There are two parallel universes in the Lucy Letby story.

One can be witnessed every day in Liverpool at the public inquiry into her case. Here, the matter of Letby’s guilt is settled. The question for the judge is why Letby was able to harm babies for so long.

In the other universe, doubts about the evidence used to convict her have been mounting. Leading statisticians and medical experts are arguing Letby may be the victim of a miscarriage of justice.

It is a surreal state of affairs: a legal system that has decided Letby is a serial killer – and a debate outside that questions her guilt.

As journalists we have been covering the Lucy Letby case for years – through two trials, an appeals process, an ongoing public inquiry and the growing controversy over her conviction. We have written a book together and made two Panorama films about the case – the latest of which airs on Monday with new information, and hears from both leading critics and the prosecution experts now under fire.

Letby is officially the most prolific child killer of modern times – convicted of murdering seven babies and attempting to murder seven others. And yet her case divides opinion.

Had someone actually seen her harming a baby at the neonatal unit in the Countess of Chester Hospital, the case might have been more straightforward, but no-one did. There was no incriminating CCTV or DNA evidence either. The evidence against her was circumstantial.

One of the documents that played a key role in her trial was a grid, listing the incidents in the case with ‘X’s to show which members of staff had been on duty. Letby was the only nurse on duty for all of them.

But the grid has attracted scorn from statisticians. They argue that we don’t know how the “suspicious events” listed on the grid were selected or which incidents were excluded, so on its own the grid is little more than a visual stunt. The jury also heard there were two suspicious incidents when Letby was not at work – neither of which was included on the grid.

But is the grid really the problem?

If there was undisputed medical evidence that 24 crimes had been committed, then surely the fact Lucy Letby was present each time would be damning.

And therein lies the key question of the Letby case: How convincing is the medical evidence that the baby deaths and collapses were definitely crimes rather than naturally occurring events?

The most controversial evidence concerned allegations that Letby murdered babies by injecting air into their blood. That would cause an air embolism – a blockage caused by an air bubble in the blood circulation.

To do this, Letby would have to have taken a syringe and injected the air into the babies’ intravenous lines. These are normally used to administer fluids, drugs, and nutrition to ill or premature newborns.

Syringes in hospitals are thrown away and incinerated after they have been used. As a murder weapon, they are virtually untraceable.

The problem is no-one saw Letby doing this. The allegation rested instead on a “checklist” of observations of some of the babies who died or collapsed while Letby was around.

According to the prosecution, the babies deteriorated suddenly and unexpectedly. Retired consultant paediatrician Dr Dewi Evans was the prosecution’s main medical expert witness. He told us: “Babies don’t suddenly drop dead.”

Many exhibited strange skin discolourations that medics on the unit hadn’t seen before. Some babies screamed.

The babies also failed to respond to resuscitation as medics expected. Post-mortem X-rays revealed air in the blood vessels of some.

According to the prosecution, this checklist was a sure way to identify air embolism. But how robust was it? Research on air embolism in babies is very limited – something the prosecution’s own experts readily admitted.

One of the most comprehensive studies was a 1989 research paper by two Canadian academics. The account in the paper appeared to support the prosecution case – particularly its references to skin colour changes associated with air embolism.

But the number of cases in the study was limited – just 53 – and the circumstances of the babies described in the paper differed in some respects from those in the Letby case.

Lucy Letby: Unanswered Questions

Reporter Judith Moritz, who has covered the case from the start, investigates the questions that have been raised about Lucy Letby’s conviction.

Watch on BBC iPlayer from 06:00 on Monday 21 October – or on BBC One at 20:00 (20:30 in Wales and Northern Ireland).

One of the paper’s authors, Dr Shoo Lee, later appeared as a witness in Letby’s defence, during her unsuccessful attempt to appeal her convictions in April 2024. He said none of the skin discolourations seen on the babies in the Letby case were proof of air embolism.

Lawyers for the prosecution disagreed. They also pointed out that skin discolouration was just one item on their air embolism checklist and that they had never argued that one particular form of skin discolouration was, on its own, proof of air embolism.

Several experts have publicly criticised the prosecution’s air embolism theory, although hardly any have seen all of the medical evidence. One expert who has is the man who advised Letby’s defence during her original ten-month trial: retired consultant neonatologist Dr Mike Hall. Dr Hall didn’t actually give evidence in court, but he told us that in his view there was no proof that the air seen in the X-rays of the babies got there while they were alive.

These are the types of expert disputes now playing out over the medical evidence in the Letby case – and some of them have become personal.

Dr Hall believes there were significant flaws in the prosecution’s medical evidence.

He also believes the prosecution experts overstated how stable the babies were before they collapsed and died.

“Phrases such as the baby was really, really well were given by the prosecution expert witnesses on several occasions for several of the babies,” Dr Hall told us.

“And it was my view and is my view that they weren’t really, really well, they had signs of significant illness.

“I think that what the prosecution experts said was misleading for the jury. That’s not the same thing as saying that they deliberately misled the jury.”

It is an allegation that both of the main prosecution experts reject emphatically.

Dr Dewi Evans told us: “Those suggestions are completely flawed and indicate either that the people making them have not seen the clinical evidence or that they are unaware of what constitutes well-being in a premature baby.”

Consultant paediatrician Dr Sandie Bohin, the prosecution’s other main expert, who is speaking about the controversy surrounding the case for the first time, said: “I gave evidence under oath 16 times. I told the truth.”

“It was my opinion and remains my opinion that these babies were stable prior to their collapse, so I can’t agree with those people that suggested that I misrepresented the stability of the babies and that I misled the jury.

“I think that’s an outrageous suggestion.”

It is an indication of the toxicity and intense division of opinion in the Letby case – even among the experts.

One obvious question is why Dr Hall didn’t testify in court. He clearly disagreed with the prosecution experts, and the fact that he didn’t give evidence meant that Letby had no medical expert witnesses in her defence.

That has prompted some to argue she didn’t have a fair trial.

We asked Dr Hall if he had been willing to testify and he said he had.

He told us he was expecting to give evidence and that he was told of the decision not to call him “right at the last minute”- a decision that left him “at odds” with Letby’s defence team. Dr Hall told us he was so concerned that he even considered writing to the judge to say he believed that the jury had not heard the whole truth.

But the ultimate decision not to call Dr Hall as a witness came from Letby herself – a point that Dr Hall acknowledges.

Why did she not call him? It is one of many questions that only she can answer.

Letby was convicted of using a variety of methods to harm and murder babies – injecting air into their stomachs, force-feeding them with milk, dislodging breathing tubes, and inflicting trauma.

As with the allegations of air embolism, the prosecution relied heavily on the opinions of experts to make their case.

But there was one part of the prosecution’s argument that appeared to rest on something more than individual expert opinion: the insulin evidence.

Lab tests indicated that two babies had been poisoned. The basic principle involved in the test was quite straightforward. When the body produces insulin, it also produces another substance called C-peptide, so C-peptide is a reliable marker of naturally produced insulin.

Although C-peptide is produced by the body at the same rate as insulin, it clears much more slowly. So you would typically expect to see five to 10 times more C-peptide than insulin, if the insulin is natural.

Where you find high levels of insulin, but low levels of C-peptide, there is only one obvious conclusion: the insulin is not natural and has instead been administered from the outside.

That is what investigators found in two of the babies in the Letby case. One had extremely high levels of insulin in his blood and a C-peptide level that was so low that it was unmeasurable.

The second baby had an insulin level more than four times higher than the C-peptide level, again indicating it had not been naturally produced.

The medical condition of the babies also fitted with the lab results. In both cases, the babies’ blood sugar levels had plummeted, which is what you would expect to see with insulin poisoning. And while no-one saw Letby poisoning either of the two babies, she was there when they started experiencing symptoms.

Of all the allegations in the case, this one looked like the most solid. In court, Letby herself accepted the scientific evidence that the babies had been given dangerous quantities of insulin. She just denied being responsible. Her lawyers were more cautious. They did not accept the insulin evidence, but they did not say it was incorrect either.

For the prosecution, the insulin evidence was fundamental to the entire case. It seemed to prove that someone on the neonatal unit at the Countess of Chester Hospital was a poisoner.

If jurors could be persuaded on this point, it wouldn’t be so difficult for them to conclude that Letby was the culprit.

And so they did. Of all the allegations in the case, the jury returned unanimous verdicts of guilt on just three – and two of these were the insulin cases.

However, since then, sceptics have questioned whether the lab test used to measure insulin and C-peptide in the Letby case was as robust as the prosecution had claimed. It is called an immunoassay test, and works by using antibodies to detect and measure substances.

Critics argue there are circumstances in which the test can mistake another substance for insulin. It is called interference and it could result in a false positive. The critics say the only way to be sure that the substance being measured is indeed insulin is to use a more precise method of analysis – such as mass spectrometry.

We spent months examining this argument. Our conclusion, having spoken to leading experts on all sides of this debate, is that, while the immunoassay method is not perfect, it is usually accurate and the circumstances in which interference might occur are extremely unlikely in the context of the babies in the Letby case.

It is even more unlikely that two lab tests conducted within months of each other would both be wrong.

In this week’s Panorama, we reveal new evidence on the insulin allegations and the question of whether Lucy Letby really poisoned babies.

An enduring challenge in the Letby case – and reporting on it – is the difficulty of seeing the big picture.

Individual parts of the evidence can, and will continue to be, criticised. But it is not possible to reach a view on the case without taking all of the evidence into account – and some of this goes beyond the opinions of the medical experts.

Letby’s time in the witness box was revealing for those who were there. During her original trial, she spent 14 days being questioned. Several observers noted that she seemed aloof and indifferent. At times, she squirmed, and seemed to tie herself in knots.

She claimed she could not remember things – like the death of a baby she had texted colleagues about, or searching repeatedly for the parents of dead babies online.

There are other details, not included in Letby’s trials, that are also challenging for the sceptics.

A total of 13 babies died in the neonatal unit between June 2015 and June 2016. Letby was on duty for 12 of them.

And yet, no-one actually saw her harm a baby.

In recent weeks, several of Letby’s colleagues have given evidence to the Thirlwall Inquiry saying that they have since come to realise her guilt.

However, when consultants began to suspect her back in 2016, many of her nursing colleagues remained fiercely loyal – and they remained loyal even after her removal from the neonatal unit in July 2016.

It’s not hard to understand why. There is nothing obvious in Letby’s background that points to her becoming a killer. Her parents seem to have adored her, and her friendship groups in Hereford – and later in Chester – were happy and supportive. Her closest friends in Hereford remain convinced she is innocent.

