Israeli strikes have killed at least 73 people, including women and children, in the city of Beit Lahia in northern Gaza, the strip’s Hamas-run authorities say.

Dozens of others are injured and many are still trapped under the rubble after the bombing late on Saturday night, officials added.

Israel said it was checking reports of casualties but said the figures published by Hamas authorities were “exaggerated” and did not match information held by its military.

The latest strikes come just hours after reports of “heavy gunfire” from Israeli troops at the Indonesian Hospital in the city.

Rescue efforts in Beit Lahia are currently hampered due to communications and internet services being severed in the region, Gaza health officials said.

The Hamas-run government media office said the bombing hit “crowded” residential areas, and that 73 people had been killed – a number also reported by Gaza’s civil defence agency. The BBC cannot independently verify the figures.

According to Palestinian news agency Wafa, an entire residential complex was destroyed in the strikes.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) told the BBC it had struck a “Hamas terror target” and was “doing everything possible to avoid causing harm to civilians”.

It said the casualties given by the Hamas office were “exaggerated” and said such sources had “proven to be sorely unreliable in previous incidents.”

Israel began a renewed military offensive in northern Gaza in early October, saying it is trying to prevent Hamas from regrouping in the area.

In particular, Israeli forces have surrounded and bombarded the densely-populated Jabalia area, which includes an urban refugee camp – with at least 33 people reported killed in a strike late on Friday.

Humanitarian groups have warned that virtually no aid has entered the area in the past few weeks. Israel’s own statistics show that aid deliveries to Gaza as a whole have collapsed when compared with the same period in September.

The UN’s top humanitarian official, Joyce Msuya, said on Saturday that Palestinians in northern Gaza are enduring “unspeakable horrors” and called for these “atrocities” to stop.

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

“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 – referring to the IDF having warned people in the north to evacuate.

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

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.

Meanwhile, Israel carried out at least a dozen air strikes on Beirut on Saturday, in the heaviest attack the Lebanese capital has witnessed in more than a week.

Damage and casualties were still being assessed, but at least one multi-storey building in the city’s southern suburbs had been completely destroyed.

The Israeli military said it had targeted Hezbollah’s weapons storage facilities and its intelligence headquarters command centre in Dahieh.

Hezbollah also continued to fire rockets into northern Israel, with the Israeli military saying about 200 projectiles – which usually means rockets – were fired on Saturday.

One person was killed by shrapnel while in his car, Israel’s medical service Magen David Adom said.

Also on Saturday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said an attempt had been made on his life following reports of a drone attack on his private residence.

“The attempt by Iran’s proxy Hezbollah to assassinate me and my wife today was a grave mistake,” he wrote in a post on X.

Mr Netanyahu and his wife were not at home at the time, and no one was injured.

Iran says Hezbollah was behind the reported attack, Iranian state news agency IRNA reported. Hezbollah – which is funded and equipped by Iran – has not commented on the reports.

At least 42,519 people have been killed and tens of thousands injured in Gaza since the war began last October, the Hamas-run authorities say.

The war began after Hamas attacked Israel on 7 October 2023, leaving around 1,200 people dead and 251 taken to Gaza as hostages. Israel vowed to destroy Hamas in response.

Earlier this week, the killing of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar in Gaza raised some hopes in some quarters of an end to the conflict.

But the group’s deputy leader said Hamas would only be strengthened, and that Israeli hostages would not be returned until Israel withdrew from Gaza.

• ‘I was shocked’: Gaza man says Hamas Leader was killed in his house

Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, also said on Saturday that Sinwar’s death would 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.

A displaced Palestinian from Gaza has told the BBC that the house the former Hamas leader was killed in was his home for 15 years before he had to flee in May.

Ashraf Abo Taha said he was “shocked” as he identified the partially destroyed building in Israeli drone footage of the incident as his home on Ibn Sena street in Rafah, southern Gaza.

Yahya Sinwar, the key figure behind the 7 October attacks on Israel, was killed by Israeli troops on Wednesday.

The Israeli military released drone footage that it said showed Sinwar in a partially destroyed house before he was killed.

Mr Abo Taha told BBC Arabic’s Gaza Lifeline that he had left his home in Rafah for Khan Younis on 6 May, when Israel ordered evacuations and began an operation against Hamas fighters, and had not received any news of his house until now.

Mr Abo Taha said his daughter first showed him the footage purportedly capturing Sinwar’s last moments on social media, saying it depicted their house in Rafah. He initially didn’t believe her, he said, until his brother confirmed the house was indeed his.

“I was like ‘yes this is my house’ and I saw the pictures and here I was shocked”, Mr Abo Taha said.

He said he had no idea why Sinwar was there or how he got there.

“Never ever did me and my brothers and sons have anything to do with this,” he said.

The BBC has verified that pictures and videos provided by Mr Abo Taha of his home match imagery of the house where Sinwar was killed.

BBC Verify compared and matched images of the home’s window archways, external decorations on doorways, shelves, and armchairs from the footage.

The BBC cannot independently verify that Mr Abo Taha owned the home.

• Who will lead Hamas after killing of Yahya Sinwar?

The footage of Sinwar’s killing was analysed by the BBC, and the house in which he was last seen was one of the few partially destroyed buildings in a neighbourhood with extensive damage.

The Israeli assault on Rafah in May was met with strong international criticism, and triggered the exodus of more than a million Palestinians, according to the UN.

Many had been forced to move for a second or third time, as they had been sheltering in and around Rafah after being displaced from other parts of Gaza.

Mr Abo Taha said he had built his home in Rafah himself with the help of his siblings. It had cost some 200,000 shekels (£41,400) and had been in good condition when he left, he said.

He described his home’s orange sofas and an orange casserole dish, remembering the last time he saw them as he fled his home.

“These are memories because some of these were brought by my mum and they are very precious to me,” he said.

“What happened has saddened me a lot, the house that I built and all my payments are gone,” he said. “Only God can compensate us.”

Six-time Olympic cycling champion Sir Chris Hoy has announced that his cancer is terminal.

In an interview with the Sunday Times, he says doctors have told him he has between two and four years to live.

The 48-year-old Scot revealed earlier this year that he had been diagnosed with cancer.

Hoy told the newspaper he has known for a year that his cancer is terminal.

Hoy won six Olympic golds between 2004 and 2012 – the second highest total by any British Olympian behind Sir Jason Kenny’s tally of seven.

He retired from cycling in 2013 and in recent years has been a regular pundit and commentator as part of BBC Sport’s cycling coverage.

He had not previously disclosed the type of cancer.

But he told the Sunday Times that he had been diagnosed with primary cancer in his prostate, which had spread to his bones – meaning it was stage four.

Tumours were discovered to his shoulder, pelvis, hip, spine and rib.

Sir Chris told the newspaper: “As unnatural as it feels, this is nature.

“You know, we were all born and we all die, and this is just part of the process.

“You remind yourself, aren’t I lucky that there is medicine I can take that will fend this off for as long as possible.”

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.

The name Shapurji Saklatvala may not be one that leaps out of the history books to most people. But as with any good tale from the past, the son of cotton merchant – who is a member of India’s supremely wealthy Tata clan – has quite a story.

At every turn, it seems that his life was one of constant struggle, defiance and persistence. He shared neither the surname of his affluent cousins, nor their destiny.

Unlike them, he would not go on to run the Tata Group, which is currently one of the world’s biggest business empires and owns iconic British brands like Jaguar Land Rover and Tetley Tea.

He instead became an outspoken and influential politician who lobbied for India’s freedom in the heart of its coloniser’s empire – the British Parliament – and even clashed with Mahatma Gandhi.

But how did Saklatvala, born into a family of businessmen, pursue a path so different from his kin? And how did he blaze a trail to become one Britain’s first Asian MPs? The answer is as complex as Saklatvala’s relationship with the his own family.

Saklatvala was the son of Dorabji, a cotton merchant, and Jerbai, the youngest daughter of Jamsetji Nusserwanji Tata, who founded the Tata Group. When Saklatvala was 14 years old, his family moved into Esplanade House in Bombay to live with Jerbai’s brother (whose name was also Jamsetji) and his family.

Saklatvala’s parents separated when he was young and so, the younger Jamsetji became the main paternal figure in his life.

“Jamsetji always had been especially fond of Shapurji and saw in him from a very early age the possibilities of great potential; he gave him a lot of attention and had great faith in his abilities, both as a boy and as a man,” Saklatvala’s daughter, Sehri, writes in The Fifth Commandment, a biography of her father.

But Jamsetji’s fondness of Saklatvala made his elder son, Dorab, resent his younger cousin.

“As boys and as men, they were always antagonistic towards each other; the breach was never healed,” Sehri writes.

It would eventually lead to Dorab curtailing Saklatvala’s role in the family businesses, motivating him to pursue a different path.

But apart from family dynamics, Saklatvala was also deeply influenced by the devastation caused by the bubonic plague in Bombay in the late 1890s. He saw how the epidemic disproportionately impacted the poor and working classes, while those in the upper echelons of society, including his family, remained relatively unscathed.

During this time, Saklatvala, who was a college student, worked closely with Waldemar Haffkine, a Russian scientist who had to flee his country because of his revolutionist, anti-tsarist politics. Haffkine developed a vaccine to combat the plague and Saklatvala went door-to-door, convincing people to inoculate themselves.

• Waldemar Haffkine: The vaccine pioneer the world forgot

“Their outlooks had much in common; and no doubt this close association between the idealist older scientist and the young, compassionate student, must have helped to form and to crystallise the convictions of Shapurji,” Sehri writes in the book.

Another important influence was his relationship with Sally Marsh, a waitress he would marry in 1907. Marsh was the fourth of 12 children, who lost their father before becoming adults. Life was tough in the Marsh household as everybody had to work hard to make ends meet.

But the well-heeled Saklatvala was drawn towards Marsh and during their courtship, he was exposed to the hardships of Britain’s working class through her life. Sehri writes that her father was also influenced by the selfless lives of the Jesuit priests and nuns under whom he studied during his school and college years.

So, after Saklatvala travelled to the UK in 1905, he immersed himself in politics with an aim to help the poor and the marginalised. He joined the Labour Party in 1909 and 12 years later, the Communist Party. He cared deeply about the rights of the working class, in India and in Britain, and believed that only socialism – and not any imperialist regime – could eradicate poverty and give people a say in governance.

