Four soldiers have been killed and more than 60 other people injured in a drone strike targeting an army base in northern Israel, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has said.

The IDF added seven soldiers had been severely injured in the attack on a base “adjacent to Binyamina” – a town around 20 miles (33km) to the south of Haifa.

Hezbollah has claimed responsibility for the attack, which it said targeted a training camp of the IDF’s Golani Brigade in the area, which is based between Tel Aviv and Haifa.

The armed group’s media office said the strike was in response to Israeli attacks in southern Lebanon and Beirut on Thursday.

The group said it targeted the camp in northern Israel using a “swarm of drones”.

The Israeli ambulance service, Magen David Adom (MDA), said 61 people had been injured in the attack – including three critically. It added 37 of them had been taken to eight regional hospitals, either by ambulance or helicopter.

In a statement before the IDF confirmed the deaths, MDA said that alongside the three critically injured, 18 of the victims were in a moderate condition, 31 sustained mild injuries and nine people were “suffering anxiety”.

The reason for the discrepancy in the number of critical injuries between MDA and the IDF is not clear.

Israeli censorship rules had initially prevented media outlets reporting exactly where or what was targeted, before the IDF confirmed it was the Binyamina base.

Some Israeli media outlets have reported the base was hit by a low-level drone launched from Lebanon – a relatively unsophisticated weapon that appears not to have activated early-warning alarms.

Throughout the evening, television bulletins, social media posts and online reports showed footage of emergency vehicles, including helicopters, taking casualties to hospitals across northern Israel.

Many of the wounded have been evacuated to Hillel Yaffe Medical Centre in nearby Hadera – with others being taken to hospitals in Tel Hashomer, Haifa, Afula and Netanya.

Details are still scarce but many of the injured appear to have been in a communal canteen at the time and were caught completely by surprise. Images circulating on social media appear to show an empty mess hall with a hole in the roof.

The Australian Republican Movement (ARM) has launched a campaign branding King Charles’s upcoming visit to the country as the “farewell tour” of the British monarchy.

They say the tongue-in-check push – which includes a merchandise collection – is aimed at sparking debate about the role of the Crown in modern Australia, but monarchists say it is offensive.

The royal tour, from 18 to 26 October, marks the first visit from a monarch down under in more than a decade and will be King Charles’s longest trip since his cancer diagnosis.

It also comes a year after Australia’s unsuccessful Voice to Parliament referendum, which many say has stalled momentum for another referendum.

The nation has already voted against becoming a republic once, in 1999, however public support for the constitutional change has grown since then.

On satirical posters, T-shirts, beer coasters and other paraphernalia, ARM’s campaign depicts the King, Queen and Prince of Wales as aging rock stars and urges Australians “young and old” to “wave goodbye to royal reign”.

“We expect a full-time, fully committed head of state whose only allegiance is to us – a unifying symbol at home and abroad,” the movement’s Co-Chair Esther Anatolitis said in a statement on Monday.

“It’s time for Australia to say ‘thanks, but we’ve got it from here’,” she added.

The organisation cited research it commissioned suggesting 92% of Australians are either “supporters of a republic” or “open to it”, as well as a finding that at least 40% of people surveyed didn’t know the country’s head of state was a foreign monarch.

Independent polling paints a different picture though, with one survey suggesting that roughly 35% of people want to remain a constitutional monarchy.

The Australian Monarchist League (AML) has described the ARM polling as “inflated”, while also criticising its new campaign as “terribly disrespectful to Charles given his ongoing cancer battle”.

“He should be applauded for his bravery, not insulted,” National Chairman Philip Benwell said.

Australia’s Prime Minister is a long-term republican but his government put any plans to hold a vote on breaking away from the British monarchy on ice earlier this year, saying it was no longer a priority issue.

Over the weekend, King Charles confirmed he had exchanged letters with the ARM ahead of his visit, reiterating the palace’s longstanding policy that it was up to Australians to make decisions about their future.

Constitutional votes in Australia are rare and difficult to pass, requiring a ‘double majority’ – support from more than half of the nation overall, and a majority in at least four of its six states. Only eight of 44 referendums have succeeded and almost all had bipartisan support.

The Voice referendum – which would have recognised First Nations people in the constitution and allowed them to form a body to advise the parliament – was overwhelmingly rejected after a bruising debate.

“This is the most dangerous of all front lines,” says Oleksandr, the head of a medical unit for the Ukrainian army’s 25th Brigade.

We are in the treatment room of a cramped makeshift field unit – the first point of treatment for injured soldiers.

“The Russian Federation is pushing very hard. We have not been able to stabilise the front. Each time the front line moves, we also move.”

We are close to Pokrovsk, a small mining city about 60km (37 miles) to the north-west of the regional capital, Donetsk.

The medics tell us they recently treated 50 soldiers in one day – numbers rarely seen before during the course of this war. The casualties are brought in for treatment at this secret location after dusk, when there is less of a chance of being attacked by armed Russian drones.

The Ukrainian troops have been injured in the ferocious battle to defend Pokrovsk. Just months ago, this was considered a relatively safe place – home to about 60,000 people, its streets lined with restaurants, cafes and markets. Soldiers would often come from the front line to the city for a break.

Now, it feels like a ghost town. More than three-quarters of its population have left.

Since Russia captured the city of Avdiivka in February, the speed of its advance in the Donestk region has been swift. At the start of October, it captured the key city of Vuhledar.

The Ukrainian government agrees with the soldiers we meet on the ground, that fighting around Pokrovsk is the most intense.

“The Pokrovsk direction leads the number of enemy attacks,” Kyiv stated this week – claiming that, in total, the Armed Forces of Ukraine had repelled about 150 “enemy” attacks on most days in the past two weeks.

In the field unit, six miles from the front, army medic Tania holds the arm of Serhii, a soldier with a bloodied bandage covering most of his face, and guides him into an examination room.

“His condition is serious,” says Tania.

Serhii has shrapnel injuries to one of his eyes, his skull and brain. The doctors quickly clean up his wounds and inject antibiotics.

Five more soldiers arrive soon after – they are uncertain how they received their injuries. The barrage of fire can be so fierce and sudden, their wounds could have been caused by mortars or explosives dropped from drones.

“It’s dangerous here. It is difficult, mentally and physically. We are all tired, but we are coping,” says Yuriy, the commander of all the brigade’s medical units.

All the soldiers we see were injured at different times of the morning, but they have only arrived after nightfall, when it is safer.

Such delays can increase the risk of death and disability, we are told.

Another soldier, Taras, has tied a tourniquet around his arm to stop the bleeding from a shrapnel wound, but now – more than 10 hours later – his arm looks swollen and pale and he can’t feel it. A doctor tells us it might have to be amputated.

In the past 24 hours, two soldiers have been brought in dead.

What we see at the field unit points to the ferocity of the battle for Pokrovsk – an important transport hub. The rail link that passes through was used regularly to evacuate civilians from front-line towns to safer parts of Ukraine, and to move supplies for the military.

Ukraine knows what is at stake here.

The threat of Russian drones is ever present – one hovers just outside the medical unit while we are there. It makes evacuations from the front line extremely hard. The building’s windows are boarded up so the drones can’t look inside, but the minute anyone steps out of the door, they are at risk of being hit.

The drones are also a threat to the remaining citizens of Pokrovsk.

“We constantly hear them buzzing – they stop and look inside the windows,” says Viktoriia Vasylevska, 50, one of the remaining, war-weary residents. But even she has now agreed to be evacuated from her home, on the particularly dangerous eastern edge of the city.

She is surprised by how fast the front line has moved west towards Pokrovsk.

“It all happened so quickly. Who knows what will happen here next. I’m losing my nerve. I have panic attacks. I’m afraid of the nights.”

Viktoriia says she has barely any money and will have to start her life from scratch somewhere else, but it is too scary to stay here now.

“I want the war to end. There should be negotiations. There is nothing left in the lands taken by Russia anyway. Everything is destroyed and all the people have fled,” she says.

We find eroded morale among most of the people we speak to – the toll of more than two and a half years of a grinding war.

Most of Pokrovsk is now without power and water.

At a school, there is a queue of people carrying empty canisters waiting to use a communal tap. They tell us that a few days ago, four taps were working, but now they are down to just one.

Driving through the streets, pockets of destruction are visible, but the city hasn’t yet been bombed out like others that have been fiercely fought over.

We meet Larysa, 69, buying sacks of potatoes at one of a handful of food stalls still open at the otherwise shuttered-down central market.

“I’m terrified. I can’t live without sedatives,” she says. On her small pension, she doesn’t think she would be able to afford rent somewhere else. “The government might take me somewhere and shelter me for a while. But what after that?”

Another shopper, 77-year-old Raisa chimes in. “You can’t go anywhere without money. So we just sit in our home and hope that this will end.”

Larysa thinks it’s time to negotiate with Russia – a sentiment that might have been unthinkable for most in Ukraine some time ago. But at least here, near the front line, we found many voicing it.

“So many of our boys are dying, so many are wounded. They’re sacrificing their lives, and this is going on and on,” she says.

From a mattress on the floor of an evacuation van, 80-year-old Nadiia has no sympathy for the advancing Russian forces. “Damn this war! I’m going to die,” she wails. “Why does [President] Putin want more land? Doesn’t he have enough? He has killed so many people.”

Nadiia can’t walk. She used to drag herself around her house, relying on the help of neighbours. Just a handful of them have stayed back, but under the constant threat of bombardment, she has decided to leave even though she doesn’t know where she will go.

But there are those who are not yet leaving town.

Among them are locals working to repair war-damaged infrastructure.

“I live on one of the streets closest to the front line. Everything is burnt out around my house. My neighbours died after their home was shelled,” Vitaliy tells us, as he and his co-workers try to fix electrical lines.

“But I don’t think it’s right to abandon our men. We have to fight until we have victory and Russia is punished for its crimes.”

His resolve is not shared by 20-year-old Roman, who we meet while he is working to fix a shell-damaged home.

“I don’t think the territory we’re fighting for is worth human lives. Lots of our soldiers have died. Young men who could have had a future, wives and children. But they had to go to the front line.”

At dawn one morning, we drive towards the battlefield outside the city. Fields of dried sunflowers line the sides of the roads. There is barely any cover, and so we drive at breakneck speed in order to protect ourselves against Russian drone attacks.

We hear loud explosions as we near the front line.

At a Ukrainian artillery position, Vadym fires a Soviet-era artillery gun. It emits a deafening sound and blows dust and dried leaves off the ground. He runs to shelter in an underground bunker, keeping safe from Russian retaliation and waiting for the coordinates of the next Ukrainian strike.

“They [Russia] have more manpower and weapons. And they send their men onto the battlefield like they’re canon fodder,” he says.

But he knows that if Pokrovsk falls, it could open a gateway to the Dnipro region – just 32km (20 miles) from Pokrovsk – and their job will become even more difficult.

“Yes, we are tired – and many of our men have died and been wounded – but we have to fight, otherwise the result will be catastrophic.”

An Israeli attack on a school used to shelter displaced Palestinians has killed at least 15 people in central Gaza, officials say.

Gaza’s Hamas-run Civil Defence Agency said the site in Nuseirat camp was struck by a volley of artillery on Sunday, killing entire families and wounding dozens more.

The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) said it was looking into the reports.

Earlier, five children were reportedly killed by a drone strike while playing on a street corner in northern Gaza.

A civil defence spokesman said the attack on al-Mufti school, where hundreds of displaced people from around Gaza were sheltering, had injured at least 50 people and more than a dozen were killed.

The main areas of conflict in Gaza in recent days have been in the north, where Israeli forces have been intensifying attacks for over a week as part of a major ground operation. Hundreds have since been killed, Gazan authorities have reported.

