There is no conscience. There is no humanity. There are only leaders who watch and do not act.

This is what Ahmed al-Dalou believes, as the images of his family burning replay in his mind. He says his life is gone. It died in the inferno of al-Aqsa compound with his boys and wife in the early hours of Monday 14 October.

In front of him on the ground is a shroud, wrapped around the body of Abdulrahman,12, his youngest son.

The child lingered in agony for four days after the fire, sparked by an Israeli strike. The day before he died Ahmed saw him in hospital and he was able to tell his father: “Don’t be worried, I am OK dad… I’m fine. Don’t be afraid.”

Ahmed is half speaking, half crying, as he talks of what has been taken from him.

“Three times I tried to pull him [Abdulrahman] out of the fire, but his body fell back into it.”

His older brother, Sha’aban, 19, and his mother, Alaa, 37, both died on the night of the fire.

Sha’aban became a new symbol of Gaza’s terrible suffering. Images of him writhing in agony as he burned to death in the family’s tent were shared around the world on social media.

There are burns all over Ahmed’s face and hands. The tone of his voice is high, a keening sound. Of the anonymous pilot who sent the missile, and the leaders who gave him orders, Ahmed said: “They broke my heart, and they broke my spirit… I wish the fire had burned me.”

The strike happened at about 01:15 local time last Monday (23:15 BST on Sunday).

The Israeli military said it was targeting a Hamas “command and control” centre in the al-Aqsa hospital compound in Deir al-Balah, central Gaza Strip.

Four people were killed immediately and dozens more wounded, including many with severe burn injuries. The Israel Defense Forces said it was “reviewing the incident”.

A spokesperson for the White House told CBS News, the BBC’s US partner, that footage of the fire was “deeply disturbing” and called on Israel to do more to protect civilians.

“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.”

The US and other powers, including Britain, have expressed concern about civilian casualties since the early stages of the war.

People are burned to death, blown to pieces, and shot every day in this war.

Most of the time the death agonies happen away from the cameras. It is the frantic search for survivors in the rubble, the dramatic scenes at hospitals, the endless stream of funerals, that are captured by cameras.

But the death of Sha’aban al-Dalou was different. His hand can be seen, reaching out of the inferno, a figure wrapped in flame, writhing and beyond the reach of any help.

In the days following his death Sha’aban’s own videos and photographs emerged. He was a typical teenager of his generation, aware of the power of social media, adept at recording his daily life.

The burning figure from the night of fire appeared to the world as an articulate, intelligent teenager, a software engineering student, a young man who took care of his family planning for a new life outside Gaza. He filmed himself donating blood and encouraged others to do the same.

“We saw so many injuries, many children are in dire need of blood… All we demand is for a ceasefire and this tragedy to end.”

We are only able to tell the story of al-Dalou family because of our own local journalist who went to meet the survivors. International journalists from media organisations, including the BBC, are not given independent access to Gaza by Israel.

• Gazans describe fresh horror in north as Israel renews offensive
• Witnesses to Israeli strike on Gaza hospital compound saw ‘so many people burning’
• UN accuses Israel of war crimes over attacks on Gaza hospitals

In a video recorded in the tent where he died Sha’aban described how his family had been displaced five times since the war began a year ago. He had two sisters, and two younger brothers.

“We live in very hard circumstances,” he said. “We suffer from various things such as homelessness, limited food, and extremely limited medicine.”

In the background, as he speaks, there is the loud mechanical hum of an Israeli observation drone, a constant in the daily and nightly soundtrack of Gaza.

The surviving brother of Sha’aban and Abdulrahman, Mohammed al-Dalou, told the BBC that he had tried to go into the flames to rescue his older brother.

But other injured people had held him back, fearing he too would be killed. Mohammed did not sleep in the family tent, but outside on the street where he kept watch over their piled belongings.

“I was screaming for someone to let me go, but in vain… My brother’s leg was trapped and he couldn’t free himself. I think you saw it in the video. He was raising his hand.

“That was my brother. He was my support in this world.”

Sha’aban would come and wake him for prayers in the morning with a bottle of water and he would tell him: “I’ll work for you.”

Mohammed recalled how the brothers set up a stall at the gates of the hospital selling food that the family made.

“We managed everything with our hard work. Everything we had was from our effort. We would get food and drink… then everything was lost.”

He saw the burned bodies, but could only identify his mother. Although her remains had been mutilated by fire, he recognised a distinctive bracelet.

“Without it, I wouldn’t have known she was my mother. Her hand was detached from her body, but the bracelet was still on it. I took it off her hand.”

This is his only memento of the woman who was “the kindness in our home”.

The al-Dalou family is in shock. The survivors mourn the dead. Our BBC colleague asked Mohammed about the psychological cost of seeing his loved ones die.

“I can’t describe it. I can’t describe how I felt. I want to explain it to people, but I can’t. I can’t describe it. I saw my brother burning in front of me, and my mother too.”

Then, as if he is posing a question on behalf of the dead, he asks: “What more do you need, and you stay silent? You see us burning, and you stay silent.”

“Get Ready, it’s about to get a little bumpy.”

That was the first sentence of a letter Liam Payne wrote to his 10-year-old self, which he read out on BBC radio in 2020.

“You’ll have the most amazing time of your life, travel the world and live a life you barely imagined,” he said.

“Then it will end for a while, and you will be left with nothing but the steering wheel. It will feel scary, like you’re alone, but you are not.”

The pop sensation died on Wednesday aged 31 after a fall from a hotel balcony in Argentina. The exact circumstances around his death, or what happened in the final weeks of his life, remain unknown.

But the star, who shot to global fame as a 16-year-old member of One Direction, had spoken for years about his struggles with mental health – and the challenges of adapting to stardom.

Runners-up on the 2010 series of The X Factor, One Direction were a new, different-style of boy band – approachable, relatable, and, apart from their musical talents, normal.

They were the boys-next-door, whose age and good looks made them heartthrobs to millions of young fans around the world.

They went on to sell more than 70 million albums, complete five world tours, produce a feature film and star in a charity music video alongside then-prime minister David Cameron.

All that – at an age when many young people are worrying about their exams, their first loves, or getting tickets to their next gig – let alone starring in it.

“I mean, it was fun,” Payne would later reflect in an interview with Men’s Health Magazine. “We had an absolute blast, but there were certain parts of it where it just got a little bit toxic.”

Paparazzi photographers. Tabloid newspapers. Night after night in hotel rooms, separated from family. Blacked-out tour buses. Fans screaming for autographs. And the new and rapidly growing world of social media.

Few, he felt, could understand the intense pressures of stardom at such a tender age.

“It’s almost like putting the Disney costume on before you step up on stage,” he said.

He also admitted he used alcohol to cope “because there was no other way to get your head around what was going on”.

By the time One Direction split in 2016, global fame was all the then 22-year-old Payne had known as an adult.

“It can be quite difficult to give up expectations of being a megastar,” says Prof John Oates, who was involved in the British Psychological Society’s consultations with the government on child performers and the duty of care for adult contributors.

“Being in a boy band ceases to become so possible when you’re no longer a boy. So there’s a need to become, in a sense, a different sort of famous person. So that’s a new challenge.”

Payne’s bandmate Harry Styles seemed more suited for that challenge.

His androgynous looks were more in harmony with the direction the music industry was progressing in 2016. He also began acting, featuring in Hollywood blockbuster Dunkirk the following year.

Payne, however, struggled to make the transition.

In 2019, he released a solo debut album, LP1. Eight tracks of R&B, it did not capture the One Direction fan base, and failed to take off.

The struggles of teenage stars have long been a topic of public discussion, from Britney Spears to Justin Bieber.

Reality TV stars have faced similar challenges, with both Love Island host Caroline Flack and contestant Mike Thalassitis tragically taking their own lives in recent years.

Speaking on the Diary of a CEO podcast in 2021, Liam Payne said of his own struggles: “I was worried how far my rock bottom was going to be. Where’s rock bottom for me? And you would never have seen it. I’m very good at hiding it. No-one would ever have seen it.”

A key challenge for young stars, according to Prof Oates, is managing the comedown after a long period of fame.

“If fame has been so important to them for their self-esteem, how can they be helped to manage the loss of that?” he asks.

“An important move in personal development is moving from external sources of self-esteem to internal sources. Part of this is to do with something called reflective functioning, that you’re able to reflect on yourself as a person and you may become less reliant on others for your sense of self.”

For those who have entered adulthood as a star, that process can be especially difficult, he says.

Shortly after Payne’s death, fellow 2010 The X Factor contestant Rebecca Ferguson wrote a tribute: “We both met at Euston station and shared the taxi together to X Factor. I can’t help but think of that boy who was hopeful and looking forward to his bright future ahead.

“If he hadn’t jumped on that train and jumped in that taxi I believe he would be alive today.”

Former X Factor judge Sharon Osbourne said: “We all let you down.”

“You were just a kid when you entered one of the toughest industries in the world. Who was in your corner?”

It was a case that made headlines globally and led to widespread condemnation.

A teenaged widow was burned on her husband’s funeral pyre under the Hindu practice of sati 37 years ago.

Now Roop Kanwar’s story has returned to headlines in India after a court acquitted eight men accused of glorifying her death, in the last of the remaining cases in the grisly saga.

Sati was first banned in 1829 by the British colonial rulers, but the practice had continued even after India’s independence in 1947. Kanwar is recognised as India’s last sati.

The outrage over her death forced the Indian government to introduce a tough new law – Commission of Sati (Prevention) Act, 1987 – banning the practice and, for the first time, also its glorification. It mandated death or life term for those committing sati or abetting it. But over the years, everyone accused of involvement in Kanwar’s death and the glorification that followed has been cleared by courts.

Last week’s order has also led to outrage, with women’s organisations and activists expressing concern that no-one has been held accountable over her death.

Fourteen women’s groups in Rajasthan have written a letter to Chief Minister Bhajan Lal asking him to ensure the government challenges the order in the high court and also makes all attempts to prevent glorification of sati. Coming after such a long delay, these acquittals could “reinforce a culture of sati glorification”, they wrote.

A lawyer acting for the eight accused told BBC Hindi that they were acquitted because “no evidence was found against them”.

I asked Rajasthan’s Justice Minister Jogaram Patel whether the government planned to appeal the decision.

“We haven’t yet received a copy of the judgement. We will examine it on its merits and demerits and then decide whether to appeal or not,” he told me.

When asked about why the government hadn’t appealed the earlier acquittals, he said those cases had happened before his time and he was not aware of the details.

The death of the 18-year-old in Deorala village on 4 September 1987 was a huge public spectacle. Watched by hundreds of villagers, it was described as a blot on Rajasthan and India.

Her husband’s family and others from their upper-caste Rajput community said Kanwar’s decision had been in keeping with the tradition of sati and was voluntary.

They said she had dressed up in her bridal finery and led a procession around the village streets, before climbing into the pyre of Maal Singh, her husband of seven months. She then placed his head in her lap and recited religious chants while slowly burning to death, they added.

It was a claim contested by journalists, lawyers, civil society and women’s rights activists – and initially, even by Kanwar’s parents. They lived in the state capital, Jaipur, just two hours from the village, but learnt of their son-in-law’s death and their daughter’s immolation from the next day’s newspaper.

But they later said they believed their daughter’s act had been voluntary. Critics said the retraction had come under pressure from powerful politicians who used the incident to mobilise the Rajput community for “vote-bank politics”.

In the days following Kanwar’s death, both sides held high-decibel protests.

The incident sparked widespread condemnation, with activists protesting for justice, criticism of the Congress-led state government, and a letter to the Rajasthan chief justice calling for a ban on celebrations.

Despite the court ban, 200,000 people attended a ceremony 13 days after Kanwar’s death, where framed photos and posters of her were sold, transforming Deorala into a profitable pilgrimage site. Shortly after, two separate reports concluded that Kanwar “was hounded by villagers to commit sati” and her immolation was “far from voluntary”.

Journalist Geeta Seshu, who visited the village as part of a three-member team three weeks after the incident, told the BBC that “the situation on the ground was tense and fraught”.

“The Rajput Sabha had taken over the entire place and the atmosphere was very charged. The spot where Roop had died was surrounded by sword-wielding young men. They were going around it in circles and it was very difficult for us to speak to eyewitnesses.”

But the trio still managed to get some testimonies from villagers that went into Trial by Fire, their damning fact-finding report.

“Preparations for the sati began immediately after Maal Singh’s body was brought to the village in the morning. Roop, who got an inkling of this, escaped from the house and hid in the nearby fields,” they wrote.

“She was found cowering in a barn and dragged to the house and put on the pyre. On her way, she is reported to have walked unsteadily surrounded by Rajput youths. She was also seen to have been frothing at the mouth” – suggesting that she had been drugged.

“She struggled to get out when the pyre was lit, but she was weighed down by logs and coconuts and youths with swords who pushed her back onto the pyre. Eyewitnesses reported to the police that they heard her shouting and crying for help,” the report added.

Ms Seshu says “one may couch it in the language of valour and sacrifice, but it was nothing but a horrific murder”.

She says when she met Kanwar’s parents and brothers, “they were angry and willing to fight. But they later changed their stance under pressure from community leaders”.

Her eldest brother Gopal Singh disputes this, and told the BBC they initially suspected foul play. “But our aunts who lived in Deorala told us that it was Roop’s decision. So, the elders in the family decided to drop it. There was no pressure on us.”

Mr Singh later went on to join the Sati Dharma Raksha Samiti – a committee formed to valorise Kanwar’s immolation – and became its deputy chief. After its glorification was made illegal, the group dropped sati from its name. He said he had spent 45 days in prison on charges of sati glorification but was acquitted in January 2004 for “lack of evidence”.

Ms Seshu says the general consensus when they visited the village after the incident was that “sati happens, women do it. The police and administrations were so complicit in the celebrations that no genuine efforts were made to collect evidence or fix responsibility”.

What was most tragic, she adds, was that Kanwar’s death was used by the Rajput community as a mobilising force to benefit them politically and to make money.

“The supporters wanted to build a temple at the site but the new law which banned sati glorification also barred construction of temples or collection of money from visitors. Now this acquittal could open the gates for a revival of religious tourism to the place.”

It’s a legitimate concern.

In Deorala, the spot at the edge of the village where Kanwar died, still attracts some visitors all these years later.

A photograph taken a year back shows a family lighting a lamp before a framed picture of Kanwar and her husband, placed under a small brick structure draped with a red and gold scarf.

But despite Kanwar’s deification, chances of justice for India’s last sati remain dim.

A drone has been “launched towards” the private residence of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the coastal town of Caesarea, his office has said.

“The prime minister and his wife were not at the location, and there were no injuries in the incident,” a statement said.

It comes after the Israeli military said three drones were launched from Lebanon into Israel early on Saturday morning, with one hitting a building in Caesarea.

The Israeli government has not said whether the building was part of the Prime Minister’s residence nor the extent of any damage.

At 08:19 local time (06:19 BST), the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said: “In the last hour, three unmanned aerial vehicles crossed into the country from Lebanon.

“Two of the aircraft were intercepted. Another aircraft hit a building in Caesarea, no injuries.”

Netanyahu makes use of two private homes, in Caesarea and Jerusalem, and has also spent time at Beit Aghion, the prime minister’s official residence in Jerusalem, which is currently being renovated.