Saklatvala’s speeches were well received and he soon became a popular face. In 1922, he was elected to parliament and would serve as an MP for close to seven years. During this time, he advocated ferociously for India’s freedom. So staunch were his views that a British-Indian MP from the Conservative Party regarded him as a dangerous “radical communist”.

During his time as an MP, he also made trips to India, where he held speeches to urge the working class and young nationalists to assert themselves and pledge their support for the freedom movement. He also helped organise and build the Communist Party of India in the areas he visited.

His strident views on communism often clashed with Mahatma Gandhi’s non-violent approach to defeat their common adversary.

“Dear Comrade Gandhi, we are both erratic enough to permit each other to be rude in order to freely express oneself correctly,” he wrote in one of his letters to Gandhi, and proceeded to mince no words about his discomfort with Gandhi’s non-co-operation movement and him allowing people to call him “Mahatma” (a revered person or sage).

Though the two never reached an agreement, they remained cordial with each other and united in their common goal to overthrow British rule.

Saklatvala’s fiery speeches in India perturbed British officials and he was banned from traveling to his homeland in 1927. In 1929, he lost his seat in parliament, but he continued to fight for India’s independence.

Saklatvala remained an important figure in British politics and the Indian nationalist movement until his death in 1936. He was cremated and his ashes were buried next to those of his parents and Jamsetji Tata in a cemetery in London – uniting him once again with the Tata clan and their legacy.

The sniffer dogs at Chisinau Airport have been working extra hard in recent months, searching for money that might be evidence of Russian meddling in Moldovan politics.

Ami, a black retriever, gives every suitcase that rolls in on the baggage claim belts a good sniff on all sides. If she detects cash, she will freeze. Back in May she was doing that a lot.

That is when customs officers began finding large amounts of money on passengers arriving via connecting flights from Moscow. People who had never left Moldova before were returning from a few days in Russia with wads of notes.

“Almost everyone had money: 2,000, 3,000, 7,000 euros”, the head of customs at Chisinau Airport, Ruslan Alexandrov, remembers. The amounts themselves were not illegal but the patterns were suspicious.

“There were certain flights: Moscow-Istanbul-Chisinau, Moscow-Yerevan-Chisinau,” the customs chief explains. “Normally people don’t come in with that much money. Not from Moscow.”

So police and prosecutors began seizing the cash. In one day alone they say they scooped $1.5m (£1.2m). No-one ever asked for their money back.

The authorities believe the cash mules were part of a major and ongoing operation to buy political influence run by a fugitive Moldovan oligarch named Ilan Shor. Convicted of major fraud in Chisinau, he is now resident in Russia which will not extradite him.

Ahead of two key votes this weekend, the capital’s airport is on alert. Flights from all “high risk” routes are met by sniffer dogs and at least half the passengers are pulled over for extra baggage scans.

On Sunday, President Maia Sandu is running for re-election on a staunchly pro-EU platform, challenged by 10 other candidates. Many are openly sympathetic to Moscow; some see Moldova as a “bridge”.

Voters will also get to cast their ballot in a referendum on whether to enshrine Moldova’s goal of EU accession in the constitution. In fact, membership talks have already begun but the country has been in a battle over its political direction for decades, ever since Moldova gained independence from Moscow as the Soviet Union fell apart.

That East-West tug has intensified since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. President Sandu – a former World Bank economist first elected on a promise to clean up corruption – then steered Moldova much more sharply towards the West. She began to openly identify Vladimir Putin’s Russia as a major security threat.

The Kremlin denies playing any role in Chisinau politics, but officials here accuse Russia of operating via proxies to disrupt and destabilise the country.

“I’m not aware of anywhere else where we’ve seen such a brazen and open attempt to corrupt an election,” Moldova’s chief anti-corruption prosecutor, Veronica Dragalin told me this week, in her office in Chisinau.

Born in Moldova, she spent most of her life in the US – most recently as a prosecutor in Los Angeles – before returning to the country and a job in a small office on the fifth floor of a Soviet-era block with a broken lift.

What her team say they have uncovered, working with police, is a pyramid payments scheme openly run from Russia by Ilan Shor and his group.

“We’re talking about a foreign country sending money in an attempt to influence the election,” Ms Dragalin spells it out. She details evidence gained through wiretaps, police infiltrators and witnesses – some of which her office has made public.

“At the start they tried to make it look legitimate. Now it’s almost like they’re flagrantly flaunting all the laws… [and] openly influencing the decision to vote,” the prosecutor says.

“The primary goal is to have the referendum fail.”

According to her team, once the cash couriers were detected at the airport and that route made more difficult, payments began to be channelled via a sanctioned Russian bank, PSB.

By early October as many as 130,000 voters had received payment through this scheme – about 10% of the active electorate, according to Viorel Cernauteanu, the chief of police.

“In September alone, $15m (£12m) was transferred,” he told me, explaining how they could trace funds and recipients because they gave personal data to open a bank account.

Offering money or goods in return for votes is a crime with a possible five-year jail sentence. Last month, a new law made it an administrative offence to accept money, too.

But in one of Europe’s poorest countries it is not hard to find willing recipients of cash.

Moldovan investigators admit they cannot identify the source of funds paid into PSB bank – whether it is Russian state money, private capital or the cash Ilan Shor was convicted of stealing in Moldova.

But he himself is very open about his actions and aims.

In a typical recent post on TikTok, Shor called for a “firm NO” to the EU. He then urged followers to choose “the president I decide on, as someone I can work with”.

In return he promised monthly top-up payments of 5,000 Moldovan lei to pensioners, or about £200.

Shor fled Moldova in 2019 and was later sentenced in absentia for money laundering and embezzlement. Last year, his party was banned and he is also under Western sanctions, accused of “malign influence campaigns” for Russia.

Media companies linked to him, Telegram channels and various political groupings have all been blocked. But his message – anti-EU, sympathetic to Moscow – still seeps through.

Some remain receptive to that, as well as the cash.

Ilya Uzun is one big fan.

The deputy governor of Gagauzia, a small autonomous region of southern Moldova, also happens to respect Russian President Vladimir Putin. He tells me that is because he likes strong leaders who he thinks “put their country first”.

Russia’s war on neighbouring Ukraine changed nothing on that score.

He admires former US President Donald Trump for the same reason, whilst his scorn for the EU – which recently placed him under sanctions for “destabilising activities” – mainly focusses on LGBT rights, which he opposes virulently.

Later, when I ask passers-by in the regional capital Comrat about the EU referendum, several reply that they’ll vote “no” in order to keep “gay parades” from their town.

Pro-Russian views and Kremlin-led narratives have always been strong in Gagauzia where many still watch Russian state TV channels, despite a national ban.

Lately, Shor has been investing heavily here. The deputy governor repeatedly refers to him as “our political leader” and shrugs off the criminal conviction as if it were political.

“Try and say a bad word here about Ilan Shor and people will spit at you!”, Uzun declares as we drive down Lenin Street past a statue of the Russian revolutionary, a little grubby but still intact.

Many shop signs, those not in the local Gagauz language, are in Russian.

I hear how Shor pays top-up pensions to 30,000 people in the region as well as re-tarmacking some 50 km (31 miles) of roads between remote villages, which we see.

“All he does is for the people,” Uzun enthuses.

The anti-corruption prosecutor later clarifies that using donations for social spending is not a crime. But channelling Shor’s funds to political parties is an offence – and Uzun’s boss, regional governor Evghenia Gutul, has been charged with that.

After a while we roll up to a children’s fairground.

“Look at Gagauziyaland, it’s beautiful!” Uzun beams, leading the way beneath a giant rainbow into a deserted but brand-new park.

The wind is bitterly cold and the mini dragon roller-coaster and merry-go-round we are looking at both stand empty and still. But Uzun insists people in Gagauzia will vote “how Shor tells them” – not for money, but because they trust him.

“All the talk, that he’s an arm of the Kremlin, destabilising Moldova: that’s absolutely not true. This is the truth: what you see here,” he waves towards the frozen fairground.

On Friday, Moldova’s election campaign reached its climax.

Maia Sandu was met for her own final rally in the small town of Telenesti, where women in traditional dress sang and supporters clapped as she passed.

She has not taken part in election debates and did not want to speak to the BBC. But addressing a couple of hundred people through a microphone, Sandu urged Moldovans to vote for her and for the EU as the best path to peace.

“This has been a very difficult campaign with a lot of lies and dirty money,” she told them, asking voters to “put our country out of harm’s way” and prevent her opponents “derailing Moldova from its European path.”

That path has been a bumpy one for many years, with multiple diversions. Still, Moldova had already made its choice and opened accession talks with the EU.

Now a referendum that Sandu initiated in an attempt to reinforce that goal and bolster her own support has turned into a risky political move.

It looks like the presidential ballot is not the only vote she has to worry about come Sunday.

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”.

• The ever-shifting alliances that fuelled Kenya’s impeachment drama
• Lupita Nyong’o speaks of family ordeal and condemns ‘chilling’ Kenya crackdown
• Toiling on a Kenyan flower farm to send fresh roses to Europe
• A quick guide to Kenya

Zayn Malik has postponed the US leg of his upcoming tour after the “heartbreaking loss” of his former One Direction bandmate Liam Payne.

Payne died, aged 31, after falling from the third floor of hotel balcony in Argentina on Wednesday.

Malik was about to start the US leg of his tour next week – starting with a show in San Francisco on Wednesday.

However, the singer told fans he was postponing the shows – saying: “Given the heartbreaking loss experienced this week, I’ve made the decision to postpone the US leg of the Stairway to the Sky Tour.”

The US part of Malik’s tour was due to also visit Las Vegas, Los Angeles, and Washington DC, ending in New York on 3 November.

He has told fans on X the dates would be rescheduled for January and the tickets will remain valid for the new dates.

“Love you all and thank you for your understanding,” he added.

The 31-year-old did not mention the 11 dates of the UK leg of his tour, which are expected to run from 20 November to 4 December.

On Thursday, Malik paid tribute to Payne, saying he would “cherish all the memories I have with you in my heart forever”.

“I lost a brother when you left us and can’t explain to you what I’d give to just give you a hug one last time and say goodbye to you properly and tell you that I loved and respected you dearly,” he said.

Payne and Malik rose to global fame as part of the boyband One Direction – created on The X Factor TV show in 2010 – and sang together with bandmates Harry Styles, Louis Tomlinson, and Niall Horan.

Malik left the group in 2015 to embark on a solo singing career, and the band later split in 2016.