Residents of Beit Hanoun, Jabalia and Beit Lahiya have reported being cut off from nearby Gaza City, while Israeli tanks have been seen on the outskirts of the territory’s largest city.

Hospitals in the area are running out of supplies, although the World Health Organisation said a joint operation with the Red Cross had resupplied two of them -after nine days of attempts.

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The five children in northern Gaza were reportedly killed in an Israeli air strike while playing on a street corner in al-Shati camp.

Graphic images from the scene in the aftermath show the bloodied bodies of what appeared to be young teenage boys.

One of them looked to be clutching several glass marbles in his hand.

According to a report from the scene, told to a BBC correspondent, a drone strike hit a person walking down the street, which killed the children and injured seven other people.

Later images showed the bodies of the five boys wrapped in white shrouds and laid out on the floor side-by-side.

An aunt of one of the boys, named Rami, wrote a moving tribute to him on social media. She said the family had moved to al-Shati after being forced to leave their homes in Jabalia to a “safer area” because of the war.

The IDF has not yet responded to questions about the incident.

Over the last year of war, the Hamas-run health ministry has reported more than 42,000 people killed.

About 1.9 million of Gaza’s 2.4 million people have been displaced by the war – many of whom have been forced to move multiple times to escape.

The fighting began after Hamas launched an unprecedented attack on northern Israel on 7 October last year – killing about 1,200 people in northern Israel and taking more than 200 hostage in Gaza.

On a Tuesday morning in September, a 10-year-old boy was approaching the gates of a Japanese school in Shenzhen in southern China, when a stranger walked up and stabbed him.

He died of his injuries. The killing shocked Japan and China, and sparked a diplomatic furore.

The Japanese government said it believed what happened was motivated by xenophobia, with the country’s foreign minister blaming the attack on “malicious and anti-Japanese” social media posts.

Online commentators have noted the killing happened on a politically sensitive date – 18 September, which is the anniversary of an incident that led to the Japanese occupation of Manchuria in China in the early 1930s.

For some, what happened is a sign of online nationalism – manifesting in recent years as rising anti-foreigner rhetoric – spilling over into the real world.

For years, posts related to events during World War Two have proliferated on the Chinese internet, with the Japanese invasion during the war remaining a sensitive topic for nationalists on both sides. In China, Japan’s wartime atrocities have long been a sore point as Beijing maintains that Tokyo has never fully apologised.

The online posts are part of a wider phenomenon, which encompasses both xenophobia and attacks on Chinese nationals for being unpatriotic. One argument by analysts is that this digital nationalism has gone mostly unchecked by the Chinese government, with online patriotism fanning flames of anti-foreigner sentiment as well as accusations against Chinese figures.

Some are asking if this has gone too far. They have dubbed the online attacks calling Chinese figures unpatriotic a “Cultural Revolution 2.0”, the latest in a series of drives ensuring ideological purity. They see echoes of the violent, state-sponsored campaign against so-called enemies of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) that traumatised the country in the 1960 and 1970s. Hundreds of thousands died in purges often led by youth militias known as the Red Guards. Families and neighbours turned on each other.

In a recent essay, author and university professor Zhang Sheng noted that “in the past people summoned the Red Guards, now people summon the ‘little pinks’” – a popular nickname for the virtual army of online nationalists.

While many on Chinese social media mourned the killing of the Japanese schoolboy, a few cyber-nationalists struck a very different tone.

“I have no opinion on how Japanese die if they don’t apologise for history,” read one popular comment on Weibo, while another pointed out that the Japanese had killed many Chinese during World War Two “and haven’t apologised till this day. How could they be even close to being described as civilised?”

A Chinese official reportedly wrote messages in a private group chat saying it is “not a big deal to kill a Japanese child” and “it’s in our regulations to kill Japanese”. He has since been placed under investigation, according to local media outlet Phoenix News.

As Japanese officials demanded answers for the “despicable” crime, Beijing sought to play it down, heavily censoring discussion of the incident online and calling it an “accidental, individual case” and an “isolated incident”.

But this is the third high-profile attack on foreigners in recent months, all of which China has described as “isolated incidents”.

In June, a Japanese mother and her son were attacked at a bus stop outside a Japanese school, and a Chinese woman died while trying to shield them. This happened just weeks after four US university tutors were stabbed in a park in Jilin. While the motives for both attacks were also unclear, they spurred anxious discussion that they were linked to xenophobic rhetoric online.

It is not just foreigners facing the ire of cyber-nationalists. In recent months, Chinese public figures and companies have also been castigated for being insufficiently patriotic.

Beverage giant Nongfu Spring is considered a Chinese business success story, with its mineral water bottles a ubiquitous sight across the country’s convenience stores and restaurant tables. But in March, nationalists accused the company of using Japanese elements in its product design. One of its logos was said to resemble a Shinto temple, while the iconic mineral water bottle’s red cap was deemed to be a reference to the Japanese flag.

It resulted in a brief but intense online campaign: some called for a boycott, while videos of people angrily stamping on Nongfu Spring bottles and chucking their drinks down the toilet were all over social media.

Similarly, the author and Nobel Literature Prize laureate Mo Yan was accused of “beautifying” Japanese soldiers and being unpatriotic in his works by a nationalist blogger, who controversially sued the writer for insulting China.

These moves have sparked deep concern. Hu Xijin, the former editor of state-run newspaper Global Times, warned that nationalistic attacks on creatives like Mo Yan could have a chilling effect.

And the outspoken liberal intellectual Yu Jianrong said the recent stabbings of foreigners were fuelled by “dangerous populist tendencies, which deserve our utmost vigilance”.

Even state media has accused online nationalists of “making patriotism a business”. One commentary by CCP mouthpiece People’s Daily said those who “stir up public opinion and add fuel to the flames in order to… gain traffic and make personal gains, should be severely punished”.

But the ruling party has had a hand in stoking the fire, some say.

“State-endorsed patriotism” and Beijing’s constant warnings about foreign influence has contributed to the “intense nationalism” we see today, says Rose Luqiu, an associate professor at Hong Kong Baptist University’s communication school. What has aggravated it, she says, is the legal risk of being deemed unpatriotic.

The Chinese government has now criminalised the “distortion and smearing [of] heroes and martyrs” – this was used in the lawsuit against the author Mo Yan. It has also passed a sweeping anti-espionage law and launched a campaign encouraging the public to report suspicious activity by foreigners.

To legitimise its rule, it has stepped up efforts to strengthen patriotism in schools, where from a young age Chinese children are taught to love not just their country but also the CCP.

Meanwhile, a global surge in Sinophobic sentiment during the Covid pandemic and growing suspicion of China in the West due to trade tensions has fed a sense among some Chinese that their country is being unfairly discriminated against by foreigners.

China’s slowing economy and a spreading social malaise have also played a role. “Many people in China are confronted with severe social and economic worries. Inflation, housing crises, youth unemployment, and evaporating pensions are all causing anxieties. Nationalism is a readily available and highly potent framework for venting those frustrations,” says Florian Schneider, an expert in online Chinese nationalism at Leiden University.

All these factors have resulted in nationalist bloggers becoming a prominent fixture of the Chinese internet in the last few years. Well-known influencers can amass millions of followers – and potentially earn income from the traffic – by pumping out patriotic content extolling the virtues of China and the CCP while denouncing their enemies.

While they often act in the name of revolutionary leftist fervour, their behaviour is actually more similar to the far right found in other countries who lead xenophobic and reactionary movements, Professor Schneider tells the BBC.

As “populists who are trying to make China great again”, they “harbour hopes of returning society to some imagined former glory, and see all manner of elites and foreign powers as roadblocks to this goal”.

Sometimes authorities appear to listen to concerns.

In July, they quietly dropped a controversial amendment to a national security law after a public outcry. They acknowledged that a proposed ban on “hurting Chinese people’s feelings” could “infringe upon the legitimate rights and normal life of the public”.

Chinese social media platforms have tried to rein in online nationalists by periodically suspending their accounts.

Well-known nationalist influencers Sima Nan and Guyanmuchan have been censored without warning. So was the blogger who tried to sue Mo Yan, whose lawsuit was also rejected by the courts.

One vlogger, who shot to notoriety this year after he posted a video accusing a shopping mall of putting up decorations that resembled the Japanese flag, was similarly shut down. A scathing state media commentary denounced his video as “a malicious report that rides on the online traffic of patriotism”.

Still, authorities appear to have a loose grip on online nationalists.

While dissenters are swiftly shut down or in some cases arrested in the name of social stability, nationalist bloggers are allowed a freer rein, despite their sometimes inflammatory rhetoric. State media has even boosted these voices by republishing their content.

The BBC has asked the Chinese government for a response on why nationalist content does not appear to be censored on social media as much as other content deemed sensitive.

That could be down to the fact the state views online nationalism as a useful safety valve to “dissipate dissent in a way that does not undermine its authority”, particularly during its current economic troubles, where “society really needs an outlet to express frustration”, says Dr Luqiu.

By encouraging nationalists and then occasionally reining them in, the government “harnesses nationalism to its advantage, only intervening when it risks spilling over” into an uncontrollable situation.

It may seem risky, but Beijing has successfully crushed serious challenges to its authority in recent years, such as the pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong in 2019 and the White Paper protests in 2022 against harsh zero-Covid policies.

The government is thus confident it can manage the dangers, and it means nationalism is likely to stay despite the backlash, analysts say.

“Nationalism is a mixed blessing for China’s leaders, and at the moment we are witnessing the costs of that,” says Professor Schneider.

“But will the leadership rethink or even abandon its nationalism in favour of something less toxic? I wouldn’t hold my breath.”

In China, people are following the US election with keen interest and some anxiety. They fear what could happen next at home and abroad, whoever wins the White House.

“None of us wants to see a war,” says Mr Xiang, as the music in the park reaches a crescendo and a nearby dancer elegantly spins his partner.

He has come to Ritan Park to learn dance with other seniors.

They gather here regularly, just a few hundred metres from the Beijing home of the American ambassador in China.

In addition to new dance moves, the looming US election is also on their minds.

It comes at a pivotal time between the two superpowers, with tensions over Taiwan, trade and international affairs running high.

“I am worried that Sino-US relations are getting tense,” says Mr Xiang who’s in his sixties. Peace is what we want, he adds.

A crowd has gathered to listen to this conversation. Most are reluctant to give their full names in a country where it is permissible to talk about the US president, but being critical of their own leader could get them in trouble.

They say they are worried about war – not just about a conflict between Washington and Beijing but an escalation of current wars in the Middle East and Ukraine.

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That is why Mr Meng, in his 70s, hopes Donald Trump will win the election.

“Although he imposes economic sanctions on China, he does not wish to start or fight a war. Mr Biden starts more wars so more ordinary people dislike him. It is Mr Biden who supports Ukraine’s war and both Russia and Ukraine suffer great loss from the war,” he said.

Some sisters recording a dance routine for their social media page chip in. “Donald Trump said in the debate that he will end the war in Ukraine 24 hours after he takes office,” says one.

“About Harris, I know little about her, we think she follows the same route as President Biden who supports war.”

Their opinions echo a key message being propagated on Chinese state media.

China has called on the international community to negotiate a ceasefire in Gaza while aligning itself with what it describes as its “Arab brothers” in the Middle East and has been quick to blame the US for its unwavering support of Israel.

On Ukraine, Foreign Minister Wang Yi told the United Nations that China was playing a “constructive role” as he accused Washington of “exploiting the situation for selfish gain”.

While most analysts believe Beijing does not have a favourite in this race for the White House, many would agree that Kamala Harris is an unknown quantity to Chinese people and the country’s leaders.

