Killing Yahya Sinwar is Israel’s biggest victory so far in the war against Hamas in Gaza.

His death is a serious blow for Hamas, the organisation he turned into a fighting force that inflicted the biggest defeat on the state of Israel in its history.

He was not killed in a planned special forces operation, but in a chance encounter with Israeli forces in Rafah in southern Gaza.

A photo taken at the scene shows Sinwar, dressed in combat gear, lying dead in the rubble of a building that was hit by a tank shell.

Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, praised the soldiers and made clear that however big a victory, it was not the end of the war.

“Today we made clear once again what happens to those who harm us. Today we once again showed the world the victory of good over evil.

“But the war, my dear ones, is not over yet. It is difficult, and it is costing us dearly.”

“Great challenges still lie ahead of us. We need endurance, unity, courage, and steadfastness. Together we will fight, and with God’s help – together we will win.”

Netanyahu and the overwhelming proportion of Israelis who support the war in Gaza needed a victory.

The prime minister has repeated his war aims many times – destroying Hamas as a military and political force and bringing the hostages home.

Neither has been achieved, despite a year of war that has killed at least 42,000 Palestinians and left much of Gaza in ruins.

But the remaining hostages are not free and Hamas is fighting and sometimes killing Israeli troops.

Killing Sinwar was the victory Israel wanted. But until Netanyahu can claim that the other war aims have been accomplished, the war, as he says, will go on.

Yahya Sinwar was born in 1962 in a refugee camp in Khan Younis in the Gaza Strip. He was five years old when it was captured by Israel from Egypt in the 1967 Middle East war.

His family were among more than 700,000 Palestinians who fled or were expelled from their homes by Israeli forces in the 1948 war in which Israel won its independence.

His family came from the town now known as Ashkelon, which is close to the northern border of the Gaza Strip.

In his 20s, he was convicted by Israel of killing four Palestinian informers. During 22 years in jail he learnt Hebrew, studied his enemy and believed that he worked out how to fight them. His time in jail also meant Israel had his dental records and a sample of his DNA, which meant that they could identify his body.

Sinwar was released as one of more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners who were swapped in 2011 for a single Israel soldier, Gilad Shalit.

On 7 October last year, in a meticulously planned series of attacks, Sinwar and his men inflicted Israel’s worst-ever defeat – and a collective trauma that is still deeply felt.

The killing of around 1,200 Israelis, the hostage-taking and the celebrations of their enemies recalled for many Israelis the Nazi holocaust.

Sinwar’s own experience in a prisoner swap must have convinced him of the value and power of taking hostages.

In Tel Aviv families of the remaining 101 hostages in Gaza – Israel says half of them might already be dead – gathered in the square in which they have been gathering for a year, urging the Israeli government to launch a new negotiation to get their people home.

Einav Zangauker, mother of hostage Matan Zangauker appealed to the prime minister.

“Netanyahu, don’t bury the hostages. Go out now to the mediators and to the public and lay out a new Israeli initiative.”

“For my Matan and the rest of the hostages in the tunnels, time has run out. You have the victory pictures. Now bring a deal!”

“If Netanyahu doesn’t use this moment and doesn’t get up now to lay out a new Israeli initiative – even at the expense of ending the war – it means he has decided to abandon the hostages in an effort to prolong the war and fortify his rulership.

“We will not give up until everyone returns.”

Many Israelis believe that Netanyahu wants to prolong the war in Gaza to put off the day of reckoning for his share of the security failures that allowed Sinwar and his men to break into Israel, and to postpone perhaps indefinitely the resumption of his trial on serious corruption charges.

He denies those accusations, insisting that only what he calls ‘total victory’ in Gaza over Hamas will restore Israeli security.

Like other news organisations, Israel does not let the BBC cross into Gaza except on rare, supervised trips with the army.

In the ruins of Khan Yunis, the birthplace of Sinwar, Palestinians interviewed for the BBC by local trusted freelancers were defiant. They said the war would go on.

“This war is not dependent on Sinwar, Haniyeh, or Mishal, nor on any leader or official,” said Dr Ramadan Faris.

“It’s a war of extermination against the Palestinian people, as we all know and understand. The issue is much bigger than Sinwar or anyone else.”

Adnan Ashour said some people were saddened, and others were indifferent about Sinwar.

“They’re not just after us. They want the entire Middle East. They’re fighting in Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen… This is a war between us and the Jews since 1919, over 100 years.”

He was asked whether the death of Sinwar would affect Hamas.

“I hope not, God willing. Let me explain: Hamas is not just Sinwar… It’s the cause of a people.”

The war goes on in Gaza. Twenty five Palestinians were killed in a raid on northern Gaza. Israel said it hit a Hamas command centre. Doctors at the local hospital said the scores of wounded that they treated were civilians.

Parachute drops of aid resumed after the Americans said Israel had to allow in more food and relief supplies.

Every leader of Hamas since the 1990s has been killed by Israel, but there’s always been a successor. As Israel celebrates killing Sinwar, Hamas still has its hostages and is still fighting.

Yahya Sinwar, the leader of Hamas, has been killed by Israeli soldiers in southern Gaza, Israel has confirmed.

Sinwar had led the armed group in Gaza since 2017 and was described by Israel, the US and UK as the mastermind behind the 7 October attacks – when Hamas gunmen killed around 1,200 people in Israel and took 251 hostages.

Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, said the killing of the Hamas chief marked not the end but the “beginning of the end” of the year-long war in Gaza.

The Israeli military said Sinwar was among three militants killed on Wednesday in Rafah in the south of the territory.

It added that there were no signs of hostages at the site. It has previously been claimed that Sinwar would travel with Israeli hostages as a means of protection.

Three gunmen were sighted by Israeli soldiers running from house to house, Israel Defense Forces (IDF) spokesman Daniel Hagari said. Once fired upon, they split up and Sinwar entered a building alone.

He was spotted sitting in a chair by a drone – which he threw a piece of wood at, Hagari added. Soldiers entered the building and found Sinwar with a vest, a gun and 40,000 shekels (£8,240), he said.

Lt Col Hertzi Halevi, chief of the IDF, said: “We said we would get to him and we did get to him. The world is now better off without him.”

Confirmation of his death was delayed by several hours, as Israel compared dental records and fingerprints. Israel will have had his genetic data on file from the decades he spent in an Israeli prison.

Earlier, graphic images circulating online appeared to show a dead body resembling Sinwar lying in rubble with a severe head injury.

The IDF said at the time it was possible he had been killed – but did not want to prematurely confirm the death of a man it had been pursuing for over a year.

Netanyahu hailed the killing of Sinwar, saying: “While this is not the end of the war in Gaza, it’s the beginning of the end.”

He said the conflict could end “tomorrow” if Hamas lays down its arms and returns the remaining hostages held in Gaza.

Earlier, addressing the families of the hostages, Netanyahu said Israel would “continue with all our might until we bring every one of your loved ones home, as they are our loved ones too”.

Netanyahu told Gazans that Sinwar “destroyed your lives”.

“Hamas will no longer control Gaza,” he said. “This is the beginning of the day after Hamas, and it is an opportunity for you, the residents of Gaza, to finally free yourselves from its tyranny.”

Sinwar’s killing comes after Hamas’s political leader, Ismail Haniyeh, was killed in the Iranian capital, Tehran, in July. Sinwar was subsequently named as Hamas’s overall leader, assuming Haniyeh’s role as well.

Sinwar – who was widely known as Abu Ibrahim – was born in Khan Younis in southern Gaza in 1962. He was first arrested by Israel aged 19 for “Islamic activities”.

Aged 25, in the late 1980s, he founded the Hamas security service al-Majd, which punished those accused of so-called morality offences and those suspected of collaborating with Israel.

In 1988, he was sentenced to four life terms in prison in Israel – but was among the 1,027 prisoners released in exchange for Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier held captive by Hamas in Gaza for over five years, in 2011.

Israel’s foreign minister, Israel Katz, said Sinwar’s killing was a “significant military and moral achievement”.

Yoav Gallant, the defence minister, said Sinwar “joins a long series of eliminations”.

“Sinwar died while beaten, persecuted and on the run – he didn’t die as a commander, but as someone who only cared for himself.

“This is a clear message to all of our enemies.”

Hamas has yet to comment on Sinwar’s killing, and there is no indication of who will take his place.

Iran backs Hamas with funding, weapons and training. The country’s mission to the UN posted on X that the killing of Sinwar would lead to the strengthening of “the spirit of resistance”.

“He will become a model for the youth and children who will carry forward his path toward the liberation of Palestine,” the mission said.

US President Joe Biden congratulated Netanyahu in a phone call with the Israeli leader, saying it was “a good day for Israel, for the United States and for the world”.

He added that the death of Sinwar proved “once again that no terrorists anywhere in the world can escape justice”.

Former CIA director David Petraeus told BBC Radio 4 that Sinwar’s death was “bigger” than Osama Bin Laden’s in 2012 – “both hugely symbolic… but also hugely operational” as Sinwar was the overall leader of Hamas.

Israel’s stated aim for entering Gaza in the wake of the 7 October attack was to destroy Hamas.

Sir John Sawers, who headed up the UK’s foreign intelligence service MI6 from 2009 to 2014, said Netanyahu would now want to “press home” his advantage.

He told BBC Radio 4’s World Tonight programme: “Netanyahu at the moment feels he has a real advantage over not just Hamas but Hezbollah and Iran itself is on the back foot.

“And I think his instinct will be to press home that advantage.”

Sir John said he suspected the Israeli PM would seek to achieve most of the country’s military goals before the next US president is inaugurated in January.

Britain’s prime minister, Sir Keir Starmer, said the UK would “not mourn” Sinwar’s death and called for the release of all hostages held by Hamas and a goal of “long-term, sustainable peace in the Middle East”.

French President Emmanuel Macron said the death was an “opportunity” to bring the conflict in the Middle East to an end. However, Giorgia Meloni, Italy’s prime minister, said that it opened a “new phase” in the war.

The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry says nearly 42,500 have been killed so far and more than 99,000 injured in the conflict. It does not differentiate between civilians and combatants.

Some 101 hostages are thought to still be in Gaza. The families of the seven American hostages said in a joint statement that “all parties must immediately seize this opportunity” to bring them home “before it is too late”.

In his remarks, Netanyahu admitted that the war was “difficult and it is costing us dearly”, but added: “Today we made clear once again what happens to those who harm us.”

Israeli troops had for more than a year hunted the leader of Hamas, who disappeared in Gaza soon after masterminding the 7 October attacks.

Yahya Sinwar, 61, was said to have spent much of his time hiding in the tunnels under the Strip, along with a cadre of bodyguards and a “human shield” of hostages seized from Israel.

But ultimately, it appears he met his end in a chance encounter with an Israeli patrol in southern Gaza. His guard detail was small. No hostages were found.

Details are still emerging, but here’s what we know so far about Sinwar’s killing.

The Israel Defense Forces says a unit from its 828th Bislamach Brigade was patrolling Tal al-Sultan, an area of Rafah, on Wednesday.

Three militants were identified and engaged by the Israeli troops – and all were eliminated.

At that stage nothing seemed particularly remarkable about the firefight and the soldiers did not return to the scene until Thursday morning.

It was then, as the dead were inspected, that one of the bodies was found to bear a striking resemblance to the leader of Hamas.

The corpse however remained in situ due to suspected booby traps and instead, part of a finger was removed and sent to Israel for testing.

His body was finally extracted and brought to Israel later that day as the area was made safe.

Daniel Hagari, the IDF’s spokesman, said his forces “didn’t know he was there but we continued to operate”.

He said his troops had identified the three men running from house to house, and engaged them before they split up.

The man since identified as Sinwar “ran alone into one of the buildings” and was killed after being located with a drone.

None of the hostages Sinwar was believed to be using as a human shield were present and his small retinue suggests either he was trying to move unnoticed, or had lost many of those protecting him.

Yoav Gallant, Israel’s defence minister, said: “Sinwar died while beaten, persecuted and on the run – he didn’t die as a commander, but as someone who only cared for himself. This is a clear message to all of our enemies.”

Drone footage released by the Israeli military late on Thursday was said to show Sinwar’s final moments before he was killed.

The video appears to be shot from a drone flying through the open window of a mostly destroyed building.

It approaches a man, with his head covered, sitting in an armchair on the first-floor of a house that is littered with debris.

The man, who seems to be injured, then throws what appears to be a stick at the drone and the video ends.

Israel first announced it was “investigating the possibility” that Sinwar had been killed in Gaza on Thursday afternoon local time.

Within minutes of the announcement, pictures posted to social media showed the body of a man with very similar features to the Hamas leader, who had suffered catastrophic head wounds. The images are too graphic to republish.

However, officials warned “at this stage” the identity of any of the three men killed could not be confirmed.

Not long after that, Israeli sources told the BBC leaders were “increasingly confident” they had killed him. However, they said all necessary tests must be carried out before the death could be confirmed.

Those tests did not take long. By Thursday evening, Israel had announced they had been completed and that Sinwar was confirmed “eliminated”.

Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, said “evil” had been “dealt a blow”, but warned the Israeli war in Gaza had not been completed.

While Sinwar was not killed during a targeted operation, the IDF said that it had for weeks been operating in areas where intelligence indicated his presence.

In short, Israeli forces had narrowed Sinwar’s rough location to the southern city of Rafah, and were slowly moving in to get him.

Sinwar had been on the run for more than a year. He had undoubtedly felt the Israeli pressure growing as other Hamas leaders, such as Mohammad Dief and Ismail Haniyeh, were killed, and as Israel destroyed the infrastructure he had used to prosecute the atrocities of 7 October.

In a statement, the IDF said its operations in recent weeks in the south had “restricted Yahya Sinwar’s operational movement as he was pursued by the forces and led to his elimination”.

Killing Sinwar was a major goal for Israel, which marked him for death soon after the 7 October attacks. But his end does not end the war in Gaza.

While Netanyahu said he had “settled the score”, he insisted the war would continue – not least to save the 101 hostages still held by Hamas.

“To the dear hostage families, I say: this is an important moment in the war. We will continue full force until all your loved ones, our loved ones, are home.”

In Israel, families of hostages said they hoped a ceasefire could now be reached that would bring home the captives.

Liam Payne’s former One Direction bandmates say they are “completely devastated” about the passing of their fellow band member.

In a statement signed by Louis Tomlinson, Zayn Malik, Niall Horan and Harry Styles they said: “In time, and when everyone is able to, there will be more to say”.

The pop star, who found fame on The X Factor in 2010, died after falling from the third floor of a hotel in Argentina, police say.

Earlier Payne’s family said they were “heartbroken” as they paid tribute to a “kind, funny and brave soul”, after his death aged 31.

“We are supporting each other the best we can as a family and ask for privacy and space at this awful time,” they said.

Liam was one of five members of One Direction.

The band’s statement added: “We will take some time to grieve and process the loss of our brother, who we loved dearly.” and concluded: “We will miss him terribly. We love you, Liam.”

Harry Styles, former One Direction band member shared a photo of Liam on Instagram, saying that he “lived wide open, with his heart on his sleeve”.

“The years we spent together will forever remain among the most cherished of my life.

“I will miss him always, my lovely friend”.

Fellow member Louis Tomlinson also shared a separate tribute on his personal Instagram account, thanking Payne for being “the kind brother I’d longed all my life for.”

“Reminiscing about all the thousands of amazing memories we had together is a luxury I thought I’d have with you for life,” he wrote.

He added he would also support Liam’s son.

“I want you to know that if Bear ever needs me I will be the Uncle he needs in his life and tell him stories of how amazing his dad was.”

Zayn Malik, who left the band in 2015, also shared a tribute on Instagram alongside a younger photo of him and Payne asleep in a car: “I lost a brother when you left us and can’t explain to you what I’d give to just give you a hug one last time”.

Payne, who found fame on The X Factor in 2010, died after falling from the third floor of a hotel in Palermo, Buenos Aires, police say.

Police inspected the area where he fell, and found items including alcohol and a phone.

Medication was also found in his room.

In a statement, police said Payne’s body was discovered when an emergency crew were called to the hotel and that “everything indicates that the musician was alone when the fall happened”.

They added they believed Payne died at the scene and there were no injuries that suggested a third party had been involved.

• Live: Liam Payne dies after falling from hotel balcony in Buenos Aires
• Watch: Fans react to his death in Argentina
• City ‘heartbroken’ after Liam Payne dies
• One Direction star Liam Payne dies after balcony fall

Following his death at around 17:00 (21:00 BST) on Wednesday, stars expressed their upset and posted memories of the dad who shared a son, Bear, with former partner Girls Aloud star Cheryl.

Former bandmate Harry’s mother Anne Twist paid tribute, posting a broken-hearted emoji on Instagram, captioning it: “Just a boy.”

Singer Rita Ora, who collaborated on a song with Payne in 2018, said she was “devastated” in a post on Instagram, adding that she “loved working with him so much”.

On Thursday, police in Buenos Aires said a preliminary autopsy suggested the One Direction star died from external and internal bleeding injuries.

They said the area where Payne fell had been inspected and items including alcohol and a phone had been discovered. Medication was found in his room.

Olly Murs, who starred on The X Factor a year before One Direction, also shared his condolences on Instagram, saying he was “lost for words” and described Payne’s death as “devastating”.

Murs said they “always had a good laugh” when they met, mostly talking about “how annoyingly good his hair always looked, or our love for Becks, the old XF [X Factor] days and the tour we shared together.

“Liam shared the same passions as me, the same dreams, so to see his life now end so young hits hard. I’m truly gutted and devastated for his family and of course his son Bear losing a dad.”

Dermot O’Leary, who hosted The X Factor when Liam appeared, posted a photograph of the pair on stage, captioning the Instagram post: “The worst news.”

“I remember him as a 14-year-old turning up to audition on The X Factor, and blowing us away singing Sinatra. He just loved to sing,” he wrote.

“He was always a joy, had time for everyone, polite, grateful, and was always humble.”

US singer Charlie Puth, a co-writer on Payne’s 2017 song Bedroom Floor, said he was in “shock” after Payne’s death.

Charlie posted images of the pair working together, alongside the caption “Liam was always so kind to me”.

The Wanted star Max George described his death as “absolutely devastating news”.

“Over the last few years I had the pleasure of getting to know him personally and spent some treasured time with him,” he said on Instagram.

“Liam was absolutely wonderful in terms of support when Tom [Parker] fell ill, performing at the Royal Albert Hall with us for Stand Up To Cancer.

“He supported me a lot personally after Tom passed. I will never forget that.

“He was one of the first major artists I got to work with. I cannot believe he is gone… I am so upset right now, may he rest in peace.”

• Boy band star who had the X factor
• Liam Payne shared final Snapchats on last few days in Argentina
• Full transcript of 911 call made moments before Liam Payne fell
• The former One Direction star’s life in pictures

The X Factor said they were “heartbroken” by his passing and were thinking of Payne’s loved ones and all who loved him.

“He was immensely talented and, as part of One Direction, Liam will leave a lasting legacy on the music industry and fans around the world.”

On X, Rylan Clark, who was also a X Factor contestant, said the death was “so tragic” , while Jedward sent their condolences to Cheryl, his son Bear and “all the One Direction family”.

Football team West Bromwich Albion were “saddened” by the passing of “Baggies fan” Payne, and sent their thoughts to his loved ones.

Mcfly sent their love to Payne’s friends and family, and said they were “shocked and extremely sad to wake up to the news” of his death.

Liam Gallagher from Oasis, wrote on X: “Life is precious kids and you only get to do it once go easy.”

DJ and music producer Zedd, who featured alongside Payne on the 2017 song Get Low, called the singer’s death “absolutely heartbreaking”.

Boyband Backstreet Boys said: “Words can not express the emotions we are collectively feeling right now, and it seems like the rest of the world is in the same boat.”

American singer and rapper Ty Dolla Sign said he would “miss” Payne, captioning videos and pictures on his Instagram story: “Just talked to you two days ago my guy.”

“Goodbyes are bittersweet, but it’s not the end. I’ll see your face again.”

This One Direction lyric, about losing somebody, has been repurposed as a tribute – scrawled on notes and stuck to trees, outside the hotel in Buenos Aires where Liam Payne fell to his death from a balcony on Wednesday.

Crowds of people have been gathering here since news of the tragedy broke – some in tears, some singing One Direction songs as they light candles and leave flowers.

It’s a reminder of just how huge Payne’s former band were internationally. One Direction’s global tour in 2014 kicked off in South America, attracting millions of fans, with two shows in this city.