The IDF said some 55 rockets had been launched into Israel from Lebanon so far on Saturday.

Israel is continuing to attack targets in Lebanon which it says are linked to the Iran-backed Hezbollah group.

Lebanon’s health ministry said on Saturday that two people were killed in an Israeli strike in Jounieh, a Christian-majority town to the north of Beirut.

The strike hit a moving car that was travelling along the main highway, according to local media.

This attack is unusual as most Israeli operations to date have focused on Shia Muslim-majority areas where Hezbollah has a presence.

The family of Dawn Sturgess, who died six years ago after coming into contact with Novichok, have been calling on Vladimir Putin to speak to the inquiry after her death in the Salisbury poisonings.

I put their request directly to Andrei Kelin, the Russian ambassador to the UK, in as part of a wide-ranging sit-down interview that will be broadcast on Sunday.

“I hardly believe President Putin will go to Britain just to testify something,” he said.

The UK government holds Russia, and two Russian agents, known as Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov, responsible for the attack.

Andrei Kelin questioned the need for an inquiry. “Why drag this history so long?”

He also rejected suggestions Petrov or Borishov should attend, saying the men had already given answers on TV – referring to a 2018 interview they gave on Russian state TV in which they claimed they had just been visiting Salisbury Cathedral.

That claim was mocked by some in Russia. UK officials called the interview “risible”.

Challenged with the fact that the UK, US, France, Germany, Canada all believe the attack was carried out by Russia with Novichok manufactured in Russia, Kelin said that “too many governments” were involved and dismissed their allegation as “nonsense“.

Pressed to give a response to the Sturgess family, the ambassador appeared to laugh, saying: “I have never met this family … If someone has died, of course we are concerned about that.”

On Ukraine, Kelin accused the UK of “waging war” on Russia by supporting the country with weapons and resources. If Zelensky “won’t negotiate with us, fine”, he said. “He will lose more and more terrain.”

This week, the Ukrainian president published a so-called victory plan to try to bring the conflict to an end next year.

It includes a formal request to join Nato and the lifting of bans on long-range strikes with Western-supplied weapons deep into Russia.

Challenged on Russia’s illegal invasion and stalemate in the war, the ambassador said Zelensky “does not want peace … he continues to ask for more and more; Nato, EU assistance, defence packages.

“Anything, but nothing about negotiations at all.”

Kyiv, backed by its allies, has always rejected any suggestions of negotiation after the Russian invasion. They believe that would mean the permanent loss of Ukrainian territory.

Western governments believe that Putin is under rising pressure at home, with increasing casualties and the huge cost of the war. Even Moscow’s finance ministry has acknowledged the intense strain on the economy.

But Kelin claims Russia is living “absolutely normal life”.

Asked if the suffering on both sides kept him awake at night, he said: “No one likes the war.” He said it could stop if the West stopped supplying arms to Ukraine.

“We are not just going to say, OK, [from] tomorrow we do not shoot each other. We won’t.”

On Friday, Keir Starmer reiterated his support for Ukraine. “We have always said that it is for the Ukrainian people to decide their own future so we’re clear, together with President Zelensky, that the only acceptable outcome is a sovereign Ukraine and a just peace.”

He also said Russia was getting weaker, with the war soaking up 40% of its budget, and the government believing there were more than 600,000 dead or wounded Russians, and another 500,000 casualties predicted by the end of the year.

With reports in recent days that North Korean troops are backing the Kremlin in the conflict, Kelin was challenged on Russia’s reliance on pariah states like North Korea and Iran.

“For us, it’s normal people, we have been friends, and we have a lot of common interests with North Korea and Iran … Anything bad – we do not see it.”

And on the American election, with just weeks to go, the ambassador claimed the winner didn’t make a difference at all. He said there was a “two-party consensus” on Russia – “and this is anti-Russian sentiment”.

The ambassador said that Russia had changed its nuclear doctrine in response to conversations among Western allies about allowing Ukraine to use long-range missiles supplied by them to fire into Russia.

Russia now says it would consider an attack from a non-nuclear state that’s backed by a nuclear-armed one to be a “joint attack”. That has been construed as a threat to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine.

Jens Stoltenberg, the former Nato boss, said the West had “called Putin’s bluff” over nuclear threats – implying it had crossed many of Putin’s red lines without anything happening.

Kelin said Stoltenberg’s statement itself was “a bluff” – adding Russia would protect itself “with all the means that are in our disposal, and believe me, there are lots of them.”

It is hard to overstate the impact of the Salisbury attacks on the fraught relationship between the UK and Russia.

A senior figure involved in the UK government response told me it was a “huge tipping point.

“It was shocking in the fact that the Russians were trying to kill people on our soil, but also, so blatantly happy for us to know that it was them,” they said, pointing to the use of Novichok, known to be manufactured and used by the Russian state.

Only a year before, then-Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson had gone to Moscow in the hope of a “reset” of the relationship between the two countries.

But another senior source told me: “we simply couldn’t have a normal relationship with them again with that in the background”.

They described the poisonings as worse than anything that had happened in the Cold War. “The competition was pretty brutal then, but this kind of thing was completely unacceptable.”

More than 20 Western allies expelled diplomats and spies from their countries in response after a bout of frantic diplomacy by Theresa May’s government, including pushing former President Trump to act.

One figure recalls, “it was pretty hairy at the time, a lot of Europeans didn’t want to do it. Trump personally didn’t want to do it but was persuaded to do so”.

The UK insisted that the announcement of the expulsions from each country was made at exactly the same time, with only the UK aware of how many Russians each government planned to order to leave.

The fear in Downing Street was that Trump would not be willing to take drastic action if he had known the numbers each European country were planning to expel.

The UK government now believes that Russia is the number one threat to the UK’s security.

Labour said in the election: “the defence of the UK starts in Ukraine,” and ministers believe the same now they are in government.

The UK has been at the forefront of leading the Western backing of Ukraine since the invasion in 2022, and has sent billions of pounds worth of weapons and resources to support the effort.

It’s given staunch political backing to President Zelensky – but don’t expect a decision on his request to use Western long-range missiles for at least a few weeks.

There are concerns in government about Russia increasing its efforts at sabotage on UK soil, with the boss of MI5 warning this week Russia was more and more engaged in “arson, sabotage and more dangerous actions conducted with increasing recklessness”.

Back in 2018, when the poisonings happened, the UK had no way of predicting how Russia’s aggression would grow into what one source calls an “off-the-charts bigger crisis” – with its illegal invasion of Ukraine.

But as the Salisbury inquiry delves into the impact of the poisoning on one innocent British family, its significance as a moment of the rupture in relations is clear too.

That’s caught in a conversation understood to have taken place between UK national security adviser Mark Sedwill and his Russian counterpart at the time, after Western allies had expelled 300 diplomats.

“You seem to want to take us back to the days of the Cold War,” the Russian said.

“Well, Yuri, at least we all knew the rules then,” Sedwill responded.

You can watch our interview with Russian ambassador Andrei Kelin tomorrow at 09:00 on on BBC One. We’ll also talk to Health Secretary Wes Streeting.

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A British national has told the BBC that he and several Turkish citizens were abducted in the Kenyan capital Nairobi by masked men on Friday, with four of the Turkish citizens still missing.

Necdet Seyitoğlu, who lived in the UK for 18 years before moving to Kenya two years ago, said he was released after eight hours when he showed his alleged abductors a copy of his British passport.

In a statement, the UK Foreign Office said they were “providing consular support to a British man and his family following an incident in Kenya”.

Kenyan police told the BBC they were investigating a “kidnapping incident” after a motorcycle driver witnessed the abduction.

According to the report, two vehicles intercepted and blocked from the front and behind a silver saloon car with two occupants.

“About eight persons armed with weapons emerged from the two vehicles, pulled out the two occupants” and drove off with them, said Kenyan police spokeswoman Resila Onyango.

“Later, one Yusuf Kar, a British national of Turkish origin” reported to a nearby police station and identified the kidnapped men as Hüseyin Yeşilsu and Necdet Seyitoğlu.

Turkish authorities have not yet commented on the incident.

Mr Seyitoğlu, an education consultant, gave additional details of what he said happened during his kidnapping ordeal, some of which differ from the police account.

He described a white SUV intercepting his car as he was leaving home for work with a friend at 07:30 local time (04:30 GMT).

The pair were blindfolded and handcuffed by four armed men before being driven off to an unknown location, he said.

Repeated requests about what was happening went unanswered, he said.

“We asked them, can you show your identification? Where we are going? But we didn’t get any kind of explanation,” the 49-year-old said.

“It was the worst experience of my life,” Mr Seyitoğlu added.

He said he was eventually able to convince his alleged abductors that he was a British citizen by showing them a copy of his passport on this phone.

After taking a photo, the men received a call that sounded like it was an instruction to release him, he said.

The masked men, who Mr Seyitoğlu said spoke Swahili, then dropped him off at a place he did not recognise and gave him 1,000 shillings ($7.50; £6) for transport back home, but refused to return his phone and laptop.

During this time, Mr Seyitoğlu said his wife reported him missing, and informed the British High Commission.

Mr Seyitoğlu said six other people he knew – all Turkish citizens – were also abducted in the same manner from different locations in Nairobi.

A local law firm, Mukele & Kakai, said in a statement that it was acting on behalf of four men who were registered refugees and warned airlines against allowing them to be brought on board.

“Our clients were abducted in Kenya with the aim of being deported back to Turkey where they are victims of political victimisation,” the lawyers’ letter, seen by the BBC, said.

This was echoed by the campaign group Amnesty International, whose Kenya spokesman said he was “deeply concerned by reports that seven asylum seekers from Türkiye have been abducted on Kenyan soil”.

The UN’s refugee agency, UNHCR, told the BBC it was “aware of reports and will provide more information once we have it”.

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An amateur historian has discovered a long-lost short story by Bram Stoker, published just seven years before his legendary gothic novel Dracula.

Brian Cleary stumbled upon the 134-year-old ghostly tale while browsing the archives of the National Library of Ireland.

Gibbet Hill was originally published in a Dublin newspaper in 1890 – when the Irishman started working on Dracula – but has been undocumented ever since.

Stoker biographer Paul Murray says the story sheds light on his development as an author and was a significant “station on his route to publishing Dracula”.

The ghostly story tells the tale of a sailor murdered by three criminals whose bodies were strung up on a hanging gallows as a warning to passing travellers.

It is set in Gibbet Hill in Surrey, a location also referenced in Charles Dickens’ 1839 novel Nicholas Nickleby.

Mr Cleary made the discovery after taking time off work following a sudden onset of hearing loss in 2021 – during which period he would pass the time at the national library in Stoker’s native Dublin.

In October 2023, the Stoker fan came across an unfamiliar title in an 1890 Christmas supplement of the Daily Express Dublin Edition.

Mr Clearly told the AFP news agency: “I read the words Gibbet Hill and I knew that wasn’t a Bram Stoker story that I had ever heard of in any of the biographies or bibliographies.”

“And I was just astounded, flabbergasted.

“I sat looking at the screen wondering, am I the only living person who had read it?”

He said of the moment he made the discovery: “What on earth do I do with it?”

The library’s director Audrey Whitty said Mr Cleary called her and said: “I’ve found something extraordinary in your newspaper archives – you won’t believe it.”

She added that his “astonishing amateur detective work” was a testament to the library’s archives.

“There are truly world-important discoveries waiting to be found”, she said.

After his initial sleuthing, Mr Cleary contacted biographer Paul Murray – who confirmed there had been no trace of the story for over a century.

He said 1890 was when he was a young writer and made his first notes for Dracula.

“It’s a classic Stoker story, the struggle between good and evil, evil which crops up in exotic and unexplained ways,” he added.

Gibbet Hill is being published alongside artwork by the Irish artist Paul McKinley by the Rotunda Foundation – the fundraising arm of Dublin’s Rotunda Hospital for which Mr Cleary worked.

All proceeds will go to the newly formed Charlotte Stoker Fund – named after Bram Stoker’s mother who was a hearing loss campaigner – to fund research on infant hearing loss.

The discovery is also being highlighted in the city’s Bram Stoker festival later this month.

Hong Eunchae, the youngest member of K-Pop band Le Sserafim, is strutting through Seoul’s infamous Nakwon Instrument Arcade when she suddenly loses her footing.

With a crash, her drink flies into the air and the 17-year-old falls head-first down a metal staircase, landing with a sickening thud on a subway floor.

There’s a pause. Then she sits up with a shrug, completely unharmed, as though this is how she typically navigates the stairs.

Instantly meme-able, the scene features in the trailer for Le Sserafim’s third EP, Easy, which was released earlier this year. But Eunchae says it also carries a deeper meaning.

“When I’m following the path I want to follow, tumbling and falling down doesn’t matter,” she tells the BBC.

“I always start over like nothing has happened. That’s the message I wanted to deliver.”

Such defiance and persistence have helped Le Sserafim carve out a niche since they were thrust into the spotlight two years ago.

With the eccentric energy of Girls Aloud and the impeccable hooks of the Korean pop machine, they’ve released grungy, club-ready songs like Crazy and Antifragile, been nominated for multiple MTV Awards, and collaborated with Nile Rodgers and PinkPantheress.

To a casual observer, the quintet might seem like the prototype girl band: Coiffed, choreographed and bristling with confidence.

But they’re unusually forthright about the unrealistic standards the industry places on women.

On Eve, Psyche and Bluebeard’s Wife (a song named after three women who defied societal expectations), singer Kim Chaewon discusses the pressure to perform, even when you’re not at your best.

.”

On Good Bones, Huh Yunjin snaps back at her critics.

she protests over a spiky rock riff.

“As a group, we’re always trying to show that duality of being strong but also being vulnerable,” Yunjin explains.

“But no matter what happens, we’ve got each other and that gives us resilience.”

Le Sserafim have an unusual origin story, with members drawn from all over the world at different ages and stages of readiness by their label Source Music.

Sakura is a showbusiness veteran, with experience in three other bands – KT48, AKB48 and Iz*One.

Aged 26, she’s the oldest member of Le Sserafim, and Yunjin calls her “a pillar” of strength who “always has good advice” about the industry.

Chaewon was also part of Iz*One, and acts as Le Sserafim’s leader, a role she characterises as being “a rock” who “makes everything smooth” when problems arise.

Yunjin was raised in New York and studied opera before entering the rigorous world of K-pop training. By contrast, Eunchae only had 15 months of preparation before making her official debut in 2022. Aged 17, she is nicknamed Manchae – a portmanteau of her name and (막내), the Korean word for “youngest member”.

Last to join was former ballerina Kazuha, who was swept out of the Dutch National Ballet Academy five months before Le Sserafim’s first single. To this day, she feels like she’s playing catch-up with the rest of the team.

“It’s been two years but every day is a new challenge still,” she says.

There was originally a sixth member. Kim Garam appeared on the band’s debut EP, Fearless, but resigned shortly afterwards following accusations she had bullied students in high school.

That’s not the only bump in the road Le Sserafim have faced.

Earlier this year, the band apologised for perceived vocal weaknesses during their performance at Coachella in California. Responding to negative press, Chaewon said the group had simply “become excited and lost control of our pace” while playing their first outdoor festival.

A recent behind-the-scenes documentary, Make It Look Easy, exposed more about the pressures the band faced promoting their first album, Unforgiven, last year.

In one scene, Chaewon breaks down in tears and confesses: “I don’t really know how to be happy.”