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But some believe she will be more stable than Trump when it comes to one of the biggest flashpoints between the US and China – Taiwan.

“I don’t like Trump. I don’t think there is a good future between the US and China – there are too many problems, the global economy, and also the Taiwan problem,” says a father of a four-year-old boy in the park for a family day out.

He fears their differences over Taiwan could eventually lead to conflict.

“I don’t want it. I don’t want my son to go to the military,” he says as the young boy pleads to go back on the slide.

China claims the self-governing island of Taiwan as its own and President Xi has said “reunification is inevitable”, vowing to retake it by force if necessary.

The US maintains official ties with Beijing and recognises it as the only Chinese government under its “One China policy” but it also remains Taiwan’s most significant international supporter.

Washington is bound by law to provide Taiwan with defensive weapons and Joe Biden has said that the US would defend Taiwan militarily, breaking with a stance known as strategic ambiguity.

Harris has not gone that far. Instead, when asked in a recent interview she stated a “commitment to security and prosperity for all nations.”

Donald Trump is instead focused on a deal – not diplomacy. He has called on Taiwan to pay for its protection.

“Taiwan took our chip business from us. I mean, how stupid are we? They’re immensely wealthy,” he said in a recent interview. “Taiwan should pay us for defence.”

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One of their biggest worries when it comes to the former US president is that he has also made it clear he plans to impose 60% tariffs on Chinese goods.

This is the last thing many businesses in China want right now as the country is trying to manufacture enough goods to export itself out of an economic downturn.

Ministers in China bristle with contempt at US-led trade tariffs which were first imposed by Donald Trump.

President Biden has also levied tariffs, targeting Chinese electronic vehicles and solar panels. Beijing believes these moves are an attempt to curb its rise as a global economic power.

“I don’t think it will do any good to the US to impose tariffs on China,” says Mr Xiang, echoing the sentiments of many we met. The tariffs will hit the US people, he adds, and increase costs for ordinary people.

Many of the the younger generation, while patriotic, also look towards the US for trends and culture – and that, perhaps more than any diplomatic mission, has power too.

In the park, Lily and Anna, aged 20 and 22, who get their news from TikTok, echo some of the national messages of pride spread by Chinese state media when it comes to this competitive relationship.

“Our country is a very prosperous and powerful country,” they say, dressed in their national costumes. They love China, they said, although they also adore the Avengers and particularly Captain America.

Taylor Swift is on their playlists too.

Others like 17-year-old Lucy hope to study in America one day.

As she cycles on an exercise bike, newly installed in the park, she dreams about visiting Universal Studios one day – after her graduation.

Lucy says she is excited to see there is a female candidate. “Harris’s candidacy marks an important step forward for gender equality, and it’s encouraging to see her as a presidential candidate.”

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The People’s Republic of China has never had a female leader and not a single woman currently sits on the 24-member team known as the Politburo that makes up the most senior members of the Chinese Communist Party.

Lucy is also worried about the intense competition between the two countries and believes the best way for China and the Uned States to improve their relationship is to have more people-to-people exchangesit.

Both sides have vowed to work towards this, and yet the number of US students studying in China has fallen from around 15,000 in 2011 to 800.

Xi hopes to open the door for 50,000 American students to come to China in the next five years. But in a recent interview with the BBC, the US ambassador to China, Nicholas Burns, accused parts of the Chinese government of not taking this pledge seriously.

He said that on dozens of occasions the security forces or a government ministry have prevented Chinese citizens from participating in public diplomacy run by the US.

On the other side, Chinese students and academics have reported being unfairly targeted by US border officials.

Lucy, however, remains optimistic that she will be able to travel to America one day, to promote Chinese culture. And, as the music strikes up nearby, she urges Americans to visit and experience China.

“We may be a little bit reserved sometimes and not as outgoing or as extrovert as US people, but we are welcoming,” she says as she heads off to join her family.

“I feel sick if I don’t search for diamonds. It’s like a drug.”

Prakash Sharma, 67, speaks about diamonds with a passion that has defined his life for the past five decades.

A diamond hunter in India’s central state of Madhya Pradesh, he spends most of his day in the mines of Panna district.

Panna is among the country’s most backward regions – its residents face poverty, water scarcity, and unemployment. But it’s also home to most of India’s diamond reserves and remains a prime destination for diamond hunters.

While most mines are managed by the federal government, state officials lease out small parts of land to prospective miners every year at nominal prices. The district has the country’s only mechanised diamond mine.

However, once known for its large and rare finds, diamond mines of Panna are rundown now. Its reserves have depleted due to over-mining over the years.

Despite this decline, hopeful miners continue their quest.

They have to hand over their finds to the government diamond office, which evaluates the stones and sells them in an auction.

After deducting royalties and taxes, the proceeds are sent back to the miners, a bittersweet reward for their tireless digging.

Mr Sharma says he began digging for diamonds in 1974, right after he finished school, following in the footsteps of his father who was once a famous diamond hunter in his village.

He soon hit the jackpot after he found a six-carat diamond, which was worth a fortune 50 years ago.

That, he says, fuelled a passion in him to keep searching for more.

“I wanted to continue doing this instead of getting a low-paying government job,” he says.

Mr Sharma is among thousands of men – young and old – who spend their days in the mines, hoping to strike rich and escape the cycle of poverty.

The miners start digging through gravel in the early hours of the morning. They then wash, dry and sift through it looking for diamonds until sunset. Their families help them in their work.

It’s a physically demanding task – but for the people of Panna, it’s an intrinsic part of their lives, conversations and hopes for a better future.

For many, diamond hunting is a family tradition passed down through generations.

Shyamlal Jatav, 58, comes from one such family. His grandfather started the work and now his son continues it, balancing his studies while working part-time in the mines.

Mr Jatav says his grandfather found many diamonds, but in those days, they did not sell for much.

But things are different now, with some of these stones selling for tens of millions of rupees.

Raja Gound is among the few who got lucky. A labourer by profession, he was neck-deep in debt when he found a massive 19.22-carat diamond in July.

He sold the diamond at a government auction for about 8m rupees ($95,178; £72,909).

Mr Gound said he had been leasing mines for more than 10 years in the hope of finding a diamond.

India has always played a key role in the diamond industry. For more than 3,000 years, it was the world’s sole diamond source.

This changed in the 18th Century with discoveries in Brazil and South Africa.

But Panna’s legacy as a hub for diamonds has endured.

The district’s Majhgawan mine, operated by the state-controlled National Mineral Development Corporation (NMDC), is the country’s only organised source of diamond production.

NMDC began mining in 1968 and by 2024, it had extracted over 1.3 million carats of diamonds.

Though anyone can mine diamonds in Panna – that too at a cheap price – most hunters avoid taking the official route to sell their treasure.

Several residents told BBC Hindi that there was a big market for illegally mined diamonds – but the exact figures of the trade are unknown.

A black-market dealer, who did not want to be named, said people sell their finds illegally to avoid taxes and to ensure quick payments.

“If they go through official channels, they only get paid after the diamond is sold at auction, which can sometimes take years,” he said.

Ravi Patel, Panna’s mining officer, says authorities have taken measures to curb illegal sales but it’s difficult to track them because most of the diamonds mined are relatively small and do not fetch high prices.

Officials admit that there has been a decline in the number of diamonds deposited for government auctions.

In 2016, the office received 1,133 diamonds, but the numbers shrank to just 23 in 2023.

Anupam Singh, a government diamond evaluator in Panna, says restrictions on mining are behind this decline.

“The forest department has marked off significant zones, turning them into no-go areas for diamond hunters,” Mr Singh said.

There are more than 50 tigers living in the Panna Tiger Reserve and recent government efforts to preserve their population has presented many challenges to the miners.

Diamond miners who once operated within forested areas, including the buffer zone of the reserve, are prohibited from mining there and risk facing severe penalties if caught.

But despite the hardships and challenges, thousands of men continue to work in the shallow mines, hoping to overturn their fate.

Prakash Majumdar started digging for diamonds in 2020 after the Covid-19 lockdown took away all the labour and farming jobs in his hometown.

Desperate and struggling to feed his family, Mr Majumdar found his first diamond worth 2.9m rupees within a month of mining.

A lot has changed since – his family has now moved to a concrete home and he has become the elected village head.

Yet, his relentless quest for more continues.

“Diamond hunting will remain a part of my life and I am not going anywhere until I strike it rich,” he said.

A man in illegal possession of a shotgun and a loaded handgun was arrested at an intersection near Donald Trump’s rally in Coachella, California, on Saturday, police said.

The 49-year-old suspect, Vem Miller, was driving a black SUV when he was stopped at a security checkpoint by deputies, who located the two firearms and a “high-capacity magazine”.

Mr Miller was then taken into custody “without incident”, the Riverside County Sheriff’s office said, and booked on possession of a loaded firearm and possession of a high-capacity magazine.

The US Secret Service said Trump “was not in any danger”, adding that the incident did not impact protective operations.

A local sheriff called the suspect a “lunatic” and his office added the encounter did not affect the safety of Trump or the rally’s attendees.

Many questions remain unanswered.

While Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco said it was impossible to speculate about what was in the mind of the suspect, he said he “truly believed” that his officers had prevented a third assassination attempt.

He added that it might be impossible to prove that this was the man’s intent.

A federal law enforcement official told CBS News there was no indication of an assassination attempt connected to this incident.

Federal authorities say they are still investigating the incident, and it would be up to them to pursue any additional charges.

Mr Bianco is an elected official and a Republican who has previously expressed support for Trump. He is also acting as a surrogate for Trump’s re-election campaign.

The incident – which occurred at 16:59 PDT (00:59 GMT) – an hour before Trump was scheduled to appear on stage – highlights, once again, the intense security operation around him, and the dangers facing the former president, with just over three weeks to go until the election.

It follows two high-profile alleged assassination attempts on Trump earlier this year.

Mr Miller was was charged with two misdemeanour weapons charges and was released on a $5,000 (£3,826) bail. No federal charges have been filed.

In a police news conference earlier on Sunday, Mr Bianco warned he might not be able to “give all of the information… because of what we’re doing”.

The sheriff added that as the suspect approached an outside perimeter, near the location of the rally, he “gave all indications that he was allowed to be there”.

But as the suspect got to the inside perimeter, “many irregularities popped up”, Sheriff Bianco added, explaining that the vehicle had a fake licence plate and was in “disarray” inside.

Multiple passports with multiple names and multiple driving licences were found in the car, the sheriff said, adding that the licence plate was “home-made” and not registered.

He added that the suspect had told authorities he was a member of the far-right group called Sovereign Citizens.

He said the licence plate was also “indicative of a group of individuals that claim to be Sovereign Citizens”, but he had not concluded that Mr Miller was a member.

“I wouldn’t say it’s a militant group. It’s just a group that doesn’t believe in government and government control,” he said. “They don’t believe that government and laws apply to them.”

The US Attorney’s Office, Secret Service, and FBI are aware of the arrest, according to a statement from federal authorities.

“The US Secret Service assesses that the incident did not impact protective operations and former President Trump was not in any danger,” the statement said.

“While no federal arrest has been made at this time, the investigation is ongoing. The US Attorney’s Office, US Secret Service, and FBI extend their gratitude to the deputies and local partners who helped ensure the safety of last night’s events.”

Security surrounding Trump has been heavily increased in the wake of previous alleged assassination attempts.

The Saturday before Mr Miller’s arrest, Trump held his second rally in Butler, Pennsylvania this year, the same place were his ear was bloodied after a sniper fired multiple shots in his direction, killing one person in the crowd.

Another man is currently in jail after he was arrested outside the Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach in September. The man was spotted hiding in bushes near the golf course with the muzzle of a rifle sticking out through the shrubbery.

