last year that the ATP tour would replace the human line judge with an electronic system from 2025. The US Open and the Australian Open have also scrapped them. The French Open will be the only major tournament left with human line judges.

As the BBC’s tennis correspondent Russell Fuller outlined, players will intermittently complain about electronic line calling, but there has been consensus for a while that the technology is now more accurate and consistent than a human.

Mr Bayliss acknowledges there is a “high degree of trust in the electronic line calling”.

He points out: “The only frustration the player can show is at themselves for not winning the point.”

Whether the tech works is one thing – but whether it’s worth it is another.

Dr Anna Fitzpatrick, who played at Wimbledon between 2007 and 2013, says her “first feeling on hearing the news about the Wimbledon line judges was of sadness”.

“A human element of sport is one of the things that draws us in,” the lecturer in sports performance and analysis at Loughborough University tells the BBC.

While she recognises technology can improve the performance of athletes, she hopes we always keep it in check.

Of course, tennis is far from alone in its embrace of tech.

Cricket is another sport where it plays a big role and – according to Dr Tom Webb, an expert in the officiating of sport at Coventry University – it has been driven by broadcasters.

He says that as soon as televised coverage showed sporting moments in a way that an umpire couldn’t see, it led to calls for change in the game.

“I think we need to be careful,” he tells the BBC.

In particular, he says, we need to think carefully about what aspect of human decision-making is automated.

He argues that in football, goal-line technology has been accepted because, like electronic line calls in tennis, it is a measurement – it’s either a goal or it’s not.

However, many people are frustrated with the video assistant referee (VAR) system, with decisions taking too long and fans in the stadium not being aware of what is happening.

“The issue with VAR is it’s not necessarily relying on how accurate the technology is. It’s still reliant on individual judgment and subjectivity, and how you interpret the laws of the game,” he adds.

Of course, there is a temptation to think of technology as something new in sport.

Anything but, according to Prof Steve Haake of Sheffield Hallam University, who says sport has always evolved with the innovations of the day, with even the Greeks adapting the sprint race in the ancient Olympics.

“Right back from the very start of sports, it was a spectacle, but we also wanted it to be fair.

“That’s what these technologies are about. That’s the trick that we’ve got to get right.”

Technology is still adding to the spectacle of sport – think of the 360-degree swirling photography used to illustrate the dramatic conclusion to the men’s 100m final at this summer’s Olympics.

And while it is true that some traditional jobs, like line judges, may be disappearing, tech is also fuelling the creation of other jobs – particularly when it comes to data.

Take the example of sports analysis system Opta, which allows both athletes and fans to have streams of data to measure performance, a process which artificial intelligence (AI) is accelerating.

While it might not be the same as a tennis player’s emotional outburst at a line judge, its advocates argue it allows a more intense connection of its own kind, as people are able to learn ever more about the sports and players they love.

And, of course, the frequent controversies over systems like VAR bring plenty of scope for tech to get the heart pumping.

“People love sport because of the drama,” says Patrick Lucey, chief scientist of Stats Perform, the company behind Opta.

“Technology is kind of making it stronger.”

The Piano Lesson has become the latest August Wilson play to be adapted for the screen by Denzel Washington and his family.

But while the Hollywood star has directed, starred in or produced film adaptations such as Fences and Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom in recent years, it’s his two sons who are taking centre stage for the latest screen adaptation.

The Piano Lesson is directed by filmmaker Malcolm Washington, while his actor brother John David Washington plays one of the leading roles. Their father Denzel serves as producer.

Speaking ahead of the its UK premiere at the London Film Festival, John David Washington described the film’s team as “fearless” in their efforts to produce a unique interpretation of the 1987 play.

Malcolm and John David Washington’s two sisters are also involved in The Piano Lesson – Katia Washington is an executive producer, while Olivia Washington, who recently starred opposite Kit Harington in the West End show Slave Play, has an acting role.

Speaking at the Telluride Film Festival last month, actress and Denzel’s wife Pauletta Pearson Washington acknowledged the film was a family affair, joking: “All my babies are involved in this.”

The movie could also see actress Danielle Deadwyler join the Oscars race, two years after she was widely considered to have been unfairly snubbed following her acclaimed performance in Till.

Set in 1936 Pittsburgh in the aftermath of the Great Depression, the Netflix film follows a brother and sister who disagree about what to do with a family heirloom piano they have inherited.

Daughter Berniece (Deadwyler) has not played the piano since the siblings’ mother died. Instead, it sits in her living room and serves as a reminder of what her ancestors endured as slaves.

The faces of earlier generations of the family have been carved into the piano’s wood. But while Berniece refuses even to move the piano, her brother Boy Willie (John David Washington) wants to sell it in order to buy land.

Speaking at Deadline’s Contender’s London event, John David Washington described the cast and production team’s attitude as “fearless”.

“It was so fearless because, right away, we were like, OK, we’re making film,” he said. “There’s a lot of versions of this story that exist, and this one is ours.

“We’re going to pass it through our filter of honesty and truth and vulnerability, put ourselves on the line, and fine-tune it to the point that, when you get to the end, the spirit of it is still there.”

Deadwyler also praised Malcolm Washington, saying the director “gave us free rein, particularly during rehearsals, and those ideas and the way that we engaged each other enabled him to craft whatever he did with the camera”.

The new adaptation of The Piano Lesson could become part of the coming film awards race. Washington’s two other August Wilson adaptations, Fences and Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, were Oscar nominated in 2017 and 2021 respectively.

But while those two movies felt like filmed plays set largely in one location, The Piano Lesson has much more visual variety. Malcolm Washington has made efforts to make it a more cinematic adaptation.

Wilson was a US playwright known for chronicling the lives and experiences of black Americans. His other works include Jitney, Two Trains Running and Joe Turner’s Come and Gone.

The Piano Lesson was revived on Broadway in 2022, and many of the actors who appeared in it on stage have transferred to the film.

However, Till star Deadwyler has joined the cast for the screen adaptation, and many critics have singled out her performance for praise.

“While most of the cast is the same that appeared on Broadway, the movie is undeniably Deadwyler’s show,” said Variety’s Peter Debruge.

The actress “anchors the film with a performance of tremendous courage and heft”, agreed Entertainment Weekly’s Maureen Lee Lenker.

Deadwyler was widely expected to take one of the five best actress slots when that year’s Oscar nominations were announced in January 2023.

However, a combination of events meant she missed out on a place in the category, such a successful grassroots campaign to score Andrea Riseborough a nomination and Michelle Williams’ decision to submit herself as a lead actress instead of supporting.

That means The Piano Lesson could be seen by Academy voters as a second chance to recognise Deadwyler’s work, potentially placing her in this year’s best supporting actress race.

As a whole, the film has received broadly positive review from critics at the festivals it has played so far, although some were more lukewarm in their response.

“It’s clear that Washington takes the task of adapting Wilson quite seriously, and there’s much to admire about The Piano Lesson,” said the Hollywood Reporter’s Lovia Gyarkye.

“But the duty can also be limiting, and there are times when The Piano Lesson is too faithful, struggling to shake the spectre of the stage.”

“Malcolm Washington shows himself to be a capable director, expanding this story in the ways he can while staying true to the source material,” wrote Collider’s Ross Bonaime.

The Wrap’s Carla Renata said the film “serves as a reminder that generational wealth is not just monetary, but emotionally and genetically tied to our ancestors”.