The cancellation of Malik’s US shows comes as, Payne’s sister, Ruth Gibbins, earlier on Saturday described her brother as her “best friend” in an emotional Instagram post, in which she said the family would “take care” of his son, Bear.

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

“I’d drive to the end of the universe to bring you back.”

Meanwhile in Argentina, Payne’s father, Geoff Payne, on Friday viewed tributes for his son outside the Casa Sur hotel in Buenos Aires.

He 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.

Geoff Payne also visited the morgue in Buenos Aires to officially identify his son. A federal prosecutor previously told the BBC that his body had been “released”, meaning no further tests were being carried out and identification could take place.

In an Instagram post on Friday, Girls Aloud singer Cheryl, who was in a relationship with Payne from 2016 to 2018 and shared a son called Bear him, said she was troubled he could access “abhorrent reports and media exploitation” and she could not protect him from it in the future.

“Liam was not only a pop star and celebrity, he was a son, a brother, an uncle, a dear friend and a father to our 7 year old son,” she said. “A son that now has to face the reality of never seeing his father again.”

“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.”

Since Payne’s death, fans in the UK have been gathering at vigils.

On Saturday afternoon fans gathered in Liverpool in memory Payne, lighting candles and placing flowers at the city’s waterfront. A vigil also took place in his home city of Wolverhampton on Friday.

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.”

The lawyer for a prominent Mozambique opposition figure has been shot dead in the capital, Maputo, along with an official from the same party.

Elvino Dias was the attorney for Venâncio Mondlane, who ran for president of Mozambique representing political party Podemos in an election 10 days ago.

Dias died with fellow Podemos official Paulo Guambe when gunmen attacked their car.

“They were brutally assassinated [in a] cold-blooded murder,” said local rights group the Center for Democracy and Human Rights (CDD).

“The indications [are] that around 10 to 15 bullets were shot, and they died instantly,” said the group’s director, Adriano Nuvunga.

Another organisation, the Mais Integridade election watchdog, said the killings were designed to intimidate anyone demanding transparency in the polls.

One of the victims, Dias, died instantly, but witnesses say the other, Guambe, succumbed to his injuries hours later, and allege that police blocked his evacuation by an ambulance that had arrived at the scene to assist them.

Witnesses also allege that the police engaged in censorship and intimidation, preventing them from recording the violent scene, confiscating and damaging several phones.

The police have denied any wrongdoing, and say they will take all necessary measures to prevent any acts of vandalism, violence, or public disorder in coming days.

“Naturally, we condemn the heinous crime and assure that we are taking all measures to clarify the case,” police spokesman Lionel Muchina said on Saturday.

Tributes have been paid to Dias, described by the Carta de Moçambique news site as a “shrewd lawyer, intrepid, with the tough fibre of a fighter”.

“Elvino was a good, peaceful man,” said Zenaido Machado, of Human Rights Watch.

“Last year, during local elections, he led several elections court cases against the election commission, and he won. This year, he was preparing to do it again.”

Election votes are still being counted in Mozambique. Mondlane says he has won, and disputes claims by the establishment Frelimo party that they are in the lead. He has called for a nationwide strike on Monday.

The European Union, whose observer mission is in Mozambique monitoring the electoral process, called the killings an outrageous crime and urged the government to conduct an independent investigation.

The European bloc said these events followed “worrying reports about violent dispersion of supporters in the aftermath of last week’s election”.

Western observers have cast doubt on the credibility of the election.

Vote-buying, inflated voter rolls in Frelimo strongholds, and voter intimidation have been reported by the US-based International Republican Institute, which sent a multinational election observer mission to Mozambique.

Mozambique has only ever been governed by one party – Frelimo – which has ruled the southern African nation for half a century since independence from Portugal.

The country is guaranteed a new president because President Filipe Nyusi is stepping down after serving the two-term limit.

His successor, the leader of Frelimo, is 47-year-old Daniel Chapo.

His rivals in this election are Mondlane of Podemos, Ossufo Momade, the former rebel commander-turned-leader of the main opposition party Renamo, and Lutero Simango from the Mozambique Democratic Movement.

A civil war between the Frelimo government, with support from Cuba and the USSR, and the anti-communist Mozambican National Resistance (Renamo) rebels took place from 1977 to 1992.

The conflict resulted in more than a million people dying in the fighting and in subsequent famines.

Renamo remains Mozambique’s largest opposition party, and was the springboard for Mondlane’s political career before he defected to the newly formed Podemos earlier this year.

Mozambique is rich in natural resources including rubies and gas, but is also struggling with an Islamist insurgency in the northern province of Cabo Delgado, where soldiers from dozens of countries have been deployed to help.

• Fresh faces in Mozambique’s poll as independence-era leaders bow out
• The poet who caught the eye of Mozambique’s freedom fighters
• Mozambique ex-minister guilty of one of Africa’s biggest scandals
• ‘I survived the ferry disaster – but lost 17 of my family’

At least seven people have died after part of a ferry dock collapsed in Georgia’s Sapelo Island on Saturday, local authorities say.

Georgia’s department of natural resources, which operates the dock, said at least 20 people plunged into the water when the gangway collapsed.

Multiple people have been taken to hospital and search and rescue operations are under way.

US President Joe Biden said he and his wife Jill mourn the lives lost and “pray for the injured and anyone still missing”.

The incident happened at approximately 16:30 local time (20:30 GMT) at the Marsh Landing Dock as crowds gathered for a cultural celebration.

It is not yet known what caused the collapse of the walkway, which connected an outer dock where people board the ferry to another dock onshore, according to local reports.

Brian Kemp, the governor of Georgia, said he and his family were “heartbroken” by the tragedy and asked for prayers “for those lost, for those still in harm’s way, and for their families”.

The governor has sent “state resources to aid in search, rescue, & recovery”, Georgia representative Buddy Carter said in a post on X.

Local authorities said the gangway has been secured and the incident is under investigation.

Biden said his team “stand ready to provide any and all assistance that would be helpful to the community”.

The annual event happening at the time of the collapse celebrates the island’s community of Hogg Hummock, which is home to a few dozen Black residents.

Hogg Hummock was founded by newly-freed former slaves from plantations in coastal Georgia who settled on Sapelo Island following the US Civil War, the Georgia Trust for Historic Preservation said on its website.

Saturday’s event “should have been a joyous celebration of Gullah-Geechee culture and history instead turned into tragedy and devastation”, President Biden said in his statement.

Small communities descended from enslaved island populations in the South, known as Gullah, or Geechee in Georgia, are scattered along the coast from North Carolina to Florida.

Sapelo Island is reachable from the mainland by boat.

Two Hamas officials told the BBC discussions to choose a successor for the group’s leader Yahya Sinwar, whose killing was confirmed on Thursday, will begin very soon.

The officials said that Khalil al-Hayya, Sinwar’s deputy and the group’s most senior official outside Gaza, is considered a strong candidate.

Al-Hayya, who is based in Qatar, currently leads the Hamas delegation in ceasefire talks between the group and Israel, and possesses a deep knowledge, connection and understanding of the situation in Gaza.

Hamas leaders will convene once again to select a successor for Sinwar, who was Israel’s most wanted man, just two months after the killing of former leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran.

A senior Hamas official had described Sinwar as the architect of the 7 October attacks, emphasising that his appointment was intended as a bold message of defiance against Israel.

Since July, ceasefire negotiations have stalled, and many believe that Sinwar’s leadership was a significant obstacle to any ceasefire deal.

Despite the killing of Sinwar, a senior Hamas official reiterated to the BBC that the movement’s conditions for accepting a ceasefire and the release of Israeli hostages have not changed.

Hamas continues to demand a complete Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, an end to hostilities, the transfer of humanitarian aid, and the reconstruction of the war-torn territory – conditions that Israel has categorically rejected, insisting that Hamas must surrender.

When questioned about Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s call for Hamas to give up its weapons and surrender, officials from the movement responded: “It is impossible for us to surrender.

“We are fighting for the freedom of our people, and we will not accept surrender. We will fight until the last bullet and the last soldier, just as Sinwar did.”

The assassination of Sinwar was one of the most significant losses for the organisation in decades. However, despite the challenges of replacing him, Hamas has a history of enduring leadership losses since the 1990s.

While Israel has succeeded in killing most of Hamas’s leaders and founders, the movement has proven resilient in its capacity to find new ones.

Amidst this crisis, questions linger regarding the fate of Israeli hostages held in Gaza and who will be responsible for their safety and protection.

In this context, Mohammed Sinwar, Yahya Sinwar’s brother, has emerged as a pivotal figure. He is believed to be leading the remaining armed groups of Hamas and may play a crucial role in shaping the future of the movement in Gaza.

As Hamas navigates this critical moment, the war in Gaza goes on.

Dozens of people were killed in Jabalia refugee camp in north Gaza on Saturday as Israeli troops intensified attacks against what Israel says are Hamas attempts to regroup.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said he is undeterred from his war aims following a reported drone attack on his private residence, warning that “anyone who tries to harm Israel’s citizens will pay a heavy price”.

“The attempt by Iran’s proxy Hezbollah to assassinate me and my wife today was a grave mistake,” he wrote in a post on X.

His office earlier said a drone was “launched towards” his residence in the northern coastal town of Caesarea on Saturday morning.

Mr Netanyahu and his wife were not at home at the time, and no one was injured.

Iran says Hezbollah was behind the reported attack, Iranian state news agency IRNA reported.

Iran’s mission to the UN was quoted as saying: “The action in question has been carried out by Hezbollah in Lebanon”.

Hezbollah – which is funded and equipped by Iran – has not commented on the reports.

The reported attack comes as Israel prepares to respond to Iran’s massive ballistic missile attack on 1 October – with Israel’s defence minister saying its response would be “deadly, precise and surprising”.

• Bowen: Sinwar’s death is serious blow to Hamas, but not the end of the war

The Israeli military said three drones were launched from Lebanon, with one hitting a building in Caesarea.

They did not confirm whether the building was part of the prime minister’s residence, nor the extent of any damage.

US outlet Axios reported that the drone did hit the residence, and was fired by Hezbollah.

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.”

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

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

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

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

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

• Follow live updates on this story
• Who was Yahya Sinwar?
• Explainer: How Israel killed Hamas leader Sinwar in a chance encounter
• Watch: Netanyahu says focus on hostages after Sinwar death
• Explainer: What has happened to Hamas’ most prominent leaders?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“We will not give up until everyone returns.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Water from a polluted river in Ghana was so thick and discoloured that an artist was able to use it as paint to depict the environmental devastation caused by the illegal gold mining that has spread like wildfire in the resource-rich West African state.