“To be honest, I sometimes think about quitting,” she tells an off-camera interviewer.

Kazuha also confronts insecurities over her abilities as a performer.

“Sometimes I get super-confident and I’m like, ‘I should work harder. I can do this’,” she says. “But then I lose confidence and I’m like, ‘I can’t do anything. I have no charm’.”

Yunjin is more fiery. Perhaps her American upbringing gives her a different perspective on K-Pop’s “idol” industry, but she’s expressed a desire to change it from within.

“Idols need to do this, do that. There are all these unspoken rules,” she says in the documentary.

“I could feel it when I was a trainee, but back then I desperately wanted to [make my] debut, so I just conformed. But after debuting I was like, ‘Why does it have to be like this?'”

She pours those frustrations into a solo song called I ≠ DOLL, which explicitly criticises the way pop stars are treated as products.

,” she sings. “ [expletive] .”

In the past, the 23-year-old has declared she wants to “change the idol industry”, breaking down its “strict standards one by one”.

By being transparent about their struggles, Le Sserafim deliberately challenge a status quo that demands perfection – and their candour comes at a time when K-pop artists are increasingly willing to confront the system.

Earlier this week, a singer with girl group NewJeans testified to South Korea’s National Assembly about the bullying she has faced at work. Last year, the 11 members of Omega X won emancipation from their contract following allegations of “unwarranted treatment” by their label.

Le Sserafim – who have a supportive relationship with Source Music – put a more positive spin on their story.

“The message we wanted to deliver through the documentary was not that our job is hard and strenuous,” Chaewon says.

“Rather, we wanted to emphasise the fact that we have a lot in common with anyone who holds down a job.”

“We want to say that you don’t have to be perfect all the time,” adds Yunjin.

“Everyone faces difficulties,” Chaewon concludes. “So our message is, let’s overcome all those difficulties together.”

In a superficial industry, they make a virtue of their imperfections, projecting them as a strength.

Even the band’s name is an anagram of the phrase “I’m fearless”.

Their camaraderie is expressed in songs like Chasing Lightning – where Yunjin is teased for her obsession with Greek yoghurt, and Sakura describes her love of crochet – and their latest single, 1-800 Hot N Fun.

Powered by a sinuous bass guitar riff, it follows the band on a night out, kissing random strangers, demanding the DJ plays Beyoncé, and clinging to the dance floor until the break of dawn.

“I love that song,” says Yunjin. “It’s almost like a dialogue, we’re just all having a conversation.”

In the hook, the bandmates keep asking, “” – their nickname for Sakura – before someone responds, “.”

Does that mean Sakura’s always the first to be ready?

“Wow! Wow!” exclaims Yunjin. “That’s actually true! That’s the first time we’ve thought about it that way. That’s genius.”

There won’t be much time for partying this year, though. Le Sserafim have been speaking to the BBC in the middle of a long day of TV rehearsals, and fans have speculated they’re working on a new EP – completing a trilogy of releases called Easy, Crazy and Hot.

The title was hinted at in lyrics to Good Bones, but Yunjin skilfully avoids revealing any secrets.

“Will it even be called Hot? We don’t know?” she laughs.

“It might be cold, it might be warm. But whatever we come out with, it’ll be fire.”

Based on the evidence so far, there’s no reason to doubt it… as long as Eunchae avoids staircases.

Beaches in the Australian city of Sydney have reopened for swimmers after being closed earlier this week when thousands of mysterious black tar-like balls washed ashore, prompting health concerns.

Officials say tests found the balls to be formed from chemicals similar to those in cosmetics and cleaning products but it is still unclear where they came from.

Eight beaches including Bondi – the city’s most famous – were closed and a massive clean-up ordered amid fears the black deposits were toxic.

New South Wales’s Environment Minister, Penny Sharpe, said investigations were continuing to establish the source of the pollution and who was responsible.

The state’s maritime authority said the balls were not highly toxic to humans but should not be touched or picked up.

“Based on advice from the Environment Protection Authority, we can now confirm the balls are made up of fatty acids, chemicals consistent with those found in cleaning and cosmetic products, mixed with some fuel oil,” said New South Wales Maritime Executive Director Mark Hutchings.

The New South Wales Environment Protection Authority (EPA) said laboratory testing was continuing, to try to determine where the balls came from, Reuters news agency reports.

“It is still somewhat of a mystery and may take a few more days to determine origin,” said EPA Executive Director Stephen Beaman.

The tar balls were “not harmful when on the ground but should not be touched or picked up”, Mr Hutchings was quoted as saying by Australian broadcaster ABC.

“If you see these balls, report them to a lifeguard. If you or your family accidentally touches one, wash your hands with soap and water or baby oil.”

Peering over her glasses, the French judge glanced sternly across the cavernous underground courtroom towards a notorious figure seated in a glass cage.

“There will be no more misbehaviour. No more threats. Is that understood?” asked Arabelle Bouts, the lead judge of a Europe-wide people smuggling trial so vast that it has generated 67 tonnes of paperwork.

“Yes,” replied Mirkhan Rasoul, 26, calmly.

Mr Rasoul, already convicted on prior smuggling charges and serving a separate eight-year sentence for attempted murder, had interrupted proceedings a few days earlier by threatening two of the translators working in the courtroom. Now he was flanked by two armed policemen.

Standing near the judge, the lead prosecutor, Julie Carros, leant in towards her microphone, glanced down at her notes, and began to set out her final arguments in a sprawling case that involves a total of 33 alleged members of a Kurdish smuggling gang, accused of responsibility for the bulk of migrants crossing the Channel in small boats between 2020 and 2022.

While Mr Rasoul remained behind a glass screen, approximately 10 other accused sat in the open courtroom surrounded by another 15 armed policemen, who only removed the men’s handcuffs when the court was in session.

“This is a tentacle-like case… involving merchants of death,” said Ms Carros, describing how the gang had overloaded the small boats, sometimes cramming up to 15 times more people on board than the boats are designed to carry.

The result, she said, was a “phenomenal” profit margin for the gangs, who could make up to €60,000 ($65,000; £50,000) for each boat launched, with roughly half of those boats reaching UK waters, leading to an income for the gang of €3.5m ($3.8m; £2.9m) a year.

The gang itself was accused of controlling the lion’s share of all Channel crossings from the French coast – with its network delivering equipment from across Europe – until, in late 2021 and 2022, its members were arrested in France, the UK, the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany, as part of the largest international operation of its kind at the time against small-boat smugglers.

In all, 17 men and one woman are now on trial, 12 were found guilty earlier, and three more will be tried next year.

As Ms Carros set out the prosecution’s case against each of the accused, there were gasps of disappointment from at least two relatives seated in the courtroom, at the long sentences being demanded. The trial is expected to end in early November.

“We request a sentence of 15 years, a €200,000 fine and a permanent ban from French territory,” said Ms Carros in reference to Mirkhan Rasoul, who is accused of continuing to control the gang from a prison in central France.

“We found three mobile telephones in his cell,” she said, going on to describe an audio recording on which Mr Rasoul had boasted of the prison in Tours being “almost like a hotel… they searched the cell but never found my phones. The police are very kind”.

But will this huge trial, and the prospect of tough sentences, act as a serious deterrent for a smuggling industry that has, in terms of the sheer number of successful small boat crossings, continued to thrive in the years since these arrests?

The prosecutors directly involved in this trial were not willing to talk to the BBC, but Pascal Marconville, lead prosecutor at the regional Court of Appeal for northern France, suggested that the long sentences were part of a broader strategy to raise the cost of smuggling for the gangs and their customers.

“The action taken by French police, with the support of investigative judges, is designed not only to thwart their actions, but also to make such operations so expensive that they lose their appeal,” Mr Marconville told us.

He described how the gangs had evolved in recent years from informal groups supporting their own countrymen to “networks organised much like drug gangs”.

He went on to sketch out a fragmented network with different “sectors” focusing on separate parts of the smuggling industry.

“It’s like chess, and they have [the advantage] on the board. So they’re always one step ahead of us. We have to adapt and understand how we can counter these networks. We’ve struggled with the ringleaders because when they’re arrested and imprisoned they still manage to run their networks from inside,” he said.

Despite the difficulties for law enforcement officials working across different countries and, for instance, different laws related to bail and standards of evidence, Mr Marconville praised the collaboration between French and British officials, saying the UK was “very willing to come up with solutions to improve co-operation”.

The Germans, on the other hand “who we always think of as very efficient people, don’t make things easier [for us]”, he noted.

But one of the defence lawyers involved in this case played down its broader impact on the small boat crisis.

“The sentences are becoming much harsher now. That’s clear. And I think they will continue to toughen them. Unfortunately… I am pessimistic because I don’t think it will stop… because in these [smuggling] circles people think only about money,” said Kamal Abbas.

Mr Abbas, who is defending a man accused of acting as decoy driver for smugglers’ convoys, explained how three of the accused in this trial, who were released on bail last year after two years in detention, were arrested soon afterwards in Belgium on fresh smuggling charges.

“Nothing discourages them… they see imprisonment as just another bump on the road,” he said.

After more than a decade involved in smuggling trials, Mr Abbas had another concern about their impact.

“[The real leaders] always escape. If their leader is Iraqi, he’s in Iraq. If he’s Iranian, he’ll be in Iran. But the link is often in England, I’m sure of that. The British authorities should look harder at certain areas of London if they want to stop this phenomenon,” said Mr Abbas.

Israeli strikes have killed at least 33 people including 21 women at a refugee camp in northern Gaza, the strip’s Hamas-run authorities say.

More than 85 people were said to be injured, some seriously, as homes belonging to three families in the camp were hit.

A video circulating on social media – which the BBC has not verified – appears to show bodies wrapped in white shrouds laid out in the courtyard of al-Awda Hospital.

Israeli forces have besieged the densely-populated Jabalia refugee camp for weeks.

The director of al-Awda hospital said it had experienced an overwhelming influx of casualties, leaving hospital wards “completely full” with many of the injured “receiving treatment on the floor.”

Nearby in Beit Lahia, the Indonesian Hospital came under “heavy gunfire” from Israeli forces on Saturday, the Hamas-run health ministry said.

The ministry said more than 40 patients, as well as medical staff, were inside the hospital, and later said two people had died due to an “outage of electricity” and lack of “medical supplies”.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said its troops were operating near the hospital and there “was no intentional fire directed at it”.

Local sources indicate that northern Gaza is effectively isolated, with telecommunications and internet services severed in the region.

About 400,000 people have been trapped inside Jabalia camp with little food or water for more than two weeks.

The head of the UN’s Office for Humanitarian Assistance, Georgios Petropoulos, told the BBC’s Newshour programme that families in Jabalia were enduring “atrocious conditions”.

“We can’t hit the alarm bell hard enough about how dire and dangerous the situation for civilians there is,” he said, speaking from Rafah in southern Gaza.

Israel said it had sent about 30 lorries of supplies into northern Gaza on Friday including food, water, medical supplies and shelter equipment but local health officials told Reuters aid had not been reaching the worst-affected areas such as Jabalia.

Israel has repeatedly denied it is preventing humanitarian aid from entering Gaza but the US has told it to boost access or risk having some American military assistance cut off.

An Israeli minister, Amichai Chikli, told the BBC Israel had “blockaded” parts of northern Gaza, which include Jabalia.

“We allowed the civilian population to escape into the safe zone, and we prevented supplies to enter the blockade region,” he told the Newshour programme.

He insisted this was “legal according to the international law”.

Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar was confirmed to have been killed in Gaza on Thursday.

According to the Israeli military, he died in a firefight after the building where he was hiding in the southern Gaza city of Rafah was struck with “tank fire”.

The pathologist in Israel who conducted his autopsy told US media he had been shot in the head.

Dr Chen Kugel also found injuries to his right forearm from “missile fire”, a damaged left leg from “fallen masonry” and shrapnel injuries.

His death raised some hopes in some quarters for an end to the war, but the group’s deputy leader said Hamas would only be strengthened.

US President Joe Biden has said there is a chance of “working towards a ceasefire” in Lebanon, where Israel is fighting Hezbollah militants, but it will be “harder in Gaza”.

He was speaking as he left the German capital Berlin, where he had met German, French and British leaders.

Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said on Saturday the death of Hamas leader Sinwar will not halt the “Axis of Resistance” – the regional network of Iran-backed, heavily armed militias that oppose Israel.

“Hamas is alive and will remain alive,” Khamenei’s statement added.

On Friday, Hamas deputy leader Khalil al-Hayya said Israeli hostages would not be returned until Israel ended the war and withdrew from Gaza.

The war in Gaza began after Hamas’s attack on Israel on 7 October 2023 left around 1,200 people dead, with 251 taken to Gaza as hostages.

Israel vowed to destroy Hamas in response, and since then at least 42,500 people have been killed and tens of thousands injured in Gaza, the Hamas-run authorities say.

• Who was Yahya Sinwar?
• Jeremy Bowen analysis: Sinwar’s death is serious blow to Hamas, but not the end of the war
• Explainer: What has happened to Hamas’ most prominent leaders?
• How much food is Israel letting into northern Gaza?

On Friday, fighting also continued in Lebanon, where Israel has been conducting a ground invasion against Hezbollah.

The Israeli military said it had killed about 60 Hezbollah fighters and destroyed the Iran-backed group’s regional command centre with an air strike.

Hezbollah said it had fired rockets at the Israeli city of Haifa and areas to its north.

Many Israelis cheered and danced on the streets at the news that Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar – chief architect of the 7 October 2023 attack on Israel – had been killed.

But his death at the hands of Israeli forces in Gaza on Wednesday has raised anxieties for families of the 101 hostages still held by Hamas.

Meanwhile, few Palestinians believed Sinwar’s killing would bring an end to the devastating year-old war in Gaza.

Israel’s military offensive in Gaza has killed at least 42,500 Palestinians, the Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza says. It followed Hamas’s attack on Israeli communities on 7 October last year, which killed about 1,200 people and saw the group take 251 hostages.

• Follow live updates on this story
• Who was Yahya Sinwar?
• Jeremy Bowen analysis: Sinwar’s death is serious blow to Hamas, but not the end of the war
• Watch: BBC Verify analyses footage of Sinwar’s killing

People in Israel were overwhelmingly supportive of Sinwar’s killing in a chance encounter with Israeli troops.

In Tiberias in northern Israel, several hundred people danced, waved flags and played loud music at the news.

“It’s very good“, Nissim Weizmann told the BBC as he sat outside a grocery shop in the town.

“He’s a bad man and his time has come. This is a present for everyone. Both Palestinians who are with us and the Jews.”

At a beach just south of Tel Aviv, bathers cheered and applauded when a lifeguard first announced rumours of the death over a loudspeaker.

But others were more circumspect, wondering how Sinwar’s killing would affect prospects for the release of Israeli hostages who continue to be held by Hamas in Gaza.

“To be honest, I feel a bit numb,” Anat Ron Kandle in Tel Aviv told the Reuters news agency.

“I have a deep concern for the hostages, and it’s very difficult to find faith and hope.

“And I always think about, what if that could have been me, [it] could have been my son that was with me?”

Family members of the remaining 101 hostages still in Gaza gathered in Tel Aviv after the news broke.

They have been demonstrating for months, urging the Israeli government to reach a ceasefire deal with Hamas to get their relatives home.