But IndieWire’s Caleb Hammond said: “While this version contains its fair share of standout sequences along with Oscar-ready performances, the film never fully coalesces into an effective, singular, emotional narrative.”

The Piano Lesson marks Malcolm Washington’s directorial debut. In an interview with Variety last month, his father Denzel said: “I’m extremely proud of Malcolm.

“From early on, I knew he had a vision. I’ve learned through my son the difference between making a film and being a filmmaker. I’ve directed four films… but I didn’t know what to do necessarily. Malcolm has studied filmmaking. He’s an academic.

“When he was younger, he would read my scripts and ask insightful questions. His mother is a huge film buff, so he – like all my kids – grew up watching movies. He always had a desire to make films, and now he’s doing it.”

While Malcolm has stayed behind the camera, viewers may be more familiar with John David Washington, the actor who played the lead role in Christopher Nolan’s Tenet and has also appeared in Amsterdam, BlacKkKlansman and Malcolm & Marie opposite Zendaya.

More than 200 people have taken part in the World Conker Championships, with many competing in fancy dress.

The competition took place earlier at the Shuckburgh Arms in Southwick, Northamptonshire.

The event saw participants go head-to-head using conkers threaded on to string to try and smash their opponent’s nut.

Since its inception in 1965, the event has raised more than £400,000 for charities that support the visually impaired.

One man wore a green inflatable Yoda headpiece, while another wore a conker-themed hat.

All participants were required to follow a stringent set of rules to ensure the event was as fair as possible, which included the conkers and laces being provided by organisers.

There were fears before the event that there could be a shortage of conkers due to high winds blowing horse chestnut seeds from trees earlier in the autumn.

More than 2,000 conkers had been prepared prior to the event.

Each player took three alternate strikes at the opponent’s conker.

Trophies were handed out to the overall winners.

The “second biggest conker competition in the world” took place at The Locks Inn at Geldeston, near Beccles, on the Norfolk-Suffolk border earlier this month.

The first black central bank governor of South Africa, who later went on to become finance minister, has died at the age of 65.

Tito Mboweni had suffered a “short illness”, the presidency confirmed on Saturday evening, without specifying further.

“We have lost a leader and compatriot who has served our nation as an activist, economic policy innovator and champion of labour rights,” President Cyril Ramaphosa said.

Mbwoeni’s family said they were “devastated” and that he had died in a hospital in Johannesburg “surrounded by his loved ones”.

A former anti-apartheid activist, Mboweni spent almost a decade in exile in Lesotho where he attended university.

That was followed by a Masters degree from the University of East Anglia in the UK.

“I suppose you can call me an exile kid, and international kid born in South Africa,” he was quoted as saying in later years.

“But my home is in South Africa, Lesotho, Mozambique, the United Kingdom, Zambia, Angola, Tanzania, Swaziland, the USA, Switzerland, and everywhere I stayed in my youth. I hate narrow nationalism – I cannot stand it. I hate xenophobia.”

He returned to South Africa in 1990, then served as the first labour minister under President Nelson Mandela, playing a key role in shaping post-apartheid labour laws.

These laid the foundation for collective bargaining agreements and labour courts to protect workers’ rights.

He gained a reputation for being principled and ready to debate issues openly.

Mboweni’s penchant for wearing battered old clothes and shoes only added to his earnest public profile.

In his 10 years as governor of the reserve bank, Mboweni earned plaudits for his performance, at one point being named central bank governor of the year by the financial magazine Euromoney – who wrote that “his biggest success has been in bringing inflation under control”.

This was followed by a stint in the private sector, including as an international adviser to the global investment bank Goldman Sachs.

More recently, as finance minister in President Ramaphosa’s government between 2018 and 2021, Mboweni was credited with stabilising the economy.

He took that post despite suggesting months earlier that he was too long in the tooth and it was perhaps time for new blood.

“Against the wisdom of my team, please don’t tell them this. It’s between us, I am not available for minister of finance. You cannot recycle the same people all over again. It is time for young people. We are available for advisory roles. Not cabinet. We have done that,” he wrote on X (formerly Twitter).

In his later years, he charmed South Africans with his laidback lifestyle and humorous cooking posts, sharing recipes and engaging with followers on social media.

One follower remarked after learning of Mboweni’s death, “He’s left shoes too big to fill”.

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One man has launched a campaign in a bid to change what he calls the “fun deficit” in his city.

Calling himself the Chichester Anti-Recreation Partnership (Carp), he has put up spoof signs around central Chichester to make people laugh, but also highlight issues impacting the community.

Carp, who lives and works locally and does not want to be identified, told the BBC he wanted to satirise the city’s “overregulation and lack of fun” after he noticed that warning or prohibited signs were “everywhere”.

Chichester District Council said Chichester was a “vibrant place to live, work and visit”. They cited a recent study ranking it as the best place to live in West Sussex.

“I absolutely adore Chichester,” Carp said.

“But it does have some notable gaps – particularly when it comes to fun and things for younger people to do.

“Over time, it’s become increasingly focused on catering to older residents,” he continued.

“While it’s great that there’s so much for those who’ve retired, it feels like that’s come at the expense of forgetting about the younger generations.”

Almost half of Chichester residents are over 50, according to the Office for National Statistics.

Chichester District Council told the BBC it was working hard to deliver exciting events for all ages, including laser light shows, music events and street parties.

“All of these have been really well received and attended,” a council spokesperson said.

Carp said he also wanted to “raise awareness “about wider problems affecting the community, such as “the sewage crisis, poor state of roads and uneven pavements”.

“Humour has this unique ability to disarm people – it lowers their defences and allows them to consider issues from a fresh perspective,” he said.

“It reframes problems in a way that’s more approachable and less confrontational, which makes it easier to get your message across and spark discussions.”

Carp says he has put up around 35 signs since starting his campaign in August. He typically photographs his handiwork and uploads it on social media.

Carp said his message was “gaining momentum quickly” – with some images going viral on TikTok – though he added the council was quick to take the signs down.

He said he hoped the signs could help shift public opinion in favour of making the city more vibrant and fun, though he said there were some who would push back against this.

He suggested a “big difference” could be made if more nightlife for young people was brought to Chichester, plus bringing back the ice rink and creating more children’s play areas.

Chichester District Council told the BBC it was investing £814,000 in refurbishments to several play areas in Chichester.

“Families and young people are a really important part of our community,” the spokesperson said.

The local authority added it had created a dedicated evening and night-time working group, which was collecting views on what young people would like to see in the city in the future.

“I feel like I’m contributing to making the city a better place for everyone,” said Carp.

“Whether it’s a smile, a conversation, or just getting people to think about the issues in a new way, I think the impact justifies the effort.”

When two white vapour trails cross the sky near the front line in eastern Ukraine, it tends to mean one thing. Russian jets are about to attack.

But what happened near the city of Kostyantynivka was unprecedented. The lower trail split in two and a new object quickly accelerated towards the other vapour trail until they crossed and a bright orange flash lit up the sky.

Was it, as many believed, a Russian war plane shooting down another in so-called friendly fire 20km (12 miles) from the front line, or a Ukrainian jet shooting down a Russian plane?

Intrigued, Ukrainians soon found out from the fallen debris that they had just witnessed the destruction of Russian’s newest weapon – the S-70 stealth combat drone.

This is no ordinary drone. Named Okhotnik (Hunter), this heavy, unmanned vehicle is as big as a fighter jet but without a cockpit. It is very hard to detect and its developers claim it has “almost no analogy” in the world.