The sombre mood outside the CasaSur Hotel reflects the grim nature of the news that has been emerging over the last 24 hours.

On Wednesday evening, local emergency services were called by the hotel’s staff concerned about a guest who was “aggressive” and under the influence of drugs and alcohol. They feared his life was in danger because of his room’s balcony.

A harrowing 911 call, obtained by local newspaper La Nacion, reveals staff imploring the operator to “send someone urgently”.

There are some big questions here about how this call, along with some initial photographs purporting to show scenes of the aftermath, spread on social media and leaked to some news outlets, while the news of Payne’s death would have still been reaching some of his loved ones.

The singer had fallen from his balcony after officers arrived at the scene, with the officer in charge saying he heard a loud noise after arriving. He was rushed to hospital, but his injuries were too severe for him to be resuscitated.

An initial post-mortem investigation suggests Payne died from internal and external bleeding. Police in Argentina say inspections were carried out of the area where he died on the ground floor, where a bottle of whiskey, a lighter and a mobile phone were found.

In his hotel room, a state of “total disorder” was found – including things broken and multiple packets of medication including the anti-anxiety medication Clonazepam.

Evidence is being gathered here and taken to a laboratory, while Payne’s body has been taken to a morgue, in the hope this may provide further answers.

Police are waiting for family to officially confirm the identity of his body. It’s not clear yet when he may be repatriated to the UK.

One guest at the hotel, Doug Jones, told the BBC he was working in the building on Wednesday when he heard loud noises and banging coming from a room, and saw staff entering and leaving it.

He assumed the hotel was “doing work” on the room, before he heard a “loud, violent scream”.

Mr Jones said it was his first time visiting a country outside the US, so did not know if this was “normal”, until he saw the road filling up with emergency vehicles and knew something was wrong.

For his fans, news of Payne’s death came as a shock as they had recently seen videos of him on social media seemingly having a nice time in Argentina – spending time with his girlfriend Kate Cassidy and attending a concert of his former band mate Niall Horan.

“We were very confused, because of the Snapchats,” said 29-year-old Magali Dalmau, a fan who came to the hotel to pay tribute to the star.

She said she started listening to One Direction when she was aged about 13.

“We all just bonded with them. It means the death of our teenage years. We’ve lost hope of the five of them having a reunion. It’s really sad. The way it happened is the saddest part.”

Shooting to fame at just 16 years old, and dying at 31, many of his fans were a similar generation and grew up with him.

A 21-year-old Brit, Ivor Radway, who lives around the corner from the hotel told the BBC he had seen One Direction at Wembley and the news had “really shocked” him – leaving him wondering if Payne had received enough support.

Indeed, many fans remember him as a smiley singer of feel-good tunes – a far cry from the horrifically dark image painted of his final moments.

But it wasn’t a secret he’d faced demons. He’d spoken openly about struggling with alcohol, mental health problems and the struggles of fame and of parenting a young son at times.

The BBC had also seen a cease-and-desist letter against the singer earlier this week from his former fiancée, the model Maya Henry.

She’d accused him of repeated unwanted contact, but he’d not responded to the allegations.

His music, and openness about his own mental health, were what drew some fans to him.

One tribute left outside the hotel reads: “Thank you for saving my life. I’m sorry I couldn’t do the same for yours.”

In a small, crowded tenement in the slums of India’s Pune city, Shailaja Paik grew up, surrounded by alleys strewn with garbage and battling the daily challenges of limited water and no private toilet.

Today, she stands as one of this year’s 22 recipients of the prestigious MacArthur “genius” fellowship, a testament to a career dedicated to researching the complex lives of Dalit women – those born into the caste considered “untouchable” in India’s hierarchical society.

The MacArthur Foundation’s award – which includes a $800,000 [£615,000] stipend given over five years – isn’t just recognition for her research on caste, gender, and sexuality but a powerful endorsement of her ongoing mission: to redefine the narratives of the oppressed.

Marlies Carruth, director of the MacArthur Fellows Program, says the interdisciplinary award seeks to “enable” people with a track record and the potential to produce additional extraordinary work.

“Through her focus on the multifaceted experiences of Dalit women, Paik elucidates the enduring nature of caste discrimination and the forces that perpetuate untouchability,” the Foundation said while announcing this year’s nominees.

In an interview with the BBC, Paik said the fellowship offered immense possibilities for emphasising Dalit issues as human rights issues and “connecting histories of the marginalised in different parts of the world”.

It also plays a role in enhancing “global conversations of social justice”, Paik, who is a professor of history at the University of Cincinnati, added.

“I feel so grateful as an Indian-American woman to be among this group of genius, creative people from the US.”

A modern historian who studies the lives of Dalit women through the lens of caste, gender and sexuality, Paik grew up in India but has been working in the US for more than a decade.

Spending her childhood in a 20x20ft room in Pune’s Yerwada slums, Paik remembered standing in long queues every day to fetch water from the public tap for cooking and cleaning.

“On all levels – social, educational, emotional and mental – all this definitely had a profound effect on me,” she said.

Her younger sister Rohini Waghmare said it was their parents who emphasised the importance of education and ensured all their children studied in English.

“Usually when there are daughters, the mentality is that girls should get married soon,” she said.

Paik was an excellent student throughout school and college.

Her mother Sarita Paik credited her hard work for her success. “I’m less educated but her father and I always felt that girls should learn a lot.”

But studying was a challenge, Paik said. “I remember wrapping myself up in a quilt and telling my family members to speak softly and not make any noise,” she recounted.

“I would go to sleep around 7:30pm until around 3am, then get up to study until 6-7am, before leaving for school.”

Paik developed a love for history while pursuing her undergraduate degree at the city’s Savitribai Phule Pune University.

“Textbooks then provided merely an overview of different time periods of India, US, Japan or China without any in-depth knowledge about the society or culture.”

As Paik delved more into the subject, she noticed not much work had been done on the education of Dalit women.

“Dalits constitute 17% of India’s total population,” Paik said. “There are statistics but there was no qualitative research. No one had written the history of Dalit women properly, so I decided that I wanted to do this work.”

In 2014, she published her first book, Dalit Women’s Education in Modern India, examining the “double discrimination” of gender and caste they face in accessing basic rights.

“Historically such a large population was not allowed any form of education, public infrastructure, public water bodies or wells, much less the wearing of slippers or new clothes, even if one could afford them.”

Having come from this background, Paik made it the centre of her research and writing.

“Dalit women are undoubtedly the most disadvantaged and oppressed. They are the Dalits among Dalits in terms of gender and politics,” Paik said.

She herself is no stranger to the discrimination and recalls people around her being surprised that she as a Dalit woman had received the Ford Foundation Fellowship for her PhD.

Paik’s second book The Vulgarity of Caste : Dalits, Sexuality, and Humanity in Modern India, published by Stanford University Press in 2022, looked at the social and intellectual history of Dalit performance of Tamasha, a popular form of travelling theatre in Maharashtra. The book won the American Historical Association’s John F. Richards Prize for “the most distinguished work of scholarship on South Asia”.

With its significant Indian-American population, caste has become a growing conversation in the US even as India continues to reckon with it.

The historian said that to tackle discrimination, it was crucial for those enjoying advantages of the caste system to acknowledge its existence globally instead of shying away from it.

The discrimination most affects people from “lower castes and outcastes”, Paik said. “So, it is important to engage with those vulnerable and disadvantaged, stand with them in the struggle against discrimination on lines of caste, gender, and race.”

Scholars from marginalised castes face different kinds of roadblocks as they navigate the academic world, one of which is fluency in English language. “Many of them are educated in vernacular mediums and as they move up in the ladders of higher education, they have to work harder than their peers who are fluent in English.”

Such scholars also struggle to access enough financial resources and social networks to tap into resources and connect with renowned scholars. Here, Paik said, it is important for institutions to grant fellowships or have individuals who will fund and support intellectuals pursuing research.

“The picture has changed over the last decade and I am happy that many emerging scholars are aware of varied opportunities and using them to their advantage,” she said.

Paik hopes her MacArthur fellowship will strengthen the fight against casteism “for both Dalits and non-Dalits in South Asia and beyond”.

“I will use the fellowship to continue my research, writing and work with my cohort fellows in creating new opportunities to work for social justice,” she said.

King Charles III and Queen Camilla are due to arrive in Australia on Friday on a historic royal tour.

Eight months ago, I didn’t think I’d be writing those words.

In February, Buckingham Palace announced the King had cancer and all his “public-facing duties” stopped – on doctors’ orders.

Back then, a trip to Australia seemed unthinkable. A flight of around 24 hours, a punishing time difference, and days of royal engagements would surely be too much for a 75-year-old dealing with a cancer diagnosis and embarking on treatment.

But palace aides never took this trip completely off the table – whenever it came up, their language was careful. “It’s not been ruled out”, they’d say, or “decisions will be made on the advice of doctors”, and “the King needs to focus on treatment for cancer first”.

And by late Spring, there were signs the visit might still go ahead.

Some of the King’s team travelled to Australia and Samoa to assess what was possible and finalise arrangements, liaising with the Foreign Office and both the Australian and New Zealand governments.

Would the King be well enough to cope with the rigours of the tour? The answer was yes – with some important changes.

On medical advice, New Zealand was removed from the schedule. Buckingham Palace said it was a choice made “in collaboration” with the Australian and New Zealand governments, and acknowledged it was a “tough decision”.

Royal aides have been open about the King’s diagnosis and treatment but they have never revealed the type of cancer the King has nor offered details of the kind of treatment he’s receiving. “His health is on a positive trajectory,” they tell us.

What is clear is the King’s treatment is ongoing and his cancer requires regular medical management. But he is well enough for his doctors to sanction this trip, and while he is away his cancer treatment has been paused.

Removing New Zealand and keeping this trip short means he can return to his regular routine of treatment as early as possible.

The programme of events for the King and Queen also looks a bit different from regular royal tours. When they arrive they will have a day to recover before starting engagements. It’s a long journey – they are both in their 70s and the day off is again a nod to the King’s condition.

The timetables in Australia and Samoa do not include evening engagements. There are no state dinners, and no trips out late in the day. But we will see more of the King over the next nine days than we have for most of this year.

Buckingham Palace says a lot of thought has gone into “balancing the programme” and it has been planned to “preserve the King’s energies”.

This is Charles’ first visit as King to one of the 14 realms where he remains Head of State. It will also be his first Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM), where he is head of the association of 56 countries.

The King’s reign has been compromised by his cancer diagnosis, but this trip gives a real sense of him being back in business.

As well as doctors’ orders, the King has also had to operate under the Queen’s orders. His wife has found herself going solo more than she might have anticipated this year, continuing with several engagements she was due to carry out alongside her husband.

Queen Camilla is an influential figure within the royal household and has referenced her husband’s “workaholic” mindset at several public engagements – even after his cancer diagnosis.

She has been key to ensuring the King follows medical advice and takes time out to recover during his treatment. And she will be doing the same in Australia and Samoa over the course of this visit, as well as taking on some of her own engagements around issues including literacy and supporting victims of domestic violence.

Royal tours require precision planning. There is a choreography to them and a check list of moments to hit – parliaments, dignitaries, military, environment and culture.

On paper, the Australia element of this trip is traditional and safe territory. But it is also significantly different from what has gone before.

The King first visited Australia in 1966 as a 17-year-old starting two terms of teaching experience at a private school in Victoria. He returns as a 75-year-old monarch receiving treatment for cancer, towards the end of a year during which he has faced immense personal challenges.

His public life has been restrained, restricted by illness. And although his schedule became busier as he progressed with his treatment, he then retreated to the solace of Balmoral for a summer break and to prepare for this trip.

“How’s the King doing?” is a question I have been asked repeatedly this year – and it’s been tricky to answer at times.

The coming days will allow us to see the King at work day after day. Up close, a head of state, King of Australia.

This tour is are big showcase for the monarchy, and monarchies need to be seen – even more so in a country where an Australian republic has been an active topic of political debate in recent times. The optics matter for Buckingham Palace.

A King looking well, engaging with the public, managing a full timetable of events, doing some soft diplomacy and embracing what Australia and Samoa have to offer is the goal.

Getting here hasn’t been easy. But there is confidence from royal aides that this visit will give a strong sense of normal service resuming.

Sign up here to get the latest royal stories and analysis straight to your inbox every week with our free Royal Watch newsletter.

Those outside the UK can sign up here.

The US Secret Service has “deep flaws” that need to be resolved urgently or more assassination attempts like the one at Donald Trump’s rally will happen again, a damning report says.

An independent panel tasked with investigating the 13 July shooting in Butler, Pennsylvania, released its findings on Thursday, and said the organisation had become “bureaucratic, complacent and static”.

It called for an overhaul of its leadership in the 52-page report, and said a “number of specific failures and breakdowns” enabled the attack against the Republican presidential candidate.

The Secret Service has already acknowledged failures on its part, and its director resigned weeks after the shooting.

In a statement on Thursday, its acting director Ronald Rowe said the agency would carefully examine the new report.

“We have already significantly improved our readiness, operational and organisational communications and implemented enhanced protective operations for the former president,” he said.

But in an internal memo to agency staff, Acting Director Rowe said he had “reservations” about the recommendations, according to CBS News, the BBC’s US partner.

He wrote: “I am deeply concerned about the unintended impact on agency morale.”

In the independent report, which was drafted by state and national law enforcement officials, the panel praised the agents who risk their lives to protect many of the country’s highest-ranking officials but noted several leadership and cultural failures.

These included a “troubling lack of critical thinking” among staff and a reluctance to “speak up”.

The agency’s issues, the report said, were “systemic or cultural” and it called for “fundamental reform”, including removing some of its top leadership “as soon as possible”.

“Without that reform… another Butler can and will happen again,” the panel wrote to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, who oversees the organisation.

President Joe Biden ordered a bipartisan review of the protective agency after a gunman attempted to assassinate Trump at his campaign rally by firing from a nearby rooftop.

The gunman, Thomas Matthew Crooks, fired eight shots at the rally, killing one man and leaving Trump with a bloody ear. The Secret Service shot and killed Crooks.

On Thursday, the panel called for “a mandate that all outdoor events are observed by overhead technology.”

Another gunman was spotted near the former president outside of the Trump International Golf Course in Palm Beach, Florida in September.

Police arrested him after noticing the tip of a rifle poking through shrubbery a few hundred yards away from Trump who was inside the golf course.

China’s economy expanded in the third quarter at the slowest pace since early last year, as the country struggles to boost flagging growth.

On an annual basis, gross domestic product (GDP) rose by 4.6% in the three months to the end of September, according to China’s National Bureau of Statistics. That is less than the previous quarter and below the government’s “around 5%” target for this year.

But it was slightly better than analysts expected, while other official figures released on Friday, including retail sales and factory output, also beat forecasts.

In recent weeks, Beijing has announced a number of measures aimed at supporting growth.

This is the second quarter in a row that China’s official measure of economic growth has fallen below the 5% target, which will add to government concerns.

“The government’s growth target for this year now appears in serious jeopardy,” the former head of the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) China division, Eswar Prasad told BBC News.

“It will take a substantial stimulus-fuelled boost to growth in the fourth quarter to hit the target.”

But Moody’s Analytics’ economist, Harry Murphy Cruise, was more optimistic. The stimulus measures are “likely to propel the economy to its around 5% target for the year”, he said.

“But more is required if officials are to address the structural challenges in the economy.”

Official figures also showed new home prices fell in September at the fastest pace in almost a decade, indicating that the downturn in the property sector is worsening.

“The property market unsurprisingly remains the biggest drag on China’s growth,” said Lynn Song, chief economist for greater China at banking giant ING.

“New investment is unlikely to see a substantive recovery until prices stabilise and housing inventories decline… until then property will remain a notable headwind to growth.”

Earlier on Friday, China’s central bank said it had held a meeting to call on banks and other financial institutions to boost lending to help support growth.

Last month, the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) announced the country’s biggest stimulus package since the pandemic, including large cuts to interest and mortgage rates.

The plans also included help for the flagging stock market and measures to encourage banks to lend more to businesses and individuals.

Since then, the Ministry of Finance and other government bodies have unveiled further plans aimed at boosting economic growth.

The world’s second largest economy has been hit by a number of challenges, including a property crisis, as well as weak consumer and business confidence.

Children as young as 10 can soon be jailed once again in Australia’s Northern Territory (NT), after the government there lowered the age of criminal responsibility.

Australian states and territories have been under pressure to raise it, from 10 to 14, in line with other developed countries and UN advice.

Last year the NT became the first jurisdiction to lift the threshold to 12 years old, but the new Country Liberal Party (CLP) government elected in August has said a reversal is necessary to reduce youth crime rates.

It has argued that returning the age to 10 will ultimately protect children – despite doctors, human rights organisations and Indigenous groups disputing that logic.

They cite evidence that the laws will not reduce crime and will disproportionately affect Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children.

The NT already jails children at a rate 11 times higher than any other jurisdiction in the country, and almost all of them are Aboriginal.

Many places across Australia have declared they are in the grips of a youth crime crisis, and a string of violent incidents this year have prompted a series of youth curfews in the NT city of Alice Springs.

Chief Minister Lia Finocchiaro said her government had been given a mandate after their landslide election victory, and that the change would allow courts to put young offenders through programmes designed to address the root causes of their crimes – which, according to statistics, are most commonly break-in and assault offences.

“We have this obligation to the child who has been let down in a number of ways, over a long period of time,” she told the parliament on Thursday.

“And we have [an obligation to] the people who just want to be safe, people who don’t want to live in fear anymore.”

The NT government has also tightened bail rules, and introduced penalties for “posting and boasting” about crime on social media.

“We make no apologies for delivering on our commitments to reduce crime for all Territorians,” Finocchiaro added.

However, research both globally and in Australia has shown that incarcerating children makes them more likely to reoffend and often has dire impacts on their health, education, and employment.

Earlier this year a report by the Australian Human Rights Commission – an independent federal agency – found policy across the nation was being driven “by populist ‘tough on crime’ rhetoric” and that governments should instead reinvest the money spent on jailing children into support services.

Opposition Leader Selena Uibo – the first and only Aboriginal woman to head a major party in Australia – said it was a “dark day” for the territory.

“We know – because all of the evidence tells us this – that the earlier a child comes into contact with the criminal justice system, the more prolonged their involvement is likely to be,” she said.

“We want to see children held accountable for bad behaviour but then supported to get on a better path.”

The change will come into effect at a later date that is yet to be confirmed.

As the NT parliament debated the bill this week, around 100 people gathered outside to protest, some carrying placards. One read, “10-year-olds still have baby teeth”. Another said, “What if it was your child?”.

Independent MP Yingiya Guyula, a Yolŋu man from northeastern Arnhem Land, told the BBC it was a “racist” bill.

“It’s [targeted] at Indigenous people.”

“It is just colonisation – somebody else is making decisions for us in the community when they should be listening to our people.”

The NT’s children’s commissioner Shahleena Musk, a Larrakia woman from Darwin, told the BBC Aboriginal children were less likely to be cautioned, more likely to be charged and pursued through the courts, and more likely to be remanded in custody than non-Aboriginal offenders.

“I accept that people are fearful in our communities, and crime has been quite prominent in the media and social media,” she said.

“[But] we shouldn’t be seeing these kids going into a youth justice system which is harmful, ineffective, and only compounds the very issues we’re trying to change.”

Defending the bill, CLP politician and former youth worker Clinton Howe told the parliament the prospect of jail was the only punishment youth offenders cared about.

“I believe government is a blunt instrument, and I don’t like it as a tool for social intervention, but for some of these children, it is the only thing left.

“We must intervene early for the sake of the child… in the environment they live in, no-one else cares.”

Critics of the bill fear the laws could arrest momentum for raising the minimum age of criminal responsibility in other states and territories.

Only the Australian Capital Territory has raised the age of criminal responsibility above 10, but Victoria has passed legislation to do so, which will come into effect next year. The Tasmanian government has said it will raise the age to 14 by 2029.

Kenyan senators have voted to remove Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua from office despite his failure to testify at his impeachment trial after his lawyer said he had been taken to hospital.

In one of the most dramatic days in Kenya’s recent political history, Gachagua had been due to appear in the Senate after lunch to defend himself, a day after he had pleaded not guilty to 11 charges.

However, Gachagua, popularly known as Riggy G, did not show up and his lawyer requested a postponement saying his client was suffering from chest pains and was being treated by doctors at The Karen Hospital.

Senators chose to continue the trial without him, prompting the defence team to leave the chamber.

