Chinese tourists huddle together against the brisk autumn breeze on a 12-storey building, vying for the best spot to photograph the point where their country meets Russia and North Korea.

The three national flags overlap on a map on the wall, which explains that Fangchuan in China’s north-east corner is a unique place for that reason.

“I feel very proud to be standing here… with Russia on my left and North Korea on my right,” declares one woman on a trip with her co-workers. “There are no borders among the people.”

That might be overly optimistic. Like the sliver of sandwiched Chinese territory she has travelled to see, Beijing too is caught between its sanctioned neighbours.

Fears over the budding alliance between Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un have peaked in recent weeks, with reports of North Korea deploying thousands of troops to support Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

And that was before Pyongyang fired a banned intercontinental missile on Thursday, on the longest flight recorded yet – after turning up the rhetoric against Seoul for weeks.

“China seeks a relationship with a reasonable, high level of control over North Korea,” says Christopher Green, an analyst from the International Crisis Group. “And North Korea’s relationship with Russia threatens to undermine that.”

If Chinese leader Xi Jinping is unable shape the Putin-Kim alliance to suit his interests, China may well remain stuck in the middle as western anger and anxiety grows.

Moscow and Pyongyang deny that North Korean soldiers are headed for Ukraine, widely seen as a significant escalation. But the United States says it has seen evidence of this, following allegations by South Korean and Ukrainian intelligence.

The first reports emerged just before Xi met his Russian counterpart at the Brics summit earlier in October, overshadowing a gathering that was meant to send the West a defiant message.

It increasingly appears as though China’s allies are spiralling out of its control. Beijing, the senior partner in the triad, seeks to be the stable leader of a new world order, one that is not led by the US. But that’s difficult to do when one ally has started a war in Europe, and another is accused of aiding the invasion.

“China is unhappy with the way things are going,” Mr Green says, “but they are trying to keep their discontent relatively quiet.”

It’s certainly a sensitive topic for Beijing, judging by the response to our presence in the border town, where it seems tourists are welcome – but journalists are not.

We were in public areas at all times, and yet the team was stopped, repeatedly questioned, followed and our footage deleted.

The hotel demanded to keep my passport for “my safety and the safety of others”. Police visited our hotel rooms, and they also blocked the road to the port at Hunchun, which would have given us a closer view of the current trade between Russia and China.

On the viewing platform in Fangchuan, it’s clear that most tourists have come to see North Korea.

“I saw a person cycling,” says one girl peering through a telescope. Her friend rushes over to see: “Ooooh! It’s such a mysterious country.”

Close by is the Tumen river that gently cuts through all three countries. It is China’s gateway into the Sea of Japan, where it has territorial disputes with Tokyo.

The 1,400km-long (870 mile) Chinese border has some of the only platforms with a clear view into North Korea. South Korea’s frontier with the North is an almost impenetrable barrier, the heavily mined and fortified Demilitarized Zone.

Someone offers me a pair of binoculars. Some people are cycling through the village on ageing bicycles, but there are few other signs of life. One of the largest buildings is a school with a sign calling for children to “learn well for Chosun”, another name for North Korea.

“North Korea has always been our neighbour. It’s no stranger to us,” says a middle-aged man. “To be able to see how they live makes me realise China is prosperous and strong.”

Kim Jong Un’s regime would certainly struggle to survive without its biggest benefactor, China, which accounts for more than 90% of foreign trade, including food and fuel.

That was not always the case. In the early 1960s it was the Chinese who fled famine across the Tumen river. Some even went to school in North Korea because they believed its education system at the time was better.

The North Korean economy crashed after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 – which had been its main source of aid and cheap oil – sparking severe food shortages and, eventually, famine.

Soon, North Korean refugees began wading through an often freezing river at the risk of being shot dead to escape hunger, poverty and repression. There are now more than 30,000 of them in South Korea and an unknown number still live in China.

“Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, North Korea hasn’t really had any choice but to maintain good relations with China, which has been its sole benefactor,” Mr Green says.

But now, he adds, Russia “is offering an alternative and the North Koreans are seeking to exploit that”.

Mao Zedong, the first leader of the People’s Republic of China, had likened the relationship between Beijing and Pyongyang to the closeness between “lips and teeth”: “If the lips are gone, the teeth will be cold.”

Now, Beijing finds itself smarting from a lack of gratitude as Kim’s lips are “kissing elsewhere”, according to sociologist Aidan Foster-Carter, who has studied North Korea for several decades.

“North Korea has consistently been the comrade from hell to both Russia and China. They take as much money as they can and [then] do what they like.”