Einav Zangauker, whose son Matan was taken hostage, urged Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu: “Don’t bury the hostages.”

“Go out now to the mediators and to the public and lay out a new Israeli initiative,” she said to Reuters.

“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.”

In Gaza, some Palestinians said they believed Sinwar’s death could open a path towards ending the war, saying it left Israel with “no reason to continue this genocide”.

“They always said they wanted to eliminate Sinwar to stop this war,” Ali Chameli told Reuters.

But the reality on the ground since his killing was “quite the opposite”, said Jemaa Abou Mendi.

Speaking to the AFP news agency, he said: “the war has not stopped, and the killings continue unabated.”

Speaking in the city of Khan Younis, which has been largely left in ruins by a year of bombardment and fighting, Dr Ramadan Faris said the outcome of the war did not depend on any single person’s fate.

“It’s a war of extermination against the Palestinian people, as we all know and understand,” he said.

Also in Khan Younis was Lina Anuni, who fled Gaza City with her three children a year ago.

“I opposed [Sinwar] while he was alive and hold him equally responsible, alongside the Israeli occupation, for my suffering and that of 2.3 million Palestinians,” she told the BBC.

“Yet, I felt a sense of sadness at his passing,” she added.

One man, who chose not to be identified, told the BBC World Service’s Gaza Today programme that though there were “differing opinions” about the former Hamas leader, his death would not change things for people in Gaza.

“I don’t believe this will change the dynamics of the conflict,” he said, citing how the deaths of other senior Hezbollah and Hamas figures – like Hassan Nasrallah last month – had resulted in “nothing fundamentally” shifting.

“Instead, tensions escalated further, raising concerns for us as Palestinians,” he said.

Some Palestinians described Sinwar as a martyr.

Yousef Jamal, who said he supported the 7 October attack on Israel, said: “He [Sinwar] did not hide among the displaced, seek refuge with enemy prisoners, or retreat into tunnels.”

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

But reports indicate he met his end in an encounter with an Israeli patrol in southern Gaza. No hostages were found with him.

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.

• Follow live updates on this story
• Who was Yahya Sinwar?
• Jeremy Bowen analysis: Sinwar’s death is serious blow to Hamas, but not the end of the war
• Watch: Netanyahu says focus on hostages after Sinwar death
• Explainer: What has happened to Hamas’ most prominent leaders?

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

Three fighters 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 at the site 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”. After being located by a drone, he was killed when a tank launched a shell at the building.

Sinwar’s body was found with a flak jacket, a gun and 40,000 shekels (£8,240).

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.

Hagari also said the IDF had gained an indication of Sinwar’s previous movements when they found his DNA in a tunnel close to where the bodies of six hostages were recovered around six weeks ago.

Israel is now searching for Sinwar’s brother, Muhammad Sinwar, and all Hamas military commanders, Hagari said.

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.

On Friday, a member of Hamas’s political bureau, Basem Naim, said in a statement that it seems “Israel believes that killing our leaders means the end of our movement and the struggle of the Palestinian people”, but said Hamas as a movement could not be eliminated.

Naim did not directly name Sinwar or confirm his death, but said “it is very painful and distressing to lose beloved people”.

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.

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 South Asia’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 unravel the ideas, actions, and lives 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 and marginality,” 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 20 years.

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 Nowrosjee Wadia College, and masters at 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 caste through the vantage point of Dalit women, 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 in English on South Asia”. The book also won the Association of Asian Studies Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy book prize.

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 negatively affects people from “low 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 racism, gender discrimination, and caste discrimination “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.

“I never imagined I’d be a victim of a scam,” says Dr Ravi Kumar.

“But here I am, a 53-year-old NHS consultant in intensive care medicine and anaesthetics, deeply affected.”

He lost £39,000 in May when scammers tricked him into transferring money into his Revolut account and giving them access to it.

He’d been saving the money for his teenagers.

“I was very depressed,” he adds. “My children are too young to share this grief with.”

Dr Kumar is one of more than 100 people who have told the BBC they feel poorly treated by Revolut after being scammed, following a Panorama investigation into the e-money firm.

For him the deception started when he received a phone call from someone claiming to be from American Express, his credit card company. They told him that fraudulent activity had been detected on his account.

They said they would report this to the industry regulator and that he should expect another phone call from Barclays, his high street bank, as money in that account might also be at risk.

A few hours later he received a call from someone who said they were from Barclays.

They told him to transfer his savings to his Revolut account for safekeeping while they carried out repairs.

He didn’t. At this point, Dr Kumar was becoming suspicious.

He wanted the person on the end of the line to prove who they were.

He was given a number to call – and when he did, he heard a familiar Barclays welcome message, which reassured him.

But it was still the scammer on the phone.

They told him again to transfer his money to Revolut as a security measure – and this time, Dr Kumar agreed.

After the transfer the scammer asked him to delete the app for extra safety.

Little did he know that this would allow them to spend thousands of pounds from his account – without him getting any notifications.

The next morning Dr Kumar reinstalled the Revolut app on his phone and found his account drained of £39,000.

The 25 transactions that had been made included purchases of luxury fashion and technology items from companies such as Selfridges, Apple and Currys.

He contacted Revolut to complain but they told him in a letter, seen by the BBC, that he would not be refunded as he had ultimately authorised the scammers to use his card.

Dr Kumar has hired lawyers to submit his claim to the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS), which settles complaints between consumers and finance companies.

“I don’t know how long I’ll be able to pay for the legal help,” he says. “We cancelled two holidays, I’ve been working almost every Saturday since.”

He adds: “What’s even more disheartening than the financial loss is the indifference and lack of accountability displayed by Revolut.”

The e-money firm, founded in 2015 by two former bankers, has nine million customers in the UK and announced record annual profits last year of £438m.

Revolut was also named in more reports of fraud than any other major UK bank, according to figures collected last year by Action Fraud – the UK’s national reporting centre for fraud and cyber-crime.

In Dr Kumar’s case, the Revolut feature which enabled the scammers to spend his money was the ability to add his debit card to their digital wallet.

This allowed them to make purchases online without the need to check for details on his physical card.

This convenience, which is also offered by some other banks, is among a wide range of features which give Revolut a broad appeal.

Others include the option to hold money in different currencies, transfer it abroad, buy individual stocks, invest in commodities and access cryptocurrencies.

These features have helped Revolut – which describes itself as an “all-in-one finance app for your money” – become popular but it’s also what cyber security experts warn could be a weakness.

“It’s like putting all your eggs in one basket,” says Prof Mark Button, who researches cybercrime.

“If you have a product which can link to all the different aspects of your financial life, and you get compromised by a fraud or scam, then that is highly dangerous.”

While Revolut offers many features – one thing it doesn’t have is an emergency phone number you can call to freeze your account. You have to ask them using their app’s chat function.

A dedicated phone number might have helped Lynne Elms stop scammers taking £160,000 in seven minutes from her employer.

She was working at her best friend’s cosmetics company in November 2022 when a scammer, who said they were from Revolut, told her the business’s account was under attack from fraudsters.

They said it was an emergency and she needed to move the money out of the account as soon as possible or risk losing it.

They convinced the 52-year-old to install a remote desktop application which they said would allow them to protect the account. It actually let them take control of her computer.

Over a period of seven minutes, the scammers pressured Lynne into authorising four transfers worth £160,000.

The accounts she was asked to transfer the money to had names including ‘refund’, ‘invoice’ and ‘cancel’.

It meant she saw these words in the notifications sent to her phone asking her to approve the transfers.

“Revolut were absolutely useless. It took me about three or four hours to get in touch with somebody,” says Lynne.

“Eventually Revolut froze the account. They told me there was nothing they could do. It felt like a one-liner to say sorry.”

Her employer has spent £70,000 on legal fees trying to get the money back.

An FOS investigator has recommended at least £115,000 should be refunded to them by Revolut, who are contesting the sum. A final decision by the Ombudsman is expected soon.

Revolut told us they were unable to comment on cases that were still ongoing with the FOS but said they were “sorry to hear about any instance where our customers are targeted by ruthless and highly sophisticated criminals”.

Addressing the fact that more than 100 people have contacted the BBC to complain about the firm, Revolut said such issues should be raised via their app.

They add that last year the number of fraudulent transactions using their service had been reduced by 20% and they had prevented £475m worth of potential fraud losses.

For victims who have lost money through scams on Revolut, the impact goes beyond financial stress.

“It felt like I was losing my business and my best friend,” says Lynne. “It was the worst time of my life. I never thought I’d get over it. I don’t think I have.”

Britain’s Newest Bank: How Safe Is Your Money?

Angelina Jolie walked the red carpet in London on Friday as her film about opera singer Maria Callas received its UK premiere.

Maria is the third in a trilogy of films about high-profile, complex women from director Pablo Larraín, following his movies about Jacqueline Kennedy and Princess Diana.

Written by Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight, the film focuses on Callas’s final years, in the 1970s, when she was living in Paris.

With Jolie taking on acting roles relatively rarely in recent years, the film has provided something of a comeback narrative for her and could lead to an Oscar nomination for best actress.

Callas was a US-born Greek soprano, and one of opera’s most well-known singers. She died in 1977 aged 53.

In Maria, a blend of Jolie’s own voice and original recordings by Callas are used in the singing scenes.

Speaking to the Hollywood Reporter about Callas in August, Jolie said: “I’m sure there’s a lot that will be read into it of our overlaps as women, but the one that’s maybe not the most obvious is I’m not sure how comfortable we both are with being public.

“And there was a pressure behind the working that wasn’t just the joy of the work.”

Asked why she had been taking on fewer film roles in recent years, Jolie explained: “I needed to be home more with my kids.”

But, she continued, she felt ready to return because her children are now “a bit older, getting more independent… I’m less needed and so able to go away for different periods of time”.

The film has received mixed reviews, although critics have generally praised its central performance.

“Jolie is absolutely spellbinding as Maria Callas, imbuing her with grace and resolve,” said Sophia Ciminello of AwardsWatch. “She doesn’t disappear into the role, she transcends.”

Thanks to a “virtuoso lead performance from Jolie and exceptional technical elements across the board”, Next Best Picture’s Ema Sasic wrote, “Maria is a triumphant high note for Larraín to close his trilogy on”.

“It is Jolie’s ability to depict a woman owning everything she is that makes her performance truly sing,” said Entertainment Weekly’s Maureen Lee Lenker.

“It’s a remarkable portrait of a woman reckoning with herself, even as her body fails her.”

Time’s Stephanie Zacharek was less keen on her performance, however, saying Jolie “plays her subject as haughtily cool and deeply insecure, but captures none of her imperious charisma”.

“Larraín does his movie no favours by using footage of the real Maria Callas in the closing credits sequence… [giving audiences] a jolt of all the vitality Jolie and Larraín have failed to capture.”

Vanity Fair’s Richard Lawson was also a little cooler on the movie, writing: “There is something arbitrary, unspecific about the film.

“With a few details removed, Maria could be about any grand diva, this blurry picture of a woman swanning through the final week of her life.”

Jolie’s previous film credits include Changeling, Maleficent, Salt, Mr & Mrs Smith, The Bone Collector and Lara Croft: Tomb Raider.

Maria will be released in cinemas in the UK on 10 January.

A selection of striking news photographs taken around the world this week.

We are now in the era of weight-loss drugs.

Decisions on how these drugs will be used look likely to shape our future health and even what our society might look like.

And, as researchers are finding, they are already toppling the belief that obesity is simply a moral failing of the weak-willed.

Weight-loss drugs are already at the heart of the national debate. This week, the new Labour government suggested they could be a tool to help obese people in England off benefits and back into work.

That announcement – and the reaction to it – has held a mirror up to our own personal opinions around obesity and what should be done to tackle it.

Here are some questions I’d like you to ponder.

Is obesity something that people bring on themselves and they just need to make better life choices? Or is it a societal failing with millions of victims that needs stronger laws to control the types of food we eat?

Are effective weight-loss drugs the sensible choice in an obesity crisis? Are they being used as a convenient excuse to duck the big issue of why so many people are overweight in the first place?

• How do drugs like Wegovy and Mounjaro work?
• NHS needs better plan around weight loss jabs, warn experts
• Why weight-loss drugs may be no obesity silver bullet

Personal choice v nanny state; realism v idealism – there are few medical conditions that stir up such heated debate.

I can’t resolve all those questions for you – it all depends on your personal views about obesity and the type of country you want to live in. But as you think them over, there are some further things to consider.

Obesity is very visible, unlike conditions such as high blood pressure, and has long come with a stigma of blame and shame. Gluttony is one of Christianity’s seven deadly sins.

Now, let’s look at Semaglutide, which is sold under the brand name Wegovy for weight loss. It mimics a hormone that is released when we eat and tricks the brain into thinking we are full, dialling down our appetite so that we eat less.

What this means is that by changing only one hormone, “suddenly you change your entire relationship with food”, says Prof Giles Yeo, an obesity scientist at the University of Cambridge.

And that has all sorts of implications for the way we think about obesity.

It also means for a lot of overweight people there is a “hormonal deficiency, or at least it doesn’t go up as high”, argues Prof Yeo, which leaves them biologically more hungry and primed to put on weight than someone who is naturally thin.

That was likely an advantage 100 or more years ago when food was less plentiful – driving people to consume calories when they are available, because tomorrow there may be none.

Our genes have not profoundly changed in a century, but the world we live in has made it easier to pile on the pounds with the rise of cheap and calorie-dense foods, ballooning portion sizes and towns and cities that make it easier to drive than walk or cycle.

These changes took off in the second half of the 20th Century, giving rise to what scientists call the “obesogenic environment” – that is, one that encourages people to eat unhealthily and not do enough exercise.

Now one in four adults in the UK is obese.

Wegovy can help people lose around 15% of their starting body weight before the benefits plateau.

Despite constantly being labelled a “skinny drug” this could take someone weighing 20 stone down to 17 stone. Medically, that would improve health in areas like heart attack risk, sleep apnoea and type 2 diabetes.

But Dr Margaret McCartney, a GP in Glasgow, cautions: “If we keep putting people into an obesogenic environment, we’re just going to increase need for these drugs forever.”

At the moment the NHS is planning to prescribe the drugs only for two years because of the cost. Evidence shows that when the injections stop, the appetite comes back and the weight goes back on.

“My big concern is the eye is taken off the ball with stopping people getting overweight in the first place,” says Dr McCartney.

We know the obesogenic environment starts early. One in five children is already overweight or obese by the time they start school.

And we know that it hits poorer communities (in which 36% of adults in England are obese) harder than wealthier ones (where the figure is 20%), in part due to the lack of availability of cheap, healthy food in those less affluent districts.

But there is often a tension between improving public health and civil liberties. You can drive, but you have to wear a seatbelt; you can smoke, but with very high taxes alongside restrictions on age and where you can do it.

So here are some further things for you to consider. Do you think we should also tackle the obesogenic environment or just treat people when it’s starting to damage their health? Should government be far tougher on the food industry, transforming what we can buy and eat?

Should we be encouraged to go Japanese (a rich country with low obesity) and have smaller meals based around rice, vegetables and fish? Or should we cap the calories in ready meals and chocolate bars?

What about sugar or junk-food taxes? What about wider bans on where calorie-dense foods can be sold or advertised?

Prof Yeo says if we want change then “we’re going to have to compromise somewhere, we’re going to have to lose some liberties” but “I don’t think we’ve come to a decision within society, I don’t think we’ve debated it”.