The senators’ refusal to delay proceedings until Saturday – as long as would have been legally allowed – shows how determined they were to get rid of Gachagua, several months after he fell out with President William Ruto.

Last week, an overwhelming majority of MPs in the National Assembly – the lower house of parliament – voted to impeach him, setting the stage for his two-day trial in the Senate.

Gachagua, a wealthy businessman from the vote-rich central Mount Kenya region who was present in the house in the morning, has described the impeachment as a “political lynching”.

• Who is Rigathi Gachagua?
• Behind the fallout between Kenya’s president and his deputy

On Thursday evening, the required two-thirds of the 67 senators upheld five charges including inciting ethnic divisions and and violating his oath of office – enough for him to to be removed from office.

He was cleared of six charges including corruption and money-laundering.

This comes just two years after Ruto and Gachagua were elected on a joint ticket.

The vote draws a line under months of infighting at the top level of government and consolidates Ruto’s hold on power.

The row came to a head in June when Gachagua, in an act seen as undermining the president, blamed the head of the intelligence agency for not properly briefing Ruto and the government over the magnitude of mass protests against unpopular tax hikes.

In a huge blow to his authority, Ruto had just been forced to withdraw the taxes. He sacked his cabinet and brought in members of the opposition to his government.

Ruto has not commented on the impeachment of his deputy.

At the start of the trial, one of Gachagua’s lawyers, Elisha Ongoya, said all of the allegations were “either false, ridiculous or embarrassing”.

Before the vote, Gachagua had said he would challenge the decision if it passed.

A doctor is quoted by the Reuters news agency as saying the 59-year-old had gone to hospital with heart trouble, but was stable and undergoing tests.

Kenyan media have already been reporting about his possible replacements, with four people mentioned:

• Murang’a County Governor Irungu Kang’ata
• Kirinyaga County Governor Anne Waiguru
• Interior Minister Kithure Kindiki
• Foreign Affairs Minister Musalia Mudavadi.

• Kenyan president’s humbling shows power of African youth
• New faces of protest – Kenya’s Gen Z anti-tax revolutionaries
• Batons, tear gas, live fire – Kenyans face police brutality

A Texas judge has blocked the execution of the first man to be put on death row in the US for murder charges related to “shaken baby syndrome”, less than two hours before the capital punishment was due to be carried out.

Robert Roberson, 57, was sentenced to death in 2003 for the death of his two-year-old daughter, Nikki Curtis, after a post-mortem examination concluded she died of injuries from abuse.

Roberson, his lawyers and supporters have long maintained the child died of complications from pneumonia.

Prosecutors, however, have insisted that new evidence does not disprove their case that the child died from injuries inflicted by her father.

Roberson was due to be executed at 18:00 local time (23:00 GMT) on Thursday.

But only 90 minutes beforehand, a Travis County judge issued a temporary restraining order to stop it going ahead, so that Roberson can testify in a hearing at the state legislature next week.

The decision came after a Texas House panel issued a highly unusual subpoena for Roberson late on Wednesday, hoping that authorities would have to send him to appear at a hearing on 21 October.

The Texas attorney general has filed an appeal against the temporary restraining order.

Ahead of the planned execution, a bipartisan group of 86 Texas lawmakers, dozens of medical and scientific experts, attorneys and others – including best-selling author John Grisham and pro-death penalty Republicans – called for clemency.

The group argued that the conviction was based on outdated science, before authorities gained a proper understanding of “shaken baby syndrome”.

“In Robert’s case there was no crime and yet we’re about to kill somebody for it in Texas,” Grisham told reporters in September.

Robertson’s lawyers have also argued that his autism – which was undiagnosed at the time of Nikki’s death – was used against him after police and medical staff became suspicious at the lack of emotion he displayed.

Autism can affect how a person communicates with others.

Shortly after the Travis County judge issued the last-minute reprieve on Thursday, the US Supreme Court declined to intervene to cancel the execution outright.

In a statement about the decision, Justice Sotomayor, a liberal, said it was up to Texas Governor Abbot whether to stop the execution.

Roberson’s supporters include Brian Wharton, the lead detective who investigated the incident in Palestine, Texas.

“I will forever be haunted by the role I played in helping the state put this innocent man on death row,” Mr Wharton was quoted as saying by the Associated Press.

“Robert’s case will forever be a burden on my heart and soul.”

Earlier this week, Texas’ Board of Pardon and Paroles denied Roberson’s clemency petition, voting 6-0 against recommending that his death sentence be delayed or commuted to life in prison.

Governor Abbott could have also granted a one-time 30-day reprieve. He has only done so once in nearly a decade in office.

In an October interview with NBC, Roberson urged Abbott to “do the right thing” because “I’m innocent”.

According to Roberson’s account, his daughter fell out of bed on 31 January 2002.

Hours later, he said he realised she was not breathing and took her to an emergency room, where she was pronounced dead.

Court documents show medical staff immediately suspected abuse, because of bruises on her head, brain swelling and bleeding behind her eyes.

He was arrested and charged with capital murder the next day. An autopsy determined she died of blunt-force head trauma and her death was ruled a homicide.

Roberson’s lawyers have noted that Nikki was prescribed medicines that are no longer given to children because they can cause serious complications.

They have argued that the medication, and her fall, could have ultimately killed her.

“Shaken baby syndrome” – now called abusive head trauma – is usually diagnosed after finding evidence of retinal haemorrhage, brain swelling and bleeding in the brain.

While the diagnosis is broadly accepted by the medical community, a recent report highlighted the need to thoroughly examine other causes before concluding injuries were due to abuse.

In 2023 an appeals court agreed there was insufficient evidence to overturn Roberson’s conviction. The Supreme Court declined to hear his case.

The United States has sanctioned two Chinese companies it says are involved in the production of aerial drones used by Russia in its war in Ukraine.

In a statement, the US Treasury said it was also targeting a Russian company and its owner, Artem Yamshchikov, who it said serve as an intermediary between the firms and a Russian state-owned weapons company.

The move means their property and interests within US control have been seized.

It came as Volodymyr Zelensky outlined his “victory plan” in a speech to the EU Council – in which he said Ukraine had intelligence that “China is still actively helping Russia drag out this war”.

The US Treasury said it had sanctioned Xiamen Limbach Aircraft Engine Co – which makes engines that power Russia’s Garpiya long-range drones – and Redlepus Vector Industry Shenzhen Co for its involvement in shipment.

US State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said the so-called suicide drones had “been used to destroy critical infrastructure and has resulted in mass casualties”.

Thousands of them have been produced since last year, according to the Reuters news agency.

“Russia increasingly relies on the expertise of foreign professionals and the import of sophisticated technologies to sustain its weapons program,” US Treasury official Bradley Smith said.

Speaking to the EU Council on Thursday, the Ukrainian president also accused North Korea and Iran of aiding Russia’s war effort.

“[Russian President Vladimir] Putin wants to match your countries’ ammunition production by next year,” he told European leaders.

“Please don’t ease the pressure of sanctions on Russia – it truly helps.”

Elsewhere in his speech, Zelensky outlined the five-point victory plan he revealed to the Ukrainian parliament on Wednesday.

He said that Ukrainian forces could hold the front line within his country while continuing to attack Russian territory – if allies provide the weapons Ukraine has requested.

Zelensky said applying military pressure to Russia while defending Ukraine was needed to achieve an equitable peace – including being permitted to use long-range missiles on Russian soil.

“We propose placing on Ukrainian land a deterrence package that would either force Russia to participate in real peace negotiations or allow for the destruction of their military targets,” Zelensky said.

Describing this as a “peace through strength approach”, he added: “Putin should respect our strength, not have the free world tremble at his threats.”

Ukraine’s allies, including the UK and US, have so far desisted from allowing their long-range missiles to be launched on targets inside Russia.

Putin has argued that Ukraine using these Western-supplied weapons would be tantamount to Nato countries fighting directly with Russia – though Western nations have crossed his “red lines” previously without retaliation.

Kyiv says that not being able to hit the bases from which many of the air strikes that have bombarded Ukraine since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022, limits its capacity for self-defence.

In his speech, Zelensky pointed to the Kursk offensive by Ukrainian forces into Russia – which took both Russia and Ukraine’s allies by surprise – as showing that “Putin does not have enough strength to hold on when we really apply pressure”.

He proposes military operations in Russia continue to avoid “buffer zones” being created in Ukraine.

Zelensky also said another point in his plan – an invitation to join Nato – would bolster Ukraine’s negotiating position, but suggested this would not mean immediate membership of the military alliance.

“Russia has used the geopolitical uncertainty caused by Ukraine not being in Nato,” he told the EU Council, saying that “an immediate invitation to Ukraine to join Nato would be decisive”.

He added: “Of course, membership would follow later.”

Allies have expressed support for Ukraine – but not yet endorsed Zelensky’s plan.

Nato’s new Secretary General Mark Rutte said it was a “strong signal”, but would only commit to Ukrainian Nato membership “in the future”.

Following Zelensky’s speech, EU Council President Charles Michel said providing more financial and military support to Ukraine was “urgent”.

Massachusetts police had to call in a tow truck to remove a giant great white shark after it washed up dead on a beach in Cape Cod.

It remains unclear how the 12 ft (3.6m) shark died, local officials say, but they have been able to identify the animal.

The male shark, named Koala, was a mature male shark and was first identified by officials in 2022, the Atlantic White Shark Conservancy said.

Orleans police department described the incident as “not one of our typical calls for service”.

A police car followed the tow truck as it drove the shark away from the beach.

“You really never know what kind of call you’ll respond to on any given shift,” the police department wrote in a Facebook post.

Images of that removal have since gone viral.

“There are no obvious signs of how or why Koala died,” the Atlantic White Shark Conservancy said in a statement. “Further testing will have to be done to find a cause of death.”

Officials performed a necropsy, an autopsy for animals, and tissue samples were taken to be analysed.

“There were no bite marks or anything on it,” Dennis Reed, who operates Nauset Recovery Inc., told the Cape Cod Times, describing the condition of the shark’s body.

“It seemed like it had a lot of internal bleeding because there was a lot of blood around its mouth,” Mr Reed told the Massachusetts outlet.

White sharks are not uncommon off the Massachusetts coast. There were an estimated 800 great white sharks in the waters around Massachusetts between 2015 and 2018, according to the Atlantic White Shark Conservancy.

Since Israel began a renewed military offensive in northern Gaza 12 days ago, humanitarian groups say that virtually no aid has entered the area. Israel’s own statistics show that aid deliveries to Gaza as a whole have collapsed when compared with the same period in September.

This has prompted accusations that the Israeli military is blocking food aid deliveries in a bid to starve out Hamas fighters.

The lack of food has prompted a top UN official to warn that “supplies for survival are running out” in north Gaza, with civilians on the ground telling the BBC that the situation is unsustainable.

Joyce Msuya, the UN’s Acting Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief, said on Monday that Israel blocked all food aid entering northern Gaza from 2-15 October.

She said a “trickle” of aid had been allowed to enter the territory on Monday, but warned that a lack of fuel deliveries would force bakeries to close within days.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly denied that his government is deliberately preventing food from reaching northern Gaza.

But the US has warned its ally to urgently boost humanitarian access or risk having some military assistance cut off, and now says it is monitoring Israel’s actions in northern Gaza to ensure it’s not pursuing “a policy of starvation”.

On Thursday, a UN-backed assessment warned that “the risk of famine persists across the whole Gaza Strip”, adding: “Given the recent surge in hostilities, there are growing concerns that this worst-case scenario may materialize.”

The Israeli military body responsible for managing crossings into Gaza, Cogat, said a total of 5,840 tons of food crossed into Gaza in the first 12 days of October, compared to a total of 75,898 tons in September.

The UN said no aid at all had entered north Gaza for the two weeks before last Sunday, when the US warned its ally in a letter to urgently boost humanitarian access or risk having some military assistance cut off.

In its own statistics, the UN said the number of lorries entering Gaza was the lowest since the beginning of the war a year ago.

Briefing the UN security council on Wednesday, Ms Msuya said Israel had facilitated just one of 54 attempts to deliver aid through the Rashid checkpoint in the first two weeks of October.

The checkpoint is south of Gaza City, where the main coastal road meets the east-west Israeli military road that effectively divides the territory in half.

She added that another four efforts were impeded, but eventually occurred. Ms Msuya said that while distribution of existing stocks in northern Gaza continued, supplies were “quickly dwindling”.

Meanwhile the World Food Programme (WFP) told the Financial Times on Tuesday that it will run out of food aid to distribute in just a week-and-a-half if Israel does not immediately facilitate fresh deliveries to northern Gaza.

WFP’s director for the Palestinian Territories, Antoine Renard, also told the outlet that his teams on the ground had just a week of flour supplies left.

Cogat said 50 trucks carrying aid entered the north of the strip on Wednesday.

Georgios Petropoulos – head of the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Gaza – told the BBC that when aid does enter Gaza through Israeli checkpoints, aid groups often lack the capacity to distribute it effectively on the other side. He pointed out that while 50 truckloads of aid were allowed to enter Gaza on Monday, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) allowed just 30 of those to be collected.

The IDF launched a renewed offensive against Hamas in the north 12 days ago. It says it is seeking to prevent the group’s fighters from regrouping in the area.

Military officials issued an evacuation order affecting an estimated 400,000 people in the northern Gaza Strip, telling them to move to the south. But many refused to leave, exhausted by constant displacement and fearful of heading to a place where they had no access to supplies.

Israeli forces have surrounded and bombarded the bombarded the densely-populated Jabalia area, which includes an urban refugee camp, to the north of Gaza City.

Israel insists that there is no policy of starvation in northern Gaza, but some have speculated that the fall in humanitarian supplies indicates the implementation of what Israeli media has dubbed “the Generals’ plan”.

Retired Maj Gen Giora Eiland recently told the BBC that civilians should be evacuated from northern Gaza, with the remaining Hamas fighters left with a choice to “surrender or starve”.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu insisted in an interview with Le Figaro that the “allegation that we are pursuing a deliberate policy of starving the population is completely baseless”.

He had previously told the UN that Israel was facilitating the entry of food amounting to “more than 3,000 calories a day for every man, woman, and child in Gaza”.

People in northern Gaza have told the BBC that supplies of food and water have plummeted in recent days.

Awad Hassan Ashour from Jabalia said residents of his area were getting very little food and water was also scarce

“Every two or three days they bring us one meal, either lunch or breakfast,” he said.

Yousef Qarmout, a displaced person in Jabalia, told the BBC that food and water shortages were making “untenable” for those living in the area.

What little food remained on sale was prohibitively expensive, he said.

“Life is becoming ever more untenable in northern Gaza, there is no food at all,” he said.

“We also suffer from high prices – take for example a can of beans. It costs 20 shekels [£4; $5.30], which is too much for me because I don’t work, nor do my children work. We all do not have any source of income.”

Sayab al-Zad said it was almost impossible to obtain meat or fresh vegetables, noting that only a few people could afford such produce. Instead, his family largely subsisted on bread, he said.

“To get bread for us is a very big challenge, you can lose your life for getting bread,” he said.

Mr Petropoulos said organised criminal gangs operating in Gaza were exacerbating the problem, with many aid drivers reporting being robbed while transporting food and shelter items.

“I see that the shelters of families are being winterised with plastic sheeting. You can see them starting to be put on top of these boxes of plastic that people live in,” he told the BBC. 

“The problem is that we were supposed to give that to the people who need it for free. But they’ve been looted and sold to them and now instead of getting a plastic sheet free so that at least you have a waterproof roof for the rain you’re in further debt.

“The damage we’re seeing done through looted equipment and supplies being sold back to people already in desperate poverty is just immense.”

Israel has long accused Hamas accused of hijacking and stealing aid deliveries – something the group has denied.

Michael Fakhri, the UN’s Special Rapporteur on the right to food, accused Israel of pursuing a deliberate policy of starvation in Gaza during an interview with the BBC’s Newshour programme on Monday.

“We’ve seen the effects of their starvation campaign, with high mortality rates – people are dying, not just from hunger, but from dehydration and disease, which often follows,” he said.

“Israel has told us what it’s doing, it’s done it, and we’ve seen the effects.”

Thursday’s report by the UN-backed Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) said about 1.84 million people were experiencing high levels of acute food insecurity, with 664,000 of them facing “emergency” levels of hunger and almost 133,000 facing “catastrophic” levels.

The last figure is three-quarters lower than at the time of the last report in June – a fall the IPC attributed to a temporary surge in humanitarian assistance and commercial supplies between May and August.

However, the IPC said it expected the number of people facing “catastrophic” hunger to nearly triple in the coming months because there had been a sharp decline in aid deliveries and food availability since September.

In response to the report, UN Secretary General António Guterres said on X: “Famine looms. This is intolerable. Crossing points must open immediately, bureaucratic impediments must be removed, and law and order restored so UN agencies can deliver lifesaving humanitarian assistance.”

Concerns over the situation have been growing in Washington, and prompted the warning from top officials giving Israel 30 days to boost humanitarian aid access in Gaza or risk having some US military assistance cut off.

The US letter to the Israeli government was signed by Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin.

The pair said they were writing to “underscore the US government’s deep concern over the deteriorating humanitarian situation in Gaza, and seek urgent and sustained actions by your government this month to reverse this trajectory”.

But the EU’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, scorned the US warning.

“The US has been saying to Israel that they have to improve humanitarian support to Gaza, but they gave one month delay,” he told reporters in Brussels.

“One month delay at the current pace of people being killed. It’s too many people.”

The first aid in two weeks has gone into northern Gaza following a letter from the US that gave Israel 30 days to boost humanitarian access, or risk having some military assistance cut off.

The letter is the Biden administration’s most detailed public criticism yet of the way Israel has blocked humanitarian aid to Gaza. It was signed by Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin and was supposed to be private, until it was leaked to Israeli journalists.

It is a blueprint for an entirely different approach by Israel to the aid operation in Gaza – expediting it, rather than imposing restrictions. The letter is a line-by-line examination of Israel’s obstruction of aid deliveries – and the way its forcible relocation of civilians has exposed 1.7 million Palestinians to serious risk of disease.

It even challenges Israel’s long-standing attack on UNRWA, the UN agency that looks after Palestinian refugees.

The US is “very concerned” about proposed new laws that would “remove certain privileges and immunities”. An Israeli government minister wants to confiscate UNRWA’s headquarters in occupied East Jerusalem to use the land for a Jewish settlement.

The US says it acknowledges Israeli concerns about UNRWA, but that restrictions on it would “devastate” the humanitarian effort in Gaza and the education and welfare of tens of thousands of Palestinians in East Jerusalem and the occupied West Bank.

The letter cannot have made easy reading for its two recipients, Yoav Gallant, Israel’s defence minister, and Ron Dermer, its minister of strategic affairs, who is one of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s closest advisers.

That is not just because the letter details the “US government’s deep concern over the deteriorating humanitarian situation in Gaza”. It also contains a reminder, that is also a threat, that US laws restrict arms transfers to countries that block the distribution of American aid.

Gallant set the tone of Israel’s approach to humanitarian aid flows to Gaza two days after the Hamas attacks of 7 October 2023. He announced a “complete siege” of the Gaza Strip. No fuel or food would be allowed in, he said. “Everything is closed… We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly.”

Pressure, not least by the Americans, forced Israel to moderate Gallant’s plan, but the aid coming in has never been consistent or adequate. In recent months, though, restrictions have been tightened, which seems to have prompted the letter. It is a sign of the exasperation and anger inside the Biden administration that Israel has not kept its promises to keep aid flowing into Gaza.

The European Union’s chief diplomat and leading human rights groups have already accused Israel of using starvation as a weapon of war. In May, Karim Khan, the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, accused Prime Minister Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant of starvation of civilians as part of his application for the court to issue arrest warrants for war crimes and crimes against humanity. Both men rejected the allegation.

When Netanyahu spoke at the UN General Assembly in New York on 27 September, he dismissed accusations that Israel was starving Gazans as “an absurdity”. He presented a version of Israel’s role in the Gaza aid operation that is diametrically opposed to the one described in Blinken and Austin’s letter.

For Netanyahu, the accusations were another sign of antisemitism at the UN and its institutions.

Israel, he said, was beset by “lies and slanders”.

“Good is portrayed as evil, and evil is portrayed as good.”

“We help bring in 700,000 tonnes of food into Gaza. That’s more than 3,000 calories a day for every man, woman, and child in Gaza.”