That all may be true, but it clearly went astray, and it appears the second trail seen on the video came from a Russian Su-57 jet, apparently chasing it down.

The Russian plane may have been trying to re-establish the contact with the errant drone, but as they were both flying into a Ukrainian air defence zone, it is assumed a decision was made to destroy the Okhotnik to prevent it ending up in enemy hands.

Neither Moscow nor Kyiv have commented officially on what happened in the skies near Kostyantynivka. But analysts believe the Russians most likely lost control over their drone, possibly due to jamming by Ukraine’s electronic warfare systems.

This war has seen many drones but nothing like Russia’s S-70.

It weighs more than 20 tonnes and reputedly has a range of 6,000km (3,700 miles).

Shaped like an arrow, it looks very similar to American X-47B, another stealth combat drone created a decade ago.

The Okhotnik is supposed to be able to carry bombs and rockets to strike both ground and aerial targets as well as conduct reconnaissance.

And, significantly, it is designed to work in conjunction with Russia’s fifth-generation Su-57 fighter jets.

It has been under development since 2012 and the first flight took place in 2019.

But until last weekend there was no evidence that it had been used in Russia’s two-and-a-half-year war in Ukraine.

Earlier this year it was reportedly spotted at the Akhtubinsk airfield in southern Russia, one of the launch sites to attack Ukraine.

So it is possible the abortive flight over Kostyantynivka was one of Moscow’s first attempts to test its new weapon in combat conditions.

Wreckage of one of Russia’s notorious long-range D-30 glide bombs was reportedly found amidst the aircraft’s crash site.

These deadly weapons use satellite navigation to become even more dangerous.

So what was the Okhotnik doing flying with an Su-57 jet? According to Kyiv-based aviation expert Anatoliy Khrapchynskyi, the warplane may have transmitted a signal from a ground base to the drone to increase the extent of their operation.

The stealth drone’s failure is no doubt a big blow for Russia’s military. It was due to go into production this year but clearly the unmanned aircraft is not ready.

Four protype S-70s are thought to have been built and it is possible the one blown out of the sky over Ukraine was the most advanced of the four.

Even though it was destroyed, Ukrainian forces may still be able to glean valuable information about the Okhotnik.

“We may learn whether it has its own radars to find targets or whether the ammunition is pre-programmed with co-ordinates where to strike,” explains Anatoliy Khrapchysnkyi.

Just by studying images from the crash site, he believes it is clear the drone’s stealth capabilities are rather limited.

As the engine nozzle’s shape is round, he says it can be picked up by radar. The same goes for the many rivets on the aircraft which are most likely made of aluminium.

No doubt the wreckage will be pored over by Ukrainian engineers and their findings passed on to Kyiv’s Western partners.

And yet, this incident shows the Russians are not standing still, reliant on their massive human resources and conventional weapons.

They are working on new and smarter ways to fight the war. And what failed today may succeed next time.

People from around the UK have been taking pictures of the “comet of the century”, which was spotted streaking across the sky on Saturday night.

Comet A3 (Tsuchinshan-ATLAS) was last month seen from Earth for the first time since the Neanderthals were alive, some 80,000 years ago.

On Saturday, a number of British stargazers said they had spotted the object, after the Royal Astronomical Society (RAS) predicted it might be visible to the naked eye.

Most images show the comet as a bright streak of light, similar to a torch, on the horizon.

Other pictures show a trail in the sky similar to what you might see coming out of an airplane.

Below are a selection of the best shots so far.

The Nasa Earth Observatory had predicted the comet could come within about 70 million km (44 million miles) of Earth on Saturday.

The RAS added the comet would be visible in the northern hemisphere from Saturday night until 30 October – and the object was later pictured in skies above the USA on Saturday.

The comet was photographed in Spain, Italy, Uruguay, and Indonesia from late September to early October, when it was visible in the southern hemisphere.

RAS said the object has been called the “comet of the century” because of its impressive brightness and visibility.

The organisation’s Dr Robert Massey advised enthusiasts to go out “immediately after sunset” with a pair of binoculars, head for higher ground and look west towards the horizon.

He suggested avoiding areas where views of the sky are obstructed and bringing a hot drink.

Dr Massey said a DSLR camera could capture shots of the comet, but said holding a mobile phone camera up against the eyepiece of a small telescope could also snap the space event.

On Thursday, the UK’s skies were once again treated to a display from the Northern Lights.

Bernardine Evaristo’s ground-breaking novel Mr Loverman was released in 2013, telling the story of a married 74-year-old Antiguan-born Londoner who has been having a secret love affair with his best friend for the past 60 years.

More than a decade on, the lives of Barrington Jedidiah Walker, his wife Carmel and his lover Morris De La Roux are being brought to the screen for a new eight-part BBC drama starring Line of Duty’s Lennie James.

“I love it. Everything in here is absolutely perfect,” says Evaristo as she sits back on the brown leather sofa.

The Booker Prize-winner is on a visit to the set in a Neasden studio where the Walkers’ Stoke Newington home has been recreated.

The living room she sits in is filled with knick-knacks and family photos, amid a garish clash of of geometric beige wallpaper, turquoise walls and a patterned red carpet.

“It’s such a wonderful experience seeing a book that I wrote come to life visually.”

Finding herself inside a world she originally created on paper appears to suit a person who says her favourite thing about writing is being able to “inhabit” her characters.

“When I was writing Mr Loverman, I was Barrington and my husband would come home and I would say [putting on Barrington’s voice]: ‘Oh hello darling, you want something to eat?’

“He’d be like, ‘Why are you talking like that? Are you OK?’” she laughs.

Protagonist Barrington – or Barry – is a husband, father and grandfather who moved with his highly religious wife Carmel from Antigua to Hackney in east London in the 1960s.

He has been living there ever since but throughout that time has been continuing a secret affair he started with Morris back in the Caribbean.

Evaristo, 64, says she chose the subject because while “everybody knows about the Windrush generation now… we don’t really hear stories about that generation being gay”.

The writer says she wasn’t daunted to take on such a story, being a woman born in London and of Nigerian descent, because “I’m not a complete stranger to that world”.

“As a writer, I’m absorbing people all the time,” she explains.

“I’m very curious, even nosy… I’ve been around enough Caribbean people of an older generation to feel comfortable to write those kinds of characters.”

Hackney, where the book is based, is also somewhere Evaristo knows very well.

Having grown up in London, she has featured different parts of the city in many of her stories, including Hello Mum, The Emperor’s Babe, and Girl, Woman, Other – for which she jointly won the Booker Prize in 2019.

“I have known Hackney since 1979 and I’ve had family living there, friends living there, I’ve worked there.

“So I have seen it transition from an area that was quite poor, quite working class… to an area that’s now very expensive and is a bit of a hipster heaven,” she says.

As such, Evaristo says she wanted Mr Loverman “to capture the Hackney that I remember when you would see these old Caribbean people hanging out, walking down the street – some of these old Caribbean men were very flamboyant dressers”.

Hackney has continued to change in the 11 years since the book was published, but the novelist believes little would be different about Barrington, Carmel and Morris if she had written the novel now, given they live “in a bubble”.

“Hackney’s changing around them but their worlds, their network, their social circle, where they live, hasn’t changed that much so I don’t think that 2024 will really see a different world to the one they’re living in at the moment.