In England, there have been official obesity strategies – 14 of them across three decades and with very little to show for it.

They included five-a-day campaigns to promote eating fruit and veg, food labelling to highlight calorie content, restrictions on advertising unhealthy food to children and voluntary agreements with manufacturers to reformulate foods.

But although there are tentative signs that child obesity in England may be starting to fall, none of these measures have sufficiently altered the national diet to turn the tide on obesity overall.

There is one school of thought that weight-loss drugs may even be the event that triggers the change in our meals.

“Food companies profit, that’s what they want – the only ray of hope I have is if weight-loss drugs help a lot of people resist buying fast foods, can that start the partial reversal of the food environment?” asks Prof Naveed Sattar from the University of Glasgow.

As weight-loss drugs become far more available, deciding how they will be used and how that fits into our wider approach to obesity will need to be addressed soon.

At the moment we are only dipping our toes in the water. There is limited supply of these drugs and because of their huge expense, they are available on the NHS to relatively few people and for a short time.

That is expected to change dramatically over the next decade. New drugs, such as tirzepatide, are on the way and the pharmaceutical companies will lose their legal protections – patents – meaning other companies can make their own, cheaper versions.

In the early days of blood-pressure-lowering medicines or statins to reduce cholesterol, they were expensive and given to the few who would benefit the most. Now around eight million people in the UK are taking each of those drugs.

Prof Stephen O’Rahilly, director of the MRC Metabolic Diseases Unit, says blood pressure was tacked with using a combination of drugs and societal change: “We screened for blood pressure, we advised about lower sodium [salt] in foods and we developed cheap, safe and effective blood pressure drugs.”

That’s analogous, he says, to what needs to happen with obesity.

It is still not clear how many of us will end up on weight-loss medication. Will it only be for those who are very obese and at medical risk? Or will it become preventative to stop people becoming obese?

How long should people take weight-loss drugs for? Should it be for life? How widely should they be used in children? Does it matter if people using the drugs are still eating unhealthy junk food, just less of it?

How quickly should weight-loss medications be adopted when we still do not know the side-effects of long term use? Are we OK with healthy people taking them entirely for cosmetic reasons? Could their availability privately widen the obesity and health gap between rich and poor?

So many questions – but, as yet, few clear answers.

“I don’t know where this is going to land – we’re on a voyage of uncertainty,” says Prof Naveed Sattar.

Rumours of ill-health have engulfed two African presidents in recent weeks, sparking contrasting responses and exposing how the wellbeing of leaders is often treated as a state secret.

It started with Cameroon’s President Paul Biya, 91, whose ministers denied that he was sick, insisting he was in “excellent health”. However, the media in Cameroon was then banned from reporting on his condition.

Then, Malawi’s state house rebuffed gossip that President Lazarus Chakwera was unwell by posting videos of the leader jogging and doing press-ups in the capital, Lilongwe.

“You have to reflect a certain kind of man to dominate in politics – you can’t show weakness or vulnerability,” says Oxford University associate professor in African politics, Miles Tendi, of the pomp and secrecy that surrounds African leaders and their health.

Chakwera and Biya used very different approaches to tackle the rumours about illnesses, but they had a similar intent – to project, and protect, an image of strength and virility.

But perhaps most importantly, to keep rivals and opportunists at bay.

Prof Tendi says that the game of politics is a “performance of masculinity” that needs to be done to maintain power.

He adds that the masculine nature of politics makes it extremely difficult for women to succeed. There is currently only one female head of state in Africa, Samia Suluhu Hassan in Tanzania, and she inherited power as the deputy leader when her male boss died.

Political leaders, in Africa and beyond, are expected to be symbols of strength and resilience.

So, especially when the leader is ageing, their health becomes a highly sensitive matter of huge national importance, as we have seen in the US elections this year.

University of Johannesburg professor Adekeye Adebajo said leaders on the continent “give the impression that the health of their countries is tied to their own personal health”, and what is ailing a leader is often treated as a state secret.

If something happens to them, it can affect the economy, the markets and alter the political landscape, a security expert from Zimbabwe told the BBC, and this is why extra precautions are taken.

In countries where the political institutions are weak, procedures for political succession are often not well established, leading to fears that any leadership vacuum could lead to a power-struggle.

Over two decades ago, the Democratic Republic of Congo President Laurent-Désiré Kabila was assassinated by one of his bodyguards.

The authorities refused to admit that he had been killed, maintaining the pretence that he had been sent to Zimbabwe for medical treatment, while they worked out what to do next.

In fact, it was his dead body that was flown across the continent in an elaborate charade.

His inexperienced son, Joseph, was eventually chosen as the country’s next leader.

In Malawi, the government delayed the announcement of President Bingu wa Mutharika’s death in 2012, sparking speculation that there was an effort to prevent the succession of his Vice-President Joyce Banda.

But in neighbouring Zambia, where two presidents have died in office, and in Ghana, where then President John Atta Mills died in 2012, the constitutional processes worked smoothly.

Over the years, various African leaders have met questions about their ailing health with either silence or anger.

In 2010, Zimbabwe’s former leader Robert Mugabe slammed years of speculation as “naked lies crafted by the Western-manipulated media”.

Three years ago, the announcement that Tanzania’s President John Magufuli had died came after weeks of denial that he was sick. People were even arrested for spreading false information about his health, only for them to be ultimately proven right.

One of the most extreme cases of a government concealing the health of its leader was in Nigeria, where President Umaru Yar’Adua wasn’t seen in public for five months.

His office said he was receiving treatment in January 2010 and that he was “getting better” however, there were numerous reports saying he was “brain-dead”.

Yar’Adua never appeared in public again, and his death was announced in May of that year.

“Some of these guys just want to hang onto power,” said Prof Tendi, even until the bitter end.

• The 91-year-old African president who keeps defying death rumours
• Why do so many African leaders die in office?

Many leaders, beyond Africa as well, do not think their citizens have a right to know about their health, which is treated as highly confidential.

But there have been exceptions.

After seven weeks of official medical leave in 2017, Nigeria’s President Buhari revealed to his nation that he had never been “so sick” in his life, although he did not say what was wrong.

Cameroon’s former President Ahmadou Ahidjo is believed to be the only African leader to resign due to ill health, in 1982, after ruling for 22 years.

This kind of transparency and relinquishing of power is rare. More than 20 African leaders have died in office, some without telling their country they were even unwell.

The example has not been adopted by Ahidjo’s successor, Paul Biya.

Leaders may fear that revealing health issues could embolden their rivals or even foreign powers seeking to influence or destabilise the country.

Some presidents have been toppled after news of their ill health was publicised.

In 1996, it was public knowledge that the kleptocratic leader of Zaire (now DR Congo) Mobutu Sese Seko, had been receiving treatment for prostate cancer.

This no doubt made it much easier for Laurent Kabila to lead a band of Rwanda-backed rebels across the vast country.

Mobutu was too sick to coordinate any resistance, and he fled to exile in Morocco, leaving Kabila to seize power.

“If you’re seen as weak, it’s a signal to your internal rivals,” said Prof Tendi.

But Nigerian farmer and teacher, Abeku Adams, 41, who has experienced two presidents dying in office, said the secrecy could also be a “cultural thing”.

“Being secretive about one’s health is something considered a part of the healing process in many African cultures. This could be the possible root of why they hide or lie about their health,” he said.

While private citizens have a right to keep their medical records confidential, it is argued that political leaders do not have this luxury because their health can have an impact on the whole country.

As more African countries establish stronger succession procedures, there are calls for greater transparency when it comes to the health of their leaders, especially from the continent’s increasingly youthful population.

“Governments owe it to their citizens to share such information,” said Mr Adams.

He insists that because citizens pay taxes, they should be privy to the health of their leaders.

It may be that Malawi’s intensely competitive political system, with elections due next year, is what pushed Chakwera into doing his public exercises – to show he is fitter than his main rival, Peter Mutharika, 15 years his senior.

In contrast, Biya faces little threat from elections – he has already won five, despite opposition complaints of rigging.

In a true democracy, the health of a leader should be transparent, one political analyst told the BBC.

But the nature of politics in much of Africa, where ruling parties are often accused of rigging elections, military coups are always a threat and even elected presidencies can become hereditary, transparency is not a practice that many leaders seem ready to adopt any time soon.

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• From Dos Santos to Mugabe – the burial disputes over ex-leaders
• Are Africa’s leaders too old to govern the young?

Donald Trump has called a judge “the most evil person” as she released more than 1,800 pages of evidence in Special Counsel Jack Smith’s election conspiracy case against him.

The Republican White House candidate said US District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan’s rejection of his request to delay releasing the new evidence until after next month’s vote amounted to “election interference”.

Legal analysts have debated whether filings in the case breach a justice department internal rule that prosecutors avoid any investigative step that might affect an election within 60 days of voting.

But in her ruling, Judge Chutkan argued that if she had kept the files under wraps, that could itself have been construed as election interference.

“If the court withheld information that the public otherwise had a right to access solely because of the potential political consequences of releasing it, that withholding could itself constitute – or appear to be – election interference,” she wrote.

Last year, a Texas woman was charged with making death threats against Judge Chutkan, citing the Trump case.

The heavily redacted 1,889 pages of documents released on Friday mostly rehash information already available publicly, including parts of former Vice-President Mike Pence’s biography and his formal announcement that he would not overturn the 2020 election results.

The new evidence is a part of a motion filed by Mr Smith last month.

Appearing on Friday during a podcast with right-wing media personality Dan Bongino, Trump lambasted Judge Chutkan and called the special counsel “a sick puppy”.

The indictment centres on the 6 January 2021 US Capitol riot and accuses Trump of illegally conspiring to overturn his election defeat three months earlier to Joe Biden.

During the interview, Trump also likened the detention of those charged with storming the Capitol to the US internment of Japanese Americans in World War Two.

“Why are they still being held? Nobody’s ever been treated like this,” he said. “Maybe the Japanese during Second World War, frankly.”

Earlier this year, the Supreme Court ruled that Trump cannot be prosecuted for official acts carried out as president.

As a result, Mr Smith was forced to change the historic case brought against Trump and argue that he committed crimes while still in office, but as a private citizen.

He filed a new motion in September laying out the new case against the former president, which included allegations that Trump promoted false claims of election fraud despite believing them to be “crazy”.

The motion also included new details on how Trump’s relationship with Pence deteriorated, with the former vice-president telling Trump to stop repeating false election fraud theories and move on.

The documents released on Friday include transcripts of interviews with the 6 January House committee that investigated the US Capitol riot, parts of Pence’s autobiography and fundraising emails sent to voters.

It is unclear if the 6 January case will ever go to trial. Trump is expected to end the prosecution if he returns to the White House.

He is facing several other criminal cases. He already has been convicted on 34 felony counts in New York in relation to a hush-money payment.

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• POLLS: Who is winning the race for the White House?

Hong Eunchae, the youngest member of K-Pop band Le Sserafim, is strutting through Seoul’s infamous Nakwon Instrument Arcade when she suddenly loses her footing.

With a crash, her drink flies into the air and the 17-year-old falls head-first down a metal staircase, landing with a sickening thud on a subway floor.

There’s a pause. Then she sits up with a shrug, completely unharmed, as though this is how she typically navigates the stairs.

Instantly meme-able, the scene features in the trailer for Le Sserafim’s third EP, Easy, which was released earlier this year. But Eunchae says it also carries a deeper meaning.

“When I’m following the path I want to follow, tumbling and falling down doesn’t matter,” she tells the BBC.

“I always start over like nothing has happened. That’s the message I wanted to deliver.”

Such defiance and persistence have helped Le Sserafim carve out a niche since they were thrust into the spotlight two years ago.

With the eccentric energy of Girls Aloud and the impeccable hooks of the Korean pop machine, they’ve released grungy, club-ready songs like Crazy and Antifragile, been nominated for multiple MTV Awards, and collaborated with Nile Rodgers and PinkPantheress.

To a casual observer, the quintet might seem like the prototype girl band: Coiffed, choreographed and bristling with confidence.

But they’re unusually forthright about the unrealistic standards the industry places on women.

On Eve, Psyche and Bluebeard’s Wife (a song named after three women who defied societal expectations), singer Kim Chaewon discusses the pressure to perform, even when you’re not at your best.

.”

On Good Bones, Huh Yunjin snaps back at her critics.

she protests over a spiky rock riff.

“As a group, we’re always trying to show that duality of being strong but also being vulnerable,” Yunjin explains.

“But no matter what happens, we’ve got each other and that gives us resilience.”

Le Sserafim have an unusual origin story, with members drawn from all over the world at different ages and stages of readiness by their label Source Music.

Sakura is a showbusiness veteran, with experience in three other bands – KT48, AKB48 and Iz*One.

Aged 26, she’s the oldest member of Le Sserafim, and Yunjin calls her “a pillar” of strength who “always has good advice” about the industry.

Chaewon was also part of Iz*One, and acts as Le Sserafim’s leader, a role she characterises as being “a rock” who “makes everything smooth” when problems arise.

Yunjin was raised in New York and studied opera before entering the rigorous world of K-pop training. By contrast, Eunchae only had 15 months of preparation before making her official debut in 2022. Aged 17, she is nicknamed Manchae – a portmanteau of her name and (막내), the Korean word for “youngest member”.

Last to join was former ballerina Kazuha, who was swept out of the Dutch National Ballet Academy five months before Le Sserafim’s first single. To this day, she feels like she’s playing catch-up with the rest of the team.

“It’s been two years but every day is a new challenge still,” she says.

There was originally a sixth member. Kim Garam appeared on the band’s debut EP, Fearless, but resigned shortly afterwards following accusations she had bullied students in high school.

That’s not the only bump in the road Le Sserafim have faced.

Earlier this year, the band apologised for perceived vocal weaknesses during their performance at Coachella in California. Responding to negative press, Chaewon said the group had simply “become excited and lost control of our pace” while playing their first outdoor festival.

A recent behind-the-scenes documentary, Make It Look Easy, exposed more about the pressures the band faced promoting their first album, Unforgiven, last year.

In one scene, Chaewon breaks down in tears and confesses: “I don’t really know how to be happy.”

“To be honest, I sometimes think about quitting,” she tells an off-camera interviewer.

Kazuha also confronts insecurities over her abilities as a performer.

“Sometimes I get super-confident and I’m like, ‘I should work harder. I can do this’,” she says. “But then I lose confidence and I’m like, ‘I can’t do anything. I have no charm’.”

Yunjin is more fiery. Perhaps her American upbringing gives her a different perspective on K-Pop’s “idol” industry, but she’s expressed a desire to change it from within.

“Idols need to do this, do that. There are all these unspoken rules,” she says in the documentary.

“I could feel it when I was a trainee, but back then I desperately wanted to [make my] debut, so I just conformed. But after debuting I was like, ‘Why does it have to be like this?'”

She pours those frustrations into a solo song called I ≠ DOLL, which explicitly criticises the way pop stars are treated as products.

,” she sings. “ [expletive] .”

In the past, the 23-year-old has declared she wants to “change the idol industry”, breaking down its “strict standards one by one”.

By being transparent about their struggles, Le Sserafim deliberately challenge a status quo that demands perfection – and their candour comes at a time when K-pop artists are increasingly willing to confront the system.