The hard facts in the US letter are a stark contrast to his emotive rhetoric. Some of them focus on restrictions Israel imposed in September, while Netanyahu made his claims in New York.

• “The amount of assistance entering Gaza in September was the lowest of any month during the past year” – in other words, since before Hamas’s 7 October attacks last year
• The US is particularly concerned by “recent actions by the Israeli government – including halting commercial imports, denying or impeding nearly 90% of humanitarian movements between northern and southern Gaza in September”

The Americans also criticise the way Israel slows the delivery of aid by imposing onerous rules, and make a number of specific demands:

• They want the removal of the restrictions on the use of closed lorries and containers, and to increase the number of vetted drivers to 400. UN agencies say that a shortage of drivers and lorries has made getting aid into Gaza much harder
• Israel must tighten and speed up security and customs checks. Aid organisations say cumbersome rules are used to slow deliveries down
• The Americans want aid to be funnelled through the port of Ashdod in an “expedited” route to the Gaza Strip. Ashdod is a modern Israeli container port a short drive north of Gaza. After Israel refused to let it be used, the US spent an estimated $230m (£174m) on a floating pier for aid deliveries into Gaza that broke up in bad weather before it could make a difference
• Israel should also remove restrictions on deliveries from Jordan

Israel argues that Hamas steals aid and sells it at inflated prices. The Americans do not directly engage with that, except in a single sentence that acknowledges there has been “increased lawlessness and looting”. Front and centre in the letter is Israel’s squeeze on Gaza.

Their criticism extends way beyond the mechanics of getting aid into Gaza. It demands an end to the isolation of northern Gaza, where ultra-nationalists in Netanyahu’s cabinet want to replace Palestinians with Jewish settlers.

Concern about northern Gaza has increased since Israel started its current offensive there.

The army’s actions have resembled parts of a plan put forward by a group of retired officers, led by Giora Eiland, a major-general who used to be Israel’s national security adviser. Eiland says he wanted a deal to get the hostages back and end the war early on. But as that didn’t happen, he believes more radical action is necessary.

Israel has already separated northern Gaza from the south with a corridor along Wadi Gaza that bisects the territory. Eiland told me that his plan was to open evacuation routes for a week to 10 days so that as many of the 400,000 or so civilians left in the north leave. Then the territory would be sealed, all aid supplies cut, and everyone left inside would be considered a legitimate military target.

A version of the plan appeared to be in place at Jabalia camp in the north, after it was sealed off by Israeli troops, tanks and drones.

The Blinken-Austin letter insists that there can be “no Israeli government policy of forced evacuation of civilians from northern to southern Gaza”. Aid agencies should have “continuous access to northern Gaza” and should be able to enter it direct from Israel rather than taking the hazardous and often deadly route from the south. Orders to evacuate must be cancelled “when there is no operational need”.

Israel has forced 1.7 million civilians, many of whom fled northern Gaza, into a narrow strip of land along the coast between al-Mawasi and the town of Deir al-Balah, where the letter says “extreme overcrowding exposed the civilians to a high risk of contracting serious diseases”.

The Americans want the pressure to be eased, for civilians to be allowed to move inland before the winter. BBC Verify has established that Israel has also bombed what it says are Hamas targets in an area it calls a humanitarian zone.

The letter had immediate results. For the first time since the beginning of October, Israel has allowed in convoys of lorries carrying aid, though not yet on the scale requested by the US. Whether the letter can end the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza, particularly in the absence of ceasefire, is another matter.

Israel has been given 30 days to remedy matters. The US presidential election happens within that time frame. Before polling day, the US would not restrict weapons shipments to Israel, especially given the fact that the Israelis are on the brink, potentially, of a much wider war with Iran.

If Vice-President Kamala Harris wins, the Biden administration will be able to keep up the pressure on Israel until the inauguration in January.

It is likely to be a different story if former President Donald Trump gets his second term. Based on Trump’s previous four years in office, Netanyahu is likely to feel he has much more freedom to do what he wants as he runs down the clock on Joe Biden’s time in the White House.

Biden has been widely criticised, in his own Democratic Party and further afield, for not using the leverage that should come with America’s position as Israel’s most vital ally. Without US military and diplomatic support Israel would struggle to fight its wars. The letter looks like a serious attempt to impose pressure. In the last year of war, Netanyahu has often ignored US wishes.

A turning point came at the UN General Assembly in late September, when the US, UK and other allies of Israel believed they had talked Israel into accepting a 21-day truce in Lebanon to make time for diplomacy.

Instead, Netanyahu’s speech doubled down, rejecting a truce and escalating the regional war. From his hotel in New York, he ordered the assassination of the leader of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah. Some senior Western officials complain that the Biden administration has been “played” by Netanyahu.

The letter is a belated attempt to redress the balance. Biden has been convinced he can best influence Israel by offering unconditional support. He advised Israel after 7 October not to be blinded by rage, as he said America was after the al-Qaeda’s 9/11 attacks.

But his wishes have often been ignored by Netanyahu. Whether or not Israel listens to America’s demands on Gaza, as Biden enters his last lap as president, it is clear that his attempt to stop the spread of the Gaza war across the Middle East has failed.

And as for the letter, it will be too little, too late for all those civilians in Gaza who have suffered, and for those who have died, as the result of months of restrictions in humanitarian aid imposed by Israel.

The UN’s special coordinator for Lebanon has criticised Israel after air strikes on municipal buildings in the southern city of Nabatieh killed the mayor and 15 other people.

Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert called the killing of mayor Ahmad Kahil “alarming” and said any violations of international humanitarian law were “completely unacceptable”.

At least five of those killed in Wednesday’s strike were municipal staff co-ordinating aid for civilians remaining in the area, Nabatiyeh Governor Howaida Turk told the BBC.

Lebanon’s caretaker prime minister, Najib Mikati condemned the attack, saying it had “intentionally” targeted a council meeting.

The attack was the most significant against a Lebanese state building since the latest escalation in fighting, which began about two weeks ago, and has raised concerns about the safety of the country’s state infrastructure.

A spokesman for the Israeli military said its forces had launched raids targeting dozens of Hezbollah targets in the area and destroyed a tunnel used by the Iran-backed group.

“We know that Hezbollah many times takes advantage of civilian facilities,” Israel’s UN ambassador Danny Danon said at a meeting of the UN in New York City on Wednesday.

Turk, the governor, said that while the majority of Nabatieh residents had already left the area following heavy Israeli air strikes, the mayor and other municipal employees had stayed behind to help those who remained.

“This is just like strikes all over Lebanon,” she said.

“They [Israel] have hit civilians, Red Cross, civil defence. Now they have targeted a government building. It is unacceptable. It is a massacre.”

Previous strikes on Nabatieh over the past few days have destroyed historic buildings, including an Ottoman-era market dating to 1910.

Israel also launched at least one air strike against Beirut on Wednesday.

The strike, which hit the southern suburb of Dahieh, was the first on the Lebanese capital in five days. It came after a reported intervention by the US in which it urged restraint over the bombing of the capital.

Residents of Dahieh had begun to return to the area over the past few days, taking advantage of the apparent pause in bombing to check on their homes and retrieve clothes and other possessions.

Several told the BBC on Wednesday that the area resembled a ghost town, with rubble and debris from buildings littering the streets.

The strike on Dahieh came just hours after a US state department spokesman Matthew Miller publicly expressed concern over the “scope and nature” of Israel’s bombing of Beirut.

Mr Miller said the state department’s concerns had been “made clear to the government of Israel”.

An Israeli military spokesman said that prior to striking Beirut, “numerous steps were taken to mitigate the risk of harming civilians, including advancing warnings to the population in the area”.

Israel has faced criticism this week over its warnings, which Amnesty International has called “inadequate” and “misleading”.

The human rights charity said the warnings did “not absolve Israel of its obligations under international humanitarian law”.

Israel has expanded its air campaign in recent days, launching an unexpected strike in the far north of the country on Monday.

The strike, which destroyed a large residential home that had been rented by a displaced family in the Christian village of Aitou, killed 23 people, according to the Lebanese health ministry.

Twelve of the dead were women and two children, the ministry said.

The UN human rights office called for an investigation into the Aitou strike, saying it raised “real concerns” with respect to international humanitarian law.

The hand was covered in dust, streaked with blood on the fingers and wrist, all that could be seen of the person who was killed.

Like many other victims of the Israeli air strikes they lie buried under the rubble – this time in Gaza City, in the north.

A teenage boy was pulled from the first floor of a collapsed building. As his feet and legs emerged it looked as if he might be alive.

But then the whole body was lifted free, and flopped lifelessly in the arms of the rescuers.

They leaned across and passed the boy through a window below, and into the waiting arms of another group of men.

In the narrow streets men dug with their hands. But there were no sounds coming from the rubble now. Whoever lay there was beyond help.

Ramez Abu Nasr was digging for hours. His mother, father and brothers were entombed by the falling masonry.

Ramez managed to save his youngest brother. The boy told him that he had heard his parents nearby, reciting the Shehada, the Muslim prayer of faith.

Soon after they were silent.

“I took out my younger brother at the last moment. I don’t know how we can go back to our home… without my mother, or father, or brothers,” says Ramez.

The family fled here from Jabalia when the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) began their renewed offensive against Hamas in the north twelve days ago.

The IDF issued an evacuation order affecting an estimated 400,000 people in the northern Gaza Strip, telling them to move to the south.

But many thousands stayed behind, exhausted by constant displacement, fearful of heading to a place where they had no access to supplies.

Inside a house that is still standing, a young man kneels in front of his dead sister. She looks to be in her thirties. “Oh God, my sister, my sister,” he calls out.

Civil Defence volunteers are gathering bodies from inside buildings. They find a badly wounded man and race to the ambulance.

They are trying to save a life, but also are afraid of being bombed themselves.

Ahmed al Kahlout from the local Civil Defence looked around him at the carnage. Behind him, a colleague tries to give CPR to a woman. It is hopeless.

“This is the al-Sayyed family house,” Ahmed says. “There are bodies, torn parts in this area… It is a horrible crime.”

Several ambulances are lined up in the streets. Most of those inside them are dead. Bodies are piled up. All ages.

Blood seeps from the forehead of a small child. A woman, wrapped in a brightly coloured blanket is loaded beside her. Next to the ambulance a dead man, middle aged, is lying on a hospital trolley.

Many of the casualties are taken to Jabalia’s Kamal Adwan hospital. It’s director, Dr Hussam Abu Safiyyah, told me by phone that his hospital faced a dire humanitarian crisis and accused Israel of imposing collective punishment.

“We urge the world to intervene and impose their humanity over the Israeli army, to open humanitarian corridors that allow the entrance of medical tools, delegations, fuel, and food so that we can provide humanitarian services for the children, newborn babies, and patients who are in need,” he said.

The United States has accused Israel of refusing or impeding up to 90% of aid to northern Gaza in the last month – and threatened to cut arms shipments unless there is change.

Israel says it is taking American concerns seriously and is “addressing the issue”.

International journalists from media organisations, including the BBC, are not given independent access to Gaza by Israel.

The IDF says it only targets “terror cells” and released a video of what it said was Hamas firing from within a clinic in Jabalia. The army also said they’d found weapons and boobytraps in a medical facility.

In the video an officer, his face blurred, points to booby traps and weapons and speaks to the camera: “Everything here is a cynical exploitation of the civilian population, inside a clinic, inside a civilian compound. We will pursue these terrorists and find them in every corner.”

In Jabalia, a heavily pregnant woman is sitting in the dust outside a house. The Civil Defence workers arrive and help her onto a stretcher. Her father is there and tells her, “You are going to be ok. You are going to give birth, my heart.”

Then a shell explodes nearby. The small group rushes to the ambulance and escapes.

Every day they plead for peace in Jabalia. For food, and medicine, for schools to open.

They plead, but know their voices cannot make it stop.

Warning: This story contains details which some people may find upsetting

Witnesses to an Israeli air strike and resulting fire at a tent camp in a Gaza hospital compound have shared with the BBC their horror and helplessness at seeing people injured and killed in the flames.

One mother called it “one of the worst scenes we’ve witnessed”, while an injured girl said she heard screaming as people tore down their tent to get them out. A man said he had “broken down” as he was “unable to do anything” to help those who burned to death.

The strike hit the al-Aqsa Hospital compound in Deir al-Balah, central Gaza, in the early hours of Monday, igniting a fire that burned makeshift shelters for displaced people.

At least four people were killed and dozens injured, mostly women and children, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.

The BBC has verified the location of a video that shows what appears to be a person on fire. Other footage captures people rushing to extinguish the flames amid screams and explosions sending fireballs into the night sky.

The Israeli military said it had targeted Hamas fighters operating inside a command centre in the car park, after which a fire broke out “likely due to secondary explosions”. The military said the incident was under review.

Charity Doctors without Borders (MSF), which has staff working at al-Aqsa, told the BBC “it had no knowledge“ of a Hamas centre and said “the hospital functions as a hospital”.

The UN’s humanitarian affairs agency said in a statement that “people burned to death” and “atrocities must end”, while a spokesperson for the White House National Security Council called the footage “disturbing”.

“The images and video of what appear to be displaced civilians burning alive following an Israeli air strike are deeply disturbing and we have made our concerns clear to the Israeli government,” the spokesperson told the BBC’s partner CBS.

“Israel has a responsibility to do more to avoid civilian casualties — and what happened here is horrifying, even if Hamas was operating near the hospital in an attempt to use civilians as human shields.”

Witnesses said the strike happened at about 01:15 local time on Monday (23:15 BST on Sunday).

It hit an area between buildings filled with makeshift shelters, next to an outdoor outpatient waiting area that had no one there at night, Anna Halford, MSF’s emergency coordinator in Gaza who was not at the hospital during the strike, said in a phone call from Deir al-Balah.

Hiba Radi, a mother who was living in a tent behind the hospital, told a BBC freelancer in Gaza she woke up to the sound of “explosions and fires erupting around the tents”.

“There were explosions everywhere, and we were shocked at whether this was gas or weapons,” she said.

“This is one of the worst scenes we’ve witnessed and lived through,” she added. “We’ve never seen destruction like this before. It’s hard, really hard.”

Atia Darwish, a photographer who recorded some of the verified videos, told the BBC it was a “big shock” and he was “unable to do anything” watching people burn.

“I was so broken down,” he said.

Um Yaser Abdel Hamid Daher, who also lives at the hospital, told the BBC “we’ve seen so many people burning that we started feeling like we might burn like them”.

The injured included her son, and his wife and children. Her granddaughter Lina, 11, who had shrapnel in her hand and leg injuries, said she had heard people screaming.

”Our neighbour’s daughter was injured in her head and her dad was killed. And our other neighbours were killed. The people next to us tore down the tent to get us out,” she said.

Her grandmother said the family “lost their tent and everything they had; they have nothing left”.

The health ministry reported on Monday that more than 40 people were injured and four killed.

MSF on Tuesday shared a higher toll, saying five people had died, their bodies burned by the time they were recovered, and 65 injured.

Forty of the injured – 22 men, eight women and 10 children – stayed at al-Aqsa. The others were transferred to different hospitals, with eight going to a specialist burns unit.

Ms Halford said her colleagues were treating burns victims ”who will almost certainly not survive”, saying “there is very little you can do for burn victims of that severity”.

“You come home with the smell of it on your clothes. It’s a viscerally affecting experience. It stays with you,” she said.

Monday’s strike was the seventh on the hospital site since March, and the third in two weeks, Ms Halford said.

When she arrived at the hospital after the most recent hit, she said she found people picking through twisted metal and burned debris to salvage any belongings.

Another mother the BBC spoke to whose children suffered burns injuries had already evacuated from north Gaza – and now has nothing.

The acting chief of the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said the strike occurred in an area where north Gaza residents had been told to relocate.

“There really is no safe place in Gaza for people to go,” the statement read.

After a bombshell accusation from Canadian officials this week – that they believe India government agents were linked to a campaign of murder and extortion in the country – diplomatic relations hit new lows.

That rift is now raising questions over the impact it could have on the deep trade and immigration ties between both countries.

Bilateral trade is worth billions of dollars, and Canada is home to nearly 1.7 million people of Indian origin.

The breakdown of relations at this level is uncharted territory, and much of what happens next will depend on how they choose to move forward, experts suggest.

Neither country has imposed tariffs or other economic forms of retaliation, but experts caution that this could change, and that a cooling relationship between India and Canada could hinder further economic growth.

“The biggest challenge, particularly for business and citizens, is going to be uncertainty,” Arif Lalani, a senior advisor at government consulting company StrategyCorp and a former Canadian diplomat, told the BBC.

The two countries have been negotiating a bilateral trade deal on and off for over a decade, but Canada paused talks last year shortly before Prime Minister Justin Trudeau first made a public accusation against India.

In September 2023, Trudeau said that Canada had “credible allegations” linking Indian government agents to the murder of Sikh separatist Hardeep Singh Nijjar, who was shot and killed in Surrey, British Columbia that June.

India temporarily suspended visas for Canadian citizens shortly after, but that move was brief and it resumed visa processing in November.

Trade ties between the two, meanwhile, remained as usual. Bilateral trade is around $8bn (£6.15bn), according to the latest fiscal figures from India’s trade ministry.

Canada’s trade minister recently assured business owners that Ottawa does seek to disrupt commercial ties with India.

Still, with ongoing uncertainty, Mr Lalani said businesspeople from both countries could look elsewhere for opportunities.

“People will be thinking twice in terms of expanding trade, or trying to build on what they already have,” he said.

Another big concern is how the rift will alter movement of people between the two countries. India has been Canada’s top source of international students since 2018, and about 4% of Canada’s overall population is of Indian origin.

“The human connection between our countries is profound,” Karan Thukral, a lawyer based in Delhi, told the BBC, adding that a big portion of his clientele are people eager to move to Canada.

He said many are now anxious about how the diplomatic tension could affect their plans to work or study in Canada.

Immigration processing remains operational, Mr Thukral noted, but he has advised his clients to anticipate potential delays due to the reduction of diplomatic staff in both countries.

Others, especially those in Canada with family in India, are anxious about India reinstating visa restrictions for Canadian nationals, he added.

Any visa restrictions would come with business implications and could have a dampening effect on trade, tourism and investment, said Jeff Nankivell, president of the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada.

“The Indian government has already shown its willingness once to suspend the visa issuance, so it’s possible they could do so again,” he said, adding the biggest impact will be felt in Canada’s large Indian diaspora community.

Mr Nankivell said that he suspects the diplomatic situation will continue to evolve, and the fallout will be felt for a long time as Canadian police pursue legal action against those allegedly complicit in Mr Nijjar’s death and other criminal acts.

“That’s going to continue to raise the temperature,” he said.

Four people have been arrested and charged in connection with Mr Nijjar’s murder – all Indian nationals in their 20s – though it remains unclear if and how they are connected to India’s government.

A trial date for them has not yet been scheduled.

Canadian police said this week there are “multiple ongoing investigations” into the alleged involvement of India government agents in “serious criminal activity” in Canada.

On Wednesday, Trudeau doubled-down on accusations against India with sharp criticism of Delhi’s alleged aggressive interference in Canada’s sovereignty.

But he also cautioned that he does not want to hurt economic and social ties.

“We don’t want to be in this situation of picking a fight with a significant trading partner, with whom we have deep people-to-people ties and a long history and are fellow democracies,” Trudeau told a public inquiry looking into foreign interference in the country.

India hit back angrily, calling Trudeau’s behaviour “cavalier” and accusing Canada of not presenting evidence to back up its accusations.

Earlier this week, India said that it “reserves the right to take further steps” in its response, while Canada’s foreign minister Mélanie Joly said all options, including sanctions, are on the table.

In a small, crowded tenement in the slums of India’s Pune city, Shailaja Paik grew up, surrounded by alleys strewn with garbage and battling the daily challenges of limited water and no private toilet.

Today, she stands as one of this year’s 22 recipients of the prestigious MacArthur “genius” fellowship, a testament to a career dedicated to researching the complex lives of Dalit women – those born into the caste considered “untouchable” in India’s hierarchical society.

The MacArthur Foundation’s award – which includes a $800,000 [£615,000] stipend given over five years – isn’t just recognition for her research on caste, gender, and sexuality but a powerful endorsement of her ongoing mission: to redefine the narratives of the oppressed.

Marlies Carruth, director of the MacArthur Fellows Program, says the interdisciplinary award seeks to “enable” people with a track record and the potential to produce additional extraordinary work.