Then there is Letby’s own continued protestation of innocence. In July 2024, she was convicted of a further count of attempted murder. After hearing the verdict, before being taken to the cells, she turned to the judge with outstretched palms and said: “I’m innocent.”

Letby now has a new lawyer, Mark McDonald, who plans to take her case to the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC). Her attempts to appeal against her convictions have so far failed.

Mr McDonald tells us he has gathered the finest experts in the world to review the prosecution’s medical and scientific evidence. He says the prosecution’s case was flawed and he is confident his team of experts will give him the arguments he needs to challenge her convictions.

But the CCRC process could take years. In the meantime, battles over the evidence will continue. That means more heartbreak for the families of the babies, who say they find the continual questioning of Lucy Letby’s convictions “grossly offensive and distressing”.

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.

Noel Drake, a 29-year-old who lives in Utah, said she felt “very bleak” about politics before this year.

During the 2020 presidential election, she felt disillusioned entirely.

But Taylor Swift – and her fans – helped change her mind, she told me.

“With this sense of community that I have established through interacting with other Swifties online, it has really changed the way I interact with politics this election cycle,” she said.

After Swift endorsed Democratic nominee Kamala Harris a month ago, Ms Drake started following a fan-led campaign group called “Swifties for Kamala”. The group is not officially affiliated with the Harris campaign, but does keep in regular touch with campaign staff.

Since interacting with other like-minded Swifties, Ms Drake has decided to get more involved in local campaigning in her home state.

The BBC has tracked down dozens of voters like Ms Drake, who say posts from Swift and her mega fans on social media have motivated them to go out and vote, or get involved in activism. But just because you’re a fan of Swift doesn’t mean you’re going to vote like her, I learned.

For the latest episode of BBC Radio 4’s Why Do You Hate Me USA, I’ve been investigating how one pop-inclined meme enthusiast Irene Kim – the co-founder of Swifties for Kamala – found herself transformed from superfan to political strategist. Have any of the tactics used by her and her fellow activists actually worked?

Over the past month, I’ve messaged several accounts who like and comment on the Swifties for Kamala posts.

Although some people were already Democrat supporters, others weren’t so sure.

Take 27-year-old Destiny from South Carolina, who doesn’t want to share her surname. She said both her and her boyfriend are “not that political,” but that the Swifties for Kamala posts have helped support her reasoning for voting for the Democrats this election.

“I really want a woman president who has similar values to me. This is my first election that has pushed me to vote for this reason,” she said.

Even her boyfriend, whom she described as “moderately conservative”, has been swayed to vote for Harris, and she said it was in part inspired by her lobbying based on some Swifties for Kamala posts.

Part of the appeal of a celebrity endorsement – and the political content generated by their fandoms – is that unlike paid-for adverts, this kind of user-generated content feels genuine.

A study from Harvard Kennedy School that looked at the impact of celebrities when it comes to voter registration found their “authenticity” can be key when motivating people to go out and vote.

Its author, Ashley Spillane, told the BBC celebrities are among the “most well-positioned members of society” when it comes to dealing with causes of voter apathy, such as “lack of information, lack of trust and lack of motivation”.

“People know them from places outside of politics, which makes their involvement feel deeper and less self-interested,” she said. Within 24 hours of Swift’s Harris endorsement on Instagram, nearly 340,000 people had visited vote.gov, a registration website, using a custom link she created.

While Harris has enjoyed endorsements from Swift, Beyonce and some other big-name celebrities, Trump is not without his fans either. Endorsements from Kid Rock, Elon Musk, John Voight and YouTubers the Nelk Boys may help him reach young men in the same way that Swift’s endorsement has boosted Harris’s profile with young women. Trump’s own committed supporters online also operate a bit like a fandom.

Endorsements can backfire, however, polls show. A Quinnipiac University poll from late September found that Swift’s endorsement of Harris made 9% of respondents “more enthusiastic” about her candidacy, while it made 13% “less enthusiastic”. It also looked at how Musk’s endorsement affected respondents’ views of Trump – 13% felt more enthusiastic, while 21% felt less. Ultimately, we won’t know exactly what impact celebrities – and their fandoms – will have on this election until after November.

In what looks to be a very closely fought election, it’s these groups of online supporters who could motivate voters to head to the polls – especially in swing states where the winner may be decided by just thousands of votes.

Ms Kim, the co-founder of Swifties for Kamala, told me the group is targeting people in swing states especially.

Peggy Rowe is in Arizona, one of the most closely watched states in the election. She told me it was Harris’s support for abortion rights that strengthened her to support for the vice-president.

“I’m very passionate about reproductive rights and social media has further confirmed my opinions,” she said.

While they’re employing all the traditional political campaign methods, Swifties for Kamala has put a fan-specific twist on their efforts. Whenever they’re at events, they give out friendship bracelets featuring political slogans like “in my voting era”. It’s a nod to Swift’s Eras tour, where fans have been trading Swift-themed friendship bracelets as a sign of being a true fan.

Ms Kim said they’d begun face-to-face campaigning a few weeks ago, and have been calling and texting followers directly. They aim to have 22 million direct voter contacts in total by Election Day.

The Swifties for Kamala group has raised over $200,000 (£153,000) for Harris’s campaign, as of the middle of October, she estimated.

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There are some Swift fans, though, who have not been swayed. I’ve spotted comments from several Republican and Trump supporters who have chosen their preferred politician over their allegiance to their favourite pop star, and sent dozens of them messages too.

Bri, who lives in Massachusetts, says she chooses to vote Republican still because “at the end of the day people need to do what’s best for them”.

She told me she thinks Swift has such a devoted fan base, she should stay out of politics to be fair to all sides.

Taylor Swift is “entitled to her own opinion,” she said, but:

“She is the only celebrity who has that amount of pull that she shouldn’t mention politics during an election year.”

And although he didn’t get her endorsement, Donald Trump supporters did try and harness Swift’s fan electoral power, by making an AI-generated meme of Swift endorsing the former president. In fact, it was Trump sharing the meme on social media that prompted Swift to endorse Harris in the first place.

Bri said she would “never not like someone over their political beliefs” – including the fans who are part of Swifties for Kamala. But that doesn’t mean all online conversations are friendly.

Ms Kim told me that getting into heated online arguments is a bit of a “rite of passage” for Swift’s fandom. But the Swifties for Kamala campaign group now has guidelines to stop this happening, in part because they want to win over voters who don’t share the same views.

“I think it’s always good to try to bridge the gap,” she said.

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Sir Chris Hoy has been hailed as “inspiring” for sending a “wonderful message of hope” after revealing his terminal cancer diagnosis.

The six-time Olympic cycling champion gave an interview to the Sunday Times, in which he said doctors have told him he has between two and four years to live.

Well-wishes to Sir Chris have poured in from sporting stars, politicians and thousands of others on social media after he posted on Instagram on Sunday to say he was “feeling fit, strong and positive”.

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said the “whole country” is behind the 48-year-old, while Health Secretary Wes Streeting said he was “in awe” at the Scot’s courage and positivity.

Sir Chris 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.

The legendary athlete revealed earlier this year that he had been diagnosed, but he had not previously disclosed the type of cancer.

Following the interview’s publication, the sporting star posted on Instagram on Sunday that he was in Copenhagen with the BBC Sport team covering the World Track Cycling Championships.

Sir Chris has been appearing on BBC Two this week co-presenting the championships, with day five coverage getting under way on Sunday afternoon.

“You may see in the news this weekend some articles about my health, so I just wanted to reassure you all that I’m feeling fit, strong and positive, and overwhelmed by all the love and support shown to my family and me,” he said in the post.

There were many supportive comments underneath the post, including from fellow former Olympic cyclist Mark Cavendish who called Sir Chris a “hero of a human being”.

Olympic athlete Dame Kelly Holmes also commented “sending love to you Chris” and the British Cycling account left an emoji showing two hands making a heart symbol.

“You know, we were all born and we all die, and this is just part of the process,” Sir Chris told the Sunday Times.

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

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

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

Olympic-medal winner boxer Anthony Ogogo posted a picture of himself with Sir Chris on X, calling him a “role model”, an “inspiration”, and a “hero”.

James Cracknell, an Olympic rower for Team GB, also took to the social media platform, saying Sir Chris was “more inspirational today than during his immense sporting career”.

Scottish First Minister John Swinney praised Hoy’s “incredible courage” in a post on X, saying he “has always inspired us by all that he has done”.

Speaking on the Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg programme, Health Secretary Wes Streeting said Sir Chris was “not the only person” dealing with a terminal cancer diagnosis and had “done the country such an enormous service” by being open and positive about it.

“That’s worth even more than the stack of Olympic gold that he’s built up over his career,” he added.

The Edinburgh-born Olympian’s cancer was discovered last year after a routine scan for shoulder pain – he thought he had injured himself while lifting weights at the gym – revealed a tumour.

The athlete was with his wife Sarra when he was given his terminal diagnosis. The couple have two children, Callum and Chloe, who were aged nine and six at the time.

Just before Sir Chris’s tumour was discovered, Sarra had undergone scans that would later show she had multiple sclerosis, a degenerative disease.

Former prime minister Gordon Brown said that courage had “defined” Sir Chris’s career and “now characterises how Chris and Sarra both face their health diagnoses and embrace life”.

Talking to Stephen Nolan on BBC Radio 5 Live, Simon Richardson, editor of Cycling Weekly magazine, called Sir Chris “the epitome of the Olympic champion”.

Sir Chris, who was first inspired to take up cycling by the famous BMX scenes in the film E.T., had won six Olympic, 11 world and 43 World Cup titles by the time he retired.

The cyclist first won gold at the Athens Olympics in 2004, and went on to secure three more gold medals four years later in 2008 Beijing. He won two further golds in London 2012, before retiring from cycling in 2013.

His haul of six Olympic golds is the second highest total by any British Olympian behind Sir Jason Kenny’s tally of seven.

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

Tech billionaire Elon Musk has said he will give away $1m (£766,000) a day to a registered voter in the key swing state of Pennsylvania until the US presidential election in November.

The winner will be chosen at random from those who sign a pro-constitution petition by Mr Musk’s campaign group AmericaPAC which he set up to support Republican nominee Donald Trump’s bid to return to the White House.

The first lottery-style cheque was given away to a surprised-looking attendee at a town hall event on Saturday night.

The giveaway will effectively help to encourage potential Trump voters to engage in the campaign during the tense final weeks of the presidential race ahead of the vote on 5 November.

Mr Musk’s offer has raised questions around its legality.

Prominent election law expert Rick Hasen wrote on his personal Election Law Blog that he believed Mr Musk’s offer was “clearly illegal”.

Federal law states anyone who “pays or offers to pay or accepts payment either for registration to vote or for voting” faces a potential $10,000 fine or five year prison sentence.