Mercury is increasingly being used to extract gold by miners digging on a massive scale in forests and farms, degrading land and polluting rivers to such an extent that the charity WaterAid has called it “ecocide”.

“I could actually paint with the water. It was so bad,” Israel Derrick Apeti, better known as Enil Art, told the BBC.

He and his friend Jay Sterling visited the Pra River – around 200km (125 miles) west of the capital, Accra – to make a point about the environmental catastrophe unfolding because of “galamsey”.

This is the term used by locals to describe the illegal mining taking place at thousands of sites around the country – including the forested regions famous for their cocoa farms, as well as their vast gold deposits.

The West African state is the world’s sixth-biggest gold exporter, and the second-biggest cocoa exporter.

Demonstrators recently took to the streets of Accra to demand that the government take action to end the illegal mining. The police responded by detaining dozens of protesters accused of holding an illegal gathering. They were later released as anger grew over the arrests.

The hashtags #stopgalamseynow and #freethecitizens were used to galvanise young people across Ghana and the diaspora, particularly in Canada and the UK, to voice their concerns.

Apeti told the BBC that he had decided to contribute to the campaign through art.

“What is art for?” he said, adding: “On our way to the river, I just thought I could perhaps paint with the polluted water. It just came to me like that. So, we got there, I tried it and it worked out.”

Communities along the river – one of the biggest in Ghana – lamented to Apeti that the water was “once so clean that you could see the fish and crocodiles that lived in it”, but it had been transformed “into a yellowish-brown body of water”.

Ghana’s music stars have also thrown their weight behind the campaign.

Black Sherif – who hails from Konongo town in the Ashanti region, which has been badly affected by the illegal mining – stopped his set at The Tidal Rave Concert in Accra earlier this month to show a video of the devastation.

Truth Ofori, who was part of Black Sherif’s set, then sang a patriotic song called “This is our home”, while Stonebowy used his set to perform “Greedy Men”, which targeted those behind galamsey.

The devastation has been caused by the fact that the nature of illegal mining has changed – previously, young unemployed men dug with picks and shovels, or their bare hands, to search for gold.

They also relied on panning – the washing of sediment through a sieve so the gold settles at the bottom.

But Chinese businessmen – who first moved to Ghana around 18 years ago – have made it a more sophisticated industry.

They are accused of ignoring environmental concerns and taking to heart an age-old saying: “There is no land in Ghana which doesn’t have gold, even in the top soil. Ghana is gold.”

Indeed, during colonial times the country was known as the Gold Coast.

Some local businessmen and politicians are widely suspected to have joined them in what has been dubbed “the mad gold rush”, buying out cocoa farms and turning them into illegal mining sites.

They have also been accused of using intimidation if a farmer refuses to sell by digging up footpaths, and forcing them to eventually give up the land.

An estimated 4,726 hectares of land – more than the size of European cities like Athens and Brussels – have been destroyed in seven of the country’s 16 regions, and 34 of its 288 forest reserves, Ghana Forestry Commission head John Allotey was quoted as saying in August.

Agricultural development consultant Dr John Manful told the BBC that “precious, valuable land” in the forest belt had been destroyed by the gold-seekers.

“Illegal small-scale mining has been taking place for decades in Ghana. However, in recent years, it has been getting out of control, having catastrophic effects,” he said.

The mining has led to the felling of trees, and the clearing of vast areas of forest vegetation. Excavators are then used to dig out the top soil and subsoil.

The soil is then deposited at gold-washing plants stationed in rivers, and water is pumped to wash the soil and crushed stones.

During the washing process, various chemicals, including mercury and cyanide, are used to help extract the gold from the soil, polluting big and small rivers.

Highlighting the dangers of this, Dr George Manful, a former senior official in Ghana’s Environmental Protection Agency, said: “Mercury can remain in water for up to 1,000 years. The water in these rivers is so turbid that it is undrinkable.”

In an interview with local broadcaster Joy FM, he also pointed out that mercury could affect the entire food chain, as it accumulates in fish and can enter crops irrigated with the water.

“We are slowly poisoning ourselves,” Dr Manful added.

For its part, WaterAid urged the government to take “immediate action to end the ecocide”, while the state water utility warned that Ghana risked becoming an importer of water by 2030 if the illegal mining was not curbed.

In September, the government said that 76 people, including 18 foreign nationals, had been convicted of illegal mining since August 2021, and more than 850 others were being prosecuted.

The illegal mining has also affected cocoa production, with the Ghana Cocoa Board saying in 2021 that more than 19,000 hectares of farmland had been destroyed in key cocoa-growing areas like the Western and Ashanti regions.

Repeating the board’s concerns earlier this week, its chief executive Joseph Boahen Aidoo said the production of cocoa – the key ingredient of chocolate – had fallen.

“Yes, it has [taken] a toll on the industry,” he was quoted as saying by Ghana’s Chronicle news site.

The illegal mining has also affected other crops, with a rice farmer in the Ahafo region telling the BBC that she could no longer use her nearby river for irrigation purposes.

“I have to set up a whole plant that involves digging deep to find water, which is very expensive,” she said.

The farmer, who asked not to be identified, said she feared that the crisis would continue if the powerful individuals behind the illegal mining were not arrested and prosecuted.

“When I see arrests by the military in poor communities, it’s just a symbolic gesture of appearing to maintain law and order. The people making big money out of it are in offices, not on the field,” she said.

The government did not respond to a BBC request for comment.

The gold rush has also been fuelled by the fact that the global price of the precious metal has risen to new heights, and is expected to continue doing so.

Ghana’s illegal syndicates are, therefore, boosting production.

The gold is smuggled out – possibly to countries like the United Arab Emirates, China and India – to be refined, mixed with legal gold, and sold on international markets, BBC business reporter Jewel Kiriungi told a World Service podcast that explored the topic.

The illegal industry has also boomed because Ghana, despite being resource-rich, is facing its most severe economic crisis in a generation, with unemployment worsening and the cost of living escalating.

As a result, many poor or jobless people – especially in rural areas – have either been employed by the illegal syndicates, or have simply taken up gold mining on their own, earning up to 2,000 cedis ($125; £96) a week – the average monthly salary of a teacher.

Apeti, the artist, said that when he visited the Pra River, he was told by locals that officials regularly carry out raids, destroying the equipment of miners.

“But that wouldn’t be enough to deter them from their quest for gold, as they would return at night to start mining all over again,” he said.

As protests took place in Accra to highlight the devastation, Ghana’s President Nana Akufo-Addo responded last week by ordering the deployment of naval boats “to ensure the immediate cessation of all mining activities, legal or illegal, in and around these water bodies”.

But some senior officials in the ruling National Peoples Party (NPP) said they did not expect a major crackdown, as many of their supporters in mining districts were involved in galamsey – and the party could not risk losing their votes in the December general election.

The popularity of galamsey was borne out by a survey conducted by WaterAid in communities involved in illegal mining in Ghana’s Upper East Region, particularly the Bongo and Bawku West districts.

More than 75% of those surveyed saw the practice as a lucrative source of income despite 97% of them acknowledging it harmed the environment and water sources.

“Alarmingly, 79% reported health issues, such as chest pains, directly linked to their work in illegal mining,” WaterAid added.

When President Akufo-Addo first took office in 2017, he acknowledged that some security personnel, businessmen and politicians were involved in galamsey.

He vowed “not just to stop it, to reclaim the land, to let our rivers work again”, but also to help “all the abled-bodied young men involved in this activity to find an alternative livelihood”.

With Akufo-Addo due to step down at the end of his two terms, his critics say that he failed to fulfil his promise and the problem rather got worse during his tenure, jeopardising – as he put it in 2017 – “the very survival of our nation”.

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• Ghana’s LGBT terror: ‘We live in fear of snitches’

“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.”

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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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The name Shapurji Saklatvala may not be one that leaps out of the history books to most people. But as with any good tale from the past, the son of cotton merchant – who is a member of India’s supremely wealthy Tata clan – has quite a story.

At every turn, it seems that his life was one of constant struggle, defiance and persistence. He shared neither the surname of his affluent cousins, nor their destiny.

Unlike them, he would not go on to run the Tata Group, which is currently one of the world’s biggest business empires and owns iconic British brands like Jaguar Land Rover and Tetley Tea.

He instead became an outspoken and influential politician who lobbied for India’s freedom in the heart of its coloniser’s empire – the British Parliament – and even clashed with Mahatma Gandhi.

But how did Saklatvala, born into a family of businessmen, pursue a path so different from his kin? And how did he blaze a trail to become one Britain’s first Asian MPs? The answer is as complex as Saklatvala’s relationship with the his own family.

Saklatvala was the son of Dorabji, a cotton merchant, and Jerbai, the youngest daughter of Jamsetji Nusserwanji Tata, who founded the Tata Group. When Saklatvala was 14 years old, his family moved into Esplanade House in Bombay to live with Jerbai’s brother (whose name was also Jamsetji) and his family.

Saklatvala’s parents separated when he was young and so, the younger Jamsetji became the main paternal figure in his life.

“Jamsetji always had been especially fond of Shapurji and saw in him from a very early age the possibilities of great potential; he gave him a lot of attention and had great faith in his abilities, both as a boy and as a man,” Saklatvala’s daughter, Sehri, writes in The Fifth Commandment, a biography of her father.

But Jamsetji’s fondness of Saklatvala made his elder son, Dorab, resent his younger cousin.

“As boys and as men, they were always antagonistic towards each other; the breach was never healed,” Sehri writes.

It would eventually lead to Dorab curtailing Saklatvala’s role in the family businesses, motivating him to pursue a different path.

But apart from family dynamics, Saklatvala was also deeply influenced by the devastation caused by the bubonic plague in Bombay in the late 1890s. He saw how the epidemic disproportionately impacted the poor and working classes, while those in the upper echelons of society, including his family, remained relatively unscathed.

During this time, Saklatvala, who was a college student, worked closely with Waldemar Haffkine, a Russian scientist who had to flee his country because of his revolutionist, anti-tsarist politics. Haffkine developed a vaccine to combat the plague and Saklatvala went door-to-door, convincing people to inoculate themselves.

• Waldemar Haffkine: The vaccine pioneer the world forgot

“Their outlooks had much in common; and no doubt this close association between the idealist older scientist and the young, compassionate student, must have helped to form and to crystallise the convictions of Shapurji,” Sehri writes in the book.