“I don’t think Barrington will have a mobile phone,” she adds, before noting with some surprise there is a computer sitting in the living room.

Evaristo says that when the book was published, there were questions about whether it could ever be adapted for TV.

“I believed that the work would transfer to the screen – that wasn’t an issue for me. It was maybe an issue for other people who didn’t think, perhaps, that there’d be a market for it.

“Somebody said to me it was ‘triple niche’, because he was black, old and gay,” she continues.

“They wouldn’t say that now… but times have changed. We are so much more inclusive, so much more progressive, and long may it last.”

Feeling so close to the characters she created, the author considers it “an adventure” to see how they have been developed for the first adaption of her work for the screen.

As for what she’s hoping will be the reaction to the series, Evaristo says she wants people to “love it, clearly”, but also “to feel that they’ve never seen anything like it before”.

“I want people to feel that they have somehow been enlightened about people living lives that they may not be familiar with.”

White blobs have been washing up on the beaches of Newfoundland recently, sparking an investigation by Canadian officials.

They have been described by resident Stan Tobin as doughy – “like someone had tried to bake bread and done a lousy job” – with an odour reminiscent of vegetable oil.

Beachcombers on the southern tip of the Canadian province began reporting the strange substance around early September.

The BBC has reached out to Ottawa officials for comment, but has not received a response.

Photos of the substance began cropping up on a beachcombers group online, prompting speculation that it was fungus or mold, palm oil, paraffin wax or even ambergris – a rare and valuable substance produced by whales and used in the perfume industry.

One poster suggested it looked like dough used to make ‘Toutons’ – a regional dish of dough often fried in pork fat.

A spokesperson for Environment and Climate Change Canada told the Globe and Mail that the substance was not a petroleum hydrocarbon, petroleum lubricant, biofuel or biodiesel.

While a marine ecologist for Fisheries and Oceans Canada told the newspaper it was not a sea sponge and contained no biological material.

The blobs were spotted along the shores of Placentia Bay, on Newfoundland’s southeast coast.

Mr Tobin, a local environmentalist, lives in Ship Cove, a tiny village on the bay, and regularly walks the beaches.

He discovered the mystery blobs one day last month, initially thinking it looked like Styrofoam.

He’s since come across “hundreds and hundreds of globs – big globs, little globs” with most about 6in (15cm) in diameter, he said.

But when he called the Canadian Coast Guard to report the findings, Mr Tobin was told that was ruled out as the base of the substance.

“Somebody or somebodies know where this came from and how it got there,” Mr Tobin said. “And knows damn well it’s not supposed to be here.”

An Indian politician has been shot dead in the commercial capital, Mumbai.

Gunmen opened fire on Baba Siddique, 66, near the office of his son, who is also a politician, according to local media reports.

Two people have been arrested in connection with the killing.

Siddique, a former local minister, was a senior figure in the politics of Maharashtra state, which is expected to hold legislative polls next month.

In February he defected from Congress, India’s main opposition party and joined the unrelated regional National Congress Party (NCP), which is part of the governing coalition of the BJP.

Maharashtra’s deputy chief minister Ajit Pawar, from the same party as Siddique, said he was shocked by the “cowardly attack”.

Siddique was known for lavish parties and for close ties to Bollywood superstars.

The shooting happened with high security in place due to a major Hindu festival in the city.

Opposition parties have criticised the government, saying there was a major lapse in security. The state government has promised a thorough inquiry.

Though two suspects have been taken into custody, the motive is not clear. Police are searching for a third suspect.

Some Indian media report the suspects have said they were from a gang run by notorious criminal Lawrence Bishnoi.

Bishnoi is currently serving a jail sentence for his involvement in several high-profile murder cases, including the killing of the Indian rapper Sidhu Moose Wala in 2022.

The shooting came weeks after Siddique’s security detail was upgraded following death threats.

Elon Musk’s Starship rocket has completed a world first after part of it was captured on its return to the launch pad.

The SpaceX vehicle’s lower half manoeuvred back beside its launch tower where it was caught in a giant pair of mechanical arms, as part of its first test flight.

It brings SpaceX’s ambition of developing a fully reusable and rapidly deployable rocket a big step closer.

“A day for the history books,” engineers at SpaceX declared as the booster landed safely.

The chances of the bottom part of the rocket, known as the Super Heavy booster, being caught so cleanly on the first attempt seemed slim.

Prior to the launch, the SpaceX team said it would not be surprised if the booster was instead directed to land in the Gulf of Mexico.

SpaceX can now point to some extraordinary achievements in the past two test flights. This comes less than a year after its inaugural flight, which saw the vehicle blown apart not long after launch.

SpaceX argues that these failures are also part of its development plan – to launch early in the expectation of failure so that it can collect as much data as possible and develop its systems quicker than its rivals.

The initial stages of the ascent of the fifth test were the same as the previous outing, with the Ship and booster separating two and three-quarter minutes after leaving the ground.

At this point the booster began to head back towards the launch site at Boca Chica in Texas.

With just two minutes to go till landing it was still not clear if the attempt would be made, as final checks were carried out by the team operating the tower.

When the flight director gave the go-ahead, cheers went up from SpaceX employees at mission control.

The company had said that thousands of criteria had to be met for the attempt to be made.

As the Super Heavy booster re-entered the atmosphere its 33 raptor engines worked to slow it down from speeds in excess of a few thousands miles per hour.

When it approached the landing tower, which stands 146m-high (480ft), it seemed to almost float, orange flames engulfed the booster and it deftly slotted into the giant mechanical arms.

The Ship part of the rocket, which is where equipment and crew will eventually be held for future missions, fired up its own engines after separating from the booster.

It was successfully landed in the Indian Ocean around forty minutes later.

“Ship landed precisely on target! Second of the two objectives achieved”, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk wrote on X.

Not only was the Ship landed accurately but SpaceX also managed to preserve some of the vehicle’s hardware, which it had not expected.

Catching the booster rather than getting it to land on the launch pad reduces the need for complex hardware on the ground and will enable rapid redeployment of the vehicle in the future.

Elon Musk and SpaceX have grand designs that the rocket system will one day take humans to the Moon, and then on to Mars, making our species “multi-planetary”.

The US space agency, Nasa, will also be delighted the flight has gone to plan. It has paid the company $2.8bn (£2.14bn) to develop Starship into a lander capable of returning astronauts to the Moon’s surface by 2026.

In space terms that is not that far away so Elon Musk’s team were eager to get the rocket re-launched as soon as possible.

But the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) , the US government body that approves all flights, had previously said there would be no launch before November as it reviewed the company’s permits.

Since last month the agency and Elon Musk have been in a public spat after the FAA said it was seeking to fine his company, SpaceX, $633,000 for allegedly failing to follow its license conditions and not getting permits for previous flights.

Before issuing a license, the FAA reviews the impact of the flight, in particular the effect on the environment.

In response to the fine, Musk threatened to sue the agency and SpaceX put out a public blog post hitting back against “false reporting” that part of the rocket was polluting the environment.

Currently the FAA only considers the impact on the immediate environment from rocket launches rather than the wider impacts of the emissions.

Dr Eloise Marais, professor of atmospheric chemistry and air quality at University College London, said the carbon emissions from rockets pale in comparison to other forms of transport but there are other planet-warming pollutants which are not being considered.