Though Mr Musk is technically asking Pennsylvania voters to sign a form, Mr Hasen questioned the intent behind the strategy.

“Who can sign the petitions? Only registered voters in swing states, which is what makes it illegal,” Mr Hasen, a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) law school alleged.

Those who sign the petition – which pledges to support free speech and gun rights – will have to give their contact details, potentially allowing AmericaPAC to contact them about their vote.

Both Mr Musk and AmericaPAC have been approached for comment.

Campaigns and political action committees rely on tactics like petition signing, survey requests, or merchandise purchases to build massive databases of voter information. That data can then be used to more accurately target voters, or raise funds from supporters who are already onboard.

Mr Musk had previously offered to give $47 to anyone who got a registered swing-state voter to sign the petition.

That strategy raised eyebrows from campaign finance experts like Hansen, but could fall under a loophole under US election law because no-one was being directly paid to vote – despite introducing money into a process that could identify likely Trump voters.

In the US, it is illegal to provide payments to get people to vote – not only for a certain candidate, but to simply cast a ballot.

The rule prompted ice cream maker Ben & Jerry’s to give its product free to everyone on election day in 2008, having initially planned to limit it just to those with an “I voted” sticker.

On Sunday, Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, a Democrat backing Kamala Harris, called Mr Musk’s strategy “deeply concerning.”

Shapiro told NBC News’ Meet the Press that law enforcement should potentially look at the payments.

Mr Musk, who has emerged as a key Trump supporter in recent years, launched AmericaPAC in July with the aim of supporting the former president’s campaign.

He has so far donated $75m (£57.5m) to the group, which has quickly become a central player in Trump’s election campaign.

The Trump campaign is highly reliant on outside groups such as AmericaPAC to canvas voters.

A statement on the groups website reads: “AmericaPAC was created to support these key values: Secure Borders, Safe Cities, Sensible spending, Fair Justice System, Free Speech, Right to Self-Protection.”

Mr Musk said he wants to get “over a million, maybe two million, voters in the battleground states to sign the petition in support of the First and Second Amendment.”

“I think [it] sends a crucial message to our elected politicians,” he added.

Mr Musk is currently the world’s richest man, with an estimated net worth of $248bn (£191bn), according to US business magazine Forbes.

The 2024 presidential race will likely come down to seven key battleground states including Pennsylvania as well as Wisconsin, North Carolina, Georgia, Michigan, Arizona and Nevada.

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• Read more about: Kamala Harris | Donald Trump | US election

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.”

Fans in the UK and around the world are holding vigils this weekend in memory of Liam Payne, the One Direction star who died on Wednesday.

Police estimated that between 800 and 1,000 people gathered in London’s Hyde Park on Sunday afternoon to remember the 31-year-old who died after falling from the third floor of a hotel balcony in Argentina.

The crowd sang One Direction songs, such as the chart-topping hit What Makes You Beautiful, with many fans in tears.

A memorial has already been held in Liverpool and Payne’s home city of Wolverhampton.

Groups of fans have also come together in Paris, Sydney, Manila and elsewhere.

It is not yet known when his body will be repatriated to the UK.

Fans showed up in London’s Hyde Park, braving the drizzly weather on Sunday afternoon, and brought with them letters, pictures and flowers.

Many were placing them at the Peter Pan statue where the memorial was being held.

Details of the various memorials worldwide have been circulating on social media, with fans encouraged to bring letters, flowers and messages.

Fans Emily and Olivia first fell in love with Payne and One Direction when they were at school.

“Growing up, it’s hard to put it in words, but being a Directioner became such an important community for me,” said Emily, 25.

“Being young at the time, it was my first feeling of being in love, my first feeling of crushing on a boy, of being excited about boys,” added Olivia, who is 23. “I kissed the posters every night. We all did.”

“It felt like you were part of the best club in the world and it’s a huge part of why we bonded together.”

She added that part of the reason why Payne’s death has hit so hard, is because she “always hoped for a One Direction reunion one day”.

“We took it for granted,” she said.

Arriving with flowers in their hands and some people with tears in their eyes, hundreds of fans of One Direction and Payne arrived in Chamberlain Square in the centre of Birmingham on Sunday afternoon.

Jamie Parker, 23, was one of many leaving flowers and a handwritten note in tribute.

Parker said his mother died from cancer in 2013 and that he and his sister “relied on the One Direction albums to help us process our grief and navigate our feelings”.

He added: “When I woke up to the news that he’d died, I was just in utter disbelief.”

“I will treasure those albums forever,” he wrote in his note in memory of Payne.

In Glasgow, people gathered to pay tribute at a vigil despite the organisers’ plan to postpone due to weather concerns.

People of all ages laid flowers, lit candles and sang One Direction and Payne’s songs at the memorial in George Square.

A one minute silence was held, and some fans cried as they hugged their friends and remembered Payne.

In Paris, a crowd gathered and flowers and candles were laid at the Tuilerie Gardens beneath a framed photo of the singer on Sunday afternoon.

One fan at the vigil, Alexandra Veloso Silva, 31, told the Reuters news agency it felt like she had “lost someone from my family”.

Another fan Roman, 23, said Payne’s death feels like “another subject that brings us relief has been taken from us”.

In Liverpool on Saturday, a group of Directioners gathered at the Keel Warf Bridge at Royal Albert Dock.

Some had cardboard signs with the band’s lyrics on them, including one saying “I’m missing half of me when we’re apart”, from the band’s single If I Could Fly.

Another memorial card said Forever Young, a nod to the Alphaville track of the same name that One Direction covered.

Photographs of Payne, flowers, teddy bears and balloons were left at the bridge, and the group sang One Direction songs.

Earlier this weekend, people came together in Wolverhampton, where the singer was born in 1993.

Around 100 people looked down with their heads, bowed as flowers were laid outside St Peter’s Church.

In Buenos Aires, people gathered earlier this week outside the hotel where Payne was found dead.

Fans also congregated in Sydney.

Organiser Alicia Sinclair, 22, from Hertfordshire, said One Direction was “a light in a lot of people’s lives, especially mine”.

Speaking to BBC 5 Live Breakfast, she added: “There are a lot of people upset and it’s a good time for us to come together and be with people who understand.”

“My favourite memories with my sister are almost entirely revolving around One Direction,” she said.

“So for me it feels like, I guess like the end of us growing up together. That’s what makes it so hard.”

Payne 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, Zayn Malik and Niall Horan.

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

On Saturday, Malik announced he had postponed the US leg of his upcoming tour after the “heartbreaking loss” of his former bandmate.

Payne’s family have also been paying tribute. His sister Ruth Gibbins described Payne as her “best friend” in an emotional Instagram post, adding that she didn’t feel “this world was good enough or kind enough” to him.

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

He also visited the morgue in the city 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.

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 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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said he is undeterred from his war aims following a reported 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.

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.

• 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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Some Palestinians described Sinwar as a martyr.

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

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

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

Noel Drake, a 29-year-old who lives in Utah, said she felt “very bleak” about politics before this year.

During the 2020 presidential election, she felt disillusioned entirely.

But Taylor Swift – and her fans – helped change her mind, she told me.

“With this sense of community that I have established through interacting with other Swifties online, it has really changed the way I interact with politics this election cycle,” she said.

After Swift endorsed Democratic nominee Kamala Harris a month ago, Ms Drake started following a fan-led campaign group called “Swifties for Kamala”. The group is not officially affiliated with the Harris campaign, but does keep in regular touch with campaign staff.

Since interacting with other like-minded Swifties, Ms Drake has decided to get more involved in local campaigning in her home state.

The BBC has tracked down dozens of voters like Ms Drake, who say posts from Swift and her mega fans on social media have motivated them to go out and vote, or get involved in activism. But just because you’re a fan of Swift doesn’t mean you’re going to vote like her, I learned.

For the latest episode of BBC Radio 4’s Why Do You Hate Me USA, I’ve been investigating how one pop-inclined meme enthusiast Irene Kim – the co-founder of Swifties for Kamala – found herself transformed from superfan to political strategist. Have any of the tactics used by her and her fellow activists actually worked?

Over the past month, I’ve messaged several accounts who like and comment on the Swifties for Kamala posts.

Although some people were already Democrat supporters, others weren’t so sure.

Take 27-year-old Destiny from South Carolina, who doesn’t want to share her surname. She said both her and her boyfriend are “not that political,” but that the Swifties for Kamala posts have helped support her reasoning for voting for the Democrats this election.

“I really want a woman president who has similar values to me. This is my first election that has pushed me to vote for this reason,” she said.

Even her boyfriend, whom she described as “moderately conservative”, has been swayed to vote for Harris, and she said it was in part inspired by her lobbying based on some Swifties for Kamala posts.

Part of the appeal of a celebrity endorsement – and the political content generated by their fandoms – is that unlike paid-for adverts, this kind of user-generated content feels genuine.

A study from Harvard Kennedy School that looked at the impact of celebrities when it comes to voter registration found their “authenticity” can be key when motivating people to go out and vote.

Its author, Ashley Spillane, told the BBC celebrities are among the “most well-positioned members of society” when it comes to dealing with causes of voter apathy, such as “lack of information, lack of trust and lack of motivation”.

“People know them from places outside of politics, which makes their involvement feel deeper and less self-interested,” she said. Within 24 hours of Swift’s Harris endorsement on Instagram, nearly 340,000 people had visited vote.gov, a registration website, using a custom link she created.

While Harris has enjoyed endorsements from Swift, Beyonce and some other big-name celebrities, Trump is not without his fans either. Endorsements from Kid Rock, Elon Musk, John Voight and YouTubers the Nelk Boys may help him reach young men in the same way that Swift’s endorsement has boosted Harris’s profile with young women. Trump’s own committed supporters online also operate a bit like a fandom.

Endorsements can backfire, however, polls show. A Quinnipiac University poll from late September found that Swift’s endorsement of Harris made 9% of respondents “more enthusiastic” about her candidacy, while it made 13% “less enthusiastic”. It also looked at how Musk’s endorsement affected respondents’ views of Trump – 13% felt more enthusiastic, while 21% felt less. Ultimately, we won’t know exactly what impact celebrities – and their fandoms – will have on this election until after November.

In what looks to be a very closely fought election, it’s these groups of online supporters who could motivate voters to head to the polls – especially in swing states where the winner may be decided by just thousands of votes.

Ms Kim, the co-founder of Swifties for Kamala, told me the group is targeting people in swing states especially.

Peggy Rowe is in Arizona, one of the most closely watched states in the election. She told me it was Harris’s support for abortion rights that strengthened her to support for the vice-president.