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

In a few hours, a spacecraft should blast-off from Florida on the hunt for signs of alien life.

Its destination is Europa, a deeply-mysterious moon orbiting the distant planet Jupiter.

Trapped under its icy surface could be a vast ocean with double the amount of water on Earth.

The Europa Clipper spacecraft will chase a European mission that left last year, but using a cosmic piggyback, it will overtake and arrive first.

That won’t be until 2030 but what it finds could change what we know about life in our solar system.

Years in the making, the Europa Clipper launch was delayed at the last minute after hurricane Milton blasted Florida this week.

The spacecraft was rushed indoors for shelter, but after checking the launchpad at Cape Canaveral for damage, engineers have now given the go-ahead for lift-off at 1206 local time (1706 BST) on 14 October.

“If we discover life so far away from the Sun, it would imply a separate origin of life to the earth,” says Mark Fox-Powell, a planetary microbiologist at the Open University.

“That is hugely significant, because if that happens twice in our solar system, it could mean life is really common,” he says.

Located 628m km from Earth, Europa is just a bit bigger than our moon, but that is where the similarity ends.

If it was in our skies, it would shine five times brighter because the water ice would reflect much more sunlight.

Its icy crust is up to 25km thick, and sloshing beneath, there could be a vast saltwater ocean. There may also be chemicals that are the ingredients for simple life.

Scientists first realised Europa might support life in the 1970s when, peering through a telescope in Arizona, they saw water ice.

Voyager 1 and 2 spacecrafts captured the first close-up images, and then in 1995 Nasa’s Galileo spacecraft flew past Europa taking some deeply puzzling pictures. They showed a surface riddled with dark, reddish-brown cracks; fractures that may contain salts and sulfur compounds that could support life.

The James Webb telescope has since taken pictures of what might be plumes of water ejected 100 miles (160 kilometers) above the moon’s surface

But none of those missions got close enough to Europa for long enough to really understand it.

Now scientists hope that instruments on Nasa’s Clipper spacecraft will map almost the entire moon, as well as collect dust particles and fly through the water plumes.

Britney Schmidt, associate professor of earth and atmospheric sciences at Cornell university in the US, helped to design a laser onboard that will see through the ice.

“I’m most excited about understanding Europa’s plumbing. Where’s the water? Europa has the ice version of Earth’s subduction zones, magma chambers and tectonics – we’re going to try to see into those regions and map them,” she says.

Her instrument, which is called Reason, was tested in Antarctica.

But unlike on Earth, all the instruments on Clipper will be exposed to huge amounts of radiation which Prof Schmidt says is a “major concern.”

The spacecraft should fly past Europa about 50 times, and each time, it will be blasted with radiation equivalent to one million X-rays.

“Much of the electronics are in a vault that’s heavily shielded to keep out radiation,” Prof Schmidt explains.

The spaceship is the largest ever built to visit a planet and has a long journey ahead. Travelling 1.8 billion miles, it will orbit both the Earth and Mars to propel itself further towards Jupiter in what is called the sling-shot effect.

It cannot carry enough fuel to motor itself all the way alone, so it will piggyback off the momentum of Earth and Mars’s gravitational pull.

It will overtake JUICE, the European Space Agency’s spaceship that will also visit Europa on its way to another of Jupiter’s moons called Ganeymede.

Once Clipper approaches Europa in 2030 it will switch on its engines again to carefully manoeuvre itself into the right orbit.

Space scientists are very cautious when talking about the chances of discovering life- there is no expectation that they will find human-like creatures or animals

“We are searching for the potential for habitability and you need four things – liquid water, a heat source, and organic material. Finally those three ingredients need to be stable over a long enough period of time that something can happen,” explains Michelle Dougherty, professor of space physics at Imperial College in London.

And they hope that if they can understand the ice surface better, they will know where to land a craft on a future mission.

An international team of scientists with Nasa, the Jet Propulsion Lab and the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab will oversee the odyssey.

At a time when there is a space launch virtually every week, this mission promises something different, suggests Professor Fox-Powell.

“There’s no profit being made. This is about exploration and curiosity, and pushing back the boundaries of our knowledge of our place in the universe,” he says.

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 fifth 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 only eighteen months 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 as its 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.

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.

“I feel sick if I don’t search for diamonds. It’s like a drug.”

Prakash Sharma, 67, speaks about diamonds with a passion that has defined his life for the past five decades.

A diamond hunter in India’s central state of Madhya Pradesh, he spends most of his day in the mines of Panna district.

Panna is among the country’s most backward regions – its residents face poverty, water scarcity, and unemployment. But it’s also home to most of India’s diamond reserves and remains a prime destination for diamond hunters.

While most mines are managed by the federal government, state officials lease out small parts of land to prospective miners every year at nominal prices. The district has the country’s only mechanised diamond mine.

However, once known for its large and rare finds, diamond mines of Panna are rundown now. Its reserves have depleted due to over-mining over the years.

Despite this decline, hopeful miners continue their quest.

They have to hand over their finds to the government diamond office, which evaluates the stones and sells them in an auction.

After deducting royalties and taxes, the proceeds are sent back to the miners, a bittersweet reward for their tireless digging.

Mr Sharma says he began digging for diamonds in 1974, right after he finished school, following in the footsteps of his father who was once a famous diamond hunter in his village.

He soon hit the jackpot after he found a six-carat diamond, which was worth a fortune 50 years ago.

That, he says, fuelled a passion in him to keep searching for more.

“I wanted to continue doing this instead of getting a low-paying government job,” he says.

Mr Sharma is among thousands of men – young and old – who spend their days in the mines, hoping to strike rich and escape the cycle of poverty.

The miners start digging through gravel in the early hours of the morning. They then wash, dry and sift through it looking for diamonds until sunset. Their families help them in their work.

It’s a physically demanding task – but for the people of Panna, it’s an intrinsic part of their lives, conversations and hopes for a better future.

For many, diamond hunting is a family tradition passed down through generations.

Shyamlal Jatav, 58, comes from one such family. His grandfather started the work and now his son continues it, balancing his studies while working part-time in the mines.

Mr Jatav says his grandfather found many diamonds, but in those days, they did not sell for much.

But things are different now, with some of these stones selling for tens of millions of rupees.

Raja Gound is among the few who got lucky. A labourer by profession, he was neck-deep in debt when he found a massive 19.22-carat diamond in July.

He sold the diamond at a government auction for about 8m rupees ($95,178; £72,909).

Mr Gound said he had been leasing mines for more than 10 years in the hope of finding a diamond.

India has always played a key role in the diamond industry. For more than 3,000 years, it was the world’s sole diamond source.

This changed in the 18th Century with discoveries in Brazil and South Africa.

But Panna’s legacy as a hub for diamonds has endured.

The district’s Majhgawan mine, operated by the state-controlled National Mineral Development Corporation (NMDC), is the country’s only organised source of diamond production.

NMDC began mining in 1968 and by 2024, it had extracted over 1.3 million carats of diamonds.

Though anyone can mine diamonds in Panna – that too at a cheap price – most hunters avoid taking the official route to sell their treasure.

Several residents told BBC Hindi that there was a big market for illegally mined diamonds – but the exact figures of the trade are unknown.

A black-market dealer, who did not want to be named, said people sell their finds illegally to avoid taxes and to ensure quick payments.

“If they go through official channels, they only get paid after the diamond is sold at auction, which can sometimes take years,” he said.

Ravi Patel, Panna’s mining officer, says authorities have taken measures to curb illegal sales but it’s difficult to track them because most of the diamonds mined are relatively small and do not fetch high prices.

Officials admit that there has been a decline in the number of diamonds deposited for government auctions.

In 2016, the office received 1,133 diamonds, but the numbers shrank to just 23 in 2023.

Anupam Singh, a government diamond evaluator in Panna, says restrictions on mining are behind this decline.

“The forest department has marked off significant zones, turning them into no-go areas for diamond hunters,” Mr Singh said.

There are more than 50 tigers living in the Panna Tiger Reserve and recent government efforts to preserve their population has presented many challenges to the miners.

Diamond miners who once operated within forested areas, including the buffer zone of the reserve, are prohibited from mining there and risk facing severe penalties if caught.

But despite the hardships and challenges, thousands of men continue to work in the shallow mines, hoping to overturn their fate.

Prakash Majumdar started digging for diamonds in 2020 after the Covid-19 lockdown took away all the labour and farming jobs in his hometown.

Desperate and struggling to feed his family, Mr Majumdar found his first diamond worth 2.9m rupees within a month of mining.

A lot has changed since – his family has now moved to a concrete home and he has become the elected village head.

Yet, his relentless quest for more continues.

“Diamond hunting will remain a part of my life and I am not going anywhere until I strike it rich,” he said.

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.

A poignant memorial to polar explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton from his crew has gone on display in Dundee after a journey of more than 7,000 miles from the South Atlantic.

Shackleton died in 1922 in South Georgia during his final expedition. The Hope Cross was constructed by crew members who could not attend his funeral.

The 3m (9.84ft) memorial is now on display beside RRS Discovery, the ship which first took Shackleton to Antarctica in 1901.

Its unveiling coincides with the release of a new documentary on Shackleton’s doomed Endurance expedition and the 2022 hunt for the sunken vessel.

The wooden cross stood for almost 100 years at King Edward Point, South Georgia, near Grytviken, before it was replaced with a replica in 2018 to preserve the original memorial from the elements.

The original cross weighs about 30kg (66lb) and was made with salvaged wood from a whaling station.

It was painted white to protect the wood, but decades of Antarctic weather have returned it to its natural state.

Dundee Heritage Trust heritage manager Sophie Hinde said: “The Quest crew members had to leave Ernest behind when he passed away to continue on the rest of the expedition.

“There were thoughts that his body would be taken to England for a funeral, but it was actually buried in Grytviken and the crew put up the cross because they wanted him to be memorialized.”

Its remote location meant few people were previously able to visit the memorial.

“If you wanted to go down to South Georgia, the only way to do it is on a cruise ship. There aren’t that many, and the season is quite short,” said Ms Hinde

“We were approached by the South Georgia Heritage Trust, who had the cross in a warehouse after it was taken down in 2018 for conservation reasons.

“They just wanted to give people the space to see it.”

The cross was taken on a three-month journey on the RRS David Attenborough from Grytviken to Harwich, before being briefly stored at the British Antarctic Survey in Cambridge.

Ms Hinde said: “Then we went down in a van and collected it, so it’s been quite a journey.

“It was actually in a very good condition.”

Interest in Shackleton’s adventures remains high more than a century after his death.

Ms Hinde said: “I think a lot of people appreciate his spirit of adventure.

“He’s probably best known for his Endurance expedition, where he rescued his crew after their ship had sunk in the Antarctic winter.

“His leadership is a thing that people come back to again and again – the adventures that he went on are incredible.”

Ernest Shackleton was born in County Kildare, Ireland, in 1874.

In 1901, alongside explorer Robert Falcon Scott, he got closer to the South Pole than any other European explorer.

Shackleton’s most famous mission was his plan to cross the South Pole on board his ship The Endurance.

In 1915, the boat became trapped in ice, and his crew abandoned ship, crossing onto floating ice, where they decided they were going to live until they could be saved.

In April 1916, Shackleton took five crew members in a small boat in search of help for the others, where they travelled 807 miles (1,300km) of ocean before reaching the island of South Georgia.

The last voyage Ernest Shackleton took was on board the Quest in 1922.

He had planned to explore Alaska and islands nearby, but lost his funding.

Instead, he headed to the South Pole to explore islands around Antarctica but died of a heart attack on board the ship, aged 47.

The Hope Cross is on long-term loan from the South Georgia Museum.