“The black carbon is one of the biggest concerns. The Starship rocket is using liquid methane. It’s a relatively new propellant, and we don’t have very good data of the amount of emissions that are coming from liquid methane,” she said.

Dr Marais said what makes black carbon from rockets so concerning is that they release it hundreds of miles higher into the atmosphere than planes, where it can last much longer.

Ukraine’s human rights ombudsman has denounced the alleged execution of nine captured Ukrainian troops by Russian forces in the Kursk border region.

Dmytro Lubinets said he had written to the United Nations and the Red Cross about the allegations, accusing Moscow of breaching “all the rules and customs of war”.

The intervention follows reporting by Ukrainian battlefield analysis site DeepState, which published drone footage purporting to show the dead troops who it said were drone operators. Officials in Russia have yet to comment on the allegations.

Kyiv is believed to have deployed thousands of troops into the Russian border region since it launched its shock incursion earlier this summer.

The images published by DeepState showed the dead Ukrainian troops stripped to their underwear and lying face down in what appeared to be farmland in Kursk. The BBC cannot indepenelty verify the images.

The outlet said the drone operators had been overrun by a rapid Russian advance.

“These actions must not go unpunished, and the enemy must bear full responsibility,” Mr Lubinets wrote in a message to Telegram. “The international community should not turn a blind eye to such crimes!”

Kyiv has frequently accused Russian of executing captured Ukrainian troops – a war crime under the Geneva Convention. Earlier this month the prosecutor general’s office alleged that Russian forces had executed 93 Ukrainian soldiers since the beginning of the conflict.

It added that an official investigation had been opened into reports that 16 Ukrainian soldiers were executed in the eastern Donetsk region near the city of Pokrovsk – where fighting has raged for months. Officials said the reports would mark the “largest mass execution” of Ukrainian prisoners of war by Russian troops since Moscow launched its invasion in February 2022.

The Kremlin denies that its soldiers have been committing war crimes in Ukraine.

• Ukrainian journalist, 27, who chronicled Russian occupation dies in prison
• ‘Russians invaded my house and held a soldier captive there’
• Russian strike kills eight in fresh attack on Ukrainian port

The reports come as Russian forces continue to attack Ukrainian positions in Kursk. President Volodymyr Zelensky said in his nightly address from Kyiv on Saturday that Ukrainian troops had fought off a renewed Russian advance in the region.

Analysts say that Kyiv launched the offensive to try and force Russia to redirect some of its troops from its offensive in eastern Ukraine. The Institute for the Study of War (ISW) has estimated that around 40,000 Russian forces are now active in Kursk – up from 11,000 when Ukrainian troops first crossed the border.

But the offensive has failed to slow Russian momentum in the eastern Donbas region, where relentless attacks has slowly pushed Ukrainian forces backwards.

The Ukrainian leader acknowledged that “there are very difficult conditions, with harsh enemy actions” in both Donetsk and Zaporizhzhia in his address on Saturday.

On Sunday morning, the Russian defence ministry said its forces had seized the village of Mykhailivka, which sits along a highway near the key city of Pokrovsk.

Russian forces have been advancing towards Pokrovsk – which is a key logistics hub – for months. Experts say if Russia can seize the city Ukraine’s ability to resupply units in other crucial towns would become far more difficult.

Meanwhile, Russian aerial attacks on Ukraine continued overnight. Air force officials in Kyiv said Moscow launched 68 drones and four missiles towards Ukrainian territory.

Famed explorer Christopher Columbus was likely Spanish and Jewish, according to a new genetic study conducted by Spanish scientists that aimed to shed light on a centuries-old mystery.

Scientists believe the explorer, whose expedition across the Atlantic in 1492 changed the course of world history, was probably born in western Europe, possibly in the city of Valencia.

They think he concealed his Jewish identity, or converted to Catholicism, to escape religious persecution.

The study of DNA contradicts the traditional theory, which many historians had questioned, that the explorer was an Italian from Genoa.

Columbus led an expedition backed by Spain’s Catholic Monarchs seeking to establish a new route to Asia – but instead he reached the Caribbean.

His arrival there was the beginning of a period of European contact with the Americas, which would lead to conquest and settlement – and the deaths of many millions of indigenous people to diseases and war.

Countries have argued for years over the explorer’s origin, with many claiming him as one of their own.

There have been an estimated 25 conflicting theories of his birthplace, including Poland, Great Britain, Greece, Portugal, Hungary and Scandinavia.

These new findings are based on more than two decades of research.

The study began in 2003, when José Antonio Lorente, professor of forensic medicine at Granada University, and the historian Marcial Castro, exhumed what were believed to be the remains of Columbus from Seville Cathedral.

Columbus died in the Spanish city of Vallodalid in 1506 but wished to be buried on the Caribbean island of Hispaniola. His remains were taken there in 1542 but centuries later were transferred to Cuba before being finally laid to rest in Seville.

The researchers also took DNA samples from the tomb, and from the bones of Columbus’ son, Hernando, and brother, Diego.

Since then scientists have compared that genetic information with that of historical figures and the explorer’s relatives in order to try and solve the mystery.

The previously widely accepted theory was that Columbus was born in Genoa in 1451, to a family of wool weavers.

But they now believe he lived in Spain – likely in Valencia – and was Jewish. They think he hid his background to avoid persecution.

Around 300,000 practicing Jews lived in Spain, before they along with Muslims were ordered to either convert to Catholicism or leave the country in 1492, the year Columbus landed in the Americas.

Announcing the study’s results on the television documentary Columbus DNA: His True Origin, Professor Lorente said they were “almost absolutely reliable”.

The programme – which aired on Spain’s national broadcaster RTVE on Saturday night – coincided with Spain’s National Day.

The day celebrates the explorer’s arrival in the Americas.

It was a phone call that ended a decades-long wait – of 56 years and eight months, to be precise.

The caller, from a police station in Pathanamthitta district in the southern Indian state of Kerala, gave unexpected news to Thomas Thomas – the body of his elder brother, Thomas Cherian, had finally been found.

Cherian, an army craftsman, was among 102 passengers on board an Indian Air Force aircraft that crashed in the Himalayas in 1968 after encountering severe weather conditions.

The plane went off the radar while it was flying over the Rohtang pass, which links the northern state of Himachal Pradesh to Indian-administered Kashmir.

For years, the IAF AN-12 aircraft was listed as missing and its fate remained a mystery.

Then in 2003, a team of mountaineers found the body of one of the passengers.

In the years since then, army search expeditions discovered eight more bodies and in 2019, the wreckage of the plane was recovered from the mountains.

A few days ago, the 1968 crash once again made headlines when the army recovered four bodies, including that of Cherian.

When the news reached the family, it felt like “the suffocation of 56 years had suddenly evaporated”, Mr Thomas told BBC Hindi.

“I was finally able to breathe again,” he says.

Cherian, the second of five children, was just 22 years old when he went missing. He had boarded the aircraft to get to his first field posting in the Himalayan region of Leh.

It was only in 2003, when the first body was found, that his status was moved from missing to dead.

“Our father died in 1990 and our mother in 1998, both waiting for news about their missing son,” says Mr Thomas.

Altogether, only 13 bodies have been recovered until now from the site of the crash.

Harsh weather conditions and the icy terrain of the region make it hard for search teams to carry out expeditions there.

The bodies of Cherian and three others – Narayan Singh, Malkan Singh and Munshiram – were found 16,000ft above sea level near the Dhaka glacier. The latest operation was jointly conducted by the Dogra Scouts – a unit of the Indian army’s Dogra regiment – and members of the Tiranga Mountain Rescue.