“I’m very passionate about reproductive rights and social media has further confirmed my opinions,” she said.

While they’re employing all the traditional political campaign methods, Swifties for Kamala has put a fan-specific twist on their efforts. Whenever they’re at events, they give out friendship bracelets featuring political slogans like “in my voting era”. It’s a nod to Swift’s Eras tour, where fans have been trading Swift-themed friendship bracelets as a sign of being a true fan.

Ms Kim said they’d begun face-to-face campaigning a few weeks ago, and have been calling and texting followers directly. They aim to have 22 million direct voter contacts in total by Election Day.

The Swifties for Kamala group has raised over $200,000 (£153,000) for Harris’s campaign, as of the middle of October, she estimated.

• SIMPLE GUIDE: How to win a US election
• EXPLAINER: What Harris or Trump would do in power
• GLOBAL: Harris or Trump? What Chinese people want
• ON THE GROUND: Democrats travel deep into Trump country
• VOICES: ‘I’m uneasy’ – first-time voters weigh in
• POLLS: Who is winning the race for the White House?

There are some Swift fans, though, who have not been swayed. I’ve spotted comments from several Republican and Trump supporters who have chosen their preferred politician over their allegiance to their favourite pop star, and sent dozens of them messages too.

Bri, who lives in Massachusetts, says she chooses to vote Republican still because “at the end of the day people need to do what’s best for them”.

She told me she thinks Swift has such a devoted fan base, she should stay out of politics to be fair to all sides.

Taylor Swift is “entitled to her own opinion,” she said, but:

“She is the only celebrity who has that amount of pull that she shouldn’t mention politics during an election year.”

And although he didn’t get her endorsement, Donald Trump supporters did try and harness Swift’s fan electoral power, by making an AI-generated meme of Swift endorsing the former president. In fact, it was Trump sharing the meme on social media that prompted Swift to endorse Harris in the first place.

Bri said she would “never not like someone over their political beliefs” – including the fans who are part of Swifties for Kamala. But that doesn’t mean all online conversations are friendly.

Ms Kim told me that getting into heated online arguments is a bit of a “rite of passage” for Swift’s fandom. But the Swifties for Kamala campaign group now has guidelines to stop this happening, in part because they want to win over voters who don’t share the same views.

“I think it’s always good to try to bridge the gap,” she said.

is available to listen to on BBC Sounds now

We asked our readers to send in their best pictures on the theme of “in the air”. Here is a selection of the photographs we received from around the world.

The next theme is “road trip” and the deadline for entries is 5 November 2024.

The pictures will be published later that week and you will be able to find them, along with other galleries, on the In Pictures section of the BBC News website.

You can upload your entries directly here or email them to yourpics@bbc.co.uk.

Terms and conditions apply.

Further details and themes are at: We set the theme, you take the pictures.

All photographs subject to copyright.

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 a cotton merchant – who was a member of India’s supremely wealthy Tata clan – has quite a story.

At every turn, it seems 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.

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

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

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

He’d been saving the money for his teenagers.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But it was still the scammer on the phone.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

As vigils are held across the world for Liam Payne, BBC journalist Bonnie McLaren – a Directioner from the very start – explains her relationship with the band.

When One Direction were on The X Factor, I was 12 years old.

I’ve often joked I was the perfect age to be indoctrinated. I hadn’t previously shown any interest in boys – but Harry, Niall, Louis, Zayn and Liam were different.

Their teenage good looks, their cheeky, charming personalities, and the fact they weren’t much older than I was meant they quickly became my whole life.

I followed all the classic fangirl rituals: reading One Direction fanfiction, watching every interview the band gave, maxing out my parents’ landline phone bill by voting for them on The X Factor.

For me, it was almost an afterthought that they were musically talented, something they proved as they honed their skills as performers during the reality show’s weekly live performances, after being put together as a group by Simon Cowell.

I wasn’t alone in my obsession. Fans – or Directioners, as we were quickly named – were a huge, sprawling community.

It was more common for girls in my year group at school to be besotted with them than not. We all had a favourite band member, and wore wristbands with Harry, Zayn, Liam, Louis or Niall’s name on them.

When the boys were seen in public, even in the early X Factor days, they were mobbed by adoring fans.

During the band’s time on the show, ITV also published video diaries on YouTube, which weren’t included in the televised programme.

Filmed as the boys sat on the stairs of the X Factor House, where they spent most of their time during the show, they offered an insight into the singers’ personalities.

In one clip, the band members were asked what their roles were in the group.

“Liam is the smart one, Harry is the flirt, Zayn is vain, Niall is the funny one,” replies 18-year-old Louis, before Harry adds: “Louis is the leader.”

We all clung to the bizarre facts revealed in these videos: that Liam hated spoons (he later explained he had a phobia of using them, in case they were dirty), and that Louis was obsessed with carrots.

Following the band’s time on The X Factor, my bedroom wall became plastered with their faces, and I begged my parents to let me see them on their first tour in 2012.

I succeeded, and my mum drove me two hours with one of my school friends to go to a gig in Bournemouth – a show which was added in order to record the band’s tour DVD. I’ve never been in a room with people so excited.

The hysterical screaming didn’t seem to stop but it didn’t bother me because, of course, I was also screaming my lungs out.

When Zayn pointed in the direction of my One Direction banner, I fell to the floor crying. It wasn’t an unusual response among the girls in the room.

At that time, I spent most of my free time online, keeping up with the boys, and with my new friends: fellow One Direction fans.

One Direction formed around the time Twitter was taking off as a platform. Long before social media managers were commonplace, Liam, Harry, Zayn, Louis and Niall often tweeted from their personal accounts.

Liam once tweeted the then-US president Barack Obama, asking if he’d bought One Direction’s debut album yet. He also asked Kim Kardashian what her favourite track on it was.

For their part, fans would send hundreds of tweets to the boys, trying to get them to notice or follow them.

Social media was still in its infancy but it made the band available to fans around the world in a way they wouldn’t have been when The X Factor first aired in 2004 – 18 months before Twitter was founded.

As One Direction grew up, so did I – and I started thinking about what I wanted to do for a job.

Thanks to my obsession with the charts – and of course, One Direction – I knew I wanted to work in entertainment, interviewing the pop stars I’d grown up listening to.

The band had announced an indefinite hiatus by the time I started working in the industry in 2016.

But even though I’d grown up, and One Direction posters no longer lined my walls, my dream of meeting the band lived on.

By the time I started working, the boys had started their solo careers, hoping to make their way in the business under their own names. The now 23-year-old Liam Payne’s first single was Strip That Down, a collaboration with rapper Quavo that was co-written with Ed Sheeran.

It was a worldwide hit, charting at number three in the UK and also reaching the US Top 10 when it was released in May 2017.

He was keen to do the work to promote his music, and wouldn’t shy away from talking to reporters at red carpet events.

The first time I spoke to him in 2017, I was a student in journalism college, covering Capital Radio’s Jingle Bell Ball.

It was one of the first times I’d covered an event on my own, and I was petrified, like a rabbit in the headlights standing in the scrum of reporters and flashing cameras.

Then Liam walked down the red carpet in my direction, and he stopped to speak to me.

I was 19, starstruck, and couldn’t believe my luck – I was completely and utterly unprofessional.

As soon as he approached me, I blurted out: “Oh my God, I was such a One Direction fan.”

He smiled, looked me in the eyes and thanked me, and managed to look interested even though he had likely heard my questions hundreds of times already that day.

Liam seemed very well media-trained, and was comfortable with reporters, appearing to find it easy to build a good rapport with us.

At the end of our chat, we took a quick selfie, which he was happy to pose for.

The next time I interviewed Liam, it was as a junior reporter for a national newspaper, and his personable manner was much the same.

In the years that followed, I didn’t interview Liam again but I continued to read about his career.

It was clear that fame wasn’t always easy for him and, despite looking at home in front of a camera, he was later open about struggling with the pressures of celebrity and with alcohol.

When the news of Liam’s death broke on Wednesday, I was having dinner at a friend’s house, and we sat watching the BBC News Channel in disbelief. I listened to One Direction on the way home and couldn’t stop myself from crying.

For me, and for countless others who grew up as Directioners, it feels like the end of something which was an integral part of our adolescence.

For that, I’ll always thank Liam.

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”.

• Journalist’s apology not enough to satisfy Ghanaian king
• ‘Bipolar, colour and me’ – an artist’s spreadsheet of emotion
• Ghana’s LGBT terror: ‘We live in fear of snitches’

The latest series of popular LGBT teen drama Heartstopper is all about Nick and Charlie’s relationship. But this series also brings Charlie’s eating disorder to the fore, a topic that is rarely talked about in the LGBT community despite studies showing it’s a common experience.

In real life, there is one school day in Year 9 that Heartstopper fan Sharan, who uses the pronoun they, will never forget.

After years of bullying, they were outed by a classmate as pansexual – and instantly became a target.

Sharan started to avoid the school canteen as a result and would spend lunch money on trinkets and hobbies, rather than food.

It was a pattern of behaviour that went undetected for months, until a teacher asked whether they had anxieties around eating.

“The teacher asked me directly after they caught me skipping lunch,” Sharan says. “It always lived in the back of my mind [that I might have an eating disorder], but I never really saw it as a problem because no-one else knew about it and I could hide it.”

Sharan, who is now 18, is not alone in their experience as a young LGBT woman. In 2021, Just like Us found that lesbian and bisexual teens were more than twice as likely to have had an eating disorder compared to straight girls, from a survey of nearly 3,000 teens across 375 UK schools.

The charity’s then-chief executive Dominic Arnall said homophobia was the main reason driving poor mental health and self-harming behaviours in the community.

The eating disorder charity Beat suggests that people can perceive eating orders as only affecting young middle class heterosexual white girls which can make some people with eating disorders feel invisible, like Sharan, who is of Asian heritage.

But it’s not just stereotyping that can make LGBT teens with eating disorders feel excluded.

Matthew Todd, the former editor of gay magazine Attitude, points to a lack of support in schools, where coming out can still be very difficult and come with “bullying, feeling isolated, feeling you can’t tell people”.

“When you have been told not to like yourself, you see yourself as your physical appearance, so we turn those things on ourselves,” he says.

Matthew says the rise of social media and “visual culture, [where] you cannot get away from images of bodies” may also help explain the higher rates of eating disorders within the LGBT community.

Social media wasn’t around 20 years ago when James, who is gay, first developed anorexia aged 14.

He says growing up in Wales in the 1990s meant there were few clinics that even treated disorders – and he says some therapists advised him that accepting he was gay could help overcome his eating disorder.

His gender also complicated things as “the specialists were quite confused about me being male,” he says. “I was treated as a bit of a rare specimen.”