Ms Hinde said: “Antarctica from 1901 to 1904 is the main expedition that we talk about here.

“But actually, the early age of Antarctic exploration ran right until this last expedition, the Quest in 1922, so it rounds off the stories that we tell her quite nicely.”

Shackleton’s granddaughter Alexandra will attend a private rededication ceremony to the cross later.

She said: “I am absolutely delighted to see the cross here in a city that my grandfather knew so well.

“Our family is very grateful to all who have made this possible.”

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.

Actors Kieran Culkin and Jesse Eisenberg have reunited on the red carpet at the London Film Festival to launch their latest film, a comedic spin on family and grief.

Culkin is best known for playing Roman Roy in the Emmy-winning Succession, while Eisenberg shot to fame playing Mark Zuckerberg in 2010’s The Social Network.

The pair’s new film A Real Pain, which is written and directed by Eisenberg, has been widely praised at film festivals and could have an outside chance of making waves in awards season.

Although the film looks like a standard bro-comedy from the trailer, it punches well above its weight and has more depth than audiences might expect.

Eisenberg and Culkin play two cousins who have very different temperaments. While Eisenberg’s character David is cerebral and family-oriented, Culkin’s Benji is haphazard and rebellious.

The pair are brought together for a visit to Poland following the death of their grandmother, a Jew who escaped the Holocaust and built a new life in the US.

Using the money their grandmother left specifically for the trip, David and Benji travel across the country together as part of a tour group, breaking off occasionally to find out about her life, while processing their grief in different ways.

The film also stars British actor Will Sharpe as the tour guide and Dirty Dancing’s Jennifer Grey as one of the other tourists.

The two US actors walked the red carpet ahead of the film’s UK premiere at the London Film Festival.

The film has received broadly positive reviews from critics. Tomris Laffly of Harper’s Bazaar described it as “understated, funny, and gradually heart-swelling”, adding: “Expect to hear about this one next award season.”

A Real Pain is a “frequently laugh-out-loud funny odd couple road trip movie whose emotional wallop sneaks up and floors you,” added the Hollywood Reporter’s David Rooney.

Culkin is praised for a “career-high performance” by Deadline’s Damon Wise. “Benji is a gift of a role, the kind that makes movie stars, and Eisenberg generously hands it to Culkin on a plate.”

There has been some consternation in awards circles, however, that Culkin is campaigning in the supporting actor category, when many consider him the film’s lead.

Vanity Fair’s Richard Lawson was cooler on the film, commenting A Real Pain “is slighter than expected and is thus easily overwhelmed by Culkin’s high shtick”.

“Sure, this film has conventional beats,” acknowledged Ema Sasic of Next Best Picture, “but that won’t keep you from enjoying it.”

Kristy Strouse from Film Inquiry agreed: “Amid the comedic elements, the film skillfully delves into the poignant contemplation of loss.”

Despite being a tight 90 minutes, A Real Pain packs in a lot of issues, hooking viewers in with snappy jokes which mask deeper themes that gradually emerge over the course of the film.

For viewers who found last year’s awards player The Zone of Interest hard going, A Real Pain tackles a not-dissimilar subject in a much more accessible way.

It is beautifully directed, bringing viewers along for the ride on a trip across Poland.

The country’s often charming scenery in the early parts of the film starkly contrasts with an affecting later visit to the Majdanek concentration camp and the house their grandmother had to leave behind.

Asked about working with Culkin on A Real Pain, Eisenberg told Esquire: “I really don’t like improv, but Kieran is such an unusual performer.

“He would say things that deviated from the script, and a lot of times they were just better.

“When I first heard something that was a deviation, it rang a false note for me because I had to look at the script for so long. But in the editing room we ended up going with some of Keiran’s improvs because they just felt natural to him.”

Culkin is one of several actors from Succession who have found huge success as a result of starring in the acclaimed HBO drama.

The series focused on a media mogul, played by Brian Cox, and his children battling to take over his empire. It was partly inspired by Rupert Murdoch’s family.

Culkin’s former Succession co-star Jeremy Strong also has a film at the festival – the Apprentice, about Donald Trump’s early years as a real estate tycoon.

And the show’s other former cast members Sarah Snook and J Smith Cameron have both recently starred in shows in London’s West End, as has theatre veteran Cox.

On 15 December 2021 Larry Lowe’s life changed.

He was 54, rarely ill, fit, healthy and running 10km most days – until he got the Pfizer Covid booster.

Within days he developed numbness in the right side of his face and started experiencing pain.

“I had lost all the feeling in my face, teeth, nose, tongue, eye, that whole side of my head,” he said.

These symptoms have spread through his body and intensified over the years, with doctors across the UK saying the vaccine is to blame.

Mr Lowe said that while he was not opposed to vaccines, his life had been destroyed.

The Public Health Agency (PHA) said the benefits of the vaccines in preventing Covid-19 and serious complications associated with it far outweighed any currently known side effects in the majority of patients.

Mr Lowe was referred to Guy’s and St Thomas’ Hospital in London where he was told the vaccine “was being recognized by my body as a toxin, and that was the cause of my problems”.

He broke down and cried.

“My wife and I were sitting in this little room in Westminster with about seven or eight consultants telling me the vaccine had destroyed the nerve on the right side of my face, and it was highly unlikely that I would ever recover from it,” he said.

In letters seen by BBC News NI, London pain management specialists confirmed the onset of symptoms could be attributed to the Covid vaccine booster.

In April 2024, Mr Lowe was diagnosed by a consultant neurologist at the Southern Health Trust with a “painful trigeminal neuropathy” which had “the Covid vaccine as its main causative factor”.

He also developed a small fibre sensory neuropathy which the consultant said “is also one of the post-vaccine related neurological presentations”.

“I struggle when I think about what another 10 years is going to do to me, because in the three years roughly that I’ve had this, it’s destroyed me and it’s getting worse,” Mr Lowe said.

Mr Lowe, from Omagh, said the small fibre neuropathy affected his entire body, from toes to fingertips.

He also suffers from dry eye syndrome and wears sunglasses inside and out because of his sensitivity to light.

“I feel as if there is a clamp on both sides of my head, squeezing it all the time,” he said.

“I’ve been told that my condition is progressive. It is going to get worse.

“I didn’t ask for this.

“I took the vaccine in good faith.

“I’ve just been left to just rot.”

“I’m in so much pain, my life is barely worth living, except for my family,” he said.

“I’m not me anymore.

“Before this I was in a rock band, lead guitar, singing, writing songs, recording albums, loving it.

“Now that’s just a memory.”

The former college lecturer and musician has had to medically retire.

“It’s very difficult to explain to people what living in chronic pain is, because people think of a toothache or breaking their leg.

“Once you break your leg, it starts to get better.

“My pain is actually getting worse every single day.”

Mr Lowe praised all the medical professionals he had seen, who he said “tried everything” to help him but all they could offer was medication.

“My GP has been fantastic,” he said.

“But he doesn’t have the magic wand that I need.”

Mr Lowe said he would like the stigma taken out of Covid vaccine injuries.

“Once I tell people that I have a vaccine injury, they sort of roll their eyes and think, oh, not another one,” he said.

“This is a real thing that I’ve been treated for a couple of years now.

“When you talk to people about vaccines they say, oh, you know what? It helps more people than it injures.

“Vaccines are fine, not for me, they’ve destroyed me.”

Mr Lowe said he had never been opposed to vaccinations which were tried and tested.

He added that he was not allowed to take any further vaccines.

Professor of European public health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, Martin McKee, said vaccines had been “absolutely essential” to allowing society to move on from the Covid-19 pandemic.

“Once the vaccines became available then the death rate fell markedly,” he said.

Prof McKee said all vaccines came with a risk of reactions and there would be “a small number of reactions” when a large number of people were vaccinated.

While he could not comment on individual cases, he said reactions like Mr Lowe’s were “exceedingly rare”.

Mr Lowe said he had exhausted all the medication and treatments available in the UK and they did not work.

“I want medical and psychological help,” he said.

“That’s the compensation I want.

“I want someone to recognize that the vaccine has done this.”

His wife Gini said life had been extremely tough.

“We’ve went from a fantastic, normal life to our world has been turned upside down,” she said.

She says Larry cries and screams at night with the pain.

“We have really lost part of Larry, and that’s hard to take,” she said.

Dr Louise Herron, deputy director of public health at the PHA said all vaccinations and medications could have some side effects.

“The most common side effects of the Covid-19 vaccine are mild and get better within a week,” she said.

“As with all vaccines and medicines, the safety of Covid-19 vaccines is being continually monitored.”

The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency is responsible for regulating medicines, including vaccines, and conducts robust safety monitoring and surveillance of all Covid-19 vaccines in the UK.

It said vaccination was the single most effective way to reduce deaths and severe illness from Covid-19.

Pfizer said patient safety was paramount and it took reports of adverse reactions very seriously.

It said hundreds of millions of doses had been administered globally “and the benefit-risk profile of the vaccine remains positive for all authorised indications and age groups”.

The small South Caucasus nation of Georgia has become a multi-billion dollar hub for the international used car market. The vehicles are mostly sourced from the US, and many appear to be ending up in Russia.

On the dusty outskirts of Rustavi, an industrial town 20km (12 miles) southeast of Georgia’s capital Tbilisi, is a vast area of open-air carparks.

Equivalent in size to more than 40 football pitches, it hosts thousands of vehicles up for sale.

You can find pretty much any automobile your heart desires – Mercedes, Porsches, Jaguars, Toyotas and, more recently, Teslas. They are all here.

One of the largest carparks is owned by Caucasus Auto Import (CAI), a company that buys used cars from auctions in the US. The vehicles have often been so badly damaged in accidents that they have been written-off by American insurance firms.

CAI says that its “team of experts” in the States will pick up the cars in person, and then arrange their export by container ship, 10,000km (6,000 miles) to a port on Georgia’s Black Sea coastline. The damaged cars will then be fixed by Georgian mechanics.

“Our company has contributed a lot to the renewal of the Georgian fleet of cars,” says David Gulashvili, CAI’s deputy chief executive. “When we started our business in 2004, Georgian automotive infrastructure was totally Soviet Union produced, like [Soviet brands] Lada and Vaz.”

He says that his company has responded to “a lot of demand for Western-produced vehicles”. Today the firm has 600 employees.

Last year, Georgia imported $3.1bn (£2.4bn) worth of cars, according to official figures. It then exported vehicles to a value of $2.1bn, mainly to former Soviet republics in the Caucasus and Central Asia. Cars are in fact Georgia’s second-largest export by value, after copper ore.

Across the huge car market in Rustavi, curious customers are on the lookout for a deal. Each car has a card on the inside of its windscreen indicating price, engine size, and date of manufacture.

Alisher Tezikbayev has travelled here from Kazakhstan. He and a group of his friends are exploring the Toyota section.

“We’ve been re-exporting cars from Georgia for about 3.5 years. We send cars to Kazakhstan and organise auto tours, when clients come to Georgia to pick their own car,” says Mr Tezikbayev, who is posting videos to his 100k followers on Tik Tok.

Georgia used to export second-hand US and European cars to its northern neighbour Russia, with whom it shares a border. But that has officially stopped as a result of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

In September 2023, the Georgian Revenue Service announced that, in line with the then latest Western sanctions against Russia, it was restricting the re-export and transit of automobiles imported from the US or Europe to Russia and Belarus.

And Georgian officials have long denied that the country has been complicit in aiding Russia’s evasion of the trade embargoes.

Yet a recent investigation by Georgian media publication Ifacti showed numerous loopholes exploited by an army of car dealers on both sides of the Russian-Georgian border.