Officials used satellite imagery, a Recco radar and drones to locate the bodies, says Colonel Lalit Palaria, commanding officer of the Dogra Scouts.

The Recco radar, which can detect metallic objects buried in the snow at depths of about 20m, identified debris from the aircraft in the area.

The team then manually dug through the wreckage and found one body.

Three more bodies were recovered from within the crevasses of the glacier.

It was the nametag on Cherian’s uniform – “Thomas C”, with only the C of his surname visible – along with a document in his pocket that helped officials identify him.

His family says that while the grief of losing him could never fade, they are relieved to finally get some closure.

On 3 October, officials handed over Cherian’s coffin, draped in the Indian flag, to his family. A funeral service was held at a church in their village Elanthoor, a day later.

Mr Thomas says that through all the years of waiting, army officials had told them that the search was still on and that they would let them know when they found Cherian’s body.

“We really appreciate that they kept us posted all these years,” he says, adding that many other members of the extended family had joined the armed forces even after Cherian’s disappearance.

Like the Odalil family, the relatives of the other soldiers whose bodies were found recently are also dealing with the grief and relief. Many of their closest relatives, including parents and spouses, died waiting for news of them.

In the northern state of Uttarakhand, Jaiveer Singh is still processing the news. He also received his uncle Narayan Singh’s body in early October.

Years after Narayan Singh went missing, his family lost hope. So with their consent, Singh’s wife, Basanti Devi, began a new life with one of his cousins. Jaiveer Singh was one of the children born of that relationship.

He says that for years, his mother held on to hopes of Narayan Singh’s return. She died in 2011.

“I don’t even have a photo of my uncle as a memory,” he says.

“Let’s smile so we look better in the pictures they are taking,” jokes Marwan, the chief waiter at a Beirut hotel.

He and a colleague are gazing at the sky, trying to spot the Israeli surveillance drone buzzing overhead.

Neither the music playing in the background nor birdsong can mask its deep, humming noise. It’s like someone has left a hairdryer on, or a motorbike is doing laps of the clouds.

Marwan’s hotel is not in an area with a strong Hezbollah presence.

It’s in Achrafieh, a wealthy Christian quarter that’s not been targeted by Israel in previous wars. It’s also where I am based.

Days later, two Israeli missiles roar over Achrafieh.

I hear children and adults in the neighbourhood scream. People run to their balconies or open their windows trying to figure out what’s just happened.

Within seconds a strong explosion shakes the tree-lined streets.

Everyone in my building looks towards Dahieh, the Hezbollah-dominated southern suburb of Beirut which is partly visible from Achrafieh.

But soon we realise the strike has hit an area just a five-minute drive away from us.

Local media say the target is Wafiq Safa, a high-ranking Hezbollah security official who’s also the brother-in-law of recently killed leader Hassan Nasrallah. He reportedly survives.

The building that was hit was full of people who’d recently fled to Beirut. No warning was issued by the Israeli army, and at least 22 people were killed. It was the deadliest attack yet.

“Oh my God. What if we were passing through that street?” a neighbour exclaims. “I pass that street to go to work.”

“What is the guarantee that next time they won’t hit a building on our street, if they have a target?” another asks.

The recent turmoil in Lebanon started on 17 and 18 September, when waves of pager blasts killed at least 32 and left more than 5,000 injured, both Hezbollah fighters and civilians. Many lost their eyes or hands, or both.

Air strikes intensified in the south, as well as on Beirut’s southern suburbs, killing high-rank Hezbollah commanders including Nasrallah. On 30 September, Israel invaded southern Lebanon.

Officials say more than 1,600 people have been killed in Israel’s bombardment over the past weeks.

I’ve seen many of the strikes from my own balcony.

The past three weeks have felt like a “fast-forward”, Marwan the waiter tells me. “We haven’t digested what exactly happened.”

I’ve spoken to him many times in the past 12 months since tensions erupted between Hezbollah and Israel.

He’s lived here his entire life and seen all the wars between the two sides. But he’s always been an optimist, and never believed that this round of fighting would escalate into a war.

“I withdraw what I was telling you,” he tells me now. “I didn’t want to believe it but we are at war.”

The face of Beirut has completely changed.

Streets are packed with cars, some parked in the middle of boulevards. Hundreds fleeing Israeli operations in the south of the country have fled to the capital’s suburbs, sheltering in schools in “safer” neighbourhoods. Many have found themselves sleeping on the streets.

On the motorway towards the airport and the south, billboards show Hassan Nasrallah’s face. Both pro- and anti-Hezbollah people tell me these feel surreal.

In other areas, posters that previously read “Lebanon doesn’t want war” now say “Pray for Lebanon”.

The city’s iconic Martyrs’ Square – usually host to protests and huge Christmas celebrations – has turned into a tent city.

Families squeeze under the skeleton of an iron Christmas tree. Around a cut-out clenched fist installed above the square after youth protests in 2019, there are blankets, mattresses and tents made of whatever else people could find.

More of the same awaits around every corner. Makeshift homes stretch from the square all the way down to the sea.

Most of the families here are Syrian refugees, who’ve found themselves displaced again and barred from shelters which are limited to Lebanese nationals.

But many Lebanese families have found themselves homeless too.

Just over a kilometre away, 26-year-old Nadine is trying to take her mind off everything for a few hours.

She’s one of very few customers at Aaliya’s Books, a bookshop-bar in Beirut’s Gemmayze neighbourhood.

“I don’t feel safe any more,” she tells me. “We keep hearing explosions all night.

“I keep asking myself: what if they bomb here? What if they target a car in front of us?”

For a long time, Beirutis believed that tensions would stay limited to Hezbollah-run border villages in southern Lebanon.

Nasrallah, who led the powerful Shia political and military organisation, said he didn’t want to take the country to war, and that the front against Israel was solely to support Palestinians in Gaza.

That all changed.

In Beirut, although strikes mostly land in the southern suburbs, where Hezbollah dominates, they send shockwaves across the city – resulting in sleepless nights.

Businesses are affected. Aaliya’s Books is usually a lively place, hosting local bands, podcasts and wine-tasting nights.

We were filming here for a report right after the first air strike on Dahieh, on 30 July, which killed Hezbollah’s second-in-command Fuad Shukr.

Intense sonic booms could be heard overhead as Israeli jets broke the sound barrier.

But a jazz band played all night, with dancing patrons crowding the bar. Now the place is empty, with no music and no dancing.

“It is sad and frustrating,” says bar manager Charlie Haber. “You come here to change your mood but again you will end up talking about the situation. Everyone is asking, what is next?”

His place closed for two weeks after Nasrallah’s killing. Now they’ve reopened, but shut at 20:00 instead of midnight.

Day by day, the psychological strain on staff and customers worsens, says Charlie. Even a post on Instagram takes half a day to write, he adds, because you “don’t want to look like ‘hey, come and enjoy and we’ll give you a discount on drinks’ in this situation”.

It’s hard to find anywhere open late any more in this area.

Loris, a well-loved restaurant, never used to shut before 01:00 – but now the streets are deserted by 19:00, says one of its owners, Joe Aoun.

Three weeks ago you couldn’t get a table here without a reservation. Now, barely two or three tables are taken each day.

“We take it day by day. We are sitting here and talking together now, but maybe in five minutes we’ll have to close down and leave.”