It took eight years for him to recover from anorexia, but soon afterwards he developed bulimia. Now aged 35, he has learned to manage the condition.

James says gay men of all ages still feel pressure to have muscular bodies because they are still traumatised from being bullied at a young age, but getting into yoga and “practicing self-compassion” has helped him recover.

According to the Priory, which treats people with mental health problems, more than one million people in the UK live with an eating disorder – and about a quarter of those are men.

Just Like Us found in its survey that gay male youths were six times more likely to have an eating disorder compared to heterosexual boys.

James believes the Heartstopper storyline might encourage those who are struggling in the community to reach out for help.

In the latest season, Charlie spends time at a residential clinic and finds a pathway towards recovery.

Heartstopper’s author, Alice Oseman, was heavily involved with the Netflix show and was keen to illustrate that the route to getting better isn’t always clear – but is possible with the right support.

Sharan was able to find the support they needed through the youth group Mosaic LGBT+, able to talk openly and “the mentors showed real care”.

Sharan says Heartstopper has become a real talking point among friends.

“Charlie faces the same struggles as I did,” they say. “It’s nice to see a positive storyline of someone who does succeed in getting help and getting better, it makes me feel hopeful.”

You can listen to Access All’s Heartstopper podcast on BBC Sounds.

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.”

King Charles and Queen Camilla joined a church congregation in Sydney for a Sunday service on the first day of engagements during their tour of Australia.

It is the King’s first visit to Australia since he became the country’s head of state in September 2022 and is the biggest trip the King has made since starting cancer treatment in February.

Their six-day visit to the Commonwealth country will involve meeting political and community leaders, and also celebrating the nation’s people, culture, and heritage.

They were joined by members of St Thomas’ Anglican Church in northern Sydney for the service, which was officiated by the city’s archbishop, the Most Reverend Kanishka Raffel.

The royal couple met some well-wishers after a crowd of a couple of hundred people – many who had queued since early morning – were allowed into the church precinct to speak to the royal couple after the service.

For most it was a snatched hello and a chance to hand over flowers or take a photo.

Lyn Tarbuck attended with her husband Bob, a republican, and her two King Charles spaniels. She said of the monarchy: “I think it’s joined forces – if we have a problem in Australia they will help us out. We are a very big country but small in population so the more help we get the better.”

Roslyn Durie, who saw the Queen on her 1980 visit to Australia, said she was “so emotional” after receiving “a good firm handshake” from the King.

Sandra Hall and her husband Peter were also there to greet the royal couple. Ms Hall said: “I shook hands with Camilla first and welcomed her to Sydney, then Charles came along. I said ‘look, it’s a beautiful sunny day’ – and he said ‘it’s always sunny in Sydney’.”

Outside the church, a small but noisy group of about 20 protesters shouted “not our King”.

They held banners, one reading “decolonise”, and waved Aboriginal and Palestinian flags.

Wayne Wharton, an Indigenous Kooma protester from Brisbane, called out: “I charge you, I charge the King … with crimes against the sovereign nations of this country … of war crimes against our people.”

“I do not recognise the illegal occupation of this country,” he said.

He had started with a megaphone but was told by police to put it down or face receiving a fine.

Also on Sunday, the King presented the New South Wales state parliament with an hourglass to celebrate the 200th anniversary of its upper house.

He also gave a speech to guests, in which he spoke of his “great joy” of visiting Australia for the first time as Sovereign, “and to renew a love of this country and its people which I have cherished for so long”.

On Saturday, a rest day for the couple, an image was released of the King and Queen Camilla showing the royals after their arrival on Friday at Admiralty House, the official residence of Australia’s governor-general, who represents the King in the country.

The couple were said to be touched when Sydney Opera House, which can be viewed from Admiralty House, was lit up with a rolling projection of images of them.

The King’s trip has been marked by his appointment to the honorary ranks of Admiral of the Fleet, Field Marshal, and Marshal in the three services of the Australian Defence Force.

Elsewhere, the Association of Commonwealth Universities, of which the King is a patron, has announced the launch of the King’s Commonwealth Fellowship programme.

It has been developed in response to urgent economic, social, and environmental challenges affecting small island developing states.

“There is so much we can learn from one another as we work together within the Commonwealth to tackle the major challenges of our age and, as these fellowships do in small island developing states, to address them where they are felt most acutely,” the King has said.

While in the Commonwealth country, the King’s visit will include supporting environmental projects and a naval review in Sydney Harbour.

The 75-year-old monarch is also expected to meet two Australian scientists, Georgina Long and Richard Scolyer, who have carried out pioneering research on melanoma – one of the country’s most common cancers.

There will be a reception in the capital on Monday to welcome King Charles, but the six state premiers – of New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland, Western Australia, South Australia, and Tasmania – have said they are unable to attend.

A post on the Royal Family’s X account said the trip would include the King addressing the Australian parliament in the capital Canberra.

The King’s cancer treatment has been suspended while in Australia and during the trip’s next leg in Samoa, where he will attend a Commonwealth leaders’ summit.

The timetables for the royal tour do not include evening engagements, state dinners, or trips out late in the day.

A message on the the Royal Family’s social media account said: “Ahead of our first visit to Australia as King and Queen, we are really looking forward to returning to this beautiful country to celebrate the extraordinarily rich cultures and communities that make it so special.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“And I was just astounded, flabbergasted.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Health authorities in Pakistan say they have confirmed six more cases of polio, taking the number of infected children to 39 this year.

The new cases of wild poliovirus type 1 (WPV1) included three in Balochistan, two in Sindh province and one in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

Polio, an infectious disease that causes crippling paralysis among young children, has been virtually eliminated globally after decades-long vaccination drives.

Pakistan and Afghanistan are the last remaining countries where it is still endemic. There is no cure for the disease, and paralysis caused by an infection is irreversible.

“This should be a wake-up call for all parents and communities,” Ms Ayesha Raza Farooq, Pakistan Prime Minister’s Focal Person for Polio Eradication, said recently.

“Every paralytic polio case means there are hundreds of children who are silently affected by poliovirus and are potentially carrying and spreading it throughout their communities,” she added.

This year, 20 cases have been detected in Balochistan, the worst affected province in Pakistan. It is followed by Sindh province with 12 cases. Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has registered five, while Punjab and Islamabad reported one each.

“The continuous movement of populations, security challenges in high-risk areas, and persistent vaccine hesitancy all contribute to the persistence of the virus,” Melissa Corkum, the chief of Unicef polio team in Pakistan, told the BBC.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has confirmed at least 18 polio cases in neighbouring Afghanistan this year, most of them in the south of the country.

Pakistan is launching a nationwide polio vaccination campaign on 28 October to vaccinate more than 45 million children under the age of five against paralytic polio.

Prior to the latest surge in infections, Pakistan – and its population of more than 240 million – was on the verge of eradicating the disease.

The country recorded only six cases in 2023, after 20 in 2022 and just one in 2021.

Health authorities say they face a number of challenges in convincing people to vaccinate their children.

Hardline clerics and militants have campaigned against vaccination, falsely claiming it is a Western conspiracy to sterilise Muslims. As a result, many communities avoid getting inoculated.

In recent years, several polio vaccinators and security officials who accompany them have come under attack by militants. At least 15 people, mostly police officers, have been killed and dozens injured this year during vaccination campaigns.

“Security concerns have, in the past, resulted in delayed or fragmented campaigns, leading to missed opportunities for immunisation and leaving children vulnerable,” Ms Corkum, the Unicef official said.

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.

Tech billionaire Elon Musk has said he will give away $1m (£766,000) a day to a registered voter in the key swing state of Pennsylvania until the US presidential election in November.

The winner will be chosen at random from those who sign a pro-constitution petition by Mr Musk’s campaign group AmericaPAC which he set up to support Republican nominee Donald Trump’s bid to return to the White House.

The first lottery-style cheque was given away to a surprised-looking attendee at a town hall event on Saturday night.

The giveaway will effectively help to encourage potential Trump voters to engage in the campaign during the tense final weeks of the presidential race ahead of the vote on 5 November.

Mr Musk’s offer has raised questions around its legality.

Prominent election law expert Rick Hasen wrote on his personal Election Law Blog that he believed Mr Musk’s offer was “clearly illegal”.

Federal law states anyone who “pays or offers to pay or accepts payment either for registration to vote or for voting” faces a potential $10,000 fine or five year prison sentence.

Though Mr Musk is technically asking Pennsylvania voters to sign a form, Mr Hasen questioned the intent behind the strategy.

“Who can sign the petitions? Only registered voters in swing states, which is what makes it illegal,” Mr Hasen, a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) law school alleged.

Those who sign the petition – which pledges to support free speech and gun rights – will have to give their contact details, potentially allowing AmericaPAC to contact them about their vote.

Both Mr Musk and AmericaPAC have been approached for comment.

Campaigns and political action committees rely on tactics like petition signing, survey requests, or merchandise purchases to build massive databases of voter information. That data can then be used to more accurately target voters, or raise funds from supporters who are already onboard.

Mr Musk had previously offered to give $47 to anyone who got a registered swing-state voter to sign the petition.

That strategy raised eyebrows from campaign finance experts like Hansen, but could fall under a loophole under US election law because no-one was being directly paid to vote – despite introducing money into a process that could identify likely Trump voters.

In the US, it is illegal to provide payments to get people to vote – not only for a certain candidate, but to simply cast a ballot.

The rule prompted ice cream maker Ben & Jerry’s to give its product free to everyone on election day in 2008, having initially planned to limit it just to those with an “I voted” sticker.

On Sunday, Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, a Democrat backing Kamala Harris, called Mr Musk’s strategy “deeply concerning.”

Shapiro told NBC News’ Meet the Press that law enforcement should potentially look at the payments.

Mr Musk, who has emerged as a key Trump supporter in recent years, launched AmericaPAC in July with the aim of supporting the former president’s campaign.

He has so far donated $75m (£57.5m) to the group, which has quickly become a central player in Trump’s election campaign.

The Trump campaign is highly reliant on outside groups such as AmericaPAC to canvas voters.

A statement on the groups website reads: “AmericaPAC was created to support these key values: Secure Borders, Safe Cities, Sensible spending, Fair Justice System, Free Speech, Right to Self-Protection.”

Mr Musk said he wants to get “over a million, maybe two million, voters in the battleground states to sign the petition in support of the First and Second Amendment.”

“I think [it] sends a crucial message to our elected politicians,” he added.

Mr Musk is currently the world’s richest man, with an estimated net worth of $248bn (£191bn), according to US business magazine Forbes.

The 2024 presidential race will likely come down to seven key battleground states including Pennsylvania as well as Wisconsin, North Carolina, Georgia, Michigan, Arizona and Nevada.