Earlier this week, a singer with girl group NewJeans testified to South Korea’s National Assembly about the bullying she has faced at work. Last year, the 11 members of Omega X won emancipation from their contract following allegations of “unwarranted treatment” by their label.

Le Sserafim – who have a supportive relationship with Source Music – put a more positive spin on their story.

“The message we wanted to deliver through the documentary was not that our job is hard and strenuous,” Chaewon says.

“Rather, we wanted to emphasise the fact that we have a lot in common with anyone who holds down a job.”

“We want to say that you don’t have to be perfect all the time,” adds Yunjin.

“Everyone faces difficulties,” Chaewon concludes. “So our message is, let’s overcome all those difficulties together.”

In a superficial industry, they make a virtue of their imperfections, projecting them as a strength.

Even the band’s name is an anagram of the phrase “I’m fearless”.

Their camaraderie is expressed in songs like Chasing Lightning – where Yunjin is teased for her obsession with Greek yoghurt, and Sakura describes her love of crochet – and their latest single, 1-800 Hot N Fun.

Powered by a sinuous bass guitar riff, it follows the band on a night out, kissing random strangers, demanding the DJ plays Beyoncé, and clinging to the dance floor until the break of dawn.

“I love that song,” says Yunjin. “It’s almost like a dialogue, we’re just all having a conversation.”

In the hook, the bandmates keep asking, “” – their nickname for Sakura – before someone responds, “.”

Does that mean Sakura’s always the first to be ready?

“Wow! Wow!” exclaims Yunjin. “That’s actually true! That’s the first time we’ve thought about it that way. That’s genius.”

There won’t be much time for partying this year, though. Le Sserafim have been speaking to the BBC in the middle of a long day of TV rehearsals, and fans have speculated they’re working on a new EP – completing a trilogy of releases called Easy, Crazy and Hot.

The title was hinted at in lyrics to Good Bones, but Yunjin skilfully avoids revealing any secrets.

“Will it even be called Hot? We don’t know?” she laughs.

“It might be cold, it might be warm. But whatever we come out with, it’ll be fire.”

Based on the evidence so far, there’s no reason to doubt it… as long as Eunchae avoids staircases.

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.

Separately, the company has also reportedly made job cuts at WhatsApp, Instagram and Reality Labs, its virtual reality business responsible for the Oculus headset. These cuts are not related to the issues surrounding the voucher system.

Jane Manchun Wong, a former security engineer at Meta, said on Wednesday that she had lost her job as part of these 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.”

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 Beyoncé 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.

A spokesperson denied the allegations against Diddy and told BBC News for this story that “Mr Combs remains strong, healthy, and disciplined, fully committed to his defence with the unwavering support of his family, legal team, and the truth”.

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 Beverly 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 has dismissed the lawsuits as “clear attempts to garner publicity”. In response to this story, a spokesperson for the rapper told BBC News that allegations of wrongdoing at his notorious parties were unfounded.

“Sean Combs’ white parties and other events were iconic, a true convergence of hip-hop, Hollywood, and Black excellence,” the statement reads.

“It’s disappointing to see the media and social commentators twist these cultural moments into something they were not. Shaming celebrities who attended, taking video clips and photos out of context, and trying to link these events to false allegations is simply untrue.”

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 have 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.

Beaches in the Australian city of Sydney have reopened for swimmers after being closed earlier this week when thousands of mysterious black tar-like balls washed ashore, prompting health concerns.

Officials say tests found the balls to be formed from chemicals similar to those in cosmetics and cleaning products but it is still unclear where they came from.

Eight beaches including Bondi – the city’s most famous – were closed and a massive clean-up ordered amid fears the black deposits were toxic.

New South Wales’s Environment Minister, Penny Sharpe, said investigations were continuing to establish the source of the pollution and who was responsible.

The state’s maritime authority said the balls were not highly toxic to humans but should not be touched or picked up.

“Based on advice from the Environment Protection Authority, we can now confirm the balls are made up of fatty acids, chemicals consistent with those found in cleaning and cosmetic products, mixed with some fuel oil,” said New South Wales Maritime Executive Director Mark Hutchings.

The New South Wales Environment Protection Authority (EPA) said laboratory testing was continuing, to try to determine where the balls came from, Reuters news agency reports.

“It is still somewhat of a mystery and may take a few more days to determine origin,” said EPA Executive Director Stephen Beaman.

The tar balls were “not harmful when on the ground but should not be touched or picked up”, Mr Hutchings was quoted as saying by Australian broadcaster ABC.

“If you see these balls, report them to a lifeguard. If you or your family accidentally touches one, wash your hands with soap and water or baby oil.”

All student unions in Ivory Coast are being shut down, the government has announced, after the killing of two students which is being blamed on the powerful Student and School Federation (Fesci).

Several Fesci members have been arrested in connection with the murders of Khalifa Diomandé and Zigui Mars Aubin Déagoué, which took place in August and September.

An underground tunnel used for torturing people and a brothel were found during investigations at Félix-Houphouët-Boigny University in the main city of Abidjan, the authorities say.

Students tell the BBC it was an open secret that Fesci ran both illicit sites but that everybody was too afraid to speak out.

“You wouldn’t have believed you were in a university in an organised country,” said a former student who has asked to remain anonymous.

“I was threatened by Fesci many times, they tried to rape me,” she tells the BBC. “My boyfriend tried to stand up for me, and he was beaten up,” she alleges. On other occasions she says she had to pay Fesci members to leave her alone.

She says she is still traumatised, and has not set foot on the campus since dropping out after her ordeal eight years ago.

“I don’t know how it lasted so long but now I feel relieved for the victims,” she adds.

Extortion was common, say students.

“I was supposed to pay $100 (£77) per month for my room,” explains Jose Aristide, “but they were forcing me to pay $250 per month.

“There was no other option. Everyone feared them.”

On Thursday, Ivory Coast’s Security Council said it had carried out a series of raids on universities in Abidjan and the central city of Bouaké in which more than 100 machetes and grenades were seized.

They also found and expelled 5,000 undeclared residents at university campuses across Abidjan, Bouaké and Daloa.

When the student union ban was announced that same day, people celebrated.

One lecturer tells the BBC he welcomes the ban, saying he hopes it will bring some peace to the campuses.

Originally set up in the 1990s as a student body, Fesci soon became an anti-government protest group, and has long been suspected of involvement in organised crime.

It has also served as a springboard into politics for some.

Former Fesci leaders include Guillaume Soro – a rebel leader-turned-prime minister, and Charles Blé Goudé – a former youth minister who was accused then acquitted of massive human rights violations during post-election violence that happened a decade ago.

• The artist ‘not surprised’ to be a best-seller
• Cash and villas for footballers after Afcon triumph
• Why I twist my hair into sculptures
• A quick guide to Ivory Coast

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s five-year deal to send migrants rescued at sea to camps in Albania for processing has been dealt a significant blow by the courts, only days after the first arrivals.

A special immigration court in Rome ruled that the 12 migrants, sent to the camp at Gjader not far from the Adriatic coast in northern Albania, should be brought back to Italy because they were from countries considered unsafe to be returned to.

Meloni’s deal with Albania has attracted widespread interest with Western allies and Italy’s government has said it will challenge the ruling.

“It’s not for the judiciary to say which countries are safe – it’s for the government,” she told reporters.

She has called a cabinet meeting for next Monday.

Although the EU says irregular migration has fallen this year – by 64% this year via the Central Mediterranean route – governments across Europe are under pressure to curb the number of arrivals.

The Italian agreement with Albania is aimed at processing and then repatriating about 3,000 irregular migrants rescued from the Mediterranean a month in two camps.

But the estimated €800m (£666m) cost has drawn criticism from opposition leaders such as Elly Schlein of the Democratic Party who said it could have been spent on healthcare.

The deal does not include women or children, and the first group of men arrived in Albania on Wednesday on board an Italian navy ship, three days after they were part of a group of 85 people picked up at sea.

There were 10 men from Bangladesh and six from Egypt on board the Libra, but that number was swiftly reduced from 16 to 12, because health screenings assessed that two were children and two were vulnerable.

On Friday, judges in Rome decided the rest of the migrants should be returned to Italy too, even though their asylum applications had been turned down. The judges ruled it was impossible to recognise their countries of origin as “safe countries”.

Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi said the government would take the case to appeal, insisting that Italy’s migrant camp plan would become European law within two years.

Current European law was spelt out only two weeks ago by the European Court of Justice, which said a country could only be considered safe if “persecution… torture or inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment is never resorted to“.

Italy’s deal with Albania is being watched closely elsewhere in Europe, including in the UK. Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said he had discussed the “concept” of Italy’s deal with Meloni last month.

EU leaders agreed at a summit on Thursday that returns of irregular migrants should be speeded up.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said new proposals were being worked on, and she argued that migrants in need of protection could have that protection in “safe third countries”.

In a separate development, the Dutch government has run into difficulties with a migrant plan of its own, involving a so-called return hub for rejected asylum seekers.

The idea to send people refused asylum to Uganda was first mooted by Reinette Klever, a foreign trade minister from the far-right Freedom Party, during a visit to East Africa.

The plan appeared to catch Prime Minister Dick Schoof by surprise at the EU summit, although he said it was an “innovative solution”.

And on Friday it became clear that it was also news to Uganda’s government. “We did not discuss anything about the Netherlands sending refugees to Uganda, we did not,” Foreign Minister Jeje Odongo told Dutch radio.

“If there is a proposal to do that we will look at it on a case by case basis.”

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.

The family of Dawn Sturgess, who died six years ago after coming into contact with Novichok, have been calling on Vladimir Putin to speak to the inquiry after her death in the Salisbury poisonings.

I put their request directly to Andrei Kelin, the Russian ambassador to the UK, in as part of a wide-ranging sit-down interview that will be broadcast on Sunday.

“I hardly believe President Putin will go to Britain just to testify something,” he said.

The UK government holds Russia, and two Russian agents, known as Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov, responsible for the attack.

Andrei Kelin questioned the need for an inquiry. “Why drag this history so long?”

He also rejected suggestions Petrov or Borishov should attend, saying the men had already given answers on TV – referring to a 2018 interview they gave on Russian state TV in which they claimed they had just been visiting Salisbury Cathedral.

That claim was mocked by some in Russia. UK officials called the interview “risible”.

Challenged with the fact that the UK, US, France, Germany, Canada all believe the attack was carried out by Russia with Novichok manufactured in Russia, Kelin said that “too many governments” were involved and dismissed their allegation as “nonsense“.

Pressed to give a response to the Sturgess family, the ambassador appeared to laugh, saying: “I have never met this family … If someone has died, of course we are concerned about that.”

On Ukraine, Kelin accused the UK of “waging war” on Russia by supporting the country with weapons and resources. If Zelensky “won’t negotiate with us, fine”, he said. “He will lose more and more terrain.”

This week, the Ukrainian president published a so-called victory plan to try to bring the conflict to an end next year.

It includes a formal request to join Nato and the lifting of bans on long-range strikes with Western-supplied weapons deep into Russia.

Challenged on Russia’s illegal invasion and stalemate in the war, the ambassador said Zelensky “does not want peace … he continues to ask for more and more; Nato, EU assistance, defence packages.

“Anything, but nothing about negotiations at all.”

Kyiv, backed by its allies, has always rejected any suggestions of negotiation after the Russian invasion. They believe that would mean the permanent loss of Ukrainian territory.

Western governments believe that Putin is under rising pressure at home, with increasing casualties and the huge cost of the war. Even Moscow’s finance ministry has acknowledged the intense strain on the economy.

But Kelin claims Russia is living “absolutely normal life”.

Asked if the suffering on both sides kept him awake at night, he said: “No one likes the war.” He said it could stop if the West stopped supplying arms to Ukraine.

“We are not just going to say, OK, [from] tomorrow we do not shoot each other. We won’t.”

On Friday, Keir Starmer reiterated his support for Ukraine. “We have always said that it is for the Ukrainian people to decide their own future so we’re clear, together with President Zelensky, that the only acceptable outcome is a sovereign Ukraine and a just peace.”

He also said Russia was getting weaker, with the war soaking up 40% of its budget, and the government believing there were more than 600,000 dead or wounded Russians, and another 500,000 casualties predicted by the end of the year.

With reports in recent days that North Korean troops are backing the Kremlin in the conflict, Kelin was challenged on Russia’s reliance on pariah states like North Korea and Iran.

“For us, it’s normal people, we have been friends, and we have a lot of common interests with North Korea and Iran … Anything bad – we do not see it.”

And on the American election, with just weeks to go, the ambassador claimed the winner didn’t make a difference at all. He said there was a “two-party consensus” on Russia – “and this is anti-Russian sentiment”.

The ambassador said that Russia had changed its nuclear doctrine in response to conversations among Western allies about allowing Ukraine to use long-range missiles supplied by them to fire into Russia.

Russia now says it would consider an attack from a non-nuclear state that’s backed by a nuclear-armed one to be a “joint attack”. That has been construed as a threat to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine.

Jens Stoltenberg, the former Nato boss, said the West had “called Putin’s bluff” over nuclear threats – implying it had crossed many of Putin’s red lines without anything happening.

Kelin said Stoltenberg’s statement itself was “a bluff” – adding Russia would protect itself “with all the means that are in our disposal, and believe me, there are lots of them.”

It is hard to overstate the impact of the Salisbury attacks on the fraught relationship between the UK and Russia.

A senior figure involved in the UK government response told me it was a “huge tipping point.

“It was shocking in the fact that the Russians were trying to kill people on our soil, but also, so blatantly happy for us to know that it was them,” they said, pointing to the use of Novichok, known to be manufactured and used by the Russian state.

Only a year before, then-Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson had gone to Moscow in the hope of a “reset” of the relationship between the two countries.

But another senior source told me: “we simply couldn’t have a normal relationship with them again with that in the background”.

They described the poisonings as worse than anything that had happened in the Cold War. “The competition was pretty brutal then, but this kind of thing was completely unacceptable.”

More than 20 Western allies expelled diplomats and spies from their countries in response after a bout of frantic diplomacy by Theresa May’s government, including pushing former President Trump to act.

One figure recalls, “it was pretty hairy at the time, a lot of Europeans didn’t want to do it. Trump personally didn’t want to do it but was persuaded to do so”.

The UK insisted that the announcement of the expulsions from each country was made at exactly the same time, with only the UK aware of how many Russians each government planned to order to leave.

The fear in Downing Street was that Trump would not be willing to take drastic action if he had known the numbers each European country were planning to expel.

The UK government now believes that Russia is the number one threat to the UK’s security.

Labour said in the election: “the defence of the UK starts in Ukraine,” and ministers believe the same now they are in government.

The UK has been at the forefront of leading the Western backing of Ukraine since the invasion in 2022, and has sent billions of pounds worth of weapons and resources to support the effort.

It’s given staunch political backing to President Zelensky – but don’t expect a decision on his request to use Western long-range missiles for at least a few weeks.

There are concerns in government about Russia increasing its efforts at sabotage on UK soil, with the boss of MI5 warning this week Russia was more and more engaged in “arson, sabotage and more dangerous actions conducted with increasing recklessness”.

Back in 2018, when the poisonings happened, the UK had no way of predicting how Russia’s aggression would grow into what one source calls an “off-the-charts bigger crisis” – with its illegal invasion of Ukraine.