Most of Loris’s staff come from Beirut’s southern suburbs or villages in the country’s south. “Each day one of them hears that his house is destroyed,” says Joe.

One employee, Ali, didn’t come to work for 15 days as he was trying to find somewhere for his family to stay. They’d slept under olive trees in the south for weeks.

Joe says Loris is trying to stay open to help staff make a living but he’s not sure how long this can continue. Fuel for the generators is extremely expensive.

I see the frustration on his face.

“We are against war,” he says. “My staff from the south are Shia but they are against war too. But no one asked for our opinion. We can’t do anything else. We just need to to hold on.”

Back at Aaliya’s, both Charlie and Nadine are worried about community tensions rising.

These parts of Beirut are mostly Sunni Muslim and Christian – but the new arrivals are largely Shia.

“I personally try to help people regardless of their religion or sect but even in my family there are divisions over it. Part of my family only help and accommodate displaced Christians,” she says.

Out in the squares and alleys of Achrafieh and Gemmayze, more and more flags can be seen of Lebanese Forces, a Christian party that strongly opposes Hezbollah.

The party has a long history of armed conflict with Shia Muslims, as well as Muslim and Palestinian parties during the civil war, three decades ago.

Nadine thinks this is a message to displaced Shias who have recently arrived, saying “don’t come here”.

With the movement of people, there are also fears that Israel can now target any building in any neighbourhood in its search for Hezbollah fighters or members of allied groups.

Hezbollah says its high-ranking officials do not stay in places assigned to displaced people.

None of this bodes well for local businesses.

Many in Gemmayze were already badly affected by the Beirut port explosion four years ago, which killed 200 people and destroyed more than 70,000 buildings. They’d only recently started getting back on their feet.

Despite the financial crisis, new places were springing up in the area – but many of them have closed now.

Maya Bekhazi Noun, an entrepreneur and board member of the restaurant and bar owners’ syndicate, estimates that 85% of food and drink spots in downtown Beirut have shut down or limited their opening hours.

“Everything happened so fast and we couldn’t do any statistics yet but I can tell you more around 85 percent of food and beverage places in downtown Beirut are closed or working for limited hours only.”

“It is difficult to keep the places open for joy when there are many people are sleeping without enough food and supplies nearby.”

Despite the tough situation in Beirut, you can still find bustling restaurants and bars around a 15 minute-drive north. But Maya says that too is temporary.

“Strikes may happen in other locations too. There have been attacks on some places in the north. There is no guarantee they will be safe either.”

It’s like someone pressed a button and life stopped in Beirut, she says.

“We are on hold. We were aware of the war in the south – and somehow affected by it too – but many like me didn’t expect the war to come this close.”

On Saturday morning, a message was posted on social media by the Israeli military’s Arabic spokesman warning people living in the ‘D5’ area of northern Gaza to move south. D5 is a square on the grid superimposed over maps of Gaza by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). It is a block that is split into several dozen smaller areas.

The message, the latest in a series, said: “The IDF is operating with great force against the terrorist organisations and will continue to do so for a long time. The designated area, including the shelters located there, is considered a dangerous combat zone. The area must be evacuated immediately via Salah al-Din Road to the humanitarian area.”

A map is attached with a large yellow arrow pointing from block D5 down to the south of Gaza. Salah al-Din Road is the main north-south route. The message is not promising a swift return to the places people have been living in, an area that has been pulverised by a year of repeated Israeli attacks. The heart of the message is that the IDF will be using “great force… for a long time”. In other words, don’t expect to come back any time soon.

The humanitarian area designated by Israel in the message is al-Mawasi, previously an agricultural area on the coast near Rafah. It is overcrowded and no safer than many other parts of Gaza. BBC Verify has tracked at least 18 airstrikes on the area.

Hamas has sent out its own messages to the 400,000 people left in northern Gaza, an area that was once the urban heartland of the Strip with a population of 1.4m. Hamas is telling them not to move. The south, they are told, is just as dangerous. As well as that, Hamas is warning them that they will not be allowed back.

Many people appear to be staying put, despite Israeli airstrikes and artillery bombardments. When I went down to an area overlooking northern Gaza I could hear explosions and see columns of smoke rising. The intensity reminded me of the first months of the war.

Some of the people who have stayed in northern Gaza when so many others have already fled south are doing so to remain with vulnerable relatives. Others are from families with connections to Hamas. Under the laws of war, that does not automatically make them belligerents.

One tactic that has been used over the last year by civilians who want to avoid IDF operations without taking their chances in the overcrowded and dangerous south of Gaza is to move elsewhere in the north, for example from Beit Hanoun to Gaza City, while the IDF is operating near their homes or shelters. When the army moves on, they return.

The IDF is trying to stop that happening, according to BBC colleagues who are daily contact with Palestinians in Gaza. It is channelling families who are moving in one direction only, down Salah al-Din, the main road to the south.

Israel does not allow journalists to enter Gaza to report the war, except for brief, rare and closely supervised trips with the IDF. Palestinian journalists who were there on 7 October still do brave work. The Committee to Protect Journalists says at least 128 Palestinian media workers in Gaza have been killed since the war began. In northern Gaza, since Israel went back on the offensive, they have been filming panic-stricken families as they flee, often with small children helping out by carrying oversized backpacks.

One of them sent out a brief interview with a woman called Manar al-Bayar who was rushing down the street carrying a toddler. She was saying as she half-walked, half-ran on the way out of Jabalia refugee camp that “they told us we had five minutes to leave the Fallujah school. Where do we go? In southern Gaza there are assassinations. In western Gaza they’re shelling people. Where do we go, oh God? God is our only chance.”

The journey is hard. Sometimes, Palestinians in Gaza say, people on the move are fired on by the IDF. It insists that Israeli soldiers observe strict rules of engagement that respect international humanitarian law.

But Medical Aid for Palestinians’ head of protection, Liz Allcock, says the evidence presented by wounded civilians suggest that they have been targeted.

“When we’re receiving patients in hospitals, a large number of those women and children and people of, if you like, non-combatant age are receiving direct shots to the head, to the spine, to the limbs, very indicative of the direct targeted attack.”

Once again, the UN and aid agencies who work in Gaza are saying that Israeli military pressure is deepening what is already a humanitarian catastrophe.

Desperate messages are being relayed from the remaining hospitals in northern Gaza, saying that they are running low on fuel to power the generators that keep the hospitals going, and keep badly wounded patients alive. Some hospitals report that their buildings have been attacked by the Israelis.

The suspicion among Palestinians, the UN and relief agencies is that the IDF is gradually adopting some or all of a new tactic to clear northern Gaza known as the “Generals’ Plan”. It was proposed by a group of retired senior officers led by Maj-Gen (ret) Giora Eiland, who is a former national security adviser.

Like most Israelis they are frustrated and angry that a year into the war Israel still has not achieved its war aims of destroying Hamas and freeing the hostages. The Generals’ Plan is a new idea that its instigators believe can, from Israel’s perspective, break the deadlock.

At its heart is the idea that Israel can force the surrender of Hamas and its leader Yahya Sinwar by increasing the pressure on the entire population of the north. The first step is to order civilians to leave along evacuation corridors that will take them south of Wadi Gaza, an east-west stream that has become a dividing line in Gaza since the Israeli invasion last October.

Giora Eiland believes Israel should have done a deal straight away to get the hostages back, even if it meant pulling out of Gaza entirely. A year later, other methods, he says, are necessary.