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• Read more about: Kamala Harris | Donald Trump | US election

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.

Sir Chris Hoy has been hailed as “inspiring” for sending a “wonderful message of hope” after revealing his terminal cancer diagnosis.

The six-time Olympic cycling champion gave an interview to the Sunday Times, in which he said doctors have told him he has between two and four years to live.

Well-wishes to Sir Chris have poured in from sporting stars, politicians and thousands of others on social media after he posted on Instagram on Sunday to say he was “feeling fit, strong and positive”.

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said the “whole country” is behind the 48-year-old, while Health Secretary Wes Streeting said he was “in awe” at the Scot’s courage and positivity.

Sir Chris 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.

The legendary athlete revealed earlier this year that he had been diagnosed, but he had not previously disclosed the type of cancer.

Following the interview’s publication, the sporting star posted on Instagram on Sunday that he was in Copenhagen with the BBC Sport team covering the World Track Cycling Championships.

Sir Chris has been appearing on BBC Two this week co-presenting the championships, with day five coverage getting under way on Sunday afternoon.

“You may see in the news this weekend some articles about my health, so I just wanted to reassure you all that I’m feeling fit, strong and positive, and overwhelmed by all the love and support shown to my family and me,” he said in the post.

There were many supportive comments underneath the post, including from fellow former Olympic cyclist Mark Cavendish who called Sir Chris a “hero of a human being”.

Olympic athlete Dame Kelly Holmes also commented “sending love to you Chris” and the British Cycling account left an emoji showing two hands making a heart symbol.

“You know, we were all born and we all die, and this is just part of the process,” Sir Chris told the Sunday Times.

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

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

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

Olympic-medal winner boxer Anthony Ogogo posted a picture of himself with Sir Chris on X, calling him a “role model”, an “inspiration”, and a “hero”.

James Cracknell, an Olympic rower for Team GB, also took to the social media platform, saying Sir Chris was “more inspirational today than during his immense sporting career”.

Scottish First Minister John Swinney praised Hoy’s “incredible courage” in a post on X, saying he “has always inspired us by all that he has done”.

Speaking on the Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg programme, Health Secretary Wes Streeting said Sir Chris was “not the only person” dealing with a terminal cancer diagnosis and had “done the country such an enormous service” by being open and positive about it.

“That’s worth even more than the stack of Olympic gold that he’s built up over his career,” he added.

The Edinburgh-born Olympian’s cancer was discovered last year after a routine scan for shoulder pain – he thought he had injured himself while lifting weights at the gym – revealed a tumour.

The athlete was with his wife Sarra when he was given his terminal diagnosis. The couple have two children, Callum and Chloe, who were aged nine and six at the time.

Just before Sir Chris’s tumour was discovered, Sarra had undergone scans that would later show she had multiple sclerosis, a degenerative disease.

Former prime minister Gordon Brown said that courage had “defined” Sir Chris’s career and “now characterises how Chris and Sarra both face their health diagnoses and embrace life”.

Talking to Stephen Nolan on BBC Radio 5 Live, Simon Richardson, editor of Cycling Weekly magazine, called Sir Chris “the epitome of the Olympic champion”.

Sir Chris, who was first inspired to take up cycling by the famous BMX scenes in the film E.T., had won six Olympic, 11 world and 43 World Cup titles by the time he retired.

The cyclist first won gold at the Athens Olympics in 2004, and went on to secure three more gold medals four years later in 2008 Beijing. He won two further golds in London 2012, before retiring from cycling in 2013.

His haul of six Olympic golds is the second highest total by any British Olympian behind Sir Jason Kenny’s tally of seven.

Noel Drake, a 29-year-old who lives in Utah, said she felt “very bleak” about politics before this year.

During the 2020 presidential election, she felt disillusioned entirely.

But Taylor Swift – and her fans – helped change her mind, she told me.

“With this sense of community that I have established through interacting with other Swifties online, it has really changed the way I interact with politics this election cycle,” she said.

After Swift endorsed Democratic nominee Kamala Harris a month ago, Ms Drake started following a fan-led campaign group called “Swifties for Kamala”. The group is not officially affiliated with the Harris campaign, but does keep in regular touch with campaign staff.

Since interacting with other like-minded Swifties, Ms Drake has decided to get more involved in local campaigning in her home state.

The BBC has tracked down dozens of voters like Ms Drake, who say posts from Swift and her mega fans on social media have motivated them to go out and vote, or get involved in activism. But just because you’re a fan of Swift doesn’t mean you’re going to vote like her, I learned.

For the latest episode of BBC Radio 4’s Why Do You Hate Me USA, I’ve been investigating how one pop-inclined meme enthusiast Irene Kim – the co-founder of Swifties for Kamala – found herself transformed from superfan to political strategist. Have any of the tactics used by her and her fellow activists actually worked?

Over the past month, I’ve messaged several accounts who like and comment on the Swifties for Kamala posts.

Although some people were already Democrat supporters, others weren’t so sure.

Take 27-year-old Destiny from South Carolina, who doesn’t want to share her surname. She said both her and her boyfriend are “not that political,” but that the Swifties for Kamala posts have helped support her reasoning for voting for the Democrats this election.

“I really want a woman president who has similar values to me. This is my first election that has pushed me to vote for this reason,” she said.

Even her boyfriend, whom she described as “moderately conservative”, has been swayed to vote for Harris, and she said it was in part inspired by her lobbying based on some Swifties for Kamala posts.

Part of the appeal of a celebrity endorsement – and the political content generated by their fandoms – is that unlike paid-for adverts, this kind of user-generated content feels genuine.

A study from Harvard Kennedy School that looked at the impact of celebrities when it comes to voter registration found their “authenticity” can be key when motivating people to go out and vote.

Its author, Ashley Spillane, told the BBC celebrities are among the “most well-positioned members of society” when it comes to dealing with causes of voter apathy, such as “lack of information, lack of trust and lack of motivation”.

“People know them from places outside of politics, which makes their involvement feel deeper and less self-interested,” she said. Within 24 hours of Swift’s Harris endorsement on Instagram, nearly 340,000 people had visited vote.gov, a registration website, using a custom link she created.

While Harris has enjoyed endorsements from Swift, Beyonce and some other big-name celebrities, Trump is not without his fans either. Endorsements from Kid Rock, Elon Musk, John Voight and YouTubers the Nelk Boys may help him reach young men in the same way that Swift’s endorsement has boosted Harris’s profile with young women. Trump’s own committed supporters online also operate a bit like a fandom.

Endorsements can backfire, however, polls show. A Quinnipiac University poll from late September found that Swift’s endorsement of Harris made 9% of respondents “more enthusiastic” about her candidacy, while it made 13% “less enthusiastic”. It also looked at how Musk’s endorsement affected respondents’ views of Trump – 13% felt more enthusiastic, while 21% felt less. Ultimately, we won’t know exactly what impact celebrities – and their fandoms – will have on this election until after November.

In what looks to be a very closely fought election, it’s these groups of online supporters who could motivate voters to head to the polls – especially in swing states where the winner may be decided by just thousands of votes.

Ms Kim, the co-founder of Swifties for Kamala, told me the group is targeting people in swing states especially.

Peggy Rowe is in Arizona, one of the most closely watched states in the election. She told me it was Harris’s support for abortion rights that strengthened her to support for the vice-president.

“I’m very passionate about reproductive rights and social media has further confirmed my opinions,” she said.

While they’re employing all the traditional political campaign methods, Swifties for Kamala has put a fan-specific twist on their efforts. Whenever they’re at events, they give out friendship bracelets featuring political slogans like “in my voting era”. It’s a nod to Swift’s Eras tour, where fans have been trading Swift-themed friendship bracelets as a sign of being a true fan.

Ms Kim said they’d begun face-to-face campaigning a few weeks ago, and have been calling and texting followers directly. They aim to have 22 million direct voter contacts in total by Election Day.

The Swifties for Kamala group has raised over $200,000 (£153,000) for Harris’s campaign, as of the middle of October, she estimated.

• SIMPLE GUIDE: How to win a US election
• EXPLAINER: What Harris or Trump would do in power
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• POLLS: Who is winning the race for the White House?

There are some Swift fans, though, who have not been swayed. I’ve spotted comments from several Republican and Trump supporters who have chosen their preferred politician over their allegiance to their favourite pop star, and sent dozens of them messages too.

Bri, who lives in Massachusetts, says she chooses to vote Republican still because “at the end of the day people need to do what’s best for them”.

She told me she thinks Swift has such a devoted fan base, she should stay out of politics to be fair to all sides.

Taylor Swift is “entitled to her own opinion,” she said, but:

“She is the only celebrity who has that amount of pull that she shouldn’t mention politics during an election year.”

And although he didn’t get her endorsement, Donald Trump supporters did try and harness Swift’s fan electoral power, by making an AI-generated meme of Swift endorsing the former president. In fact, it was Trump sharing the meme on social media that prompted Swift to endorse Harris in the first place.

Bri said she would “never not like someone over their political beliefs” – including the fans who are part of Swifties for Kamala. But that doesn’t mean all online conversations are friendly.

Ms Kim told me that getting into heated online arguments is a bit of a “rite of passage” for Swift’s fandom. But the Swifties for Kamala campaign group now has guidelines to stop this happening, in part because they want to win over voters who don’t share the same views.

“I think it’s always good to try to bridge the gap,” she said.

is available to listen to on BBC Sounds now

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 a cotton merchant – who was a member of India’s supremely wealthy Tata clan – has quite a story.

At every turn, it seems 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.

There are two parallel universes in the Lucy Letby story.

One can be witnessed every day in Liverpool at the public inquiry into her case. Here, the matter of Letby’s guilt is settled. The question for the judge is why Letby was able to harm babies for so long.

In the other universe, doubts about the evidence used to convict her have been mounting. Leading statisticians and medical experts are arguing Letby may be the victim of a miscarriage of justice.

It is a surreal state of affairs: a legal system that has decided Letby is a serial killer – and a debate outside that questions her guilt.

As journalists we have been covering the Lucy Letby case for years – through two trials, an appeals process, an ongoing public inquiry and the growing controversy over her conviction. We have written a book together and made two Panorama films about the case – the latest of which airs on Monday with new information, and hears from both leading critics and the prosecution experts now under fire.

Letby is officially the most prolific child killer of modern times – convicted of murdering seven babies and attempting to murder seven others. And yet her case divides opinion.

Had someone actually seen her harming a baby at the neonatal unit in the Countess of Chester Hospital, the case might have been more straightforward, but no-one did. There was no incriminating CCTV or DNA evidence either. The evidence against her was circumstantial.