Another important influence was his relationship with Sally Marsh, a waitress he would marry in 1907. Marsh was the fourth of 12 children, who lost their father before becoming adults. Life was tough in the Marsh household as everybody had to work hard to make ends meet.

But the well-heeled Saklatvala was drawn towards Marsh and during their courtship, he was exposed to the hardships of Britain’s working class through her life. Sehri writes that her father was also influenced by the selfless lives of the Jesuit priests and nuns under whom he studied during his school and college years.

So, after Saklatvala travelled to the UK in 1905, he immersed himself in politics with an aim to help the poor and the marginalised. He joined the Labour Party in 1909 and 12 years later, the Communist Party. He cared deeply about the rights of the working class, in India and in Britain, and believed that only socialism – and not any imperialist regime – could eradicate poverty and give people a say in governance.

Saklatvala’s speeches were well received and he soon became a popular face. In 1922, he was elected to parliament and would serve as an MP for close to seven years. During this time, he advocated ferociously for India’s freedom. So staunch were his views that a British-Indian MP from the Conservative Party regarded him as a dangerous “radical communist”.

During his time as an MP, he also made trips to India, where he held speeches to urge the working class and young nationalists to assert themselves and pledge their support for the freedom movement. He also helped organise and build the Communist Party of India in the areas he visited.

His strident views on communism often clashed with Mahatma Gandhi’s non-violent approach to defeat their common adversary.

“Dear Comrade Gandhi, we are both erratic enough to permit each other to be rude in order to freely express oneself correctly,” he wrote in one of his letters to Gandhi, and proceeded to mince no words about his discomfort with Gandhi’s non-co-operation movement and him allowing people to call him “Mahatma” (a revered person or sage).

Though the two never reached an agreement, they remained cordial with each other and united in their common goal to overthrow British rule.

Saklatvala’s fiery speeches in India perturbed British officials and he was banned from traveling to his homeland in 1927. In 1929, he lost his seat in parliament, but he continued to fight for India’s independence.

Saklatvala remained an important figure in British politics and the Indian nationalist movement until his death in 1936. He was cremated and his ashes were buried next to those of his parents and Jamsetji Tata in a cemetery in London – uniting him once again with the Tata clan and their legacy.

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?

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• 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.

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, after an Israeli strike.

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.

Hamas denies operating in hospitals.

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 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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• Lupita Nyong’o speaks of family ordeal and condemns ‘chilling’ Kenya crackdown
• Toiling on a Kenyan flower farm to send fresh roses to Europe
• A quick guide to Kenya

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.

On a Sunday morning in September, the air inside the historic Mt Lebanon AME Zion Church was filled with the sounds of gospel music, prayer – and politics.

“This is a… very, very important, very, very dangerous opportunity,” Reverend Javan Leach said.

“The reason why I say dangerous: because if we don’t participate with our voice, and our body, that’s just like casting a vote for the other side.”

“Amen,” the congregation shouted.

Located in Pasquotank County, where a third of the population is black, the church is in a rare Democratic stronghold on North Carolina’s north-east coast.

It was rural black voters, like those at Mt Lebanon church, who were credited with helping Barack Obama take the state in 2008, the only time a Democrat has won North Carolina since the 1970s. Donald Trump took the state in both 2016 and 2020.

But support for Democrats has been declining in Pasquotank, just as it has been in other rural areas across the country over the past few years. In 2020, Democrat Joe Biden won the county by just 62 votes – the party’s slimmest margin yet – barely bigger than Sunday’s congregation.

Trump beat Biden in the state by 1.3% in 2020, but polls now rate it as a “toss-up” between him and Kamala Harris, giving Democrats fresh hope in a state where losing has been the norm.

With margins razor-thin in not just North Carolina, but other battleground states like Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan, Harris’s campaign will have to excite Democratic voters from across all corners of the state – not just the blue urban areas, but the deep-red countryside, too.

To do that, they’ve opened offices in places where Democrats have usually not campaigned but where strategists see new potential. The goal is to churn out as many votes as possible in the least likely places – even if it means venturing deep into politically unfriendly territory.

Onslow County, located along a rural stretch of the state’s south-eastern coastline, is one of those places.

Last month, a few dozen Democrats were gathered there at a local bed-and-breakfast to eat pulled pork and talk party strategy.

“We don’t have to be afraid to be Democrats in rural communities,” Anderson Clayton, North Carolina’s Democratic Party chairwoman, told the small crowd.

“We should be proud of that and wear it on our chest this year when we go to vote.”

As she spoke, she pointed to picnic tables smothered in Democratic paraphernalia: blue tablecloths, blue balloons, and rolls of blue stickers that said “I’m voting with Democrats”. A life-size cutout of Kamala Harris stood nearby.

It was a defiant display in a place like Onslow.

While Trump’s 2020 victory in the state overall was a narrow one, in Onslow County he won by an immense margin of 30%.

“It is really scary to get out and knock doors. I get that,” Clayton said.

While she was speaking, a large truck roared by with a Trump flag waving above its rear.

Her optimism didn’t waver.

“There is a political realignment happening in rural communities across North Carolina,” Clayton continued, her voice elevating.

“Whether or not people choose to realise it, they’re going to see it.”

The party has made big investments in the state, including signing up 32,000 volunteers, hiring over 340 staff members, and opening up 28 offices, including in rural Republican-led counties like Onslow.

Republicans have begun to notice.

Earlier this month, Senator Thom Tillis told media outlet Semafor “what we’re seeing in North Carolina that we haven’t seen for a time, though, is a really well organised ground game by the Democrats”.

Although Harris has little chance of winning a majority of votes in these deep-red parts of the country, this election will be won on the margins. And so Democrats are betting that a few extra votes in unexpected areas may make the difference in an extremely close race.

Near the end of the campaign event in Onslow County, the energy of the crowd began to fizzle as the sun dipped beyond the trees.

A few lingered, including a 14-year-old who walked up to Clayton to introduce himself.

“After hearing you speak, I decided I’m going to go door knock on Saturday,” Gavin Rohwedder said.

Clayton smiled – one more volunteer today in Onslow than yesterday.

“It’s piece by piece,” she told the BBC. “All people need is somebody to show up.”

But the Democrats’ plans were upended when Hurricane Helene hit in late September.

The storm wreaked havoc in North Carolina, killing at least 95 people. Nearly 100 are still missing.

As residents begin the lengthy process of rebuilding, both parties must also reassess their ground game.

In Buncombe County, where the Democratic stronghold of Asheville is located, some people are still living without internet connection, mobile phone service or clean water, said the county’s party chair, Kathie Kline.

“The typical way to win elections is to knock on doors and to have face-to-face conversations with people,” she told the BBC. “Of course, we had to stop that.”

When North Carolina residents began early voting on Thursday, Kline said some people waited in line at polls to vote, while others queued at government-provided trailers to shower.

It’s a chaotic set of circumstances that Kline agreed could hurt Democrats’ chances in November: “I don’t like saying it out loud, but yes.”

Republicans are not going to cede North Carolina without a fight.

Strategists say the state looks like a must-win for Donald Trump to take back the presidency. In 2020, it was the only one of the seven battleground states he won.

“It’s very hard for us to win unless we’re able to get North Carolina,” said Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, during a campaign stop last month.

The state’s pivotal role in the election is felt by Republicans on the grassroots level, too.

Adele Walker, who owns an antique store in Selma, North Carolina, is a lifelong Republican, but this is her first year volunteering to canvass.

“This is such an important election,” Walker said, noting her opposition to abortion and fears about illegal immigration.

While out canvassing backroads on foot, Walker passed a woman sitting on her porch and stopped to speak to her.

“Hola,” said Walker, who identifies as Hispanic, continuing the conversation in Spanish.

The woman told Walker she was from Honduras and answered “no” when asked if any political groups had previously approached her.

Walker then reached into a cardboard box she’d been carrying under her arm and handed the woman one of roughly a dozen copies of the Constitution translated to Spanish.

She left the encounter in slight astonishment.

“That’s interesting,” Walker said. “Someone said that Democrats were walking through here just last week.

“Guess they missed her.”

At Mt Lebanon church, Reverend Leach is ensuring everyone understands the urgency of voting.

The church’s origins date back to the mid-1800s, its original congregation composed of African-American slaves. Since then, it has evolved into a hub for social and political activity.

Now, the reverend implored his congregation: “Someone say mission possible.”

Possible, he said, if they – black, rural voters – showed up to the polls.

“Some of you who don’t think your vote matters… We can’t let them take us back 40, 50, 60 years,” Reverend Leach said, echoing a line often used in Harris’s stump speech.

His warning struck a personal chord with William Overton, who was in the crowd. The 85-year-old told the BBC he was voting for Harris and that his number one concern was protecting abortion rights.

“The laws now are worse than they were in the 1950s,” Overton said.

Abortion is an intimate issue for him. His wife had a miscarriage in South Carolina in 1964, he said, and relied on medical care that is now sometimes illegal in that state.

Democrats’ investments into rural areas are felt here, Overton said, adding that he’s been receiving daily campaign calls and texts.

“The excitement is up compared to 2020,” he said.

Michael Sutton, another Democratic voter and member of the church, agreed.

“The way things look even here, in North Carolina, in this small town, everybody is energised,” Sutton said. “It feels like we have a good chance.”

But energy is one thing – votes are another.

Standing outside of Mt Lebanon church was 25-year-old Justin Herman.

He told the BBC he voted for Joe Biden in 2020, but feels undecided about this election.

“I don’t know much about Kamala,” Herman said. “Trump, sometimes the stuff he says isn’t ideal. I don’t feel like I can relate to either candidate.”

Then, Herman said something that strikes to the heart of the challenge that Democrats are facing not just in this state, but nationally.

“I don’t know if I’m going to vote at all.”

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.

The US agency in charge of regulating road safety revealed Friday that they are probing Tesla’s self-driving software systems.

The evaluation by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) covers 2.4 million Tesla vehicles across multiple models manufactured between 2016 and 2024.

NHTSA’s action is the first step toward any potential recall that the agency might seek against the company, which is run by tech billionaire Elon Musk.

Tesla did not immediately reply on Friday to a BBC inquiry about the investigation.

NHTSA’s preliminary evaluation follows four crash reports involving the use of Tesla’s “Full Self-Driving”, or FSD, software.

The agency said the crashes involved reduced roadway visibility, with fog or glares from the sun.

One of the incidents involved a Telsa fatally striking a pedestrian, and another involved someone being injured, NHTSA said.