David Gulashvili says that his company no longer has any trade with Russia. “From day one of the war we have restricted any kind of transactions from Russia, any kind of exports to Russia. You will not see a single car exported by Caucasus Auto Import to Russia.”

However, he adds that there is no existing mechanism to monitor the final destination for re-exported cars going to other countries.

And since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine there has been a steep rise in exports of used cars to Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Armenia – all of which are members of the Russia-led customs union.

It means that a vehicle registered in any of those countries can be driven to Russia with minimal tariffs.

Figures from Georgia’s national statistics agency suggest that cars are indeed going on to Russia. It says that in 2022 Georgia exported 7,352 used cars to Kazakhstan, while in 2023 the number was 39,896, a more than five-fold increase.

While the geopolitical machinations rumble on, the underling success of Georgia’s second-hand car industry can be explained by its geography. It has access to Europe via its Black Sea ports, and to Central Asia via Baku, on neighbouring Azerbaijan’s Caspian coast.

Another key component is the affordable cost of labour when it comes to fixing salvaged cars.

“These cars that have been damaged in the US, most of the time it does not make economical sense to rebuild them in the US,” says Mr Gulashvili.

“This is because of the cost of human resources, service costs are much higher, and the legal costs to get those cars back on the road, is time consuming and very expensive process.

“In the US rebuilding of a car, and making it legal again, takes six months and let’s say $5,000. It takes $1,000 and one month in Georgia to fix the same car.”

In a sprawling warehouse on the outskirts of Tbilisi, Zaza Andreashvili leans over a car engine fixed to a specialised stand. The mechanic points to the cylinders, which he has just cleaned.

“The engine is the heart of the vehicle. Just like humans, if your heart stop working, you die. The same with the cars, if engine stops working, car dies.”

Mr Andreashvili has been repairing car engines for nearly 30 years. “We used to learn through books, there was no internet at the time,” he says.

Next door to Mr Andreashvili’s workshop, there is a banging noise. Roma and his apprentice Boris specialise in body work repairs.

With a panel-beater, Boris is reshaping the near side wing of a mangled automobile. Roma, in his brown t-shirt with USA written in the front, says he’s been repairing cars for 50 years.

“Mercedes has the best metal, Volvo and Toyotas are also good, but with some cars the body work is so thin it’s like a piece of paper,” he says.

While most cars imported into Georgia are petrol and diesel-powered, Mr Gulashvili says there is a fast-growing demand for electric, and particularly hybrid vehicles.

“About 30% of the cars we are bringing right now, is hybrid. It is not fully electric, but it’s hybrid like Toyota Prius. The growth rate is off the charts, it’s like 300 – 400% rate quarter over quarter.”

The biggest re-sale market for Teslas, adds Mr Gulashvili, is Ukraine, where he has 100 members of staff based.

“It’s very expensive and it’s very risky, but still we’re trying to get traction there. We are also importing a lot of pickup trucks into Ukraine, which are used to fight against Russia.”

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, says News 24.

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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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.”

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.”

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 aeroplane.

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 bringing a hot drink and avoiding areas where views of the sky are obstructed.

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.

He’s the character crafting weapons and upgrading armour as gamers fight their way past rats, bears and centipedes – a sword-wielding blacksmith with a tiger’s head and… a Brummie accent.

Actor James Alexander, from Birmingham, was picked to play Yin Tiger for the English voiceover of the Chinese video game hit Black Myth: Wukong.

The creators loved his accent so much they encouraged him to keep it for the part.

His Brummie tones are now being heard through millions of headphones across the world, with the game selling 10 million copies in the first three days of its release in August.

Black Myth: Wukong has sparked a tourism boom in China, prompting fans to visit breathtaking locations featured and also introduces a new audience to the 16th Century Chinese novel on which it is based.

The success of the game was “well deserved”, said the voice actor.

“I woke up the morning it was released and had a message on my phone saying there were two million people playing, which was just mad,” he said.

“A lot of love has clearly gone into it.”

The 32-year-old was cast by British creative services company PitStop Productions to play five parts.

The Chinese client had provided detailed character briefs, he explained, “and seeing that as a voice actor you get excited thinking ‘oh I can spice that up a bit'”.

The character of Yin Tiger, was “a bit stoic and a bit irritable as well,” he said.

“The Brummie accent leans in nicely to having that kind of humble nature to it, but also you can be quite threatening with it as well.”

Yin Tiger is one of dozens of bosses players encounter as they move through the game’s storyline.

He also voices a Scorpion Lord “who’s drunk because he’s got an unfortunate back story where he lost his wife to a large chicken”.

A “dim-witted” rat man was given a soft West Country accent, and a “very threatening ox” was “a bit more Cockney”, he explained.

The actor is no stranger to working on popular releases, having voiced about 20 characters in last year’s hit game Baldur’s Gate 3.

Others he appears in include Brawl Stars, Warhammer 40K: Darktide, Horizon Call of the Mountain and the latest TV adaptation of Watership Down.

The former supermarket worker said he had had no formal acting training and is “constantly kicking myself I get to be part of these insane stories and experiences”.

He had always been a mimic he explained – trying to replicate voices he heard on TV or games – and had initially started applying for opportunities through casting websites.

“That was seven years ago and if you’d said to me then I would be in this game or that game I wouldn’t have believed you,” he said.

Beth Park from PitStop, with studios in London, said she had cast and directed more than 60 actors playing “a couple of hundred” parts in the Chinese game.

A snippet of it, previously released on YouTube, had resulted in a “definite buzz”, garnering millions of views ahead of its release.

But the numbers playing the game on its release were “just crazy”, she said.

Within 24 hours, it broke the record for the most-played single-player title ever released on gaming platform Steam.

It is the Chinese video game industry’s first AAA release – a title typically given to big-budget games from major companies.

Some early controversy surrounding its release has not dented its popularity with fans, with the game reportedly selling more than 20 million copies.

“I’ve worked on games that are incredibly popular in the past, and it’s always just really lovely to have your work experienced by so many people,” Ms Park said.

The action game is based on the classic 16th Century Chinese novel Journey to the West, with players taking on the role of the Destined One – a monkey with supernatural powers in search of magic objects.

The lead character is based on Sun Wukong, or the Monkey King, a key character in the classic which was “incredibly important” in Chinese culture, added Ms Park.

For the English voiceover version, the Chinese company had been keen to use British regional accents, she explained.

“But I didn’t want the player to think ‘now we’re in a very specific part of Britain’, so I went more for the character fitting the type of voice – so I tried to keep it fairly broad.

“We just snuck in a few accents here and there if it felt right.”

Megan Richards, who plays one of the game’s Spider Sisters, said her first experience of voicing a video game had been “incredibly positive”.

“It’s amazing the sort of worldwide and universal reach that it has had,” she said.

The actor is also starring in Amazon Studio’s production The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, playing Harfoot Poppy Proudfellow, of which series two has just been released.

She said the two jobs were “incomparable”.

“For this season we had three units going, so three separate crews working at the same time, which is massive,” she said.

“And then compare that to just three people working in a booth.”

Her Singaporean heritage and Mandarin lessons as a child had helped her identify and pronounce some of the Chinese names in the game,” she explained.

“I have never been part of a project that has Asian influence in it, so it’s really nice to have that background and also able to see that representation in a video game.”

Tourists had been flocking to remote parts of China to visit ancient temples and pagodas featured in the game after a government department released a video showing the real-world attractions.

“I can only imagine how beautiful they are in real life,” added Ms Park.

“Games are intangible, so it’s really nice when real world things happen because of the work.”

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.”

Four soldiers have been killed and more than 60 other people injured in a drone strike targeting an army base in northern Israel, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has said.

The IDF added seven soldiers had been severely injured in the attack on a base “adjacent to Binyamina” – a town around 20 miles (33km) to the south of Haifa.

Hezbollah has claimed responsibility for the attack, which it said targeted a training camp of the IDF’s Golani Brigade in the area, which is based between Tel Aviv and Haifa.

The armed group’s media office said the strike was in response to Israeli attacks in southern Lebanon and Beirut on Thursday.

The group said it targeted the camp in northern Israel using a “swarm of drones”.

The Israeli ambulance service, Magen David Adom (MDA), said 61 people had been injured in the attack – including three critically. It added 37 of them had been taken to eight regional hospitals, either by ambulance or helicopter.

In a statement before the IDF confirmed the deaths, MDA said that alongside the three critically injured, 18 of the victims were in a moderate condition, 31 sustained mild injuries and nine people were “suffering anxiety”.

The reason for the discrepancy in the number of critical injuries between MDA and the IDF is not clear.

Israeli censorship rules had initially prevented media outlets reporting exactly where or what was targeted, before the IDF confirmed it was the Binyamina base.

Some Israeli media outlets have reported the base was hit by a low-level drone launched from Lebanon – a relatively unsophisticated weapon that appears not to have activated early-warning alarms.

Throughout the evening, television bulletins, social media posts and online reports showed footage of emergency vehicles, including helicopters, taking casualties to hospitals across northern Israel.

Many of the wounded have been evacuated to Hillel Yaffe Medical Centre in nearby Hadera – with others being taken to hospitals in Tel Hashomer, Haifa, Afula and Netanya.

Details are still scarce but many of the injured appear to have been in a communal canteen at the time and were caught completely by surprise. Images circulating on social media appear to show an empty mess hall with a hole in the roof.

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.

In China, people are following the US election with keen interest and some anxiety. They fear what could happen next at home and abroad, whoever wins the White House.

“None of us wants to see a war,” says Mr Xiang, as the music in the park reaches a crescendo and a nearby dancer elegantly spins his partner.

He has come to Ritan Park to learn dance with other seniors.

They gather here regularly, just a few hundred metres from the Beijing home of the American ambassador in China.

In addition to new dance moves, the looming US election is also on their minds.

It comes at a pivotal time between the two superpowers, with tensions over Taiwan, trade and international affairs running high.

“I am worried that Sino-US relations are getting tense,” says Mr Xiang who’s in his sixties. Peace is what we want, he adds.

A crowd has gathered to listen to this conversation. Most are reluctant to give their full names in a country where it is permissible to talk about the US president, but being critical of their own leader could get them in trouble.

They say they are worried about war – not just about a conflict between Washington and Beijing but an escalation of current wars in the Middle East and Ukraine.

• Election polls – is Harris or Trump ahead?
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That is why Mr Meng, in his 70s, hopes Donald Trump will win the election.

“Although he imposes economic sanctions on China, he does not wish to start or fight a war. Mr Biden starts more wars so more ordinary people dislike him. It is Mr Biden who supports Ukraine’s war and both Russia and Ukraine suffer great loss from the war,” he said.

Some sisters recording a dance routine for their social media page chip in. “Donald Trump said in the debate that he will end the war in Ukraine 24 hours after he takes office,” says one.

“About Harris, I know little about her, we think she follows the same route as President Biden who supports war.”

Their opinions echo a key message being propagated on Chinese state media.

China has called on the international community to negotiate a ceasefire in Gaza while aligning itself with what it describes as its “Arab brothers” in the Middle East and has been quick to blame the US for its unwavering support of Israel.

On Ukraine, Foreign Minister Wang Yi told the United Nations that China was playing a “constructive role” as he accused Washington of “exploiting the situation for selfish gain”.

While most analysts believe Beijing does not have a favourite in this race for the White House, many would agree that Kamala Harris is an unknown quantity to Chinese people and the country’s leaders.

• Listen to Laura Bicker discuss China/US on The Global Story
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But some believe she will be more stable than Trump when it comes to one of the biggest flashpoints between the US and China – Taiwan.

“I don’t like Trump. I don’t think there is a good future between the US and China – there are too many problems, the global economy, and also the Taiwan problem,” says a father of a four-year-old boy in the park for a family day out.