“Through her focus on the multifaceted experiences of Dalit women, Paik elucidates the enduring nature of caste discrimination and the forces that perpetuate untouchability,” the Foundation said while announcing this year’s nominees.

In an interview with the BBC, Paik said the fellowship offered immense possibilities for emphasising Dalit issues as human rights issues and “connecting histories of the marginalised in different parts of the world”.

It also plays a role in enhancing “global conversations of social justice”, Paik, who is a professor of history at the University of Cincinnati, added.

“I feel so grateful as an Indian-American woman to be among this group of genius, creative people from the US.”

A modern historian who studies the lives of Dalit women through the lens of caste, gender and sexuality, Paik grew up in India but has been working in the US for more than a decade.

Spending her childhood in a 20x20ft room in Pune’s Yerwada slums, Paik remembered standing in long queues every day to fetch water from the public tap for cooking and cleaning.

“On all levels – social, educational, emotional and mental – all this definitely had a profound effect on me,” she said.

Her younger sister Rohini Waghmare said it was their parents who emphasised the importance of education and ensured all their children studied in English.

“Usually when there are daughters, the mentality is that girls should get married soon,” she said.

Paik was an excellent student throughout school and college.

Her mother Sarita Paik credited her hard work for her success. “I’m less educated but her father and I always felt that girls should learn a lot.”

But studying was a challenge, Paik said. “I remember wrapping myself up in a quilt and telling my family members to speak softly and not make any noise,” she recounted.

“I would go to sleep around 7:30pm until around 3am, then get up to study until 6-7am, before leaving for school.”

Paik developed a love for history while pursuing her undergraduate degree at the city’s Savitribai Phule Pune University.

“Textbooks then provided merely an overview of different time periods of India, US, Japan or China without any in-depth knowledge about the society or culture.”

As Paik delved more into the subject, she noticed not much work had been done on the education of Dalit women.

“Dalits constitute 17% of India’s total population,” Paik said. “There are statistics but there was no qualitative research. No one had written the history of Dalit women properly, so I decided that I wanted to do this work.”

In 2014, she published her first book, Dalit Women’s Education in Modern India, examining the “double discrimination” of gender and caste they face in accessing basic rights.

“Historically such a large population was not allowed any form of education, public infrastructure, public water bodies or wells, much less the wearing of slippers or new clothes, even if one could afford them.”

Having come from this background, Paik made it the centre of her research and writing.

“Dalit women are undoubtedly the most disadvantaged and oppressed. They are the Dalits among Dalits in terms of gender and politics,” Paik said.

She herself is no stranger to the discrimination and recalls people around her being surprised that she as a Dalit woman had received the Ford Foundation Fellowship for her PhD.

Paik’s second book The Vulgarity of Caste : Dalits, Sexuality, and Humanity in Modern India, published by Stanford University Press in 2022, looked at the social and intellectual history of Dalit performance of Tamasha, a popular form of travelling theatre in Maharashtra. The book won the American Historical Association’s John F. Richards Prize for “the most distinguished work of scholarship on South Asia”.

With its significant Indian-American population, caste has become a growing conversation in the US even as India continues to reckon with it.

The historian said that to tackle discrimination, it was crucial for those enjoying advantages of the caste system to acknowledge its existence globally instead of shying away from it.

The discrimination most affects people from “lower castes and outcastes”, Paik said. “So, it is important to engage with those vulnerable and disadvantaged, stand with them in the struggle against discrimination on lines of caste, gender, and race.”

Scholars from marginalised castes face different kinds of roadblocks as they navigate the academic world, one of which is fluency in English language. “Many of them are educated in vernacular mediums and as they move up in the ladders of higher education, they have to work harder than their peers who are fluent in English.”

Such scholars also struggle to access enough financial resources and social networks to tap into resources and connect with renowned scholars. Here, Paik said, it is important for institutions to grant fellowships or have individuals who will fund and support intellectuals pursuing research.

“The picture has changed over the last decade and I am happy that many emerging scholars are aware of varied opportunities and using them to their advantage,” she said.

Paik hopes her MacArthur fellowship will strengthen the fight against casteism “for both Dalits and non-Dalits in South Asia and beyond”.

“I will use the fellowship to continue my research, writing and work with my cohort fellows in creating new opportunities to work for social justice,” she said.

Two countries, Moldova and Georgia, hold pivotal votes in the coming days that will decide their future path in Europe.

Both have both felt the shadow of Russia’s war in Ukraine, and both are former Soviet republics.

While Moldova’s pro-EU president Maia Sandu is favourite to win and talks have begun on joining the European Union, the government in Georgia has been accused of “democratic backsliding” and turning away from Europe.

Moldovans go to the polls on Sunday in a referendum on enshrining Moldova’s path to EU membership in the constitution – alongside the presidential election.

A Yes vote would consolidate Moldova’s status as a pro-Western, EU-facing country. It would also mean Moldova having to set out on a long path of democratic and judicial reforms to ensure it adheres to EU standards.

A survey last month suggested more than 63% of voters would back the Yes campaign. However, many in the pro-European camp have denounced what they say are Russian efforts to spread disinformation and influence the vote.

Moldova’s population is just over 2.5 million, while 1.2 million Moldovans live abroad.

Moldova’s incumbent president is Maia Sandu – the 52-year-old founder of the liberal Party of Action and Solidarity, who came to power in 2020 and is a committed pro-European.

She will face off against Alexander Stoianoglo, the former prosecutor general of Moldova who took many by surprise when he announced running for president in July.

He is supported by the pro-Russian Party of Socialists, whose leader is ex-president and popular opposition figure Igor Dodon.

Turnout on Sunday is predicted to be high – above 80%.

Recent polls suggest Sandu could win over 35% of the vote on Sunday, with Stoianoglo coming a distant second with 9%.

There are several other candidates, the majority of whom are pro-Russian. However, almost 30% of voters were still undecided, according to the polls.

If no candidate gets more than 50% of the vote, the presidential election will go to a run-off vote on 3 November.

Although Sandu should comfortably win both rounds, parliamentary elections next July look less positive for her party, which may have to work with less staunchly pro-EU forces if it wants to govern.

One figure who looms large over the election, although he is not a candidate, is Ilan Shor, a businessman and politician. His Shor Party was banned in Moldova last year following allegations of working with Russia to undermine Moldova’s security and constitutional order. Shor fled to Israel in 2019 after being convicted of fraud and money-laundering, and has recently been living in Russia.

He makes no secret of where his allegiances lie. In September, he offered money to convince “as many people as possible” to vote No or to abstain in the EU referendum.

Pro-European forces in Moldova have long warned of Russian interference in the election and referendum vote. One Moldovan news website said the election campaign had been marred by Russia’s “most slanderous, most violent and disruptive destabilisation campaign since the country’s independence”.

Authorities have linked some cases of vandalism and disinformation campaigns on social media to Shor and to his alleged Kremlin backers.

Last month, Moldova’s chief of police Viorel Cernauteanu said 130,000 Moldovans had received money transfers from Russia – amounting to $15m – as bribes to vote for Russia-friendly candidates and against the EU referendum.

On Thursday, Mr Cernauteanu alleged that dozens of Moldovans had recently travelled to Moscow, ostensibly to attend “cultural exchange programmes”, but actually receiving training to stir violence ahead of the elections.

The Kremlin maintains it “does not interfere in other people’s affairs” and has accused Moldova’s authorities of “denying many citizens a right to say that they support having good relations with Russia”.

There is a lot of stake for Georgians when they vote in parliamentary elections on Saturday 26 October.

This country of 3.7 million people has become highly polarised – with the governing party, Georgian Dream, accused of dismantling civil society and adopting Russia-style laws.

Opposition parties have sought to frame this vote as a choice between Europe and Russia – a label firmly rejected by Georgian Dream.

It was only last December that Georgians were celebrating the EU granting their country official candidate status, with polls suggesting support from at least 80% of Georgians.

By the summer, the EU had frozen that process, because of a Russia-style “foreign influence law” that brought tens of thousands of protesters onto the streets of the capital Tbilisi.

The law requires media and NGOs with foreign funding to register as acting in the interest of a foreign power. Since then Georgian Dream has also enacted a law curbing LGBT rights.

The US, EU and US have all issued warnings against backsliding from democracy. The EU’s ambassador in Tbilisi has warned it could temporarily suspend its visa-free regime with Georgia if the vote is not deemed free and fair. US President Joe Biden pointedly withdrew a recent invite to a reception to Georgia’s Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze.

Russia has accused the West of blatantly trying to put pressure on Georgia, denying that the Kremlin has itself has sought to do so.

But Georgian Dream maintains it is still on the path to joining the EU.

The prime minister promises a reset in relations with the West, and EU membership by 2030, as well as deepening co-operation with Nato.

The party has been in power since 2012, and if Georgian Dream wins a fourth consecutive election, party founder Bidzina Ivanishvili, a billionaire who made his fortune in Russia, has promised to ban opposition groups. But to do that they would need three-quarters of the seats in the 150-seat parliament to change the constitution.

The opposition itself is far from united, so while Georgian Dream has declined in popularity it still leads in the opinion polls.

Four opposition groups have a chance of securing the 5% of votes needed to get into parliament.

The biggest – United National Movement or UNM – is also considered the most divisive. Many voters still have bad memories of its nine years in power before Georgian Dream took office, so the other three opposition forces have shied away from forming a united front.

Coalition for Change, Strong Georgia and Gakharia for Georgia are all polling well but even if the four groups were to find common ground it might take months to form a government, clearing the way for a period of instability.

Although Georgians will be voting for the first time under a proportional representation system, seen by most parties as fairer, critics have complained that the party in power still maintains a grip on the media and controls the public space.

Hotel staff made two calls to emergency services in the moments before singer Liam Payne fell to his death from a balcony in Argentina.

A caller appearing to be the chief receptionist said they had a guest who had taken “too many drugs and alcohol”, and was “trashing the entire room”, before the line cut out.

In a second call, the same caller warned the guest’s life “may be in danger” as the room had a balcony, and asked the 911 operator to send someone “urgently”.

Medics and local authorities were sent to the CasaSur Palermo hotel, Buenos Aires, where the former One Direction star had been staying.

• Live: Liam Payne dies after falling from hotel balcony
• Stars pay tribute to Liam Payne, dead at 31
• Watch: Fans react to his death in Argentina
• Boy band star who had the X factor
• The former One Direction star’s life in pictures
• Liam Payne shared final Snapchats on last few days in Argentina
• Full transcript of 911 call made moments before Liam Payne fell

Payne fell from the balcony after officers arrived.

Call handler: 911 where’s your emergency?

Caller: Hello.

911 what’s your emergency?

Hello, good afternoon, look I’m calling you from the hotel CasaSur Palermo, which is located in Costa Rica [St] 6032.

6032? Is that between Cramer [St] and…

Yes, that’s correct it’s between Arévalo [St] and Dorrego [St]. So, we have a guest who is high on drugs and who is trashing the room. Erm, so we need someone to come.

Understood, so you’re telling me [he] is being aggressive? Sir, can you please repeat the name of the hotel? Sir?

Call handler: 911 where’s your emergency?

Caller: Hello, good day, I just called but got cut off. I’m calling from the hotel CasaSur Palermo, Costa Rica [St] 6032.

What’s happening at that location, sir?

Well, we’ve got a guest who has had too many drugs and alcohol and, well, when he is conscious he is trashing the entire room and we need you to send someone, please.

He is under the effect of alcohol and drugs, is he, sir?

Yes, correct.

You said Costa Rica St at which location?

Costa Rica 6032.

That’s between Arévalo and Cramer?

Yes.

You said it’s a hotel? What’s it called?

CasaSur Palermo, and we need you to send someone urgently because, well, I don’t know whether his life may be in danger, the guest’s life. He is in a room with a balcony and well, we’re a little afraid that he…

Since when has he been there or is this a long-stay hotel?

He’s been here for two or three days.

Understood, you wouldn’t know any other details because you can’t get in, right?

No.

We’ll notify the SAME (medical emergency) staff as well, yes?

Yes, what I’m asking is for someone to come urgently because, well…

We’ve notified SAME. Any other details you can provide. Who are you, are you in charge?

I am the chief receptionist.

In charge at the location?

Yes, yes.

We’ve now reported this. What’s your name, sir?

Esteban.

We’ve reported it.

Ok.

Thanks for calling, you can free up the line now.

Are you sending the police as well or not?

The police and the local – wait give me a second – the local authorities and the SAME.

No, no, just the SAME. Just the SAME.

Understood, don’t worry, we’ve reported it.

Yes, perfect, many thanks.

You told me that [the guest] is under the influence of drugs and alcohol and the SAME doesn’t go in alone.

The SAME doesn’t go in alone? Ok, ok.

No, it’s [been] reported [to the police] regardless. If the police arrives you explain [what’s going on] and if they need the SAME, they call them.

Good, ok. Perfect.

We’ve made the report, have a good day, sir.

Good, thanks, same to you.

Russia’s army is forming a unit of some 3,000 North Koreans, a Ukrainian military intelligence source has told the BBC, in the latest report suggesting that Pyongyang is forming a close military alliance with the Kremlin.

So far the BBC has yet to see any sign of such a large unit being formed in Russia’s Far East, and Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has dismissed reports of North Korean involvement.

“This is not only British intelligence, it is also American intelligence. They report it all the time, they don’t provide any evidence,” he said.

There is no doubt Moscow and Pyongyang have deepened their levels of cooperation in recent months. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un sent Vladimir Putin a birthday message only last week calling him his “closest comrade”.

Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky has spoken of North Korea joining the war, and South Korea’s defence minister said this month that the chance of a North Korean deployment in Ukraine was “highly likely”.

The biggest question mark is over the numbers involved.

A military source in Russia’s Far East confirmed to BBC Russian that “a number of North Koreans have arrived” and were stationed in one of the military bases near Ussuriysk, to the north of Vladivostok. But the source refused to give a precise number, other than that they were “absolutely nowhere near 3,000”.

Military experts have told us they doubt Russian army units can successfully incorporate North Korean soldiers in their thousands.

“It wasn’t even that easy to include hundreds of Russian prisoners at first – and all those guys spoke Russian,” one analyst – who is in Russia so didn’t want to be named – told the BBC.

Even if they did number 3,000, it would not be big in a battlefield sense, but the US is as concerned as Ukraine.

“It would mark a significant increase in their relationship,” said US state department spokesman Matthew Miller, who saw it as “a new level of desperation by Russia” amid battlefield losses.

It was back in June that Vladimir Putin toasted a “peaceful and defensive” pact with Kim Jong Un.

And there is mounting evidence that North Korea is supplying Russia with ammunition, as recently demonstrated by the recovery of a missile in Ukraine’s Poltava region.

In fact, reports of mines and shells supplied by Pyongyang date back to December 2023 in Telegram chats involving Russia’s military communities.

Russian soldiers, stationed in Ukraine, have often complained about the standard of ammunition and that dozens of soldiers have been wounded.

Kyiv suspects that a unit of North Korean soldiers is preparing in the Ulan-Ude region close to the Mongolian border ahead of deployment to Russia’s Kursk province, where Ukrainian forces launched an incursion back in August.

“They could guard some sections of the Russian-Ukrainian border, which would free Russian units for fighting elsewhere,” said Valeriy Ryabykh, editor of the Ukrainian publication Defence Express.

“I would rule out the possibility that these units will immediately appear on the front line.”

Ryabakh is not alone in this thought.

North Korea may have some 1.28 million active soldiers but its army has no recent experience of combat operations, unlike Russia’s military.

Pyongyang has pursued the old Soviet model in its armed forces but it is unclear how its main force of motorised infantry units might fit into the war in Ukraine.

Then there is the obvious language barrier and an unfamiliarity with Russian systems that would complicate any fighting roles.

That does not preclude North Korea’s military taking part in Russia’s full-scale war in Ukraine, but they are most recognised by experts for their engineering and construction abilities, not for fighting.

What they do both have are shared incentives.

Pyongyang needs money and technology, Moscow needs soldiers and ammunition.

“Pyongyang would be paid well and maybe get access to Russian military technology, which otherwise Moscow would have been reluctant to transfer to North Korea,” says Andrei Lankov, director of the Korea Risk Group.

“It would also give their soldiers real combat experience, but there is also the risk of exposing North Koreans to life in the West, which is a considerably more prosperous place.”

For Putin, there is an urgent need to make up for significant losses during more than two and half years of war.

Valeriy Akimenko from the UK’s Conflict Studies Research Centre believes deploying North Koreans would help the Russian leader deal with the previous round of mandatory mobilisation not going well.

“So he thinks, as the Russian ranks are thinned out by Ukraine, what a brilliant idea – why not let North Koreans do some of the fighting?”

President Zelensky is clearly concerned about how this hostile alliance could evolve.

There have not been Western boots on the ground in Ukraine for fear of escalation.

However, if reports of hundreds of North Koreans preparing for deployment are borne out, the idea of foreign boots on the ground in this war would appear to be less of a concern for Vladimir Putin.

King Charles III and Queen Camilla are due to arrive in Australia on Friday on a historic royal tour.

Eight months ago, I didn’t think I’d be writing those words.

In February, Buckingham Palace announced the King had cancer and all his “public-facing duties” stopped – on doctors’ orders.

Back then, a trip to Australia seemed unthinkable. A flight of around 24 hours, a punishing time difference, and days of royal engagements would surely be too much for a 75-year-old dealing with a cancer diagnosis and embarking on treatment.

But palace aides never took this trip completely off the table – whenever it came up, their language was careful. “It’s not been ruled out”, they’d say, or “decisions will be made on the advice of doctors”, and “the King needs to focus on treatment for cancer first”.

And by late Spring, there were signs the visit might still go ahead.

Some of the King’s team travelled to Australia and Samoa to assess what was possible and finalise arrangements, liaising with the Foreign Office and both the Australian and New Zealand governments.

Would the King be well enough to cope with the rigours of the tour? The answer was yes – with some important changes.

On medical advice, New Zealand was removed from the schedule. Buckingham Palace said it was a choice made “in collaboration” with the Australian and New Zealand governments, and acknowledged it was a “tough decision”.

Royal aides have been open about the King’s diagnosis and treatment but they have never revealed the type of cancer the King has nor offered details of the kind of treatment he’s receiving. “His health is on a positive trajectory,” they tell us.

What is clear is the King’s treatment is ongoing and his cancer requires regular medical management. But he is well enough for his doctors to sanction this trip, and while he is away his cancer treatment has been paused.

Removing New Zealand and keeping this trip short means he can return to his regular routine of treatment as early as possible.

The programme of events for the King and Queen also looks a bit different from regular royal tours. When they arrive they will have a day to recover before starting engagements. It’s a long journey – they are both in their 70s and the day off is again a nod to the King’s condition.

The timetables in Australia and Samoa do not include evening engagements. There are no state dinners, and no trips out late in the day. But we will see more of the King over the next nine days than we have for most of this year.

Buckingham Palace says a lot of thought has gone into “balancing the programme” and it has been planned to “preserve the King’s energies”.

This is Charles’ first visit as King to one of the 14 realms where he remains Head of State. It will also be his first Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM), where he is head of the association of 56 countries.

The King’s reign has been compromised by his cancer diagnosis, but this trip gives a real sense of him being back in business.

As well as doctors’ orders, the King has also had to operate under the Queen’s orders. His wife has found herself going solo more than she might have anticipated this year, continuing with several engagements she was due to carry out alongside her husband.

Queen Camilla is an influential figure within the royal household and has referenced her husband’s “workaholic” mindset at several public engagements – even after his cancer diagnosis.

She has been key to ensuring the King follows medical advice and takes time out to recover during his treatment. And she will be doing the same in Australia and Samoa over the course of this visit, as well as taking on some of her own engagements around issues including literacy and supporting victims of domestic violence.

Royal tours require precision planning. There is a choreography to them and a check list of moments to hit – parliaments, dignitaries, military, environment and culture.

On paper, the Australia element of this trip is traditional and safe territory. But it is also significantly different from what has gone before.

The King first visited Australia in 1966 as a 17-year-old starting two terms of teaching experience at a private school in Victoria. He returns as a 75-year-old monarch receiving treatment for cancer, towards the end of a year during which he has faced immense personal challenges.

His public life has been restrained, restricted by illness. And although his schedule became busier as he progressed with his treatment, he then retreated to the solace of Balmoral for a summer break and to prepare for this trip.

“How’s the King doing?” is a question I have been asked repeatedly this year – and it’s been tricky to answer at times.

The coming days will allow us to see the King at work day after day. Up close, a head of state, King of Australia.