The evaluation aims to determine if Tesla’s self-driving systems can detect and appropriately respond to reduced visibility conditions. It also will examine if other self-driving crashes have happened under similar conditions.

In its notice, the agency noted that despite the label, full self-driving is actually “a partial driving automation system”.

NHTSA’s announcement comes one week after Mr Musk’s glitzy rollout of the Cybercab at the Warner Bros. studio lot in Burbank, California.

At the event, Mr Musk said the fully autonomous robotaxi concept, which operates without pedals or a steering wheel, would be on the market by 2027.

But some analysts and investors were unimpressed.

The company’s stock is down 8% since the Cybercab rollout. Shares were mostly steady after the notice from NHTSA.

Unlike Waymo, the self-driving venture operated by Google-parent Alphabet, Tesla’s autonomous systems rely largely on cameras and artificial intelligence.

Mr Musk’s approach costs less than deploying high-tech sensors like Lidar and radar, which are critical to Waymo’s driverless car program.

Six-time Olympic cycling champion Sir Chris Hoy has announced that his cancer is terminal.

In an interview with the Sunday Times, he says doctors have told him he has between two and four years to live.

The 48-year-old Scot revealed earlier this year that he had been diagnosed with cancer.

Hoy told the newspaper he has known for a year that his cancer is terminal.

Hoy won six Olympic golds between 2004 and 2012 – the second highest total by any British Olympian behind Sir Jason Kenny’s tally of seven.

He retired from cycling in 2013 and in recent years has been a regular pundit and commentator as part of BBC Sport’s cycling coverage.

He had not previously disclosed the type of cancer.

But he told the Sunday Times that he had been diagnosed with primary cancer in his prostate, which had spread to his bones – meaning it was stage four.

Tumours were discovered to his shoulder, pelvis, hip, spine and rib.

Sir Chris told the newspaper: “As unnatural as it feels, this is nature.

“You know, we were all born and we all die, and this is just part of the process.

“You remind yourself, aren’t I lucky that there is medicine I can take that will fend this off for as long as possible.”

A displaced Palestinian from Gaza has told the BBC that the house the former Hamas leader was killed in was his home for 15 years before he had to flee in May.

Ashraf Abo Taha said he was “shocked” as he identified the partially destroyed building in Israeli drone footage of the incident as his home on Ibn Sena street in Rafah, southern Gaza.

Yahya Sinwar, the key figure behind the 7 October attacks on Israel, was killed by Israeli troops on Wednesday.

The Israeli military released drone footage that it said showed Sinwar in a partially destroyed house before he was killed.

Mr Abo Taha told BBC Arabic’s Gaza Lifeline that he had left his home in Rafah for Khan Younis on 6 May, when Israel ordered evacuations and began an operation against Hamas fighters, and had not received any news of his house until now.

Mr Abo Taha said his daughter first showed him the footage purportedly capturing Sinwar’s last moments on social media, saying it depicted their house in Rafah. He initially didn’t believe her, he said, until his brother confirmed the house was indeed his.

“I was like ‘yes this is my house’ and I saw the pictures and here I was shocked”, Mr Abo Taha said.

He said he had no idea why Sinwar was there or how he got there.

“Never ever did me and my brothers and sons have anything to do with this,” he said.

The BBC has verified that pictures and videos provided by Mr Abo Taha of his home match imagery of the house where Sinwar was killed.

BBC Verify compared and matched images of the home’s window archways, external decorations on doorways, shelves, and armchairs from the footage.

The BBC cannot independently verify that Mr Abo Taha owned the home.

• Who will lead Hamas after killing of Yahya Sinwar?

The footage of Sinwar’s killing was analysed by the BBC, and the house in which he was last seen was one of the few partially destroyed buildings in a neighbourhood with extensive damage.

The Israeli assault on Rafah in May was met with strong international criticism, and triggered the exodus of more than a million Palestinians, according to the UN.

Many had been forced to move for a second or third time, as they had been sheltering in and around Rafah after being displaced from other parts of Gaza.

Mr Abo Taha said he had built his home in Rafah himself with the help of his siblings. It had cost some 200,000 shekels (£41,400) and had been in good condition when he left, he said.

He described his home’s orange sofas and an orange casserole dish, remembering the last time he saw them as he fled his home.

“These are memories because some of these were brought by my mum and they are very precious to me,” he said.

“What happened has saddened me a lot, the house that I built and all my payments are gone,” he said. “Only God can compensate us.”

Israeli strikes have killed at least 73 people, including women and children, in the city of Beit Lahia in northern Gaza, the strip’s Hamas-run authorities say.

Dozens of others are injured and many are still trapped under the rubble after the bombing late on Saturday night, officials added.

Israel said it was checking reports of casualties but said the figures published by Hamas authorities were “exaggerated” and did not match information held by its military.

The latest strikes come just hours after reports of “heavy gunfire” from Israeli troops at the Indonesian Hospital in the city.

Rescue efforts in Beit Lahia are currently hampered due to communications and internet services being severed in the region, Gaza health officials said.

The Hamas-run government media office said the bombing hit “crowded” residential areas, and that 73 people had been killed – a number also reported by Gaza’s civil defence agency. The BBC cannot independently verify the figures.

According to Palestinian news agency Wafa, an entire residential complex was destroyed in the strikes.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) told the BBC it had struck a “Hamas terror target” and was “doing everything possible to avoid causing harm to civilians”.

It said the casualties given by the Hamas office were “exaggerated” and said such sources had “proven to be sorely unreliable in previous incidents.”

Israel began a renewed military offensive in northern Gaza in early October, saying it is trying to prevent Hamas from regrouping in the area.

In particular, Israeli forces have surrounded and bombarded the densely-populated Jabalia area, which includes an urban refugee camp – with at least 33 people reported killed in a strike late on Friday.

Humanitarian groups have warned that virtually no aid has entered the area in the past few weeks. Israel’s own statistics show that aid deliveries to Gaza as a whole have collapsed when compared with the same period in September.

The UN’s top humanitarian official, Joyce Msuya, said on Saturday that Palestinians in northern Gaza are enduring “unspeakable horrors” and called for these “atrocities” to stop.

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

“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 – referring to the IDF having warned people in the north to evacuate.

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

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.

Meanwhile, Israel carried out at least a dozen air strikes on Beirut on Saturday, in the heaviest attack the Lebanese capital has witnessed in more than a week.

Damage and casualties were still being assessed, but at least one multi-storey building in the city’s southern suburbs had been completely destroyed.

The Israeli military said it had targeted Hezbollah’s weapons storage facilities and its intelligence headquarters command centre in Dahieh.

Hezbollah also continued to fire rockets into northern Israel, with the Israeli military saying about 200 projectiles – which usually means rockets – were fired on Saturday.

One person was killed by shrapnel while in his car, Israel’s medical service Magen David Adom said.

Also on Saturday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said an attempt had been made on his life following reports of a drone attack on his private residence.

“The attempt by Iran’s proxy Hezbollah to assassinate me and my wife today was a grave mistake,” he wrote in a post on X.

Mr Netanyahu and his wife were not at home at the time, and no one was injured.

Iran says Hezbollah was behind the reported attack, Iranian state news agency IRNA reported. Hezbollah – which is funded and equipped by Iran – has not commented on the reports.

At least 42,519 people have been killed and tens of thousands injured in Gaza since the war began last October, the Hamas-run authorities say.

The war began after Hamas attacked Israel on 7 October 2023, leaving around 1,200 people dead and 251 taken to Gaza as hostages. Israel vowed to destroy Hamas in response.

Earlier this week, the killing of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar in Gaza raised some hopes in some quarters of an end to the conflict.

But the group’s deputy leader said Hamas would only be strengthened, and that Israeli hostages would not be returned until Israel withdrew from Gaza.

• ‘I was shocked’: Gaza man says Hamas Leader was killed in his house

Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, also said on Saturday that Sinwar’s death would 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.

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.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said he is undeterred from his war aims following a reported drone attack on his private residence, warning that “anyone who tries to harm Israel’s citizens will pay a heavy price”.

“The attempt by Iran’s proxy Hezbollah to assassinate me and my wife today was a grave mistake,” he wrote in a post on X.

His office earlier said a drone was “launched towards” his residence in the northern coastal town of Caesarea on Saturday morning.

Mr Netanyahu and his wife were not at home at the time, and no one was injured.

Iran says Hezbollah was behind the reported attack, Iranian state news agency IRNA reported.

Iran’s mission to the UN was quoted as saying: “The action in question has been carried out by Hezbollah in Lebanon”.

Hezbollah – which is funded and equipped by Iran – has not commented on the reports.

The reported attack comes as Israel prepares to respond to Iran’s massive ballistic missile attack on 1 October – with Israel’s defence minister saying its response would be “deadly, precise and surprising”.

• Bowen: Sinwar’s death is serious blow to Hamas, but not the end of the war

The Israeli military said three drones were launched from Lebanon, with one hitting a building in Caesarea.

They did not confirm whether the building was part of the prime minister’s residence, nor the extent of any damage.

US outlet Axios reported that the drone did hit the residence, and was fired by Hezbollah.

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.”

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

Donald Trump has said that if he returns to the White House China would not dare provoke him because President Xi Jinping knows the Republican is “crazy”.

Speaking to the Wall Street Journal’s editorial board, Trump said that if elected president next month, he would impose tariffs on China if it sought to blockade Taiwan.

“I would say: if you go into Taiwan, I’m sorry to do this, I’m going to tax you at 150% to 200%,” he said.

On the campaign trail, the Republican candidate has argued that America’s adversaries would not act against US interests under a new Trump presidency because they would fear a forceful, even unpredictable, response.

He told the Wall Street Journal’s editorial board he would not have to use military force to prevent a blockade of Taiwan, because President Xi “respects me and he knows I’m [expletive] crazy”.

“I had a very strong relationship with him,” Trump said of President Xi. “He was actually a really good, I don’t want to say friend – I don’t want to act foolish, ‘he was my friend’ – but I got along with him great.”

“He’s a very fierce person,” Trump added.

The former president also cast his relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin in a positive light, saying: “I got along with him great.”

But Trump – who has previously been criticised for praising the Russian leader – said he had threatened him not to invade Ukraine.

He told the Journal that he said to Putin: “’I’m going to hit you right in the middle of fricking Moscow.’ I said, ‘We’re friends. I don’t want to do it, but I have no choice.’ He goes, ‘No way.’ I said, ‘Way.’