One of the documents that played a key role in her trial was a grid, listing the incidents in the case with ‘X’s to show which members of staff had been on duty. Letby was the only nurse on duty for all of them.

But the grid has attracted scorn from statisticians. They argue that we don’t know how the “suspicious events” listed on the grid were selected or which incidents were excluded, so on its own the grid is little more than a visual stunt. The jury also heard there were two suspicious incidents when Letby was not at work – neither of which was included on the grid.

But is the grid really the problem?

If there was undisputed medical evidence that 24 crimes had been committed, then surely the fact Lucy Letby was present each time would be damning.

And therein lies the key question of the Letby case: How convincing is the medical evidence that the baby deaths and collapses were definitely crimes rather than naturally occurring events?

The most controversial evidence concerned allegations that Letby murdered babies by injecting air into their blood. That would cause an air embolism – a blockage caused by an air bubble in the blood circulation.

To do this, Letby would have to have taken a syringe and injected the air into the babies’ intravenous lines. These are normally used to administer fluids, drugs, and nutrition to ill or premature newborns.

Syringes in hospitals are thrown away and incinerated after they have been used. As a murder weapon, they are virtually untraceable.

The problem is no-one saw Letby doing this. The allegation rested instead on a “checklist” of observations of some of the babies who died or collapsed while Letby was around.

According to the prosecution, the babies deteriorated suddenly and unexpectedly. Retired consultant paediatrician Dr Dewi Evans was the prosecution’s main medical expert witness. He told us: “Babies don’t suddenly drop dead.”

Many exhibited strange skin discolourations that medics on the unit hadn’t seen before. Some babies screamed.

The babies also failed to respond to resuscitation as medics expected. Post-mortem X-rays revealed air in the blood vessels of some.

According to the prosecution, this checklist was a sure way to identify air embolism. But how robust was it? Research on air embolism in babies is very limited – something the prosecution’s own experts readily admitted.

One of the most comprehensive studies was a 1989 research paper by two Canadian academics. The account in the paper appeared to support the prosecution case – particularly its references to skin colour changes associated with air embolism.

But the number of cases in the study was limited – just 53 – and the circumstances of the babies described in the paper differed in some respects from those in the Letby case.

Lucy Letby: Unanswered Questions

Reporter Judith Moritz, who has covered the case from the start, investigates the questions that have been raised about Lucy Letby’s conviction.

Watch on BBC iPlayer from 06:00 on Monday 21 October – or on BBC One at 20:00 (20:30 in Wales and Northern Ireland).

One of the paper’s authors, Dr Shoo Lee, later appeared as a witness in Letby’s defence, during her unsuccessful attempt to appeal her convictions in April 2024. He said none of the skin discolourations seen on the babies in the Letby case were proof of air embolism.

Lawyers for the prosecution disagreed. They also pointed out that skin discolouration was just one item on their air embolism checklist and that they had never argued that one particular form of skin discolouration was, on its own, proof of air embolism.

Several experts have publicly criticised the prosecution’s air embolism theory, although hardly any have seen all of the medical evidence. One expert who has is the man who advised Letby’s defence during her original ten-month trial: retired consultant neonatologist Dr Mike Hall. Dr Hall didn’t actually give evidence in court, but he told us that in his view there was no proof that the air seen in the X-rays of the babies got there while they were alive.

These are the types of expert disputes now playing out over the medical evidence in the Letby case – and some of them have become personal.

Dr Hall believes there were significant flaws in the prosecution’s medical evidence.

He also believes the prosecution experts overstated how stable the babies were before they collapsed and died.

“Phrases such as the baby was really, really well were given by the prosecution expert witnesses on several occasions for several of the babies,” Dr Hall told us.

“And it was my view and is my view that they weren’t really, really well, they had signs of significant illness.

“I think that what the prosecution experts said was misleading for the jury. That’s not the same thing as saying that they deliberately misled the jury.”

It is an allegation that both of the main prosecution experts reject emphatically.

Dr Dewi Evans told us: “Those suggestions are completely flawed and indicate either that the people making them have not seen the clinical evidence or that they are unaware of what constitutes well-being in a premature baby.”

Consultant paediatrician Dr Sandie Bohin, the prosecution’s other main expert, who is speaking about the controversy surrounding the case for the first time, said: “I gave evidence under oath 16 times. I told the truth.”

“It was my opinion and remains my opinion that these babies were stable prior to their collapse, so I can’t agree with those people that suggested that I misrepresented the stability of the babies and that I misled the jury.

“I think that’s an outrageous suggestion.”

It is an indication of the toxicity and intense division of opinion in the Letby case – even among the experts.

One obvious question is why Dr Hall didn’t testify in court. He clearly disagreed with the prosecution experts, and the fact that he didn’t give evidence meant that Letby had no medical expert witnesses in her defence.

That has prompted some to argue she didn’t have a fair trial.

We asked Dr Hall if he had been willing to testify and he said he had.

He told us he was expecting to give evidence and that he was told of the decision not to call him “right at the last minute”- a decision that left him “at odds” with Letby’s defence team. Dr Hall told us he was so concerned that he even considered writing to the judge to say he believed that the jury had not heard the whole truth.

But the ultimate decision not to call Dr Hall as a witness came from Letby herself – a point that Dr Hall acknowledges.

Why did she not call him? It is one of many questions that only she can answer.

Letby was convicted of using a variety of methods to harm and murder babies – injecting air into their stomachs, force-feeding them with milk, dislodging breathing tubes, and inflicting trauma.

As with the allegations of air embolism, the prosecution relied heavily on the opinions of experts to make their case.

But there was one part of the prosecution’s argument that appeared to rest on something more than individual expert opinion: the insulin evidence.

Lab tests indicated that two babies had been poisoned. The basic principle involved in the test was quite straightforward. When the body produces insulin, it also produces another substance called C-peptide, so C-peptide is a reliable marker of naturally produced insulin.

Although C-peptide is produced by the body at the same rate as insulin, it clears much more slowly. So you would typically expect to see five to 10 times more C-peptide than insulin, if the insulin is natural.

Where you find high levels of insulin, but low levels of C-peptide, there is only one obvious conclusion: the insulin is not natural and has instead been administered from the outside.

That is what investigators found in two of the babies in the Letby case. One had extremely high levels of insulin in his blood and a C-peptide level that was so low that it was unmeasurable.

The second baby had an insulin level more than four times higher than the C-peptide level, again indicating it had not been naturally produced.

The medical condition of the babies also fitted with the lab results. In both cases, the babies’ blood sugar levels had plummeted, which is what you would expect to see with insulin poisoning. And while no-one saw Letby poisoning either of the two babies, she was there when they started experiencing symptoms.

Of all the allegations in the case, this one looked like the most solid. In court, Letby herself accepted the scientific evidence that the babies had been given dangerous quantities of insulin. She just denied being responsible. Her lawyers were more cautious. They did not accept the insulin evidence, but they did not say it was incorrect either.

For the prosecution, the insulin evidence was fundamental to the entire case. It seemed to prove that someone on the neonatal unit at the Countess of Chester Hospital was a poisoner.

If jurors could be persuaded on this point, it wouldn’t be so difficult for them to conclude that Letby was the culprit.

And so they did. Of all the allegations in the case, the jury returned unanimous verdicts of guilt on just three – and two of these were the insulin cases.

However, since then, sceptics have questioned whether the lab test used to measure insulin and C-peptide in the Letby case was as robust as the prosecution had claimed. It is called an immunoassay test, and works by using antibodies to detect and measure substances.

Critics argue there are circumstances in which the test can mistake another substance for insulin. It is called interference and it could result in a false positive. The critics say the only way to be sure that the substance being measured is indeed insulin is to use a more precise method of analysis – such as mass spectrometry.

We spent months examining this argument. Our conclusion, having spoken to leading experts on all sides of this debate, is that, while the immunoassay method is not perfect, it is usually accurate and the circumstances in which interference might occur are extremely unlikely in the context of the babies in the Letby case.

It is even more unlikely that two lab tests conducted within months of each other would both be wrong.

In this week’s Panorama, we reveal new evidence on the insulin allegations and the question of whether Lucy Letby really poisoned babies.

An enduring challenge in the Letby case – and reporting on it – is the difficulty of seeing the big picture.

Individual parts of the evidence can, and will continue to be, criticised. But it is not possible to reach a view on the case without taking all of the evidence into account – and some of this goes beyond the opinions of the medical experts.

Letby’s time in the witness box was revealing for those who were there. During her original trial, she spent 14 days being questioned. Several observers noted that she seemed aloof and indifferent. At times, she squirmed, and seemed to tie herself in knots.

She claimed she could not remember things – like the death of a baby she had texted colleagues about, or searching repeatedly for the parents of dead babies online.

There are other details, not included in Letby’s trials, that are also challenging for the sceptics.

A total of 13 babies died in the neonatal unit between June 2015 and June 2016. Letby was on duty for 12 of them.

And yet, no-one actually saw her harm a baby.

In recent weeks, several of Letby’s colleagues have given evidence to the Thirlwall Inquiry saying that they have since come to realise her guilt.

However, when consultants began to suspect her back in 2016, many of her nursing colleagues remained fiercely loyal – and they remained loyal even after her removal from the neonatal unit in July 2016.

It’s not hard to understand why. There is nothing obvious in Letby’s background that points to her becoming a killer. Her parents seem to have adored her, and her friendship groups in Hereford – and later in Chester – were happy and supportive. Her closest friends in Hereford remain convinced she is innocent.

Then there is Letby’s own continued protestation of innocence. In July 2024, she was convicted of a further count of attempted murder. After hearing the verdict, before being taken to the cells, she turned to the judge with outstretched palms and said: “I’m innocent.”

Letby now has a new lawyer, Mark McDonald, who plans to take her case to the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC). Her attempts to appeal against her convictions have so far failed.

Mr McDonald tells us he has gathered the finest experts in the world to review the prosecution’s medical and scientific evidence. He says the prosecution’s case was flawed and he is confident his team of experts will give him the arguments he needs to challenge her convictions.

But the CCRC process could take years. In the meantime, battles over the evidence will continue. That means more heartbreak for the families of the babies, who say they find the continual questioning of Lucy Letby’s convictions “grossly offensive and distressing”.

Voters in the US go to the polls on 5 November to elect their next president.

The election was initially a rematch of 2020 but it was upended in July when President Joe Biden ended his campaign and endorsed Vice-President Kamala Harris.

The big question now is – will America get its first woman president or a second Donald Trump term?

As election day approaches, we’ll be keeping track of the polls and seeing what effect the campaign has on the race for the White House.