This tour is are big showcase for the monarchy, and monarchies need to be seen – even more so in a country where an Australian republic has been an active topic of political debate in recent times. The optics matter for Buckingham Palace.

A King looking well, engaging with the public, managing a full timetable of events, doing some soft diplomacy and embracing what Australia and Samoa have to offer is the goal.

Getting here hasn’t been easy. But there is confidence from royal aides that this visit will give a strong sense of normal service resuming.

Sign up here to get the latest royal stories and analysis straight to your inbox every week with our free Royal Watch newsletter.

Those outside the UK can sign up here.

Chinese communities are being targeted by scammers who trick older women out of their valuables by persuading them their loved ones are in danger.

After a wave of cases on the streets of the UK, US, Australia and Canada, police are investigating and victims’ families are trying to find the perpetrators.

The blessing scam is an elaborate piece of criminal street theatre. A gang of usually three women act out a well-rehearsed script in Cantonese for an audience of one – the unsuspecting victim.

Mungnee is a Chinese Malaysian Londoner in her sixties. She was approached in West London while on her way to yoga, by a crying woman. The woman asked in Cantonese if Mungnee knew a specific Chinese traditional healer in the area, as her husband was sick.

Quickly, a second Cantonese-speaking stranger appeared, claiming she knew the healer, and offering to take them to him. Mungnee was swept along, keen to help the woman who was so upset. On a quieter side street, a third woman joined the group, claiming to be related to the healer and went to see if he could help.

When she returned from speaking to the healer for 15 minutes, she had troubling news. Through his mystical powers, he had apparently discovered Mungnee was also in danger. He miraculously seemed to know all about her marriage problems, the shooting pain in her right leg – things Mungnee had not shared with them.

But the next revelation was what shocked Mungnee.

“Your son is going to have an accident in the next three days and he’s going to die.”

The woman told Mungnee the healer could bestow a blessing that would protect her adult son.

The ladies told her: “You need to take a handful of rice, and put in as much gold and cash in a bag as you can”. They would say a blessing over the valuables.

Mungnee says she felt reassured by the promise her items would be returned to her after the blessing.

One of the women rushed Mungnee home to collect her jewellery, then to the bank to withdraw £4,000 in cash from her savings. The valuables were placed in a plastic bag.

Mungnee thinks this must have been the moment the bags were exchanged.

“It was quick as a flash – her hands are so nimble. I didn’t see anything.”

When she got home, Mungnee was shocked to look inside the black bag and find only a brick, a piece of cake, and two bottles of water. She says: “That’s when I just turned cold.. and then I just told my son. ‘I think I’ve been conned. I’ve been scammed.’”

Some of the items stolen had been in the family for generations, passed down by her mother.

Mungnee’s experience is a textbook example of a blessing scam. The BBC has spoken to multiple victims who all tell similar stories – from the distraught stranger, to the claims evil spirits are threatening a relative. Even the name of the fictional healer is the same in many cases – ‘Mr Koh’.

All the victims are scammed within a few hours, in Mungnee’s case the whole con only took about three hours from beginning to end.

Anqi Shen is a law professor at Northumbria University and a former Chinese police officer. She believes the blessing scam is the latest example of a centuries old tradition of street crime that exploits spiritual beliefs.

“Chinese people tend to keep some valuable jewellery especially pieces made of gold, silver, jade, believed to hold protective powers,” Shen explains.

She says it’s believable to victims that after such items are blessed, they could offer even greater protection.

Tuyet van Huynh has started a social media campaign to raise awareness about the blessing scam, after her mother was scammed out of tens of thousands of pounds in May.

Her mum was shopping in Upton in East London when three women playing the same roles persuaded her that her son was threatened by evil spirits.

Police in the US, Canada, and Australia have issued warnings about blessing scams over the past year.

In the UK, Mungnee and Tuyet’s mother have both reported their cases to the Metropolitan Police, who have also revealed they are investigating a number of cases in the Islington area of London.

Tuyet has received reports of other incidents in Lewisham, Romford, Liverpool and, Manchester.

She began to investigate what happened by gathering CCTV recordings from the area where her mother was approached. Tuyet says the footage showed her mother “followed every instruction to the point where she was like a zombie”.

Tuyet’s mother can’t explain how the crooks pulled her in with the story of the healer, as she is adamantly not superstitious nor spiritual.

Tuyet wondered if something else might have been involved. She began to research if there was a drug that could have put her mum under somebody’s influence, but also leave her lucid enough to gather her valuables from hiding places around her home.

She has a theory: “It’s a possibility that this is a drug called the Devil’s Breath.”

Scopolamine, colloquially known as Devil’s Breath, is used to treat motion sickness. In the right dose it can reportedly make people highly suggestable – temporarily compromising a person’s free will. It can be administered to victims in the street, without them realising they have been drugged.

Tuyet has no evidence that this medication was used in her mother’s or any other case. It is one of very few drugs that could have such a lucid effect, and it has been used in robberies in Ecuador, France and Vietnam, as well as murders and sexual assaults in Colombia.

While it’s not known if this drug is involved in blessing scams in the UK, even if it was it would be difficult to establish.

The drug passes through the body very quickly, so when Tuyet tried to get her mum tested for the drug the next day, it was already too late.

Lisa Mills, a fraud expert from the charity Victim Support, says there may be other reasons the scam is so effective, and the set-up is designed to reel victims in quickly.

“You are getting people that mirror you in terms of you know they look like you. They’re female, similar age, speaking your language,” she explains.

At the moment the scammers are still at large, but some victims’ families are determined to find them

Mungnee says: “I told the police, I’m willing to do anything to catch these people”.

What also upsets her is that the scammers are Chinese: “They are conning their own people”.

What do you want BBC Verify to investigate?

A South Korean court has acquitted Seoul’s former police chief of negligence over the Halloween crowd crush that killed 159 people in 2022.

Kim Kwang-ho was the highest-ranked police official to be charged over the tragedy in the Itaewon nightlife district.

During Thursday’s verdict, the court said that prosecution evidence was insufficient to show that Kim neglected his duties before the incident and during the preliminary response.

A lower-ranked police official, Lee Im-jae, was sentenced last month to three years in prison for failing to prevent the crush that shocked the world.

The verdict has been met with strong protests from the victims’ families.

Kim was indicted only last January, more than a year after the tragedy. The families said he should have been charged earlier. He was dismissed from his post in June after receiving disciplinary action over the crush, according to Yonhap.

Two of Kim’s co-accused who worked as situation management officers on the day of the crush, Ryu Mi-jin and Jeong Dae-gyeong, were also found not guilty.

The victims’ families said they strongly condemned the verdict and called on prosecutors to file an appeal.

“The court missed an opportunity to reflect on the gravity of the responsibility of public officials to protect the lives and safety of the public, and to remind state leaders and members of society of this,” the families said.

“The prosecution’s weak investigation and the court’s passive interpretation of the law have delayed the punishment of those responsible for the tragedy and violated the rights of victims once again,” they said.

A special police panel earlier investigated the case and in January, it released its report that largely spared senior government officials from blame.

The report instead held local municipal and emergency service officials responsible for weak planning and a poor emergency response.

Most of the victims who died on the night of 29 October 2022 were young people celebrating Halloween in Itaewon, known for its buzzing bars and restaurants lining narrow streets. The crush happened in one of those cramped alleys.

Some accounts say more than 100,000 were in the area that evening. The incident shook South Korea and ignited accusations that authorities did not do enough to prevent the tragedy.

Russia’s army is forming a unit of some 3,000 North Koreans, a Ukrainian military intelligence source has told the BBC, in the latest report suggesting that Pyongyang is forming a close military alliance with the Kremlin.

So far the BBC has yet to see any sign of such a large unit being formed in Russia’s Far East, and Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has dismissed reports of North Korean involvement.

“This is not only British intelligence, it is also American intelligence. They report it all the time, they don’t provide any evidence,” he said.

There is no doubt Moscow and Pyongyang have deepened their levels of cooperation in recent months. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un sent Vladimir Putin a birthday message only last week calling him his “closest comrade”.

Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky has spoken of North Korea joining the war, and South Korea’s defence minister said this month that the chance of a North Korean deployment in Ukraine was “highly likely”.

The biggest question mark is over the numbers involved.

A military source in Russia’s Far East confirmed to BBC Russian that “a number of North Koreans have arrived” and were stationed in one of the military bases near Ussuriysk, to the north of Vladivostok. But the source refused to give a precise number, other than that they were “absolutely nowhere near 3,000”.

Military experts have told us they doubt Russian army units can successfully incorporate North Korean soldiers in their thousands.

“It wasn’t even that easy to include hundreds of Russian prisoners at first – and all those guys spoke Russian,” one analyst – who is in Russia so didn’t want to be named – told the BBC.

Even if they did number 3,000, it would not be big in a battlefield sense, but the US is as concerned as Ukraine.

“It would mark a significant increase in their relationship,” said US state department spokesman Matthew Miller, who saw it as “a new level of desperation by Russia” amid battlefield losses.

It was back in June that Vladimir Putin toasted a “peaceful and defensive” pact with Kim Jong Un.

And there is mounting evidence that North Korea is supplying Russia with ammunition, as recently demonstrated by the recovery of a missile in Ukraine’s Poltava region.

In fact, reports of mines and shells supplied by Pyongyang date back to December 2023 in Telegram chats involving Russia’s military communities.

Russian soldiers, stationed in Ukraine, have often complained about the standard of ammunition and that dozens of soldiers have been wounded.

Kyiv suspects that a unit of North Korean soldiers is preparing in the Ulan-Ude region close to the Mongolian border ahead of deployment to Russia’s Kursk province, where Ukrainian forces launched an incursion back in August.

“They could guard some sections of the Russian-Ukrainian border, which would free Russian units for fighting elsewhere,” said Valeriy Ryabykh, editor of the Ukrainian publication Defence Express.

“I would rule out the possibility that these units will immediately appear on the front line.”

Ryabakh is not alone in this thought.

North Korea may have some 1.28 million active soldiers but its army has no recent experience of combat operations, unlike Russia’s military.

Pyongyang has pursued the old Soviet model in its armed forces but it is unclear how its main force of motorised infantry units might fit into the war in Ukraine.

Then there is the obvious language barrier and an unfamiliarity with Russian systems that would complicate any fighting roles.

That does not preclude North Korea’s military taking part in Russia’s full-scale war in Ukraine, but they are most recognised by experts for their engineering and construction abilities, not for fighting.

What they do both have are shared incentives.

Pyongyang needs money and technology, Moscow needs soldiers and ammunition.

“Pyongyang would be paid well and maybe get access to Russian military technology, which otherwise Moscow would have been reluctant to transfer to North Korea,” says Andrei Lankov, director of the Korea Risk Group.

“It would also give their soldiers real combat experience, but there is also the risk of exposing North Koreans to life in the West, which is a considerably more prosperous place.”

For Putin, there is an urgent need to make up for significant losses during more than two and half years of war.

Valeriy Akimenko from the UK’s Conflict Studies Research Centre believes deploying North Koreans would help the Russian leader deal with the previous round of mandatory mobilisation not going well.

“So he thinks, as the Russian ranks are thinned out by Ukraine, what a brilliant idea – why not let North Koreans do some of the fighting?”

President Zelensky is clearly concerned about how this hostile alliance could evolve.

There have not been Western boots on the ground in Ukraine for fear of escalation.

However, if reports of hundreds of North Koreans preparing for deployment are borne out, the idea of foreign boots on the ground in this war would appear to be less of a concern for Vladimir Putin.

A Bangladeshi court has ordered an arrest warrant for former prime minister Sheikh Hasina, who fled to India in August after she was ousted by mass protests.

Hasina is wanted by Bangladesh’s International Criminal Tribunal (ICT) for her alleged involvements in “crimes against humanity” that took place during the demonstrations, in which hundreds were killed.

Hasina, who was in charge of Bangladesh for more than 20 years, was seen as an autocrat whose government ruthlessly clamped down on dissent.

Arrest warrants have also been issued for 45 others, including former government ministers who also fled the country.

“The court has… ordered the arrest of former prime minister Sheikh Hasina, and to produce her in court on November 18,” Mohammad Tajul Islam, the ICT’s chief prosecutor, told reporters on Thursday.

“Sheikh Hasina was at the helm of those who committed massacres, killings and crimes against humanity in July to August,” he added.

Bangladesh’s interim health ministry said in August that more than 1,000 people were killed in the violence this summer after student-led protests against government job quotas turned into mass demonstrations, making it the bloodiest period in the country’s history since its 1971 independence.

Hasina, 77, has not been seen in public since fleeing Bangladesh. Her last official whereabouts is a military airbase near India’s capital Delhi.

She was initially expected to stay in India for a short time, but reports say her attempts to seek asylum elsewhere have been unsuccessful so far.

Her continued presence in India poses a challenge for Delhi in working with the new interim government in Dhaka. Many in Bangladesh are angered by the fact she has been given shelter by India.

The new interim government in Bangladesh has revoked her diplomatic passport and the two countries have a bilateral extradition treaty which would permit her return to face criminal trial.

A clause in the treaty, however, says extradition might be refused if the offence is of a “political character”.

Hasina’s government created the ICT in 2010 to investigate atrocities during the war with Pakistan, which gave Bangladesh its independence in 1971.

The United Nations and rights groups criticised its procedural shortcomings and it became widely seen as a means for Hasina to eliminate political opponents.

The tribunal, reconstituted by the interim government, began its proceedings on Thursday. Critics say it lacks judges with experience of international law.

Several cases accusing Hasina of orchestrating the “mass murder” of protesters are being investigated by the court.

Hasina’s son Sajeeb Wazed has said his mother is ready to face trial. “My mother has done nothing wrong,” he told Reuters news agency last month.

Bahrain’s national football team says it will not play a World Cup qualifying fixture in Indonesia, to “protect the safety” of the team.

The Gulf nation’s players were subjected to online death threats from Indonesian fans following a controversial 2-2 draw between both countries’ teams last week, according to the Bahrain Football Association (BFA).

The return fixture is scheduled to take place in Jakarta in March next year, but the BFA has asked Fifa to move the match to a venue outside Indonesia.

Neither the Indonesian Football Association (PSSI) nor Fifa have publicly commented on Bahrain’s request.

Controversy erupted last Thursday after Bahrain scored a 99th minute equaliser against Indonesia – a full three minutes after their players had expected the game to end.

The goal sparked wild protests from Indonesia’s players and staff, one of whom had to be separated from officials and was sent off.

Indonesia’s football association alleged that the referee, Oman’s Ahmed Al Kaf, deliberately allowed the match to go on until Bahrain managed to score.

Just before the end of the standard 90 minutes, referees will typically indicate how much time they will add onto the match in order to make up for stoppages during the game.

In this case, Al Kaf indicated an extra six minutes. Bahrain scored after nine.

While controversial, the laws of the game state that indicated additional time is only a minimum, and referees are entitled to increase the amount if necessary.

“We are very disappointed with the refereeing,” said PSSI executive member Arya Sinulingga.

“It seemed like they extended the added time just to allow Bahrain to score an equaliser.”

Following the match, the PSSI says it submitted an official complaint to both Fifa and the Asian Football Confederation (AFC).

The subsequent days saw a torrent of online abuse from Indonesian football fans, who flooded the AFC’s social media pages with criticism and created fake accounts impersonating Ahmed Al Kaf.

Many fans alleged that the Omani referee had intentionally favoured a fellow Gulf nation by allowing the match to continue. After the game, Indonesia’s manager called Al Kaf “biased” towards Bahrain.

The abuse prompted a strong response from the BFA, which had to disable comments on its social media posts and said its website was repeatedly targeted by hackers in Indonesia.

“[The BFA] expresses its extreme surprise at the multiple death threats received by the team members on their social media accounts – a move that reflects the Indonesian public’s disregard for human lives,” it said in a statement posted on Instagram.

“It does not belong to the principles, values and Islamic norms, nor does it reflect the progress and advancement of countries.”

As a result, the BFA said it had requested the return fixture in Jakarta to be moved outside Indonesia because it “refuses to expose the lives of the team members to any potential danger”.

If the BFA’s request is denied and Bahrain refuse to play the fixture, then Indonesia would be awarded an automatic 3-0 win.

Crowd trouble is a major issue in Indonesian football, where authorities have often struggled to contain violence between supporter groups.

Two years ago, Indonesia saw one of the world’s worst ever stadium disasters when 125 people were killed in a crush that was triggered by a fan pitch invasion in the city of Malang.

Bahrain and Indonesia have history when it comes to controversial encounters.

In 2012, the Gulf nation beat Indonesia 10-0 in a World Cup qualifier, which raised suspicions because Bahrain had needed to make up a nine-goal deficit on rivals Qatar in the group standings to have a chance of advancing to the next round.

The bizarre scoreline prompted a Fifa investigation into potential match-fixing, but both sides were eventually cleared.

Bahrain, who are currently ranked 76th in the world, face China in their next World Cup qualifying match next month.

Indonesia, ranked 129th, play Japan next in November.

Niger’s military leaders have renamed streets and monuments bearing French names, in the latest move to cut links with the country’s former colonial power.

Avenue Charles de Gaulle in the capital, Niamey, is now Avenue Djibo Bakary in honour of the Nigerien politician who played a key role in the West African country’s struggle for independence.

“Most of our avenues, boulevards and streets… bear names that are simply reminders of the suffering and bullying our people endured during the ordeal of colonisation,” said junta spokesman Maj Col Abdramane Amadou.

Niger’s relationship with France and other Western allies deteriorated after President Mohamed Bazoum was ousted in a coup last year.

Like its military-led neighbours, Mali and Burkina Faso, Niger has courted Russia for military support as a jihadist insurgency threatens the region – and the three countries have clubbed together to form what they call the Alliance of Sahel States.

Under Bazoum, France had more than 1,500 troops stationed in Niger to help fight jihadist groups linked to both al-Qaeda and Islamic State. They all withdrew by the end of last year.

• ‘France takes us for idiots’ – inside coup-hit Niger
• Is France to blame for coups in West Africa?
• Colonial abuses haunt France’s racism debate

A ceremony was held in Niamey on Tuesday to mark the various name changes, including the avenue once named after a French general, as well as a war memorial that was built to remember those who died in World War One and World War Two.

It now pays “homage to all civilian and military victims of colonisation to the present day”.

Charles de Gaulle was a soldier and politician who formed a French government in exile during World War Two when the Nazi German forces overran France. He became leader of the Free French Forces.

Many Africans in French colonies volunteered to fight for the Free French Forces, though many were also drafted into service.

About 400,000 came from Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia, and more than 70,000 from Senegal and other sub-Saharan colonies. They took part in the Allies’ landings in the south of France in August 1944, which were crucial to ousting the Nazis from the area.

In fact as part of a reappraisal of its colonial past, France began to rename some of its streets and squares after African World War Two heroes four years ago.

Another place to have been given a facelift in Niamey is a stone monument that had an engraving of French colonial officer and explorer Parfait-Louis Monteil. He had travelled from Senegal in 1890 across West Africa, writing a book about his two-year journey.

His image has now been replaced by a plaque with a portrait of Burkina Faso’s iconic revolutionary leader Thomas Sankara, a charismatic pan-Africanist who was assassinated in 1987.

During his time in power, he adopted an anti-imperialist foreign policy that challenged the dominance of France, which retained huge influence in many of its former colonies in Africa.

Another significant name change is Niamey’s Place de La Francophonie, named after the group of French-speaking states.

Instead it will be known as Place de l’Alliance des Etats du Sahel, after the country’s new confederation with Burkina Faso and Mali.

• War ‘tour’, football and graffiti: How Russia is trying to influence Africa
• Death penalty fears for Niger ex-president – lawyer
• West African bloc risks ‘disintegration’

Israeli troops had for more than a year hunted the leader of Hamas, who disappeared in Gaza soon after masterminding the 7 October attacks.

Yahya Sinwar, 61, was said to have spent much of his time hiding in the tunnels under the Strip, along with a cadre of bodyguards and a “human shield” of hostages seized from Israel.

But ultimately, it appears he met his end in a chance encounter with an Israeli patrol in southern Gaza. His guard detail was small. No hostages were found.

Details are still emerging, but here’s what we know so far about Sinwar’s killing.

The Israel Defense Forces says a unit from its 828th Bislamach Brigade was patrolling Tal al-Sultan, an area of Rafah, on Wednesday.

Three militants were identified and engaged by the Israeli troops – and all were eliminated.