In his office in central Israel, he laid out the heart of the plan.

“Since we already encircled the northern part of Gaza in the past nine or 10 months, what we should do is the following thing to tell all the 300,000 residents [that the UN estimates is 400,000] who still live in the northern part of Gaza that they have to leave this area and they should be given 10 days to leave through safe corridors that Israel will provide.

“And after that time, all this area will become to be a military zone. And all the Hamas people will still, though, whether some of them are fighters, some of them are civilians… will have two choices either to surrender or to starve.”

Eiland wants Israel to seal the areas once the evacuation corridors are closed. Anyone left behind would be treated as an enemy combatant. The area would be under siege, with the army blocking all supplies of food, water or other necessities of life from going in. He believes the pressure would become unbearable and what is left of Hamas would rapidly crumble, freeing the surviving hostages and giving Israel the victory it craves.

The UN World Food Programme says that the current offensive in Gaza is having a “disastrous impact on food security for thousands of Palestinian families”. The main crossings into northern Gaza, it says, have been closed and no food aid has entered the strip since 1 October. Mobile kitchens and bakeries have been forced to stop work because of air strikes. The only functioning bakery in the north, which is supported by WFP, caught fire after it was hit by an explosive munition. The position in the south is almost as dire.

It is not clear whether the IDF has adopted the Generals’ Plan in part or in full, but the circumstantial evidence of what is being done in Gaza suggests it is at the very least a strong influence on the tactics being used against the population. The BBC submitted a list of questions to the IDF, which were not answered.

The ultra-nationalist extremists in Benjamin Netanyahu’s cabinet want to replace Palestinians in northern Gaza with Jewish settlers. Among many statements he’s made on the subject, the finance minister Bezalel Smotrich has said “Our heroic fighters and soldiers are destroying the evil of Hamas, and we will occupy the Gaza Strip… to tell the truth, where there is no settlement, there is no security.”

A row over a luxury hotel, a mini-bar tab and two women who just cannot seem to agree.

Yes, you guessed it. Wagatha Christie is back.

The dispute between Coleen Rooney and Rebekah Vardy returned to court this week, exactly five years after the viral social media post that sparked their high-profile libel battle.

During the High Court trial in 2022, the world’s media watched on, gripped by details of a whodunit worthy of author Agatha Christie.

Rooney had accused her fellow footballer’s wife of leaking private information about her to the press, and eventually emerged victorious.

Vardy was ordered to pay 90% of her rival’s legal costs, which now stand at more than £1.8m.

This week, the showdown returned to court as Vardy tried to reduce that bill.

It’s a saga worthy of a soap opera, and one that taps into Brits’ fascination with the Wags (wives and girlfriends) of footballers. It has already spawned multiple documentaries. And it’s not over yet.

“We’ll be back again at some point next year for an excruciating line-by-line process of going through the costs,” says media lawyer Jonathan Coad, who has followed the case from the start.

“It’s ridiculous,” he adds. “It’s the last place you want to end up.”

Here is what we learned after another week of the now infamous Wagatha row.

This week’s hearing was a “close-run thing”, but in the end, “the winner appears to be Coleen again”, says Coad.

Vardy’s barrister argued there were various reasons why the amount of money she has to pay should be reduced.

But in a ruling on Tuesday, senior costs judge Andrew Gordon-Saker dismissed a number of Vardy’s claims.

He found that Rooney’s legal team had not committed any misconduct, but reached that decision “on balance and, I have to say, only just”. However, that meant it was “not an appropriate case” to reduce the amount of money that Vardy should pay.

The following day, the judge ordered Vardy to pay Rooney £100,000 this month.

That is not additional to what she already owes. Vardy has already paid £800,000 so far, and the £100,000 is a further payment towards the eventual total bill.

“Vardy took a risk. It hasn’t worked, and now she’s come away paying another £100,000,” says Coad.

In 2022, the world’s media descended on London as Rooney and Vardy, flanked by their husbands, arrived at the High Court.

Even the US press were gripped, as they tried to make sense of why two “soccer wives” were going head-to-head.

This week, neither woman showed up, leaving their barristers to fight it out for them.

Naturally, that meant less of a media circus outside the court. And inside, where I was, there were fewer fireworks than last time.

Britain’s tabloids still had a field day, of course. The headline of the week surely goes to Metro, which dubbed the whole affair “Wagatha Thrifty”.

But the tenor of this hearing was much more muted. There was no cross-examination, and the arguments were less incendiary – although the two KCs did still have a decent fight.

Cost hearings are dry at the best of times. Even with the famous names involved, there is only so excited anyone can get about the intricate details of chargeable rates.

Having said that, there were still some juicy details.

One of the headline-grabbing claims to emerge involved a stay at a five-star hotel in London.

Vardy’s lawyer said Rooney’s total legal bill from the 2022 case included costs for a lawyer staying “at the Nobu Hotel, incurring substantial dinner and drinks charges as well as mini-bar charges”.

The hotel brand – a spin-off from the high-end Japanese restaurants – advertises itself as being “among the top luxury lifestyle hotel chains”.

But on Tuesday, Rooney’s lawyer Robin Dunne, said the spending claims were “factually inaccurate”.

“Yesterday morning, the Sun ran a front-page headline which dealt with mini-bar charges,” he said.

“It also was reported around the world, over and over again on Twitter, or X,” he said, adding that the charges had been taken as “evidence of the defendant spending wildly”.

He said a “modest” hotel had initially been booked for the lawyer.

But on the first night, there had been no wi-fi or working shower, so the lawyer transferred to the Nobu after Rooney’s agent said she could get reduced rates, he said.

A room at Nobu ordinarily costs £600 but was charged at £295, which he said was the same price as a room at a Premier Inn.

There was also a claim that £225 had been spent on a food and mini-bar tab.

But Mr Dunne insisted the mini-bar bill actually came to just £7 for two bottles of water, and said the lawyer had not eaten at the Nobu restaurant during his stay.

Vardy’s team also claimed it was “unreasonable” for Rooney to use Stewarts, a London-based law firm, and that she should have sought one near where she lived in north-west England.

But that was rejected by the judge.

“This was always going to be a high-profile case and it attracted significant press coverage both here and elsewhere,” Mr Gordon-Saker said on Tuesday.

“Defamation is still a specialist area and most of the firms who specialise in defamation are based in central London.”

He added that it was a “reasonable choice” to instruct a solicitor in central London, given the size of the claim and the “reputations at stake”.

The judge also rejected Vardy’s claim that it had been unreasonable for Rooney to consult her barrister on 30 occasions, at a cost of nearly £500,000.

He said that Vardy’s conduct – in particular destroying evidence – “adds to the complexity” and “clearly justifies rates in excess of the guidelines” for the most experienced lawyers.

But he did say less experienced lawyers should have been charged at a lower hourly rate.

This battle is far from over yet.

This week’s hearing dealt with points of principle. There will now be a line-by-line assessment of costs, which will take place next spring at the earliest.

And it is still possible that Vardy will end up paying less than the estimated £1.6m she was instructed to pay, with some rulings yet to be made.

The irony is, as Coad notes, both sides will have invested even more money in this latest battle.

And the judge’s parting shot carried, perhaps, just a hint of exasperation.

“The parties need to get on with this and put it behind them.”

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 or swing 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 – but the margins are still small.

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 swing 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