But as the Salisbury inquiry delves into the impact of the poisoning on one innocent British family, its significance as a moment of the rupture in relations is clear too.

That’s caught in a conversation understood to have taken place between UK national security adviser Mark Sedwill and his Russian counterpart at the time, after Western allies had expelled 300 diplomats.

“You seem to want to take us back to the days of the Cold War,” the Russian said.

“Well, Yuri, at least we all knew the rules then,” Sedwill responded.

You can watch our interview with Russian ambassador Andrei Kelin tomorrow at 09:00 on on BBC One. We’ll also talk to Health Secretary Wes Streeting.

Sign up for the Off Air with Laura K newsletter to get Laura Kuenssberg’s expert insight and insider stories every week, emailed directly to you.

Liam Payne’s father has viewed tributes outside the hotel where his son died, as the star’s former partner Cheryl says her son Bear has to “face the reality of never seeing his father again”.

Payne, 31, died on Wednesday when he fell from the balcony of the third-floor hotel room where he had been staying in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

In Argentina, Geoff Payne was followed by a scrum of photographers as he visited the hotel, prompting fans to shout at the press and attempt to block the building’s entrance to stop them entering.

Mr Payne travelled to Buenos Aires after his son’s death and the journey from his hotel to the Casa Sur hotel was broadcast on Argentine television, despite family requests for privacy.

Girls Aloud singer Cheryl, who was in a relationship with Payne from 2016 to 2018, also criticised “abhorrent” media coverage following his death.

Posting on Instagram, Cheryl said: “As I try to navigate this earth shattering event, and work through my own grief at this indescribably painful time, I’d like to kindly remind everyone that we have lost a human being.”

Along with her statement Cheryl shared a black and white image of Payne with their son Bear and a broken heart emoji.

Payne’s sister, Ruth Gibbins, described him as her “best friend” in an emotional Instagram post on Saturday, in which she vowed the family will “take care of Bear”.

“My brain is struggling to catch up with what’s happening and I don’t understand where you’ve gone,” she added.

Cheryl also said she was troubled her seven-year-old son could access “abhorrent reports and media exploitation” and she cannot protect him from it in the future.

“What is troubling my spirit the most is that one day Bear will have access to the abhorrent reports and media exploitation we have seen in the past two days,” she added.

“I am begging you to consider what use some of these reports are serving, other than to cause further harm to everyone left behind picking up the pieces.

“Before you leave comments or make videos, ask yourself if you would like your own child or family to read them.”

Ending her statement, the 41-year-old urged people to give Payne “the little dignity he has left in the wake of his death to rest in some peace at last”.

The tribute came as Geoff Payne paused to read tributes to his son outside the Casa Sur hotel and say thank you to the gathered fans.

When he arrived, fans at the site created a barrier between him and the cameras, with some telling the BBC afterwards that they wanted to make sure he had space.

Bianca Gallorini, who helped organise the makeshift barrier, said fans wanted to give Mr Payne “a moment” to “express his feelings and see how much we love Liam”.

Mr Payne had earlier visited the morgue in Buenos Aires to officially identify his son, so that arrangements can be made for his body to be flown back to the UK.

A federal prosecutor told the BBC that Payne’s body has been “released”, meaning no further tests were being carried out and that identification could take place. An investigation into his death continues.

It is not yet known when Payne’s body will be repatriated to the UK.

Fans gathered in Liverpool on Saturday afternoon to hold a vigil to mourn the One Direction singer.

Elsewhere, people gathered in the singer’s home city of Wolverhampton for a vigil on Friday evening.

Simon Cowell, who put the group together on The X Factor in 2010, earlier paid his own tribute to Payne, saying he is “heartbroken” and feels “empty” following the singer’s death.

Cowell remembered Payne as “kind, funny, sweet, thoughtful [and] talented”.

In a post on Instagram, Cowell added: “And I want you to know how much love and respect I have for you. Every tear I have shed is a memory of you.”

Payne’s girlfriend Kate Cassidy has also paid tribute to the star who she called “my angel”, adding she was “at a complete loss”.

“You are everything,” she said in a statement.

“I want you to know I loved you unconditionally and completely. I will continue to love you for the rest of my life.”

In Cowell’s statement, he also recalled Payne’s first X Factor audition in 2008, at the age of 14, when Cowell told the budding singer he was not ready and to come back in two years.

“A lot of people would have given up. You didn’t. You came back and within months the whole world would know Liam.

“And you never forgot the fans. I watched you spending so much time with people who had wanted to meet you. You really cared.”

Cowell eventually signed One Direction to his label and masterminded their global success before they split in 2016.

The music mogul also revealed that Payne had visited him last year “just to sit and talk”, adding that they “reminisced about all of the fun times we had together”.

• ‘We all let you down Liam’, says Sharon Osbourne
• Niall Horan says Liam’s death ‘doesn’t feel real’
• One Direction’s messages to Liam in full
• What we know so far about the death
• ‘I was a Directioner – here’s what Liam Payne meant to me’
• ‘Liam called asking for advice on handling fame’

Also on Friday, Payne’s bandmate Niall Horan posted a tribute, saying he was “absolutely devastated” by the “passing of his amazing friend”.

Singer Katie Waissel, a contestant alongside One Direction in 2010’s X Factor series, called the music industry “very manipulative, coercive and deconstructive”, saying “it sucks the soul out of people”.

Speaking to Stephen Nolan on BBC Radio 5 Live, Waissal, who has long campaigned for better support for those who appear on TV, criticised the amount given to those who appear on shows such as X Factor.

Similarly, US singer Bruce Springsteen told the Daily Telegraph that the industry “puts enormous pressures on young people”, adding that they do not have “the inner self yet to be able to protect themselves from a lot of the things that come with success and fame”.

Springsteen said he understands this “very well” from his own experience, having done his “own wrestling with different things”.

There is no conscience. There is no humanity. There are only leaders who watch and do not act.

This is what Ahmed al-Dalou believes, as the images of his family burning replay in his mind. He says his life is gone. It died in the inferno of al-Aqsa compound with his boys and wife in the early hours of Monday 14 October.

In front of him on the ground is a shroud, wrapped around the body of Abdulrahman,12, his youngest son.

The child lingered in agony for four days after the fire, sparked by an Israeli strike. The day before he died Ahmed saw him in hospital and he was able to tell his father: “Don’t be worried, I am OK dad… I’m fine. Don’t be afraid.”

Ahmed is half speaking, half crying, as he talks of what has been taken from him.

“Three times I tried to pull him [Abdulrahman] out of the fire, but his body fell back into it.”

His older brother, Sha’aban, 19, and his mother, Alaa, 37, both died on the night of the fire.

Sha’aban became a new symbol of Gaza’s terrible suffering. Images of him writhing in agony as he burned to death in the family’s tent were shared around the world on social media.

There are burns all over Ahmed’s face and hands. The tone of his voice is high, a keening sound. Of the anonymous pilot who sent the missile, and the leaders who gave him orders, Ahmed said: “They broke my heart, and they broke my spirit… I wish the fire had burned me.”

The strike happened at about 01:15 local time last Monday (23:15 BST on Sunday).

The Israeli military said it was targeting a Hamas “command and control” centre in the al-Aqsa hospital compound in Deir al-Balah, central Gaza Strip.

Four people were killed immediately and dozens more wounded, including many with severe burn injuries. The Israel Defense Forces said it was “reviewing the incident”.

A spokesperson for the White House told CBS News, the BBC’s US partner, that footage of the fire was “deeply disturbing” and called on Israel to do more to protect civilians.

“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.”

The US and other powers, including Britain, have expressed concern about civilian casualties since the early stages of the war.

People are burned to death, blown to pieces, and shot every day in this war.

Most of the time the death agonies happen away from the cameras. It is the frantic search for survivors in the rubble, the dramatic scenes at hospitals, the endless stream of funerals, that are captured by cameras.

But the death of Sha’aban al-Dalou was different. His hand can be seen, reaching out of the inferno, a figure wrapped in flame, writhing and beyond the reach of any help.

In the days following his death Sha’aban’s own videos and photographs emerged. He was a typical teenager of his generation, aware of the power of social media, adept at recording his daily life.

The burning figure from the night of fire appeared to the world as an articulate, intelligent teenager, a software engineering student, a young man who took care of his family planning for a new life outside Gaza. He filmed himself donating blood and encouraged others to do the same.

“We saw so many injuries, many children are in dire need of blood… All we demand is for a ceasefire and this tragedy to end.”

We are only able to tell the story of al-Dalou family because of our own local journalist who went to meet the survivors. International journalists from media organisations, including the BBC, are not given independent access to Gaza by Israel.

• Gazans describe fresh horror in north as Israel renews offensive
• Witnesses to Israeli strike on Gaza hospital compound saw ‘so many people burning’
• UN accuses Israel of war crimes over attacks on Gaza hospitals

In a video recorded in the tent where he died Sha’aban described how his family had been displaced five times since the war began a year ago. He had two sisters, and two younger brothers.

“We live in very hard circumstances,” he said. “We suffer from various things such as homelessness, limited food, and extremely limited medicine.”

In the background, as he speaks, there is the loud mechanical hum of an Israeli observation drone, a constant in the daily and nightly soundtrack of Gaza.

The surviving brother of Sha’aban and Abdulrahman, Mohammed al-Dalou, told the BBC that he had tried to go into the flames to rescue his older brother.

But other injured people had held him back, fearing he too would be killed. Mohammed did not sleep in the family tent, but outside on the street where he kept watch over their piled belongings.

“I was screaming for someone to let me go, but in vain… My brother’s leg was trapped and he couldn’t free himself. I think you saw it in the video. He was raising his hand.

“That was my brother. He was my support in this world.”

Sha’aban would come and wake him for prayers in the morning with a bottle of water and he would tell him: “I’ll work for you.”

Mohammed recalled how the brothers set up a stall at the gates of the hospital selling food that the family made.

“We managed everything with our hard work. Everything we had was from our effort. We would get food and drink… then everything was lost.”

He saw the burned bodies, but could only identify his mother. Although her remains had been mutilated by fire, he recognised a distinctive bracelet.

“Without it, I wouldn’t have known she was my mother. Her hand was detached from her body, but the bracelet was still on it. I took it off her hand.”

This is his only memento of the woman who was “the kindness in our home”.

The al-Dalou family is in shock. The survivors mourn the dead. Our BBC colleague asked Mohammed about the psychological cost of seeing his loved ones die.

“I can’t describe it. I can’t describe how I felt. I want to explain it to people, but I can’t. I can’t describe it. I saw my brother burning in front of me, and my mother too.”

Then, as if he is posing a question on behalf of the dead, he asks: “What more do you need, and you stay silent? You see us burning, and you stay silent.”

A drone has been “launched towards” the private residence of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the coastal town of Caesarea, his office has said.

“The prime minister and his wife were not at the location, and there were no injuries in the incident,” a statement said.

It comes after the Israeli military said three drones were launched from Lebanon into Israel early on Saturday morning, with one hitting a building in Caesarea.

The Israeli government has not said whether the building was part of the Prime Minister’s residence nor the extent of any damage.

At 08:19 local time (06:19 BST), the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said: “In the last hour, three unmanned aerial vehicles crossed into the country from Lebanon.

“Two of the aircraft were intercepted. Another aircraft hit a building in Caesarea, no injuries.”

Netanyahu makes use of two private homes, in Caesarea and Jerusalem, and has also spent time at Beit Aghion, the prime minister’s official residence in Jerusalem, which is currently being renovated.

The IDF said some 55 rockets had been launched into Israel from Lebanon so far on Saturday.

Israel is continuing to attack targets in Lebanon which it says are linked to the Iran-backed Hezbollah group.

Lebanon’s health ministry said on Saturday that two people were killed in an Israeli strike in Jounieh, a Christian-majority town to the north of Beirut.

The strike hit a moving car that was travelling along the main highway, according to local media.

This attack is unusual as most Israeli operations to date have focused on Shia Muslim-majority areas where Hezbollah has a presence.

North Korea has started sending troops to fight with Russia in Ukraine, South Korea’s spy agency has said as Seoul warned of a “grave security threat”.

The allegation comes a day after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said he believed 10,000 North Korean soldiers could join the war, based on intelligence information.

South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol called for a security meeting on Friday and said the international community must respond with “all available means”.

According to the spy agency, 1,500 troops have already arrived in Russia – with anonymous sources telling South Korean media the final figure could be closer to 12,000.

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

Moscow and Pyongyang have also been deepening their cooperation in recent months. Last week, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un greeted Russian President Vladimir Putin on his birthday, calling him his “closest comrade”.

Friday’s security meeting was attended by key officials from South Korea’s National Security Office, the Ministry of National Defence, and the National Intelligence Service, Yoon’s office said.

“[The participants] decided not to ignore the situation and to jointly respond to it with the international community using all available means,” it said.

The allegation from the National Intelligence Service (NIS) comes days after Ukrainian military intelligence sources said that Russia’s army is forming a unit of North Koreans.

The BBC has asked the NIS for comment.

On Thursday, Ukraine’s spy chief Kyrylo Budanov claimed that there were nearly 11,000 North Korean infantry troops training in eastern Russia to fight in Ukraine.

“They will be ready [to fight in Ukraine] on 1 November,” Lt Gen Budanov, who heads the Ukrainian Defence Intelligence Directorate, told The Warzone website.

He added that the North Koreans would be using Russian equipment and ammunition, and the first group of 2,600 soldiers would be sent to Russia’s western Kursk region, where Ukraine holds a number of settlements after launching its incursion in August.

Earlier this week, Putin introduced a bill to ratify a military pact he made with Kim, which pledges that Russia and North Korea will help each other in the event of “aggression” against either country.

South Korea’s spy agency, the NIS, said North Korean troops are training in Russian bases in Vladivostok, Ussuriysk, Khabarovsk, and Vlagoveshensk.

This appears to confirm information from a military source in Russia’s Far East, who told BBC Russian this week that “a number of North Koreans have arrived” and were stationed in one of the military bases near Ussuriysk.

Seoul’s spy agency also released aerial photographs of Ussuriysk and Khabarovsk, where they say hundreds of North Korean troops have gathered, and another photo of North Korea’s Chongjin port, where a Russian ship was reportedly shown carrying North Korean soldiers.

The NIS said it found that since August, North Korea has sent 13,000 shipping containers carrying shells, missiles, and anti-armour rockets to Russia.

As many as eight million 122-mm and 152-mm shells have been supplied to Russia, it said.

However, some military experts believe the Russian military units will have difficulties incorporating North Korean troops into their frontlines.

Apart from the language barrier, the North Korean army has no recent experience of combat operations, they said.

“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.”

Former One Direction star Liam Payne died at the age of 31 in Buenos Aires, Argentina, on Wednesday after falling from a balcony.

Many details about the British singer’s death still remain unclear, but information from emergency services and other authorities has started to build a picture of the events.

Payne was a global star and part of the much-loved boyband, which was created on The X factor TV show in 2010.

His bandmates have released a series of heartfelt statements, saying they are “completely devastated” by his death.

Payne was staying in a hotel in the upmarket neighbourhood of Palermo in the Argentine capital.

He had been at the hotel for two or three days, according to staff, and had been in the country to visit his former bandmate Niall Horan.

Horan was in Argentina on tour and the pair had remained friendly since One Direction’s 2016 split.