At that stage nothing seemed particularly remarkable about the firefight and the soldiers did not return to the scene until Thursday morning.

It was then, as the dead were inspected, that one of the bodies was found to bear a striking resemblance to the leader of Hamas.

The corpse however remained in situ due to suspected booby traps and instead, part of a finger was removed and sent to Israel for testing.

His body was finally extracted and brought to Israel later that day as the area was made safe.

Daniel Hagari, the IDF’s spokesman, said his forces “didn’t know he was there but we continued to operate”.

He said his troops had identified the three men running from house to house, and engaged them before they split up.

The man since identified as Sinwar “ran alone into one of the buildings” and was killed after being located with a drone.

None of the hostages Sinwar was believed to be using as a human shield were present and his small retinue suggests either he was trying to move unnoticed, or had lost many of those protecting him.

Yoav Gallant, Israel’s defence minister, said: “Sinwar died while beaten, persecuted and on the run – he didn’t die as a commander, but as someone who only cared for himself. This is a clear message to all of our enemies.”

Drone footage released by the Israeli military late on Thursday was said to show Sinwar’s final moments before he was killed.

The video appears to be shot from a drone flying through the open window of a mostly destroyed building.

It approaches a man, with his head covered, sitting in an armchair on the first-floor of a house that is littered with debris.

The man, who seems to be injured, then throws what appears to be a stick at the drone and the video ends.

Israel first announced it was “investigating the possibility” that Sinwar had been killed in Gaza on Thursday afternoon local time.

Within minutes of the announcement, pictures posted to social media showed the body of a man with very similar features to the Hamas leader, who had suffered catastrophic head wounds. The images are too graphic to republish.

However, officials warned “at this stage” the identity of any of the three men killed could not be confirmed.

Not long after that, Israeli sources told the BBC leaders were “increasingly confident” they had killed him. However, they said all necessary tests must be carried out before the death could be confirmed.

Those tests did not take long. By Thursday evening, Israel had announced they had been completed and that Sinwar was confirmed “eliminated”.

Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, said “evil” had been “dealt a blow”, but warned the Israeli war in Gaza had not been completed.

While Sinwar was not killed during a targeted operation, the IDF said that it had for weeks been operating in areas where intelligence indicated his presence.

In short, Israeli forces had narrowed Sinwar’s rough location to the southern city of Rafah, and were slowly moving in to get him.

Sinwar had been on the run for more than a year. He had undoubtedly felt the Israeli pressure growing as other Hamas leaders, such as Mohammad Dief and Ismail Haniyeh, were killed, and as Israel destroyed the infrastructure he had used to prosecute the atrocities of 7 October.

In a statement, the IDF said its operations in recent weeks in the south had “restricted Yahya Sinwar’s operational movement as he was pursued by the forces and led to his elimination”.

Killing Sinwar was a major goal for Israel, which marked him for death soon after the 7 October attacks. But his end does not end the war in Gaza.

While Netanyahu said he had “settled the score”, he insisted the war would continue – not least to save the 101 hostages still held by Hamas.

“To the dear hostage families, I say: this is an important moment in the war. We will continue full force until all your loved ones, our loved ones, are home.”

In Israel, families of hostages said they hoped a ceasefire could now be reached that would bring home the captives.

Killing Yahya Sinwar is Israel’s biggest victory so far in the war against Hamas in Gaza.

His death is a serious blow for Hamas, the organisation he turned into a fighting force that inflicted the biggest defeat on the state of Israel in its history.

He was not killed in a planned special forces operation, but in a chance encounter with Israeli forces in Rafah in southern Gaza.

A photo taken at the scene shows Sinwar, dressed in combat gear, lying dead in the rubble of a building that was hit by a tank shell.

Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, praised the soldiers and made clear that however big a victory, it was not the end of the war.

“Today we made clear once again what happens to those who harm us. Today we once again showed the world the victory of good over evil.

“But the war, my dear ones, is not over yet. It is difficult, and it is costing us dearly.”

“Great challenges still lie ahead of us. We need endurance, unity, courage, and steadfastness. Together we will fight, and with God’s help – together we will win.”

Netanyahu and the overwhelming proportion of Israelis who support the war in Gaza needed a victory.

The prime minister has repeated his war aims many times – destroying Hamas as a military and political force and bringing the hostages home.

Neither has been achieved, despite a year of war that has killed at least 42,000 Palestinians and left much of Gaza in ruins.

But the remaining hostages are not free and Hamas is fighting and sometimes killing Israeli troops.

Killing Sinwar was the victory Israel wanted. But until Netanyahu can claim that the other war aims have been accomplished, the war, as he says, will go on.

Yahya Sinwar was born in 1962 in a refugee camp in Khan Younis in the Gaza Strip. He was five years old when it was captured by Israel from Egypt in the 1967 Middle East war.

His family were among more than 700,000 Palestinians who fled or were expelled from their homes by Israeli forces in the 1948 war in which Israel won its independence.

His family came from the town now known as Ashkelon, which is close to the northern border of the Gaza Strip.

In his 20s, he was convicted by Israel of killing four Palestinian informers. During 22 years in jail he learnt Hebrew, studied his enemy and believed that he worked out how to fight them. His time in jail also meant Israel had his dental records and a sample of his DNA, which meant that they could identify his body.

Sinwar was released as one of more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners who were swapped in 2011 for a single Israel soldier, Gilad Shalit.

On 7 October last year, in a meticulously planned series of attacks, Sinwar and his men inflicted Israel’s worst-ever defeat – and a collective trauma that is still deeply felt.

The killing of around 1,200 Israelis, the hostage-taking and the celebrations of their enemies recalled for many Israelis the Nazi holocaust.

Sinwar’s own experience in a prisoner swap must have convinced him of the value and power of taking hostages.

In Tel Aviv families of the remaining 101 hostages in Gaza – Israel says half of them might already be dead – gathered in the square in which they have been gathering for a year, urging the Israeli government to launch a new negotiation to get their people home.

Einav Zangauker, mother of hostage Matan Zangauker appealed to the prime minister.

“Netanyahu, don’t bury the hostages. Go out now to the mediators and to the public and lay out a new Israeli initiative.”

“For my Matan and the rest of the hostages in the tunnels, time has run out. You have the victory pictures. Now bring a deal!”

“If Netanyahu doesn’t use this moment and doesn’t get up now to lay out a new Israeli initiative – even at the expense of ending the war – it means he has decided to abandon the hostages in an effort to prolong the war and fortify his rulership.

“We will not give up until everyone returns.”

Many Israelis believe that Netanyahu wants to prolong the war in Gaza to put off the day of reckoning for his share of the security failures that allowed Sinwar and his men to break into Israel, and to postpone perhaps indefinitely the resumption of his trial on serious corruption charges.

He denies those accusations, insisting that only what he calls ‘total victory’ in Gaza over Hamas will restore Israeli security.

Like other news organisations, Israel does not let the BBC cross into Gaza except on rare, supervised trips with the army.

In the ruins of Khan Yunis, the birthplace of Sinwar, Palestinians interviewed for the BBC by local trusted freelancers were defiant. They said the war would go on.

“This war is not dependent on Sinwar, Haniyeh, or Mishal, nor on any leader or official,” said Dr Ramadan Faris.

“It’s a war of extermination against the Palestinian people, as we all know and understand. The issue is much bigger than Sinwar or anyone else.”

Adnan Ashour said some people were saddened, and others were indifferent about Sinwar.

“They’re not just after us. They want the entire Middle East. They’re fighting in Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen… This is a war between us and the Jews since 1919, over 100 years.”

He was asked whether the death of Sinwar would affect Hamas.

“I hope not, God willing. Let me explain: Hamas is not just Sinwar… It’s the cause of a people.”

The war goes on in Gaza. Twenty five Palestinians were killed in a raid on northern Gaza. Israel said it hit a Hamas command centre. Doctors at the local hospital said the scores of wounded that they treated were civilians.

Parachute drops of aid resumed after the Americans said Israel had to allow in more food and relief supplies.

Every leader of Hamas since the 1990s has been killed by Israel, but there’s always been a successor. As Israel celebrates killing Sinwar, Hamas still has its hostages and is still fighting.

South Korean football player Hwang Ui-jo has apologised for secretly filming sexual encounters with his partners.

Prosecutors say the 31-year-old striker filmed sexual encounters with two of his partners without their consent on four occasions between June and September 2022.

In his first court appearance in Seoul on Wednesday, Hwang said he was “deeply sorry” for causing “disappointment”.

The former striker had just last month left England’s Nottingham Forest for Turkey’s Alanyaspor.

The videos came to light after Hwang’s sister-in-law shared them on social media last June, in an attempt to blackmail him.

She was sentenced to three years in prison in September for the blackmail after Hwang sued her.

However, the charges against him proceeded as prosecutors said he filmed the videos illegally.

Prosecutors refused to provide details on the women in the videos to prevent further harm.

“I will not do anything wrong in the future and will do my best as a footballer,” Hwang told the court in Seoul.

“I sincerely apologise to the victims who have been affected by my actions, and I am deeply sorry for the disappointment I have caused to all those who have cared and supported me,” he added.

Liam Payne’s former One Direction bandmates say they are “completely devastated” about the passing of their fellow band member.

In a statement signed by Louis Tomlinson, Zayn Malik, Niall Horan and Harry Styles they said: “In time, and when everyone is able to, there will be more to say”.

The pop star, who found fame on The X Factor in 2010, died after falling from the third floor of a hotel in Argentina, police say.

Earlier Payne’s family said they were “heartbroken” as they paid tribute to a “kind, funny and brave soul”, after his death aged 31.

“We are supporting each other the best we can as a family and ask for privacy and space at this awful time,” they said.

Liam was one of five members of One Direction.

The band’s statement added: “We will take some time to grieve and process the loss of our brother, who we loved dearly.” and concluded: “We will miss him terribly. We love you, Liam.”

Harry Styles, former One Direction band member shared a photo of Liam on Instagram, saying that he “lived wide open, with his heart on his sleeve”.

“The years we spent together will forever remain among the most cherished of my life.

“I will miss him always, my lovely friend”.

Fellow member Louis Tomlinson also shared a separate tribute on his personal Instagram account, thanking Payne for being “the kind brother I’d longed all my life for.”

“Reminiscing about all the thousands of amazing memories we had together is a luxury I thought I’d have with you for life,” he wrote.

He added he would also support Liam’s son.

“I want you to know that if Bear ever needs me I will be the Uncle he needs in his life and tell him stories of how amazing his dad was.”

Zayn Malik, who left the band in 2015, also shared a tribute on Instagram alongside a younger photo of him and Payne asleep in a car: “I lost a brother when you left us and can’t explain to you what I’d give to just give you a hug one last time”.

Payne, who found fame on The X Factor in 2010, died after falling from the third floor of a hotel in Palermo, Buenos Aires, police say.

Police inspected the area where he fell, and found items including alcohol and a phone.

Medication was also found in his room.

In a statement, police said Payne’s body was discovered when an emergency crew were called to the hotel and that “everything indicates that the musician was alone when the fall happened”.

They added they believed Payne died at the scene and there were no injuries that suggested a third party had been involved.

• Live: Liam Payne dies after falling from hotel balcony in Buenos Aires
• Watch: Fans react to his death in Argentina
• City ‘heartbroken’ after Liam Payne dies
• One Direction star Liam Payne dies after balcony fall

Following his death at around 17:00 (21:00 BST) on Wednesday, stars expressed their upset and posted memories of the dad who shared a son, Bear, with former partner Girls Aloud star Cheryl.

Former bandmate Harry’s mother Anne Twist paid tribute, posting a broken-hearted emoji on Instagram, captioning it: “Just a boy.”

Singer Rita Ora, who collaborated on a song with Payne in 2018, said she was “devastated” in a post on Instagram, adding that she “loved working with him so much”.

On Thursday, police in Buenos Aires said a preliminary autopsy suggested the One Direction star died from external and internal bleeding injuries.

They said the area where Payne fell had been inspected and items including alcohol and a phone had been discovered. Medication was found in his room.

Olly Murs, who starred on The X Factor a year before One Direction, also shared his condolences on Instagram, saying he was “lost for words” and described Payne’s death as “devastating”.

Murs said they “always had a good laugh” when they met, mostly talking about “how annoyingly good his hair always looked, or our love for Becks, the old XF [X Factor] days and the tour we shared together.

“Liam shared the same passions as me, the same dreams, so to see his life now end so young hits hard. I’m truly gutted and devastated for his family and of course his son Bear losing a dad.”

Dermot O’Leary, who hosted The X Factor when Liam appeared, posted a photograph of the pair on stage, captioning the Instagram post: “The worst news.”

“I remember him as a 14-year-old turning up to audition on The X Factor, and blowing us away singing Sinatra. He just loved to sing,” he wrote.

“He was always a joy, had time for everyone, polite, grateful, and was always humble.”

US singer Charlie Puth, a co-writer on Payne’s 2017 song Bedroom Floor, said he was in “shock” after Payne’s death.

Charlie posted images of the pair working together, alongside the caption “Liam was always so kind to me”.

The Wanted star Max George described his death as “absolutely devastating news”.

“Over the last few years I had the pleasure of getting to know him personally and spent some treasured time with him,” he said on Instagram.

“Liam was absolutely wonderful in terms of support when Tom [Parker] fell ill, performing at the Royal Albert Hall with us for Stand Up To Cancer.

“He supported me a lot personally after Tom passed. I will never forget that.

“He was one of the first major artists I got to work with. I cannot believe he is gone… I am so upset right now, may he rest in peace.”

• Boy band star who had the X factor
• Liam Payne shared final Snapchats on last few days in Argentina
• Full transcript of 911 call made moments before Liam Payne fell
• The former One Direction star’s life in pictures

The X Factor said they were “heartbroken” by his passing and were thinking of Payne’s loved ones and all who loved him.

“He was immensely talented and, as part of One Direction, Liam will leave a lasting legacy on the music industry and fans around the world.”

On X, Rylan Clark, who was also a X Factor contestant, said the death was “so tragic” , while Jedward sent their condolences to Cheryl, his son Bear and “all the One Direction family”.

Football team West Bromwich Albion were “saddened” by the passing of “Baggies fan” Payne, and sent their thoughts to his loved ones.

Mcfly sent their love to Payne’s friends and family, and said they were “shocked and extremely sad to wake up to the news” of his death.

Liam Gallagher from Oasis, wrote on X: “Life is precious kids and you only get to do it once go easy.”

DJ and music producer Zedd, who featured alongside Payne on the 2017 song Get Low, called the singer’s death “absolutely heartbreaking”.

Boyband Backstreet Boys said: “Words can not express the emotions we are collectively feeling right now, and it seems like the rest of the world is in the same boat.”

American singer and rapper Ty Dolla Sign said he would “miss” Payne, captioning videos and pictures on his Instagram story: “Just talked to you two days ago my guy.”

There was a time when an invitation to a party hosted by Sean “Diddy” Combs was one of the most sought-after tickets in the entertainment industry.

With guest lists that included Justin Bieber, Mariah Carey, Paris Hilton and Jennifer Lopez, it was a chance to rub shoulders with some of the biggest celebrities. Jay-Z and Beyonce even released new music at his events.

“When Diddy winked at you and said come into the VIP section, you knew you were going to have a really good night,” Rob Shuter, who worked as a publicist for the rapper at the height of his fame, told BBC News in an exclusive interview.

Now Mr Shuter’s former star client is sitting in a Brooklyn jail cell, a short drive away from the Hamptons, where he once presided over decadent celebrity bashes.

Mr Combs’s fall from grace has been swift, with an extensive federal criminal case charging him in a sex trafficking and racketeering conspiracy. More than a dozen civil lawsuits have also been filed, accusing the music mogul of assaults, rape and sexual extortion. One lawyer said he represents more than 100 alleged victims who claim they were sexually abused.

The Harlem-born rapper has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing, whether in relation to the criminal or civil allegations. The rapper’s representatives declined to comment for this story. But previously, Erica Wolff, a lawyer representing Mr Combs, has told media the rapper “emphatically and categorically” denies the allegations. She said they are “false and defamatory”.

He is set to go on trial in May 2025.

Mr Shuter, who worked for Diddy from 2002-04, said Mr Combs was at a pivotal moment in his career when he started working for the rapper.

Mr Combs had founded Bad Boy Records in 1993, a label that represented some of the biggest names in hip hop – including artists like Notorious B.I.G. and Usher. In 1998, he created the Sean John clothing line that later became a cultural phenomenon. From there, he dipped into fragrances, alcohol and even set up a media company, becoming the host of multiple reality shows where he would discover new talent and make people stars.

Mr Shuter said that when he first joined the rapper’s world, Mr Combs wanted to transform his persona and elevate his career, looking to use his parties to keep himself at the centre of the entertainment industry.

“He was just figuring out that how he could get the most attention was to become the party king of New York.”

Mr Shuter said Mr Combs was obsessed with power and a deep desire to remain famous, explaining the star loved to have his photo taken and wanted to show off his lifestyle. It was Mr Shuter’s job to help keep “Diddy” at the top. Being part of his entourage, he said, was like being part of a circus – the rapper was the “ringmaster”.

He said he never witnessed any sexual misconduct. “I’ve seen the imbalance of power,” he said. “What I haven’t seen is what is now alleged, which is just horrific.”

“The reason he was such a superstar is because all he thinks about is Diddy. From the minute he wakes up until the minute he goes to bed,” Mr Shuter told BBC News. “Diddy’s hobby is Diddy.”

He also claims Mr Combs also held a deep fascination with the British royal family. Mr Shuter said he remembers being asked more than 10 times to call Prince Harry and Prince William with invites to parties, offering to cover their travel, lodging and even pay for their security.

In his lavish New York apartment, the rapper kept framed pictures of the princes, Mr Shuter said, explaining: “He thought of himself as a king so it makes perfect sense that he would like to have two princes in his entourage.”

Both Harry and William never accepted an invite from Mr Combs, he added.

But saying “no” to the music mogul wasn’t something many others did.

“There were always guns around Diddy,” Mr Shuter said, describing metal detectors in his apartment that resembled those at an airport. “It was strange.”

Mr Shuter described firearms all over the rapper’s home. In his private living quarters, security guards had guns strapped to their ankles. Mr Combs held a close circle and was serious about both his security and his image.

“You don’t get to be Diddy… unless the people around you were buttoned up. There was nobody around him sloppy.”

In the Los Angeles area, the rapper lived on what has become known as Beverly Hills’s most expensive street.

The high fences allow celebrities to hide from prying eyes. Hugh Hefner’s Playboy mansion sits a few doors down.

The towering gates of Mr Combs’ estate have flaming torches burning day and night.

Neighbours told the BBC they often called police over his parties.

A freedom of information request by the BBC has revealed that officers were dispatched to parties at the P Diddy mansion 14 times over seven years.

On a street where discretion and privacy are of the utmost importance, no-one wished to be named, but neighbours described privately to the BBC what they witnessed, saying they were fed up and disturbed by what they saw.

“For six or seven years it was just parties, parties, parties,” one neighbour said, adding she saw females at all hours “coming out and sitting down on the street, they didn’t know where they were”.

She said they appeared “lost” and “their underwear was showing”.

Mr Combs’s mansion in Beverely Hills was one of several venues he used to host his annual “White Party”, a flagship event which he held from 1998 to 2009.

He began the parties in New York’s exclusive Hamptons area with a strict all-white dress code, bringing together East Hampton’s old-money elite and the rising stars of hip hop.

Mr Combs once described the parties as a way to break down racial and generational barriers.

But the hottest party of the year was a “facade” that allowed “sinister” conduct, a recent lawsuit alleges.

In a lawsuit filed this week, a man – who was 16 years old at the time – described the thrill of getting to attend Mr Combs’s first “White Party” in 1998. Walking into the Hamptons mansion, he saw celebrities and entertainment executives left and right. In the lawsuit, he said he believed the party could open doors to a music career.

He said he was on his way to the bathroom when he ran into the rapper. They started talking and then moved to another, more private area. That’s when Mr Combs said the teen had the right “look” and he could turn anyone into a star, the lawsuit states.

Then things took a turn. Mr Combs abruptly ordered the then-teenage boy to drop his pants so that Mr Combs could examine and touch him, the lawsuit alleges.

According to the lawsuit, Mr Combs said it was “a rite of passage” and “the route to becoming a star”. It also claims that he said it was a way for him to prove himself, asking the teen: “Don’t you want to break into the business?”

At least two other lawsuits centre on the parties.