“I said, ‘You’re going to be hit so hard, and I’m going to take those [expletive] domes right off your head.’ Because, you know, he lives under the domes.”

With his vows to wage trade wars and end US involvement in the Russia-Ukraine war, Trump has branded his foreign policy America First, though detractors say it is isolationist.

The Republican’s choice of JD Vance as his running mate alarmed Ukraine’s allies, as the Ohio senator staunchly opposes sending any more US aid to the country.

Trump, whose hardline immigration stance is central to his campaign, told the Wall Street Journal: “I want a lot of people to come in, but I want them to come in legally.”

Asked about his plan for mass deportations of illegal immigrants, he said: “I don’t want to go too much into clarification, because the nicer I become, the more people that come over illegally.”

Trump also defended the “zero tolerance” migrant family-separation policy that was used during his administration.

“I said, ‘We’re going to separate your family.’ It doesn’t sound nice, but when a family hears they’re going to be separated, you know what they do? They stay where they are, because we couldn’t handle it.

“But the interest from the heart, yeah, something’s going to be done. I mean, there’s some human questions that get in the way of being perfect, and we have to have the heart, too. OK?”

The Wall Street Journal also asked Trump about his remark on Fox News this week that the “radical left” in the US poses more of a threat than foreign actors.

“I think the bigger problem is the enemy from within,” Trump said in an interview with the network, referring to “sick people, radical left lunatics” who he said could cause trouble around the election.

Speaking to the Wall Street Journal, he cited President Joe Biden’s remark this month that he is not certain if the election will be peaceful. Biden was referring to Trump supporters like those who rioted at the Capitol in 2021.

“If you were to reach the presidency again, would you of course rule out using the military to move against your enemies?” Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan asked Trump.

“Of course I wouldn’t. But now, if you’re talking about you’re going to have riots on the street, you would certainly bring the National Guard in,” Trump said.

The name Shapurji Saklatvala may not be one that leaps out of the history books to most people. But as with any good tale from the past, the son of cotton merchant – who is a member of India’s supremely wealthy Tata clan – has quite a story.

At every turn, it seems that his life was one of constant struggle, defiance and persistence. He shared neither the surname of his affluent cousins, nor their destiny.

Unlike them, he would not go on to run the Tata Group, which is currently one of the world’s biggest business empires and owns iconic British brands like Jaguar Land Rover and Tetley Tea.

He instead became an outspoken and influential politician who lobbied for India’s freedom in the heart of its coloniser’s empire – the British Parliament – and even clashed with Mahatma Gandhi.

But how did Saklatvala, born into a family of businessmen, pursue a path so different from his kin? And how did he blaze a trail to become one Britain’s first Asian MPs? The answer is as complex as Saklatvala’s relationship with the his own family.

Saklatvala was the son of Dorabji, a cotton merchant, and Jerbai, the youngest daughter of Jamsetji Nusserwanji Tata, who founded the Tata Group. When Saklatvala was 14 years old, his family moved into Esplanade House in Bombay to live with Jerbai’s brother (whose name was also Jamsetji) and his family.

Saklatvala’s parents separated when he was young and so, the younger Jamsetji became the main paternal figure in his life.

“Jamsetji always had been especially fond of Shapurji and saw in him from a very early age the possibilities of great potential; he gave him a lot of attention and had great faith in his abilities, both as a boy and as a man,” Saklatvala’s daughter, Sehri, writes in The Fifth Commandment, a biography of her father.

But Jamsetji’s fondness of Saklatvala made his elder son, Dorab, resent his younger cousin.

“As boys and as men, they were always antagonistic towards each other; the breach was never healed,” Sehri writes.

It would eventually lead to Dorab curtailing Saklatvala’s role in the family businesses, motivating him to pursue a different path.

But apart from family dynamics, Saklatvala was also deeply influenced by the devastation caused by the bubonic plague in Bombay in the late 1890s. He saw how the epidemic disproportionately impacted the poor and working classes, while those in the upper echelons of society, including his family, remained relatively unscathed.

During this time, Saklatvala, who was a college student, worked closely with Waldemar Haffkine, a Russian scientist who had to flee his country because of his revolutionist, anti-tsarist politics. Haffkine developed a vaccine to combat the plague and Saklatvala went door-to-door, convincing people to inoculate themselves.

• Waldemar Haffkine: The vaccine pioneer the world forgot

“Their outlooks had much in common; and no doubt this close association between the idealist older scientist and the young, compassionate student, must have helped to form and to crystallise the convictions of Shapurji,” Sehri writes in the book.

Another important influence was his relationship with Sally Marsh, a waitress he would marry in 1907. Marsh was the fourth of 12 children, who lost their father before becoming adults. Life was tough in the Marsh household as everybody had to work hard to make ends meet.

But the well-heeled Saklatvala was drawn towards Marsh and during their courtship, he was exposed to the hardships of Britain’s working class through her life. Sehri writes that her father was also influenced by the selfless lives of the Jesuit priests and nuns under whom he studied during his school and college years.

So, after Saklatvala travelled to the UK in 1905, he immersed himself in politics with an aim to help the poor and the marginalised. He joined the Labour Party in 1909 and 12 years later, the Communist Party. He cared deeply about the rights of the working class, in India and in Britain, and believed that only socialism – and not any imperialist regime – could eradicate poverty and give people a say in governance.

Saklatvala’s speeches were well received and he soon became a popular face. In 1922, he was elected to parliament and would serve as an MP for close to seven years. During this time, he advocated ferociously for India’s freedom. So staunch were his views that a British-Indian MP from the Conservative Party regarded him as a dangerous “radical communist”.

During his time as an MP, he also made trips to India, where he held speeches to urge the working class and young nationalists to assert themselves and pledge their support for the freedom movement. He also helped organise and build the Communist Party of India in the areas he visited.

His strident views on communism often clashed with Mahatma Gandhi’s non-violent approach to defeat their common adversary.

“Dear Comrade Gandhi, we are both erratic enough to permit each other to be rude in order to freely express oneself correctly,” he wrote in one of his letters to Gandhi, and proceeded to mince no words about his discomfort with Gandhi’s non-co-operation movement and him allowing people to call him “Mahatma” (a revered person or sage).

Though the two never reached an agreement, they remained cordial with each other and united in their common goal to overthrow British rule.

Saklatvala’s fiery speeches in India perturbed British officials and he was banned from traveling to his homeland in 1927. In 1929, he lost his seat in parliament, but he continued to fight for India’s independence.

Saklatvala remained an important figure in British politics and the Indian nationalist movement until his death in 1936. He was cremated and his ashes were buried next to those of his parents and Jamsetji Tata in a cemetery in London – uniting him once again with the Tata clan and their legacy.

The sniffer dogs at Chisinau Airport have been working extra hard in recent months, searching for money that might be evidence of Russian meddling in Moldovan politics.

Ami, a black retriever, gives every suitcase that rolls in on the baggage claim belts a good sniff on all sides. If she detects cash, she will freeze. Back in May she was doing that a lot.

That is when customs officers began finding large amounts of money on passengers arriving via connecting flights from Moscow. People who had never left Moldova before were returning from a few days in Russia with wads of notes.

“Almost everyone had money: 2,000, 3,000, 7,000 euros”, the head of customs at Chisinau Airport, Ruslan Alexandrov, remembers. The amounts themselves were not illegal but the patterns were suspicious.

“There were certain flights: Moscow-Istanbul-Chisinau, Moscow-Yerevan-Chisinau,” the customs chief explains. “Normally people don’t come in with that much money. Not from Moscow.”

So police and prosecutors began seizing the cash. In one day alone they say they scooped $1.5m (£1.2m). No-one ever asked for their money back.

The authorities believe the cash mules were part of a major and ongoing operation to buy political influence run by a fugitive Moldovan oligarch named Ilan Shor. Convicted of major fraud in Chisinau, he is now resident in Russia which will not extradite him.

Ahead of two key votes this weekend, the capital’s airport is on alert. Flights from all “high risk” routes are met by sniffer dogs and at least half the passengers are pulled over for extra baggage scans.

On Sunday, President Maia Sandu is running for re-election on a staunchly pro-EU platform, challenged by 10 other candidates. Many are openly sympathetic to Moscow; some see Moldova as a “bridge”.

Voters will also get to cast their ballot in a referendum on whether to enshrine Moldova’s goal of EU accession in the constitution. In fact, membership talks have already begun but the country has been in a battle over its political direction for decades, ever since Moldova gained independence from Moscow as the Soviet Union fell apart.

That East-West tug has intensified since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. President Sandu – a former World Bank economist first elected on a promise to clean up corruption – then steered Moldova much more sharply towards the West. She began to openly identify Vladimir Putin’s Russia as a major security threat.

The Kremlin denies playing any role in Chisinau politics, but officials here accuse Russia of operating via proxies to disrupt and destabilise the country.

“I’m not aware of anywhere else where we’ve seen such a brazen and open attempt to corrupt an election,” Moldova’s chief anti-corruption prosecutor, Veronica Dragalin told me this week, in her office in Chisinau.

Born in Moldova, she spent most of her life in the US – most recently as a prosecutor in Los Angeles – before returning to the country and a job in a small office on the fifth floor of a Soviet-era block with a broken lift.

What her team say they have uncovered, working with police, is a pyramid payments scheme openly run from Russia by Ilan Shor and his group.

“We’re talking about a foreign country sending money in an attempt to influence the election,” Ms Dragalin spells it out. She details evidence gained through wiretaps, police infiltrators and witnesses – some of which her office has made public.

“At the start they tried to make it look legitimate. Now it’s almost like they’re flagrantly flaunting all the laws… [and] openly influencing the decision to vote,” the prosecutor says.

“The primary goal is to have the referendum fail.”

According to her team, once the cash couriers were detected at the airport and that route made more difficult, payments began to be channelled via a sanctioned Russian bank, PSB.

By early October as many as 130,000 voters had received payment through this scheme – about 10% of the active electorate, according to Viorel Cernauteanu, the chief of police.

“In September alone, $15m (£12m) was transferred,” he told me, explaining how they could trace funds and recipients because they gave personal data to open a bank account.

Offering money or goods in return for votes is a crime with a possible five-year jail sentence. Last month, a new law made it an administrative offence to accept money, too.

But in one of Europe’s poorest countries it is not hard to find willing recipients of cash.

Moldovan investigators admit they cannot identify the source of funds paid into PSB bank – whether it is Russian state money, private capital or the cash Ilan Shor was convicted of stealing in Moldova.