Payne posted on Snapchat earlier this month that he was visiting Horan for a catch-up, saying: “It’s been a while since me and Niall have spoken, we’ve got a lot to talk about.”

He added: “No bad vibes or anything like that, but we need to talk.”

• His final Snapchats from last few days in Argentina

Payne attended the show, again posting social media videos of himself and girlfriend Kate Cassidy singing and dancing at the concert.

The BBC also spoke to fan Noelia Verón – who saw him on 30 September and then again at the concert on 2 October.

She said “He was fine. Later people said he was either drunk or on drugs. But that wasn’t the case at all. He talked to us, hugged us and even made jokes.”

When Veron saw him at Niall’s show, she said he was “dancing, waving and cheering” and “seemed to be enjoying himself”.

We also know the pop star had visited a friend’s house in Argentina in the days before he died, again with Cassidy.

But when Payne fell to his death on Wednesday, Cassidy had already left the country.

Payne had been documenting much of his trip on Snapchat, including pictures of food, plans to play polo, and jokes about his hair.

But none of his posts featured the CasaSur hotel, where he had been staying shortly before his death.

We know a call was made to emergency services around 17:00 local time (21:00 BST) on Wednesday by hotel staff, with requests to respond to a hotel guest “who is overwhelmed by drugs and alcohol” and “destroying his room”.

“I don’t know if the guest’s life is in danger. But he has a room with a balcony and we’re a little afraid that he might do something life-threatening,” said the hotel’s front desk manager in a second call.

• Read the full transcript of the hotel’s emergency call

Payne’s room was on the third floor and had a balcony about 14m (45ft) above an interior courtyard.

It is thought he fell from the balcony at about 17:07 local time.

Police arrived minutes later. Hotel staff told them a loud sound had been heard in the courtyard, where Payne’s body was discovered.

He was pronounced dead at the scene, with the emergency services saying there had been “no possibility of resuscitation”.

Payne’s body was removed from the hotel at about 20:30 local time and an autopsy was carried out that evening.

It established that he had suffered “multiple traumas” and “internal and external haemorrhaging” according to the public prosecutor’s office.

A preliminary report stated he had 25 injuries, which were “consistent with a fall from a great height”.

It also added that he may have been fully or partially unconscious when he fell.

It is yet to be established whether alcohol or drugs were in Payne’s system at the time of death.

Authorities also interviewed five witnesses to help piece together Payne’s final hours, including three hotel workers as well as two women who had been with the singer but had left the hotel before his death.

Investigators also want to establish the “possible involvement of third parties in the events prior to the victim’s death”.

Hotel staff on the emergency call highlighted that Payne was “destroying his room”, and police say they found the room in “total disorder”.

A bottle of whiskey, a lighter, a passport and a mobile phone were found.

The room was said to have “various broken items” and medication was found, including anxiety drug Clonazepam and other over-the-counter medications.

Evidence and fingerprints were also collected to be analysed in a lab.

Local media also published pictures purportedly from his room, showing a TV with a broken screen, multiple bottles, cans, candles, aluminium foil and a half-full glass of champagne.

The prosecutor’s office said substances that appeared to be “narcotics and alcoholic beverages” were found in the room with pieces of furniture and other objects broken.

Payne’s death is being treated as suspicious by prosecutors, which means more needs to be established about what happened before his death and who he was in contact with.

A toxicology report is also yet to be published and will determine whether he was drinking alcohol and using drugs before his death.

It could take several days for this to come back.

Police have also seized the star’s laptop and phone, which could provide evidence, and eyewitness reports could help establish what led to his death.

The force said on Friday that Payne’s close family would have to travel to Argentina to identify his body before it is released.

Full coverage of the death of Liam Payne:

• Niall Horan says death ‘doesn’t feel real’
• ‘Struggling to say goodbye’ – One Direction’s tributes in full
• ‘I was a Directioner – here’s what he meant to me’
• ‘We all let you down Liam’, says Sharon Osbourne
• ‘He was a big piece of my life’: Your tributes to Liam
• Obituary: Boy band star who had the X factor

Many Israelis cheered and danced on the streets at the news that Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar – chief architect of the 7 October 2023 attack on Israel – had been killed.

But his death at the hands of Israeli forces in Gaza on Wednesday has raised anxieties for families of the 101 hostages still held by Hamas.

Meanwhile, few Palestinians believed Sinwar’s killing would bring an end to the devastating year-old war in Gaza.

Israel’s military offensive in Gaza has killed at least 42,500 Palestinians, the Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza says. It followed Hamas’s attack on Israeli communities on 7 October last year, which killed about 1,200 people and saw the group take 251 hostages.

• Follow live updates on this story
• Who was Yahya Sinwar?
• Jeremy Bowen analysis: Sinwar’s death is serious blow to Hamas, but not the end of the war
• Watch: BBC Verify analyses footage of Sinwar’s killing

People in Israel were overwhelmingly supportive of Sinwar’s killing in a chance encounter with Israeli troops.

In Tiberias in northern Israel, several hundred people danced, waved flags and played loud music at the news.

“It’s very good“, Nissim Weizmann told the BBC as he sat outside a grocery shop in the town.

“He’s a bad man and his time has come. This is a present for everyone. Both Palestinians who are with us and the Jews.”

At a beach just south of Tel Aviv, bathers cheered and applauded when a lifeguard first announced rumours of the death over a loudspeaker.

But others were more circumspect, wondering how Sinwar’s killing would affect prospects for the release of Israeli hostages who continue to be held by Hamas in Gaza.

“To be honest, I feel a bit numb,” Anat Ron Kandle in Tel Aviv told the Reuters news agency.

“I have a deep concern for the hostages, and it’s very difficult to find faith and hope.

“And I always think about, what if that could have been me, [it] could have been my son that was with me?”

Family members of the remaining 101 hostages still in Gaza gathered in Tel Aviv after the news broke.

They have been demonstrating for months, urging the Israeli government to reach a ceasefire deal with Hamas to get their relatives home.

Einav Zangauker, whose son Matan was taken hostage, urged Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu: “Don’t bury the hostages.”

“Go out now to the mediators and to the public and lay out a new Israeli initiative,” she said to Reuters.

“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.”

In Gaza, some Palestinians said they believed Sinwar’s death could open a path towards ending the war, saying it left Israel with “no reason to continue this genocide”.

“They always said they wanted to eliminate Sinwar to stop this war,” Ali Chameli told Reuters.

But the reality on the ground since his killing was “quite the opposite”, said Jemaa Abou Mendi.

Speaking to the AFP news agency, he said: “the war has not stopped, and the killings continue unabated.”

Speaking in the city of Khan Younis, which has been largely left in ruins by a year of bombardment and fighting, Dr Ramadan Faris said the outcome of the war did not depend on any single person’s fate.

“It’s a war of extermination against the Palestinian people, as we all know and understand,” he said.

Also in Khan Younis was Lina Anuni, who fled Gaza City with her three children a year ago.

“I opposed [Sinwar] while he was alive and hold him equally responsible, alongside the Israeli occupation, for my suffering and that of 2.3 million Palestinians,” she told the BBC.

“Yet, I felt a sense of sadness at his passing,” she added.

One man, who chose not to be identified, told the BBC World Service’s Gaza Today programme that though there were “differing opinions” about the former Hamas leader, his death would not change things for people in Gaza.

“I don’t believe this will change the dynamics of the conflict,” he said, citing how the deaths of other senior Hezbollah and Hamas figures – like Hassan Nasrallah last month – had resulted in “nothing fundamentally” shifting.

“Instead, tensions escalated further, raising concerns for us as Palestinians,” he said.

Some Palestinians described Sinwar as a martyr.

Yousef Jamal, who said he supported the 7 October attack on Israel, said: “He [Sinwar] did not hide among the displaced, seek refuge with enemy prisoners, or retreat into tunnels.”

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

But reports indicate he met his end in an encounter with an Israeli patrol in southern Gaza. No hostages were found with him.

US President Joe Biden’s state visit to Germany on Friday was extremely brief.

But the US president used every minute in Berlin to try to make clear that he still has big ambitions on the world stage, these last weeks before he leaves office in January. Especially in the Middle East and Ukraine.

European defence has been a cornerstone of Biden’s foreign policy – a stark contrast to that of his predecessor, Donald Trump, now a 2024 presidential hopeful.

In recognition of his efforts, German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier awarded Biden his country’s highest honour, the special class of the Grand Cross.

The conflict in Ukraine, since Russia’s full-scale invasion, is the worst war this continent has experienced since World War Two.

And as it did 80 years ago, Europe has looked to the US for co-ordinated leadership and military support.

But Biden insisted far more needed to be done: “We must keep going until Ukraine wins a just and durable peace… We must sustain our support.”

A lot will depend on who wins the November US election.

Europe has relied on US military aid to help Ukraine. Berlin is the second largest donor after Washington, though the volume pales in significance compared with its ally’s across the Atlantic.

Those days of American largesse are expected to be over as soon as Biden leaves the White House.

Even if Democratic candidate Kamala Harris becomes the next US president, Congress is thought likely to pivot to other foreign policy priorities, such as China and Taiwan.

As for Trump, during his 2016-2020 administration, relations with Nato – the transatlantic military alliance in place since WW2 – were famously turbulent.

He is known for having admired “strongman” Russian President Vladimir Putin and he has not yet said in public if he wants Kyiv to emerge victorious from the conflict.

Despite lots of corridor talk in Nato circles about “Trump-proofing” European defence before the forthcoming US election, there is little sign that has actually taken place or that Europe would be able to successfully “go it alone” if it had to.

Following Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, the German Chancellor, Olaf Scholz, promised a “Zeitenwende” a historical turning point, where his country would jump over the shadow of its Nazi past and invest massively in its military to fully contribute to its allies’ shared defence.

This week, German intelligence chiefs warned Russia’s continued investment in its military would see it in a position to attack Nato by the end of the decade.

But Germany’s planned military revamp has got bogged down in bureaucracy. The government has not even agreed a future defence budget.

Diplomats say Biden worries about European resolve, with signs of spreading “Ukraine fatigue” as allies in Europe grapple with their own domestic challenges.

Scholz is under considerable pressure at home from the popular far right and far left, both sympathetic to the Russian narrative, ahead of a general election next year.

On Friday, Scholz and Biden were joined in Berlin by fellow major Ukraine donors the UK and France.

The “Quad”, as these four big Nato powers are known, also discussed Iran and the wider Middle East. On Ukraine, their joint press statement reiterated a resolve to continue supporting Kyiv.

The UK Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer, said Russia was getting weaker and that the war was soaking up 40% of Moscow’s budget.

He said he and the other leaders had discussed “what further capability, what further equipment and what further resources” they could help Ukraine with. But he did not get into specifics.

Yet it is specifics the Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelensky, has asked for in his “victory plan”. Specifics like an official invitation to join Nato and a free hand in using the long-range missiles supplied by the UK and France. A request that to date has been denied.

Critics of Joe Biden and his NATO allies accuse them of repeated feet-dragging for fear of escalation with Russia.

Kyiv – and Moscow – will have closely followed Biden’s “farewell trip” to Berlin this Friday.

They will have heard the repeated assurances from four Nato powers of ongoing, unwavering support for Ukraine – but what they will have also seen is a US president on his way out of office, a German chancellor expected to lose his country’s general elections, and a French president politically hobbled at home.

For Ukraine, extra help from its biggest backers cannot come fast enough. On the backfoot against Russia along its front lines, the country is in a particularly vulnerable moment. The rest of Europe is too.

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“Get Ready, it’s about to get a little bumpy.”

That was the first sentence of a letter Liam Payne wrote to his 10-year-old self, which he read out on BBC radio in 2020.

“You’ll have the most amazing time of your life, travel the world and live a life you barely imagined,” he said.

“Then it will end for a while, and you will be left with nothing but the steering wheel. It will feel scary, like you’re alone, but you are not.”

The pop sensation died on Wednesday aged 31 after a fall from a hotel balcony in Argentina. The exact circumstances around his death, or what happened in the final weeks of his life, remain unknown.

But the star, who shot to global fame as a 16-year-old member of One Direction, had spoken for years about his struggles with mental health – and the challenges of adapting to stardom.

Runners-up on the 2010 series of The X Factor, One Direction were a new, different-style of boy band – approachable, relatable, and, apart from their musical talents, normal.

They were the boys-next-door, whose age and good looks made them heartthrobs to millions of young fans around the world.

They went on to sell more than 70 million albums, complete five world tours, produce a feature film and star in a charity music video alongside then-prime minister David Cameron.

All that – at an age when many young people are worrying about their exams, their first loves, or getting tickets to their next gig – let alone starring in it.

“I mean, it was fun,” Payne would later reflect in an interview with Men’s Health Magazine. “We had an absolute blast, but there were certain parts of it where it just got a little bit toxic.”

Paparazzi photographers. Tabloid newspapers. Night after night in hotel rooms, separated from family. Blacked-out tour buses. Fans screaming for autographs. And the new and rapidly growing world of social media.

Few, he felt, could understand the intense pressures of stardom at such a tender age.

“It’s almost like putting the Disney costume on before you step up on stage,” he said.

He also admitted he used alcohol to cope “because there was no other way to get your head around what was going on”.

By the time One Direction split in 2016, global fame was all the then 22-year-old Payne had known as an adult.

“It can be quite difficult to give up expectations of being a megastar,” says Prof John Oates, who was involved in the British Psychological Society’s consultations with the government on child performers and the duty of care for adult contributors.

“Being in a boy band ceases to become so possible when you’re no longer a boy. So there’s a need to become, in a sense, a different sort of famous person. So that’s a new challenge.”

Payne’s bandmate Harry Styles seemed more suited for that challenge.

His androgynous looks were more in harmony with the direction the music industry was progressing in 2016. He also began acting, featuring in Hollywood blockbuster Dunkirk the following year.

Payne, however, struggled to make the transition.

In 2019, he released a solo debut album, LP1. Eight tracks of R&B, it did not capture the One Direction fan base, and failed to take off.

The struggles of teenage stars have long been a topic of public discussion, from Britney Spears to Justin Bieber.

Reality TV stars have faced similar challenges, with both Love Island host Caroline Flack and contestant Mike Thalassitis tragically taking their own lives in recent years.

Speaking on the Diary of a CEO podcast in 2021, Liam Payne said of his own struggles: “I was worried how far my rock bottom was going to be. Where’s rock bottom for me? And you would never have seen it. I’m very good at hiding it. No-one would ever have seen it.”

A key challenge for young stars, according to Prof Oates, is managing the comedown after a long period of fame.

“If fame has been so important to them for their self-esteem, how can they be helped to manage the loss of that?” he asks.

“An important move in personal development is moving from external sources of self-esteem to internal sources. Part of this is to do with something called reflective functioning, that you’re able to reflect on yourself as a person and you may become less reliant on others for your sense of self.”

For those who have entered adulthood as a star, that process can be especially difficult, he says.

Shortly after Payne’s death, fellow 2010 The X Factor contestant Rebecca Ferguson wrote a tribute: “We both met at Euston station and shared the taxi together to X Factor. I can’t help but think of that boy who was hopeful and looking forward to his bright future ahead.

“If he hadn’t jumped on that train and jumped in that taxi I believe he would be alive today.”

Former X Factor judge Sharon Osbourne said: “We all let you down.”

“You were just a kid when you entered one of the toughest industries in the world. Who was in your corner?”