He fears their differences over Taiwan could eventually lead to conflict.

“I don’t want it. I don’t want my son to go to the military,” he says as the young boy pleads to go back on the slide.

China claims the self-governing island of Taiwan as its own and President Xi has said “reunification is inevitable”, vowing to retake it by force if necessary.

The US maintains official ties with Beijing and recognises it as the only Chinese government under its “One China policy” but it also remains Taiwan’s most significant international supporter.

Washington is bound by law to provide Taiwan with defensive weapons and Joe Biden has said that the US would defend Taiwan militarily, breaking with a stance known as strategic ambiguity.

Harris has not gone that far. Instead, when asked in a recent interview she stated a “commitment to security and prosperity for all nations.”

Donald Trump is instead focused on a deal – not diplomacy. He has called on Taiwan to pay for its protection.

“Taiwan took our chip business from us. I mean, how stupid are we? They’re immensely wealthy,” he said in a recent interview. “Taiwan should pay us for defence.”

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One of their biggest worries when it comes to the former US president is that he has also made it clear he plans to impose 60% tariffs on Chinese goods.

This is the last thing many businesses in China want right now as the country is trying to manufacture enough goods to export itself out of an economic downturn.

Ministers in China bristle with contempt at US-led trade tariffs which were first imposed by Donald Trump.

President Biden has also levied tariffs, targeting Chinese electronic vehicles and solar panels. Beijing believes these moves are an attempt to curb its rise as a global economic power.

“I don’t think it will do any good to the US to impose tariffs on China,” says Mr Xiang, echoing the sentiments of many we met. The tariffs will hit the US people, he adds, and increase costs for ordinary people.

Many of the the younger generation, while patriotic, also look towards the US for trends and culture – and that, perhaps more than any diplomatic mission, has power too.

In the park, Lily and Anna, aged 20 and 22, who get their news from TikTok, echo some of the national messages of pride spread by Chinese state media when it comes to this competitive relationship.

“Our country is a very prosperous and powerful country,” they say, dressed in their national costumes. They love China, they said, although they also adore the Avengers and particularly Captain America.

Taylor Swift is on their playlists too.

Others like 17-year-old Lucy hope to study in America one day.

As she cycles on an exercise bike, newly installed in the park, she dreams about visiting Universal Studios one day – after her graduation.

Lucy says she is excited to see there is a female candidate. “Harris’s candidacy marks an important step forward for gender equality, and it’s encouraging to see her as a presidential candidate.”

• Can Xi fix China’s economy?

The People’s Republic of China has never had a female leader and not a single woman currently sits on the 24-member team known as the Politburo that makes up the most senior members of the Chinese Communist Party.

Lucy is also worried about the intense competition between the two countries and believes the best way for China and the Uned States to improve their relationship is to have more people-to-people exchangesit.

Both sides have vowed to work towards this, and yet the number of US students studying in China has fallen from around 15,000 in 2011 to 800.

Xi hopes to open the door for 50,000 American students to come to China in the next five years. But in a recent interview with the BBC, the US ambassador to China, Nicholas Burns, accused parts of the Chinese government of not taking this pledge seriously.

He said that on dozens of occasions the security forces or a government ministry have prevented Chinese citizens from participating in public diplomacy run by the US.

On the other side, Chinese students and academics have reported being unfairly targeted by US border officials.

Lucy, however, remains optimistic that she will be able to travel to America one day, to promote Chinese culture. And, as the music strikes up nearby, she urges Americans to visit and experience China.

“We may be a little bit reserved sometimes and not as outgoing or as extrovert as US people, but we are welcoming,” she says as she heads off to join her family.

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 fifth 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 only eighteen months 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 as its 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.

The US says it will deploy a high-altitude anti-missile system and a US military crew to Israel to help bolster its air defences after a missile attack from Iran earlier this month.

A Pentagon statement said President Joe Biden had ordered the Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense (Thaad) battery and its crew be sent “to defend Israel”.

Iran launched almost 200 ballistic missiles towards Israel on 1 October. The Israeli military said most were intercepted, but a number struck central and southern Israel.

Israel has not yet said how it will respond to the attack, but Defence Minister Yoav Gallant has said it will be “deadly, precise and above all surprising”.

Iran has in turn said it will not let any attack by Israel go unanswered.

The Pentagon said the Thaad deployment “underscores the United States’ ironclad commitment to the defense of Israel, and to defend Americans in Israel, from any further ballistic missile attacks by Iran”.

The US previously sent a Thaad battery to the Middle East after Hamas attacked southern Israel on 7 October last year. It previously sent a Thaad battery to Israel in 2019 for training and an air defence exercise.

Iran said its missile barrage was a response to Israel’s assassinations of the Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and a senior Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) officer in Beirut, and of the Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran.

Israel has dramatically escalated its campaign against Iran-backed Hezbollah in recent weeks, carrying out deadly air strikes across southern and eastern Lebanon and in parts of Beirut.

Before that, Israel and Hezbollah had been trading cross-border fire on a near daily basis since last October, when Hezbollah began firing into Israel which it said was a show of support for Palestinians in Gaza. It had said it would stop firing if there was a ceasefire in Gaza.

However, international efforts to get Israel and Hamas to agree to a ceasefire in Gaza have so far failed.

A man in illegal possession of a shotgun and a loaded handgun was arrested at an intersection near Donald Trump’s rally in Coachella, California, on Saturday, police said.

The 49-year-old suspect, Vem Miller, was driving a black SUV when he was stopped at a security checkpoint by deputies, who located the two firearms and a “high-capacity magazine”.

Mr Miller was then taken into custody “without incident”, the Riverside County Sheriff’s office said, and booked on possession of a loaded firearm and possession of a high-capacity magazine.

The US Secret Service said Trump “was not in any danger”, adding that the incident did not impact protective operations.

A local sheriff called the suspect a “lunatic” and his office added the encounter did not affect the safety of Trump or the rally’s attendees.

Many questions remain unanswered.

While Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco said it was impossible to speculate about what was in the mind of the suspect, he said he “truly believed” that his officers had prevented a third assassination attempt.

He added that it might be impossible to prove that this was the man’s intent.

A federal law enforcement official told CBS News there was no indication of an assassination attempt connected to this incident.

Federal authorities say they are still investigating the incident, and it would be up to them to pursue any additional charges.

Mr Bianco is an elected official and a Republican who has previously expressed support for Trump. He is also acting as a surrogate for Trump’s re-election campaign.

The incident – which occurred at 16:59 PDT (00:59 GMT) – an hour before Trump was scheduled to appear on stage – highlights, once again, the intense security operation around him, and the dangers facing the former president, with just over three weeks to go until the election.

It follows two high-profile alleged assassination attempts on Trump earlier this year.

Mr Miller was was charged with two misdemeanour weapons charges and was released on a $5,000 (£3,826) bail. No federal charges have been filed.

In a police news conference earlier on Sunday, Mr Bianco warned he might not be able to “give all of the information… because of what we’re doing”.

The sheriff added that as the suspect approached an outside perimeter, near the location of the rally, he “gave all indications that he was allowed to be there”.

But as the suspect got to the inside perimeter, “many irregularities popped up”, Sheriff Bianco added, explaining that the vehicle had a fake licence plate and was in “disarray” inside.

Multiple passports with multiple names and multiple driving licences were found in the car, the sheriff said, adding that the licence plate was “home-made” and not registered.

He added that the suspect had told authorities he was a member of the far-right group called Sovereign Citizens.

He said the licence plate was also “indicative of a group of individuals that claim to be Sovereign Citizens”, but he had not concluded that Mr Miller was a member.

“I wouldn’t say it’s a militant group. It’s just a group that doesn’t believe in government and government control,” he said. “They don’t believe that government and laws apply to them.”

The US Attorney’s Office, Secret Service, and FBI are aware of the arrest, according to a statement from federal authorities.

“The US Secret Service assesses that the incident did not impact protective operations and former President Trump was not in any danger,” the statement said.

“While no federal arrest has been made at this time, the investigation is ongoing. The US Attorney’s Office, US Secret Service, and FBI extend their gratitude to the deputies and local partners who helped ensure the safety of last night’s events.”

Security surrounding Trump has been heavily increased in the wake of previous alleged assassination attempts.

The Saturday before Mr Miller’s arrest, Trump held his second rally in Butler, Pennsylvania this year, the same place were his ear was bloodied after a sniper fired multiple shots in his direction, killing one person in the crowd.

Another man is currently in jail after he was arrested outside the Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach in September. The man was spotted hiding in bushes near the golf course with the muzzle of a rifle sticking out through the shrubbery.

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

The UN peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon says Israeli tanks forced their way into one of its positions early on Sunday morning.

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 Israeli border, 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.

The IDF offered a different version of events, saying it had encroached on a Unifil position to evacuate soldiers who had been wounded by an anti-tank missile.

It said two soldiers had been “seriously injured” in the attack, with others suffering lesser degrees of injury.

“For the sake of evacuating the wounded, two tanks drove backwards, in a place where they could not advance otherwise in light of the threat of shooting, a few metres towards the Unifil position,” the IDF said.

It added that during the incident, a smoke screen was fired to aid the evacuation – and that it had “maintained continuous contact” with Unifil, stressing there was “no threat to the Unifil force from IDF activities”.

UN secretary general António Guterres warned any attacks on peacekeepers “may constitute a war crime”, adding that “Unifil personnel and its premises must never be targeted”.

“Attacks against peacekeepers are in breach of international law, including international humanitarian law,” Mr Guterres said, according to a statement from his spokesman.

The incident is the latest in a growing number of encounters between Unifil and Israeli forces.

Israel has repeatedly urged the peacekeeping force to withdraw from areas of southern Lebanon where fighting was taking place, after it began a ground incursion on 30 September targeting the armed group Hezbollah.

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

Unifil has so far refused these requests.

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.

The IDF has yet to comment on that incident. But it alleged that Hezbollah had fired around 25 rockets and missiles in the last month from sites located near Unifil sites. It accused the armed group of “exploiting their proximity to UN forces”.

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”.

Israel has previously asked Unifil to withdraw north by 5km (3 miles).

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”.

“This is the most dangerous of all front lines,” says Oleksandr, the head of a medical unit for the Ukrainian army’s 25th Brigade.

We are in the treatment room of a cramped makeshift field unit – the first point of treatment for injured soldiers.

“The Russian Federation is pushing very hard. We have not been able to stabilise the front. Each time the front line moves, we also move.”

We are close to Pokrovsk, a small mining city about 60km (37 miles) to the north-west of the regional capital, Donetsk.

The medics tell us they recently treated 50 soldiers in one day – numbers rarely seen before during the course of this war. The casualties are brought in for treatment at this secret location after dusk, when there is less of a chance of being attacked by armed Russian drones.

The Ukrainian troops have been injured in the ferocious battle to defend Pokrovsk. Just months ago, this was considered a relatively safe place – home to about 60,000 people, its streets lined with restaurants, cafes and markets. Soldiers would often come from the front line to the city for a break.

Now, it feels like a ghost town. More than three-quarters of its population have left.

Since Russia captured the city of Avdiivka in February, the speed of its advance in the Donestk region has been swift. At the start of October, it captured the key city of Vuhledar.

The Ukrainian government agrees with the soldiers we meet on the ground, that fighting around Pokrovsk is the most intense.

“The Pokrovsk direction leads the number of enemy attacks,” Kyiv stated this week – claiming that, in total, the Armed Forces of Ukraine had repelled about 150 “enemy” attacks on most days in the past two weeks.

In the field unit, six miles from the front, army medic Tania holds the arm of Serhii, a soldier with a bloodied bandage covering most of his face, and guides him into an examination room.