But he himself is very open about his actions and aims.

In a typical recent post on TikTok, Shor called for a “firm NO” to the EU. He then urged followers to choose “the president I decide on, as someone I can work with”.

In return he promised monthly top-up payments of 5,000 Moldovan lei to pensioners, or about £200.

Shor fled Moldova in 2019 and was later sentenced in absentia for money laundering and embezzlement. Last year, his party was banned and he is also under Western sanctions, accused of “malign influence campaigns” for Russia.

Media companies linked to him, Telegram channels and various political groupings have all been blocked. But his message – anti-EU, sympathetic to Moscow – still seeps through.

Some remain receptive to that, as well as the cash.

Ilya Uzun is one big fan.

The deputy governor of Gagauzia, a small autonomous region of southern Moldova, also happens to respect Russian President Vladimir Putin. He tells me that is because he likes strong leaders who he thinks “put their country first”.

Russia’s war on neighbouring Ukraine changed nothing on that score.

He admires former US President Donald Trump for the same reason, whilst his scorn for the EU – which recently placed him under sanctions for “destabilising activities” – mainly focusses on LGBT rights, which he opposes virulently.

Later, when I ask passers-by in the regional capital Comrat about the EU referendum, several reply that they’ll vote “no” in order to keep “gay parades” from their town.

Pro-Russian views and Kremlin-led narratives have always been strong in Gagauzia where many still watch Russian state TV channels, despite a national ban.

Lately, Shor has been investing heavily here. The deputy governor repeatedly refers to him as “our political leader” and shrugs off the criminal conviction as if it were political.

“Try and say a bad word here about Ilan Shor and people will spit at you!”, Uzun declares as we drive down Lenin Street past a statue of the Russian revolutionary, a little grubby but still intact.

Many shop signs, those not in the local Gagauz language, are in Russian.

I hear how Shor pays top-up pensions to 30,000 people in the region as well as re-tarmacking some 50 km (31 miles) of roads between remote villages, which we see.

“All he does is for the people,” Uzun enthuses.

The anti-corruption prosecutor later clarifies that using donations for social spending is not a crime. But channelling Shor’s funds to political parties is an offence – and Uzun’s boss, regional governor Evghenia Gutul, has been charged with that.

After a while we roll up to a children’s fairground.

“Look at Gagauziyaland, it’s beautiful!” Uzun beams, leading the way beneath a giant rainbow into a deserted but brand-new park.

The wind is bitterly cold and the mini dragon roller-coaster and merry-go-round we are looking at both stand empty and still. But Uzun insists people in Gagauzia will vote “how Shor tells them” – not for money, but because they trust him.

“All the talk, that he’s an arm of the Kremlin, destabilising Moldova: that’s absolutely not true. This is the truth: what you see here,” he waves towards the frozen fairground.

On Friday, Moldova’s election campaign reached its climax.

Maia Sandu was met for her own final rally in the small town of Telenesti, where women in traditional dress sang and supporters clapped as she passed.

She has not taken part in election debates and did not want to speak to the BBC. But addressing a couple of hundred people through a microphone, Sandu urged Moldovans to vote for her and for the EU as the best path to peace.

“This has been a very difficult campaign with a lot of lies and dirty money,” she told them, asking voters to “put our country out of harm’s way” and prevent her opponents “derailing Moldova from its European path.”

That path has been a bumpy one for many years, with multiple diversions. Still, Moldova had already made its choice and opened accession talks with the EU.

Now a referendum that Sandu initiated in an attempt to reinforce that goal and bolster her own support has turned into a risky political move.

It looks like the presidential ballot is not the only vote she has to worry about come Sunday.

It all started with a friend request.

Kirat Assi thought she’d hit the jackpot when Bobby, a handsome cardiologist, got in touch with her in 2009.

He wasn’t a total stranger. The pair were both from west London’s Sikh community and had mutual friends in common.

So, Kirat accepted, and her online chats developed into deeper conversations before blossoming into a full-on love story.

The two became more and more entangled in each other’s lives but they never met, even after years of correspondence.

Bobby would provide increasingly outlandish excuses. He’d had a stroke. He’d been shot. He had entered witness protection.

The tall tales, though, were always backed up by someone close to Bobby – or so Kirat thought.

In truth, she was the victim of a wildly elaborate and traumatising catfishing scheme.

After nine years, when the excuses ran thin, Kirat finally came face-to-face with Bobby.

But she didn’t recognise the person in front of her.

The person she’d been messaging was her female cousin, Simran, who had been the brains behind everything.

Looking back now, Kirat asks herself: “How could you have been so stupid?”

Kirat’s shocking story was a hit for podcast maker Tortoise in 2021. You can listen to that on BBC Sounds here. Now, three years on, Netflix has recently released a documentary which features her recounting her experience.

She says that telling her story has prompted others to ask the same question: “How can somebody fall for that?”

It’s also prompted abuse from some people online.

“For people who might still think I’m stupid. That’s fine, you’re allowed your opinion,” she tells BBC Asian Network News.

But Kirat says people shouldn’t make assumptions – and countering these was partly what prompted her to tell her story.

“I’m not stupid, I’m not dumb. I’m the one that’s chosen to speak.

“I’m the one that’s put myself out in the firing line and I hope others will come forward,” she says.

Which prompts another question: Why would someone who’d been duped in this way put themselves in the public eye?

Kirat, who’s from a Punjabi background, says speaking out was important because she wanted to challenge stigmas in the South Asian community.

“We are so scared to open up about these issues,” she says.

“Because of how a community will be seen by wider society, the victims in our communities keep suffering.”

Kirat says her dad’s reaction to her story is a good example of what she means.

“He doesn’t want to know what happened,” she says.

“Because to face up to what happened, and how horrific it was, it’s going to be painful.

“I love my dad and I know my dad loves me,” she says, adding: “It’s a different set of values that he has been brought up with.”

Kirat says she hasn’t spoken directly to “the real Bobby” about what happened, and puts this down to the community’s reluctance to have difficult conversations.

She wonders if her experience would have been the same if she’d come from another background.

“I’d be making different decisions,” she says.

“Because we have responsibilities towards our community. You have the pressure of family.”

Despite some negative reactions to the re-tellings of Sweet Bobby, Kirat says she would rather deal with questions up-front.

“If you do see me, don’t be scared to approach me,” she says.

“And if you want to say something which might be controversial to me, it’s OK.

“Let’s have a discussion about it,” she says.

When Kirat’s asked if speaking to podcast or documentary producers has given her a sense of closure, she’s less certain.

Simran rejected offers to be involved in the documentary, where she’s played by an actress.

Kirat successfully brought civil action against her cousin, receiving compensation and an apology at the end of the case.

A statement from Simran included in the show says: “This matter involves events that began when she was a schoolgirl. She considers it a private matter and strongly objects to what she describes as numerous unfounded and damaging accusations.”

Kirat says Simran hasn’t faced any criminal charges, and wants her to be held accountable.

“I’m not OK with that person being out there,” says Kirat.

There’s another question that she’s no closer to answering: Why?

Kirat doesn’t think she will ever truly find out what drove the campaign against her.

“I think I’ve long given up,” she says.

“The extent to which that person went, you can’t ever justify it.

“I can’t understand why you didn’t stop… what gave you pleasure from hearing somebody in pain.”

But not having answers is not stopping her from moving forward with life, including dating again.

“I’m working really hard, harder than I should have to right now to rebuild my life and career,” she says.

“I don’t carry the victim mentality around with me. I don’t want to be that person.

“I’m going to carry on working towards goals and dreams.”

Listen to Ankur Desai’s show on BBC Asian Network live from 15:00-18:00 Monday to Thursday – or listen back here.

At least seven people have died after part of a ferry dock collapsed in Georgia’s Sapelo Island on Saturday, local authorities say.

Georgia’s department of natural resources, which operates the dock, said at least 20 people plunged into the water when the gangway collapsed.

Multiple people have been taken to hospital and search and rescue operations are under way.

US President Joe Biden said he and his wife Jill mourn the lives lost and “pray for the injured and anyone still missing”.

The incident happened at approximately 16:30 local time (20:30 GMT) at the Marsh Landing Dock as crowds gathered for a cultural celebration.

It is not yet known what caused the collapse of the walkway, which connected an outer dock where people board the ferry to another dock onshore, according to local reports.

Brian Kemp, the governor of Georgia, said he and his family were “heartbroken” by the tragedy and asked for prayers “for those lost, for those still in harm’s way, and for their families”.

The governor has sent “state resources to aid in search, rescue, & recovery”, Georgia representative Buddy Carter said in a post on X.

Local authorities said the gangway has been secured and the incident is under investigation.

Biden said his team “stand ready to provide any and all assistance that would be helpful to the community”.

The annual event happening at the time of the collapse celebrates the island’s community of Hogg Hummock, which is home to a few dozen Black residents.

Hogg Hummock was founded by newly-freed former slaves from plantations in coastal Georgia who settled on Sapelo Island following the US Civil War, the Georgia Trust for Historic Preservation said on its website.

Saturday’s event “should have been a joyous celebration of Gullah-Geechee culture and history instead turned into tragedy and devastation”, President Biden said in his statement.

Small communities descended from enslaved island populations in the South, known as Gullah, or Geechee in Georgia, are scattered along the coast from North Carolina to Florida.

Sapelo Island is reachable from the mainland by boat.

Six-time Olympic cycling champion Sir Chris Hoy has announced that his cancer is terminal.

In an interview with the Sunday Times, he says doctors have told him he has between two and four years to live.

The 48-year-old Scot revealed earlier this year that he had been diagnosed with cancer.

Hoy told the newspaper he has known for a year that his cancer is terminal.

Hoy won six Olympic golds between 2004 and 2012 – the second highest total by any British Olympian behind Sir Jason Kenny’s tally of seven.

He retired from cycling in 2013 and in recent years has been a regular pundit and commentator as part of BBC Sport’s cycling coverage.

He had not previously disclosed the type of cancer.

But he told the Sunday Times that he had been diagnosed with primary cancer in his prostate, which had spread to his bones – meaning it was stage four.

Tumours were discovered to his shoulder, pelvis, hip, spine and rib.

Sir Chris told the newspaper: “As unnatural as it feels, this is nature.

“You know, we were all born and we all die, and this is just part of the process.

“You remind yourself, aren’t I lucky that there is medicine I can take that will fend this off for as long as possible.”