Harris has had a small lead over Trump in the national polling averages since she entered the race at the end of July and she remains ahead – as shown in the chart below with the latest figures rounded to the nearest whole number.

Harris saw a bounce in her polling numbers in the first few weeks of her campaign, building a lead of nearly four percentage points towards the end of August.

But the numbers have been relatively stable since early September, even after the only debate between the two candidates on 10 September, which was watched by nearly 70 million people.

You can see how little the race has changed nationally in the last few weeks in the poll tracker chart below, with the trend lines showing the averages and the dots showing the individual poll results for each candidate.

While these national polls are a useful guide as to how popular a candidate is across the country as a whole, they’re not necessarily an accurate way to predict the result of the election.

That’s because the US uses an electoral college system, in which each state is given a number of votes roughly in line with the size of its population. A total of 538 electoral college votes are up for grabs, so a candidate needs to hit 270 to win.

There are 50 states in the US but because most of them nearly always vote for the same party, in reality there are just a handful where both candidates stand a chance of winning. These are the places where the election will be won and lost and are known as battleground states or swing states.

• What is the electoral college?

Right now the polls are very tight in the seven states considered battlegrounds in this election and neither candidate has a decisive lead in any of them, according to the polling averages.

If you look at the trends since Harris joined the race, it does help highlight some differences between the states – but it’s important to note that there are fewer state polls than national polls so we have less data to go on and every poll has a margin of error that means the numbers could be higher or lower.

In Arizona, Georgia and North Carolina, the lead has changed hands a few times since the start of August but Trump has had a small lead for a few weeks now. It’s a similar story in Nevada but with Harris the candidate who has been slightly ahead.

In the three other states – Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin – Harris has been leading since the start of August, sometimes by two or three points, but in recent days the polls have tightened significantly.

All three of those states had been Democratic strongholds before Trump turned them red on his path to winning the presidency in 2016. Biden retook them in 2020 and if Harris can do the same then she will be on course to win the election.

In a sign of how the race has changed since Harris became the Democratic nominee, on the day that Biden quit the race he was trailing Trump by nearly five percentage points on average in the seven swing states.

In Pennsylvania, Biden was behind by nearly 4.5 percentage points when he dropped out, as the chart below shows. It is a key state for both campaigns as it has the highest number of electoral votes of the seven and therefore winning it makes it easier to reach the 270 votes needed.

The figures we have used in the graphics above are averages created by polling analysis website 538, which is part of American news network ABC News. To create them, 538 collects the data from individual polls carried out both nationally and in battleground states by lots of polling companies.

As part of its quality control, 538 only includes polls from companies that meet certain criteria, like being transparent about how many people they polled, when the poll was carried out and how the poll was conducted (telephone calls, text message, online, etc).

You can read more about the 538 methodology here.

At the moment, the polls suggest that Kamala Harris and Donald Trump are within a couple of percentage points of each other in all of the swing states – and when the race is that close, it’s very hard to predict winners.

Polls underestimated support for Trump in both 2016 and 2020. Polling companies will be trying to fix that problem in a number of ways, including how to make their results reflect the make-up of the voting population.

Those adjustments are difficult to get right and pollsters still have to make educated guesses about other factors like who will actually turn up to vote on 5 November.

• Listen: How do election polls work?

• SIMPLE GUIDE: Everything you need to know about the vote
• ANALYSIS: Harris goads Trump into flustered performance
• EXPLAINER: Seven swing states that could decide election
• IMMIGRATION: Could Trump really deport a million migrants?
• FACT CHECK: Was US economy stronger or weaker under Trump?
• Read more about: Kamala Harris | Donald Trump | US election

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Some Palestinians described Sinwar as a martyr.

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

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

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

“It is definitely otters because I’ve seen them. I’ve even chased one around the garden.”

Nige Cooper loves animals. From the rescued fish in his garden pond to the visiting otters who are having to roam further to find food.

And the chihuahuas he has trained to act as an early warning system.

He is one of a number of pond owners in Ulverston, Cumbria, seeking humane ways to protect their fish from hungry mammals which, according to conservationists, are being forced to hunt in urban areas due to man-made environmental changes.

The 16ft-long pond in Nige Cooper’s garden is where he dotes on his sturgeon, goldfish and rescued koi carp and delights in the dragonflies, bats and birds that dart above the water.

But he now watches over it for different reasons.

Nige is on high alert for otters who, he said, have snuck into his garden several times seeking a midnight snack.

“We’ve installed electric fences, motion-sensor lighting, left peppercorns and put up CCTV,” the 61-year-old said.

“I’ve even trained my chihuahuas to look at the pond and bark like mad when they come.”

Nige says he “loves otters to bits”, which is why he has gone to such efforts to try to safely deter them from snatching his fish.

“We could put wired chicken mesh over the pond, but it looks unattractive and would put off creatures like dragonflies and bats.

“We are lucky in that only about eight of our fish have been eaten and most of mine were rescues or donated.

“Other people have thousands of pounds worth of fish that are getting eaten.”

Along with a friend, Nige has been logging pond raids in his neighbourhood.

“We’ve had about 41 that have been recorded in Ulverston over the past six months,” he said.

“There’s a guy living down the road who bred his fish from babies 25 years ago, and the next morning there were just fish carcasses left… they’d wiped the lot out.

“I also spoke to a lady the other day who burst into tears because she lost 20 fish that she had for about 15 years.”

His research has a wider purpose, he explained: “I just want pond owners to make sure they use the correct methods of deterrents.

“It is so lovely to see otters, but my question is why are they coming into urban areas for food?”

Ulverston is situated next to the River Leven and is home to a canal and several becks.

South Cumbria Rivers Trust (SCRT) said pollution and loss of habitat were linked to a decline of native fish, increasing the chance of otters predating on captive populations.

“The Ulverston catchment, like many others, has been modified by human activity over many years,” SCRT’s project officer Hannah Teagle said.

“There are a number of redundant structures, some of which are impassable to fish and other aquatic species.”

The trust said it was working with partners and landowners to improve water quality.

It added it was introducing practical interventions like eel passes on weirs, de-culverting and reducing run-off from agricultural land, creating buffer strips and planting trees.

Dr Paul Yoxon, from The International Otter Survival Fund (IOSF), said: “Otters do not kill for fun and will only take to eat.

“People say otters are entering ponds largely because there are more otters – there is no evidence for an actual increase in numbers.”

IOSF points to a decline in eels of more than 90% in some areas, with Dr Yoxon adding: “Rather than an actual increase in otter numbers it is more likely that they have had to increase their home range to get the food they need.”

The Environment Agency said it had “no evidence to suggest that poor water quality is driving them to take fish from garden ponds in Ulverston”.

“However, eels are currently classed as a critically endangered species and we are taking forward a range of measures to protect and support their populations across Cumbria,” a spokeswoman said.

“This includes removing barriers to upstream migration by improving eel pass design in our rivers, removing man-made barriers such as weirs and carrying out research on all life stages of the European eel to inform conservation measures.”

Back in Ulverston, Nige said he was “doing everything he could” to protect both his pond and the otters, but he was worried harm may come to them.

For now, all he and his diligent dogs can do is hope the otters return to the waterways and their environment improves.

A Palestinian man from Gaza has told the BBC that the house the former Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar 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.

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.”

Sir Chris Hoy has been hailed as “inspiring” for sending a “wonderful message of hope” after revealing his terminal cancer diagnosis.

The six-time Olympic cycling champion gave an interview to the Sunday Times, in which he said doctors have told him he has between two and four years to live.

Well-wishes to Sir Chris have poured in from sporting stars, politicians and thousands of others on social media after he posted on Instagram on Sunday to say he was “feeling fit, strong and positive”.

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said the “whole country” is behind the 48-year-old, while Health Secretary Wes Streeting said he was “in awe” at the Scot’s courage and positivity.

Sir Chris 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.

The legendary athlete revealed earlier this year that he had been diagnosed, but he had not previously disclosed the type of cancer.

Following the interview’s publication, the sporting star posted on Instagram on Sunday that he was in Copenhagen with the BBC Sport team covering the World Track Cycling Championships.

Sir Chris has been appearing on BBC Two this week co-presenting the championships, with day five coverage getting under way on Sunday afternoon.

“You may see in the news this weekend some articles about my health, so I just wanted to reassure you all that I’m feeling fit, strong and positive, and overwhelmed by all the love and support shown to my family and me,” he said in the post.

There were many supportive comments underneath the post, including from fellow former Olympic cyclist Mark Cavendish who called Sir Chris a “hero of a human being”.

Olympic athlete Dame Kelly Holmes also commented “sending love to you Chris” and the British Cycling account left an emoji showing two hands making a heart symbol.

“You know, we were all born and we all die, and this is just part of the process,” Sir Chris told the Sunday Times.

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

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

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

Olympic-medal winner boxer Anthony Ogogo posted a picture of himself with Sir Chris on X, calling him a “role model”, an “inspiration”, and a “hero”.

James Cracknell, an Olympic rower for Team GB, also took to the social media platform, saying Sir Chris was “more inspirational today than during his immense sporting career”.

Scottish First Minister John Swinney praised Hoy’s “incredible courage” in a post on X, saying he “has always inspired us by all that he has done”.

Speaking on the Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg programme, Health Secretary Wes Streeting said Sir Chris was “not the only person” dealing with a terminal cancer diagnosis and had “done the country such an enormous service” by being open and positive about it.

“That’s worth even more than the stack of Olympic gold that he’s built up over his career,” he added.

The Edinburgh-born Olympian’s cancer was discovered last year after a routine scan for shoulder pain – he thought he had injured himself while lifting weights at the gym – revealed a tumour.

The athlete was with his wife Sarra when he was given his terminal diagnosis. The couple have two children, Callum and Chloe, who were aged nine and six at the time.

Just before Sir Chris’s tumour was discovered, Sarra had undergone scans that would later show she had multiple sclerosis, a degenerative disease.

Former prime minister Gordon Brown said that courage had “defined” Sir Chris’s career and “now characterises how Chris and Sarra both face their health diagnoses and embrace life”.

Talking to Stephen Nolan on BBC Radio 5 Live, Simon Richardson, editor of Cycling Weekly magazine, called Sir Chris “the epitome of the Olympic champion”.

Sir Chris, who was first inspired to take up cycling by the famous BMX scenes in the film E.T., had won six Olympic, 11 world and 43 World Cup titles by the time he retired.

The cyclist first won gold at the Athens Olympics in 2004, and went on to secure three more gold medals four years later in 2008 Beijing. He won two further golds in London 2012, before retiring from cycling in 2013.

His haul of six Olympic golds is the second highest total by any British Olympian behind Sir Jason Kenny’s tally of seven.