“His condition is serious,” says Tania.

Serhii has shrapnel injuries to one of his eyes, his skull and brain. The doctors quickly clean up his wounds and inject antibiotics.

Five more soldiers arrive soon after – they are uncertain how they received their injuries. The barrage of fire can be so fierce and sudden, their wounds could have been caused by mortars or explosives dropped from drones.

“It’s dangerous here. It is difficult, mentally and physically. We are all tired, but we are coping,” says Yuriy, the commander of all the brigade’s medical units.

All the soldiers we see were injured at different times of the morning, but they have only arrived after nightfall, when it is safer.

Such delays can increase the risk of death and disability, we are told.

Another soldier, Taras, has tied a tourniquet around his arm to stop the bleeding from a shrapnel wound, but now – more than 10 hours later – his arm looks swollen and pale and he can’t feel it. A doctor tells us it might have to be amputated.

In the past 24 hours, two soldiers have been brought in dead.

What we see at the field unit points to the ferocity of the battle for Pokrovsk – an important transport hub. The rail link that passes through was used regularly to evacuate civilians from front-line towns to safer parts of Ukraine, and to move supplies for the military.

Ukraine knows what is at stake here.

The threat of Russian drones is ever present – one hovers just outside the medical unit while we are there. It makes evacuations from the front line extremely hard. The building’s windows are boarded up so the drones can’t look inside, but the minute anyone steps out of the door, they are at risk of being hit.

The drones are also a threat to the remaining citizens of Pokrovsk.

“We constantly hear them buzzing – they stop and look inside the windows,” says Viktoriia Vasylevska, 50, one of the remaining, war-weary residents. But even she has now agreed to be evacuated from her home, on the particularly dangerous eastern edge of the city.

She is surprised by how fast the front line has moved west towards Pokrovsk.

“It all happened so quickly. Who knows what will happen here next. I’m losing my nerve. I have panic attacks. I’m afraid of the nights.”

Viktoriia says she has barely any money and will have to start her life from scratch somewhere else, but it is too scary to stay here now.

“I want the war to end. There should be negotiations. There is nothing left in the lands taken by Russia anyway. Everything is destroyed and all the people have fled,” she says.

We find eroded morale among most of the people we speak to – the toll of more than two and a half years of a grinding war.

Most of Pokrovsk is now without power and water.

At a school, there is a queue of people carrying empty canisters waiting to use a communal tap. They tell us that a few days ago, four taps were working, but now they are down to just one.

Driving through the streets, pockets of destruction are visible, but the city hasn’t yet been bombed out like others that have been fiercely fought over.

We meet Larysa, 69, buying sacks of potatoes at one of a handful of food stalls still open at the otherwise shuttered-down central market.

“I’m terrified. I can’t live without sedatives,” she says. On her small pension, she doesn’t think she would be able to afford rent somewhere else. “The government might take me somewhere and shelter me for a while. But what after that?”

Another shopper, 77-year-old Raisa chimes in. “You can’t go anywhere without money. So we just sit in our home and hope that this will end.”

Larysa thinks it’s time to negotiate with Russia – a sentiment that might have been unthinkable for most in Ukraine some time ago. But at least here, near the front line, we found many voicing it.

“So many of our boys are dying, so many are wounded. They’re sacrificing their lives, and this is going on and on,” she says.

From a mattress on the floor of an evacuation van, 80-year-old Nadiia has no sympathy for the advancing Russian forces. “Damn this war! I’m going to die,” she wails. “Why does [President] Putin want more land? Doesn’t he have enough? He has killed so many people.”

Nadiia can’t walk. She used to drag herself around her house, relying on the help of neighbours. Just a handful of them have stayed back, but under the constant threat of bombardment, she has decided to leave even though she doesn’t know where she will go.

But there are those who are not yet leaving town.

Among them are locals working to repair war-damaged infrastructure.

“I live on one of the streets closest to the front line. Everything is burnt out around my house. My neighbours died after their home was shelled,” Vitaliy tells us, as he and his co-workers try to fix electrical lines.

“But I don’t think it’s right to abandon our men. We have to fight until we have victory and Russia is punished for its crimes.”

His resolve is not shared by 20-year-old Roman, who we meet while he is working to fix a shell-damaged home.

“I don’t think the territory we’re fighting for is worth human lives. Lots of our soldiers have died. Young men who could have had a future, wives and children. But they had to go to the front line.”

At dawn one morning, we drive towards the battlefield outside the city. Fields of dried sunflowers line the sides of the roads. There is barely any cover, and so we drive at breakneck speed in order to protect ourselves against Russian drone attacks.

We hear loud explosions as we near the front line.

At a Ukrainian artillery position, Vadym fires a Soviet-era artillery gun. It emits a deafening sound and blows dust and dried leaves off the ground. He runs to shelter in an underground bunker, keeping safe from Russian retaliation and waiting for the coordinates of the next Ukrainian strike.

“They [Russia] have more manpower and weapons. And they send their men onto the battlefield like they’re canon fodder,” he says.

But he knows that if Pokrovsk falls, it could open a gateway to the Dnipro region – just 32km (20 miles) from Pokrovsk – and their job will become even more difficult.

“Yes, we are tired – and many of our men have died and been wounded – but we have to fight, otherwise the result will be catastrophic.”

The Australian Republican Movement (ARM) has launched a campaign branding King Charles’s upcoming visit to the country as the “farewell tour” of the British monarchy.

They say the tongue-in-check push – which includes a merchandise collection – is aimed at sparking debate about the role of the Crown in modern Australia, but monarchists say it is offensive.

The royal tour, from 18 to 26 October, marks the first visit from a monarch down under in more than a decade and will be King Charles’s longest trip since his cancer diagnosis.

It also comes a year after Australia’s unsuccessful Voice to Parliament referendum, which many say has stalled momentum for another referendum.

The nation has already voted against becoming a republic once, in 1999, however public support for the constitutional change has grown since then.

On satirical posters, T-shirts, beer coasters and other paraphernalia, ARM’s campaign depicts the King, Queen and Prince of Wales as aging rock stars and urges Australians “young and old” to “wave goodbye to royal reign”.

“We expect a full-time, fully committed head of state whose only allegiance is to us – a unifying symbol at home and abroad,” the movement’s Co-Chair Esther Anatolitis said in a statement on Monday.

“It’s time for Australia to say ‘thanks, but we’ve got it from here’,” she added.

The organisation cited research it commissioned suggesting 92% of Australians are either “supporters of a republic” or “open to it”, as well as a finding that at least 40% of people surveyed didn’t know the country’s head of state was a foreign monarch.

Independent polling paints a different picture though, with one survey suggesting that roughly 35% of people want to remain a constitutional monarchy.

The Australian Monarchist League (AML) has described the ARM polling as “inflated”, while also criticising its new campaign as “terribly disrespectful to Charles given his ongoing cancer battle”.

“He should be applauded for his bravery, not insulted,” National Chairman Philip Benwell said.

Australia’s Prime Minister is a long-term republican but his government put any plans to hold a vote on breaking away from the British monarchy on ice earlier this year, saying it was no longer a priority issue.

Over the weekend, King Charles confirmed he had exchanged letters with the ARM ahead of his visit, reiterating the palace’s longstanding policy that it was up to Australians to make decisions about their future.

Constitutional votes in Australia are rare and difficult to pass, requiring a ‘double majority’ – support from more than half of the nation overall, and a majority in at least four of its six states. Only eight of 44 referendums have succeeded and almost all had bipartisan support.

The Voice referendum – which would have recognised First Nations people in the constitution and allowed them to form a body to advise the parliament – was overwhelmingly rejected after a bruising debate.

In a few hours, a spacecraft should blast-off from Florida on the hunt for signs of alien life.

Its destination is Europa, a deeply-mysterious moon orbiting the distant planet Jupiter.

Trapped under its icy surface could be a vast ocean with double the amount of water on Earth.

The Europa Clipper spacecraft will chase a European mission that left last year, but using a cosmic piggyback, it will overtake and arrive first.

That won’t be until 2030 but what it finds could change what we know about life in our solar system.

Years in the making, the Europa Clipper launch was delayed at the last minute after hurricane Milton blasted Florida this week.

The spacecraft was rushed indoors for shelter, but after checking the launchpad at Cape Canaveral for damage, engineers have now given the go-ahead for lift-off at 1206 local time (1706 BST) on 14 October.

“If we discover life so far away from the Sun, it would imply a separate origin of life to the earth,” says Mark Fox-Powell, a planetary microbiologist at the Open University.

“That is hugely significant, because if that happens twice in our solar system, it could mean life is really common,” he says.

Located 628m km from Earth, Europa is just a bit bigger than our moon, but that is where the similarity ends.

If it was in our skies, it would shine five times brighter because the water ice would reflect much more sunlight.

Its icy crust is up to 25km thick, and sloshing beneath, there could be a vast saltwater ocean. There may also be chemicals that are the ingredients for simple life.

Scientists first realised Europa might support life in the 1970s when, peering through a telescope in Arizona, they saw water ice.

Voyager 1 and 2 spacecrafts captured the first close-up images, and then in 1995 Nasa’s Galileo spacecraft flew past Europa taking some deeply puzzling pictures. They showed a surface riddled with dark, reddish-brown cracks; fractures that may contain salts and sulfur compounds that could support life.

The James Webb telescope has since taken pictures of what might be plumes of water ejected 100 miles (160 kilometers) above the moon’s surface

But none of those missions got close enough to Europa for long enough to really understand it.

Now scientists hope that instruments on Nasa’s Clipper spacecraft will map almost the entire moon, as well as collect dust particles and fly through the water plumes.

Britney Schmidt, associate professor of earth and atmospheric sciences at Cornell university in the US, helped to design a laser onboard that will see through the ice.

“I’m most excited about understanding Europa’s plumbing. Where’s the water? Europa has the ice version of Earth’s subduction zones, magma chambers and tectonics – we’re going to try to see into those regions and map them,” she says.

Her instrument, which is called Reason, was tested in Antarctica.

But unlike on Earth, all the instruments on Clipper will be exposed to huge amounts of radiation which Prof Schmidt says is a “major concern.”

The spacecraft should fly past Europa about 50 times, and each time, it will be blasted with radiation equivalent to one million X-rays.

“Much of the electronics are in a vault that’s heavily shielded to keep out radiation,” Prof Schmidt explains.

The spaceship is the largest ever built to visit a planet and has a long journey ahead. Travelling 1.8 billion miles, it will orbit both the Earth and Mars to propel itself further towards Jupiter in what is called the sling-shot effect.

It cannot carry enough fuel to motor itself all the way alone, so it will piggyback off the momentum of Earth and Mars’s gravitational pull.

It will overtake JUICE, the European Space Agency’s spaceship that will also visit Europa on its way to another of Jupiter’s moons called Ganeymede.

Once Clipper approaches Europa in 2030 it will switch on its engines again to carefully manoeuvre itself into the right orbit.

Space scientists are very cautious when talking about the chances of discovering life- there is no expectation that they will find human-like creatures or animals

“We are searching for the potential for habitability and you need four things – liquid water, a heat source, and organic material. Finally those three ingredients need to be stable over a long enough period of time that something can happen,” explains Michelle Dougherty, professor of space physics at Imperial College in London.

And they hope that if they can understand the ice surface better, they will know where to land a craft on a future mission.

An international team of scientists with Nasa, the Jet Propulsion Lab and the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab will oversee the odyssey.

At a time when there is a space launch virtually every week, this mission promises something different, suggests Professor Fox-Powell.

“There’s no profit being made. This is about exploration and curiosity, and pushing back the boundaries of our knowledge of our place in the universe,” he says.