Former adult film star Adria English claimed she was “groomed into sex trafficking over time” after working at multiple White Party events, where she alleges the alcohol was laced with drugs. Another lawsuit, filed anonymously this week by a man, makes allegations about a 2006 White Party. He said in the lawsuit that he was working security at the event, where drinks were allegedly laced with drugs, and said he was raped by Mr Combs.

More than a dozen civil lawsuits in total have been filed accusing the music mogul of assaults, rape and sexual extortion. In these lawsuits, both men and women say they were coerced or forced into sex, either by Mr Combs or those in his entourage. Others say they obliged because they were intimidated by Mr Combs and the power he held in the entertainment industry. Some described having their careers derailed or opportunities taken from them when they did not cave to Mr Combs’s whims.

Mr Combs’ legal team dismissed the lawsuits as “clear attempts to garner publicity”.

Singer Cassie, who dated the rapper off-and-on for nearly a decade starting in 2007, accused the mogul in a lawsuit of controlling every aspect of her life, forcing her to take excessive amounts of drugs, have sex with other men, beating her for years and threatening her – and those in her circle – when she tried to leave the relationship.

In a lawsuit – which started an avalanche of accusations against the rapper – the singer said while dating Mr Combs she realised he had a “tremendously loyal network” that would do anything he asked.

“She recognized that she was powerless, and that reporting Mr Combs to the authorities would not alter Mr Combs’s status or influence but would merely give Mr Combs another excuse to hurt her,” the lawsuit stated.

Cassie, whose full name is Casandra Ventura, said at one point after she attempted to leave Mr Combs, his record label threatened “her single would not be released if she did not answer Mr Combs’s phone calls”, the lawsuit states.

Lawyers for Mr Combs have again denied the allegations, saying in a statement to the BBC earlier this week that he “has never sexually assaulted anyone – adult or minor, man or woman”.

While various lawsuits detail alleged sexual assaults at parties held at Mr Combs’s properties, so-called “Freak-off” parties at hotel rooms appear to be a focus for federal authorities. The Department of Justice charged him with racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking and transportation to engage in prostitution in a 14-page indictment last month.

Prosecutors have accused Mr Combs of recording sex acts during “Freak Offs”, which federal authorities describe as days-long sex parties involving multiple sex workers.

The indictment alleged that Mr Combs and his associates booked hotel rooms and stocked them with narcotics like ketamine, lubricant, extra linens and lighting so that they could record the orgies.

During the “Freak Offs,” Mr Combs allegedly “hit, kicked, threw objects at victims”, which led to injuries that would sometimes take weeks to heal, the court documents state.

According to the indictment, participants were allegedly coerced with drugs and threats to remain “obedient and compliant”. Afterwards, those involved would take IV fluids to recover, prosecutors allege.

Ms Ventura’s lawsuit, filed in November 2023 – almost a year before his indictment in New York – includes graphic details of these alleged “Freak-Off” parties. The lawsuit states Mr Combs would host these events weekly in hotels in New York and Los Angeles, flying in sex workers, supplying drugs that included ecstasy, cocaine and ketamine and forcing the singer to perform sex acts.

During a raid on Mr Combs’s Los Angeles and Miami mansions, law enforcement officers seized AR-15-style guns, large-capacity magazines, thousands of bottles of lube and baby oil.

Mr Combs’s arrest and the fallout surrounding his career has sparked hope among activists and survivors of sexual violence that his case could drive meaningful change within the music industry.

Gloria Allred, a prominent women’s rights lawyer who has defended a number of women throughout the #MeToo movement, believes the world is finally seeing a “reckoning” in the music industry.

She’s representing Thalia Graves, who alleges she was drugged and violently raped by the rapper in 2001. She said she was threatened by Mr Combs and did not speak out, fearing he would “ruin her life”, Allred said.

But Ms Allred told the BBC she thinks the fallout from Diddy’s arrest is far from over.

“Courage is contagious,” she said.

And prosecutors and lawyers for the growing list of Mr Combs’s accusers have hinted there is more to come.

“Combs did not do this all on his own,” Damian Williams, US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, said. “He used his business and employees of that business and other close associates to get his way.”

The investigation into the case is still open, authorities say.

As Mr Combs left his most recent court appearance in a beige prison jumpsuit, he mouthed to his family “I love you” and repeatedly put his hands to his heart, making a prayer sign.

As the hearing ended, a group of fans huddled by the courtroom doors on their tiptoes hoping to catch sight of him and show support for the rapper.

For his former assistant, the media storm that now surrounds the rapper is not without a hint of irony.

“He wanted to make himself the most famous person in the world, and ironically, now he is,” Mr Shuter said.

After a bombshell accusation from Canadian officials this week – that they believe India government agents were linked to a campaign of murder and extortion in the country – diplomatic relations hit new lows.

That rift is now raising questions over the impact it could have on the deep trade and immigration ties between both countries.

Bilateral trade is worth billions of dollars, and Canada is home to nearly 1.7 million people of Indian origin.

The breakdown of relations at this level is uncharted territory, and much of what happens next will depend on how they choose to move forward, experts suggest.

Neither country has imposed tariffs or other economic forms of retaliation, but experts caution that this could change, and that a cooling relationship between India and Canada could hinder further economic growth.

“The biggest challenge, particularly for business and citizens, is going to be uncertainty,” Arif Lalani, a senior advisor at government consulting company StrategyCorp and a former Canadian diplomat, told the BBC.

The two countries have been negotiating a bilateral trade deal on and off for over a decade, but Canada paused talks last year shortly before Prime Minister Justin Trudeau first made a public accusation against India.

In September 2023, Trudeau said that Canada had “credible allegations” linking Indian government agents to the murder of Sikh separatist Hardeep Singh Nijjar, who was shot and killed in Surrey, British Columbia that June.

India temporarily suspended visas for Canadian citizens shortly after, but that move was brief and it resumed visa processing in November.

Trade ties between the two, meanwhile, remained as usual. Bilateral trade is around $8bn (£6.15bn), according to the latest fiscal figures from India’s trade ministry.

Canada’s trade minister recently assured business owners that Ottawa does seek to disrupt commercial ties with India.

Still, with ongoing uncertainty, Mr Lalani said businesspeople from both countries could look elsewhere for opportunities.

“People will be thinking twice in terms of expanding trade, or trying to build on what they already have,” he said.

Another big concern is how the rift will alter movement of people between the two countries. India has been Canada’s top source of international students since 2018, and about 4% of Canada’s overall population is of Indian origin.

“The human connection between our countries is profound,” Karan Thukral, a lawyer based in Delhi, told the BBC, adding that a big portion of his clientele are people eager to move to Canada.

He said many are now anxious about how the diplomatic tension could affect their plans to work or study in Canada.

Immigration processing remains operational, Mr Thukral noted, but he has advised his clients to anticipate potential delays due to the reduction of diplomatic staff in both countries.

Others, especially those in Canada with family in India, are anxious about India reinstating visa restrictions for Canadian nationals, he added.

Any visa restrictions would come with business implications and could have a dampening effect on trade, tourism and investment, said Jeff Nankivell, president of the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada.

“The Indian government has already shown its willingness once to suspend the visa issuance, so it’s possible they could do so again,” he said, adding the biggest impact will be felt in Canada’s large Indian diaspora community.

Mr Nankivell said that he suspects the diplomatic situation will continue to evolve, and the fallout will be felt for a long time as Canadian police pursue legal action against those allegedly complicit in Mr Nijjar’s death and other criminal acts.

“That’s going to continue to raise the temperature,” he said.

Four people have been arrested and charged in connection with Mr Nijjar’s murder – all Indian nationals in their 20s – though it remains unclear if and how they are connected to India’s government.

A trial date for them has not yet been scheduled.

Canadian police said this week there are “multiple ongoing investigations” into the alleged involvement of India government agents in “serious criminal activity” in Canada.

On Wednesday, Trudeau doubled-down on accusations against India with sharp criticism of Delhi’s alleged aggressive interference in Canada’s sovereignty.

But he also cautioned that he does not want to hurt economic and social ties.

“We don’t want to be in this situation of picking a fight with a significant trading partner, with whom we have deep people-to-people ties and a long history and are fellow democracies,” Trudeau told a public inquiry looking into foreign interference in the country.

India hit back angrily, calling Trudeau’s behaviour “cavalier” and accusing Canada of not presenting evidence to back up its accusations.

Earlier this week, India said that it “reserves the right to take further steps” in its response, while Canada’s foreign minister Mélanie Joly said all options, including sanctions, are on the table.

Liam Payne, the former One Direction star, has died aged 31 in Argentina after falling from the third floor of a hotel in Buenos Aires, police say.

In a statement, police said they discovered Payne’s body after an emergency crew responded to an call in the upscale neighbourhood of Palermo on Wednesday.

On Thursday, police in Buenos Aires said a preliminary autopsy suggests Liam Payne died from external and internal bleeding injuries.

The police inspected the area where Payne fell, and found items including alcohol and a phone. Medication was found in his room.

Payne had risen to global fame as part of the much-loved boyband created on the X Factor TV show in 2010, along with Harry Styles, Louis Tomlinson, Niall Horan and Zayn Malik.

According to police in Buenos Aires, officers at the scene were initially responding to reports “of an aggressive man who may have been under the effects of drugs and alcohol”.

When they arrived at the hotel, officials were told a loud sound had been heard in an interior courtyard. Soon after, they discovered the body there. A police investigation was then launched.

Emergency medical services director Alberto Crescenti told local media that Payne had suffered “serious injuries” and that an autopsy will be carried out.

Mr Crescenti declined to answer questions about the circumstances of Payne’s fall from the balcony.

The star’s body has been transferred to a morgue in the city.

Police in Buenos Aires confirmed on Thursday that an inspection of the scene where Payne fell has been carried out on the hotel’s ground floor.

They said that a bottle of whiskey, a lighter, and a mobile phone were found.

Police said “everything indicates that the musician was alone when the fall happened”, and that he had died at the scene and there were no injuries that suggested a third party had been involved.

In the hotel room where Payne was staying, staff found “total disorder” including “various items broken.”

They said this included several packets of medication, including Clonazepam, as well as over-the-counter medications.

A notebook and passport were also found at the scene.

• Live: Liam Payne dies after falling from hotel balcony in Buenos Aires
• ‘Just a boy’ – tributes paid to Liam Payne, dead at 31
• Watch: Fans react to his death in Argentina
• Liam Payne shared final Snapchats on last few days in Argentina
• Full transcript of 911 call made moments before Liam Payne fell

Evidence and finger prints have been collected and the room’s balcony has also been inspected to establish access to it.

Five witness statements were taken by the police on the night, three from hotel employees and two from women who had been in the room with Payne earlier on, but were not there at the time of the fall.

Payne posted on Snapchat just hours before the incident, saying: “It’s a lovely day here in Argentina” but the video was from earlier in the week where he had spent time with his girlfriend Kate Cassidy.

• Boy band star who had the X factor
• The former One Direction star’s life in pictures
• City ‘heartbroken’ after Liam Payne dies

The UK Foreign Office confirmed it was in touch with authorities in Argentina “regarding reports of the death of a British man”. No further details were given.

Once news of his death broke, fans began gathering outside the Buenos Aires hotel where the death took place, prompting police to cordon off the entrance. Some lit candles in his memory.

“I was in my living room and my sister told me Liam died,” a young fan named Violeta Antier told Reuters news agency. “We couldn’t believe it. We came here directly to confirm it was true.”

Ms Antier said she saw Payne at the Niall Horan concert just two weeks ago.

Another woman cried as she explained why she had come to the hotel, telling Reuters in Spanish: “This is the only way I have to say goodbye to him”.

One Direction had global success with hits such as What Makes You Beautiful and Story of My Life, while Payne also enjoyed some solo success after the band announced in 2015 that they were going on hiatus the following year.

In August this year, Payne was announced as a judge on a new Netflix talent show alongside former Destiny’s Child singer Kelly Rowland and The Pussycat Dolls star Nicole Scherzinger.

Payne, who was born in Wolverhampton in the UK, first tried for stardom when he auditioned for ITV talent show The X Factor in 2008 – but judge Simon Cowell told him to “come back in two years”.

He did, impressing the judges more in 2010, and was put together with four other solo hopefuls at the boot camp stage and One Direction were born.

The group had four UK number one albums and four number one singles as well as topping charts around the world, before Zayn Malik left in 2015, prompting the band’s hiatus.

In 2017, Payne’s debut solo single Strip That Down, which peaked at number three on the Official UK Chart, and his collaboration with Rita Ora on the song For You – from the Fifty Shades Freed soundtrack – also reached the top 10.

He began a relationship with Girls Aloud star Cheryl Tweedy in 2016 and they had a son, Bear, the following year. The couple split in 2018.

The BBC has seen a cease and desist letter against the singer earlier this week from another of Payne’s former partners, Maya Henry.

It “pertains to alleged egregious conduct”.

She had posted on social media accusing him of repeatedly contacting her. Payne did not respond to the accusations.

China’s economy expanded in the third quarter at the slowest pace since early last year, as the country struggles to boost flagging growth.

On an annual basis, gross domestic product (GDP) rose by 4.6% in the three months to the end of September, according to China’s National Bureau of Statistics. That is less than the previous quarter and below the government’s “around 5%” target for this year.

But it was slightly better than analysts expected, while other official figures released on Friday, including retail sales and factory output, also beat forecasts.

In recent weeks, Beijing has announced a number of measures aimed at supporting growth.

This is the second quarter in a row that China’s official measure of economic growth has fallen below the 5% target, which will add to government concerns.

“The government’s growth target for this year now appears in serious jeopardy,” the former head of the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) China division, Eswar Prasad told BBC News.

“It will take a substantial stimulus-fuelled boost to growth in the fourth quarter to hit the target.”

But Moody’s Analytics’ economist, Harry Murphy Cruise, was more optimistic. The stimulus measures are “likely to propel the economy to its around 5% target for the year”, he said.

“But more is required if officials are to address the structural challenges in the economy.”

Official figures also showed new home prices fell in September at the fastest pace in almost a decade, indicating that the downturn in the property sector is worsening.

“The property market unsurprisingly remains the biggest drag on China’s growth,” said Lynn Song, chief economist for greater China at banking giant ING.

“New investment is unlikely to see a substantive recovery until prices stabilise and housing inventories decline… until then property will remain a notable headwind to growth.”

Earlier on Friday, China’s central bank said it had held a meeting to call on banks and other financial institutions to boost lending to help support growth.

Last month, the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) announced the country’s biggest stimulus package since the pandemic, including large cuts to interest and mortgage rates.

The plans also included help for the flagging stock market and measures to encourage banks to lend more to businesses and individuals.

Since then, the Ministry of Finance and other government bodies have unveiled further plans aimed at boosting economic growth.

The world’s second largest economy has been hit by a number of challenges, including a property crisis, as well as weak consumer and business confidence.

Workers at Meta have reportedly been sacked for abusing the tech firm’s meal voucher system, such as using it to buy toothpaste and washing powder.

Other breaches of the policy included sharing the vouchers with others or going over budget, according to people who said they work at Meta.

There are differing accounts over how much warning, if any, the owner of Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp gave the workers before firing them.

Separately, the company has reportedly cut jobs across the business. Meta has been contacted for comment.

Meta staff are given $25 (£19) for lunch, $20 for breakfast, and $25 for dinner in vouchers which are meant to be used for ordering food from Grubhub, the US name for takeaway website Just Eat.

Posts on anonymous work social message board Blind appear to confirm elements of the story, originally reported by the Financial Times.

One user wrote that more than 30 people were fired last week because they used the credits for “non-food items, shared credits with people, or went above budget”.

Examples of the non-food items bought included toothpaste, toothbrushes and wine glasses.

“They were given a warning to stop which most of them did, but were still fired three months later even after stopping,” the user said.

Some repeated the claim the staff were warned, though other users wrote that there were no warnings.

The company has also reportedly made job cuts at WhatsApp, Instagram and Reality Labs, its virtual reality business responsible for the Oculus headset.

Jane Manchun Wong, a former security engineer at Meta, said on Wednesday that she had lost her job as part of the wider layoffs.

“I’m still trying to process this but I’m informed that my role at Meta has been impacted,” she wrote on X, formerly Twitter.

Ms Wong was hired just over a year ago as a software engineer after making 2022’s Forbes 30 under 30 list.

The layoffs were first reported by Verge, with a spokesperson telling the tech publication: “A few teams at Meta are making changes to ensure resources are aligned with their long-term strategic goals and location strategy.

“This includes moving some teams to different locations, and moving some employees to different roles. In situations like this when a role is eliminated, we work hard to find other opportunities for impacted employees.”

Voters in the US go to the polls on 5 November to elect their next president.

The election was initially a rematch of 2020 but it was upended in July when President Joe Biden ended his campaign and endorsed Vice-President Kamala Harris.

The big question now is – will America get its first woman president or a second Donald Trump term?

As election day approaches, we’ll be keeping track of the polls and seeing what effect the campaign has on the race for the White House.

Harris has had a small lead over Trump in the national polling averages since she entered the race at the end of July and she remains ahead – as shown in the chart below with the latest figures rounded to the nearest whole number.

Harris saw a bounce in her polling numbers in the first few weeks of her campaign, building a lead of nearly four percentage points towards the end of August.

But the numbers have been relatively stable since early September, even after the only debate between the two candidates on 10 September, which was watched by nearly 70 million people.

You can see how little the race has changed nationally in the last few weeks in the poll tracker chart below, with the trend lines showing the averages and the dots showing the individual poll results for each candidate.

While these national polls are a useful guide as to how popular a candidate is across the country as a whole, they’re not necessarily an accurate way to predict the result of the election.

That’s because the US uses an electoral college system, in which each state is given a number of votes roughly in line with the size of its population. A total of 538 electoral college votes are up for grabs, so a candidate needs to hit 270 to win.

There are 50 states in the US but because most of them nearly always vote for the same party, in reality there are just a handful where both candidates stand a chance of winning. These are the places where the election will be won and lost and are known as battleground states or swing states.

• What is the electoral college?

Right now the polls are very tight in the seven states considered battlegrounds in this election and neither candidate has a decisive lead in any of them, according to the polling averages.

If you look at the trends since Harris joined the race, it does help highlight some differences between the states – but it’s important to note that there are fewer state polls than national polls so we have less data to go on and every poll has a margin of error that means the numbers could be higher or lower.

In Arizona, Georgia and North Carolina, the lead has changed hands a few times since the start of August but Trump has had a small lead for a few weeks now. It’s a similar story in Nevada but with Harris the candidate who is slightly ahead at the moment.

In the three other states – Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin – Harris has been leading since the start of August, sometimes by two or three points, but in recent days the polls have tightened significantly.

All three of those states had been Democratic strongholds before Trump turned them red on his path to winning the presidency in 2016. Biden retook them in 2020 and if Harris can do the same then she will be on course to win the election.

In a sign of how the race has changed since Harris became the Democratic nominee, on the day that Biden quit the race he was trailing Trump by nearly five percentage points on average in the seven swing states.

In Pennsylvania, Biden was behind by nearly 4.5 percentage points when he dropped out, as the chart below shows. It is a key state for both campaigns as it has the highest number of electoral votes of the seven and therefore winning it makes it easier to reach the 270 votes needed.

The figures we have used in the graphics above are averages created by polling analysis website 538, which is part of American news network ABC News. To create them, 538 collects the data from individual polls carried out both nationally and in battleground states by lots of polling companies.

As part of its quality control, 538 only includes polls from companies that meet certain criteria, like being transparent about how many people they polled, when the poll was carried out and how the poll was conducted (telephone calls, text message, online, etc).

You can read more about the 538 methodology here.

At the moment, the polls suggest that Kamala Harris and Donald Trump are within a couple of percentage points of each other in all of the swing states – and when the race is that close, it’s very hard to predict winners.

Polls underestimated support for Trump in both 2016 and 2020. Polling companies will be trying to fix that problem in a number of ways, including how to make their results reflect the make-up of the voting population.

Those adjustments are difficult to get right and pollsters still have to make educated guesses about other factors like who will actually turn up to vote on 5 November.

• Listen: How do election polls work?

• SIMPLE GUIDE: Everything you need to know about the vote
• ANALYSIS: Harris goads Trump into flustered performance
• EXPLAINER: Seven swing states that could decide election
• IMMIGRATION: Could Trump really deport a million migrants?
• FACT CHECK: Was US economy stronger or weaker under Trump?
• Read more about: Kamala Harris | Donald Trump | US election