Analysts have noted that Kim has consistently flattered Putin over Xi in the last year. While Kim hasn’t met Xi since 2019, he has met Putin twice in the past year or so. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has drawn the two sanctioned leaders closer than ever. Putin seeks more support for his war and Kim wants to bolster his regime with alliances and attention.

From the Chinese border, it’s easy to see the burgeoning relationship between the two sides.

The whistle of a train interrupts the tourist chatter, and a steam engine pulling a long line of freight carriages slowly chugs across the railway bridge from Russia to North Korea. It stops in front of a Korean sign facing China which reads: “Towards a new victory!”

The US estimates that Kim has sold more than a million artillery shells and Grad rockets to Moscow for use in Ukraine, which North Korea denies.

But there is no doubt that the pair have stepped up cooperation after signing a security pact in June to help each other in the event of “aggression” against either country.

“You have very stiff and formal language to Xi Jinping on the occasion of what is actually an historically important event – the 75th anniversary of relations of the People’s Republic of China,” Mr Foster-Carter says.

“And yet on Putin’s birthday, Kim calls him ‘my closest comrade’. If you are Xi Jinping, what are you thinking?”

It’s hard to know, because China has shown no signs of interfering with the Russia-North Korea alliance.

The US has noticed Beijing’s disquiet and for once the two rivals may have similar goals.

In the last week, State Department officials have raised the issue of North Korean troops in Russia with Chinese diplomats.

Beijing does have options – in the past, they have cut supplies of oil and coal to North Korea, and complied with US-led sanctions to curb Pyongyang’s nuclear programme.

Already, China is battling US accusations that it is selling components to Russia that aid its invasion of Ukraine. Beijing’s trade with Moscow is also flourishing, even as it tries to cope with Western tariffs.

Xi has kept Russia close because he needs Putin’s help to challenge the US-led world order. But he has not stopped trying to repair ties with Europe, the UK and even the US. China has also been holding talks with Japan and South Korea to ease historic tensions.

But Kim’s increasingly aggressive rhetoric against Seoul has the South once again debating whether it should have its own nuclear arsenal. North Korean troops on a Ukrainian battlefield would only further unravel Beijing’s plans.

The possibility has already seen South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol discuss “concrete counter-measures” and talk of strengthening security cooperation with Ukraine and Nato.

A nuclear-armed South Korea or an “East Asian Nato” are not ideal in a region where China wants greater sway. An emboldened Kim could also draw a stronger show of support from the US – in the form of warships or even weapons – towards its allies, Seoul and Tokyo.

“For a very long time, China has had a policy of three nos in Northeast Asia – one of those nos was a no nuclear North Korea. Obviously that has been a failure,” Mr Green says.

Now Beijing fears that the alliance with Russia could destabilise North Korea, he adds: “That could even benefit Vladimir Putin in a way it really would not benefit Xi Jinping.”

Experts say Beijing is just as worried as the West about what military technology Putin might sell to Kim in exchange for troops.

“Satellites, for sure,” Mr Foster-Carter says. “But Putin is bad – not mad. Russia knows just as China knows that North Korea is a loose cannon. Giving [Kim] more technology for nukes is not a good thing for anybody.”

Experts believe Xi is unlikely to do anything drastic because China needs a stable North Korea – if he cuts off aid, he would likely have a refugee crisis at the border.

But Kim too might have a decision to make.

Although Russia is paying for shells and troops, Mr Foster-Carter says, it is China that “has actually kept North Korea going all this time, often through gritted teeth. I just wonder at what point Beijing will turn on Pyongyang?”.

Kim’s deadly gamble could also have a profound impact closer to home – the 25 million North Koreans who are cut off from the outside world and completely dependent on the regime for their survival.

Across the Tumen river in Fangchuan, a North Korean soldier watches us, while we watch him.

Steam rises from snack stands selling noodles and sizzled octopus on sticks on the Chinese side. And he can probably hear the giggling tourists taking pictures with the latest cameras and phones, which he is forbidden from owning.

The shallow river is a gulf neither the tourists nor the soldier can cross.

Two families in the West Midlands are waiting for compensation in the first documented case of babies being switched at birth in NHS history.

It was only taken out of idle curiosity one rainy winter’s day – but the shocking result of a DNA test was to force two women and their families to reassess everything they knew about themselves.

When Tony’s friends bought him a DNA home-testing kit for Christmas in 2021, he left it on his kitchen sideboard and forgot about it for two months.

It did not catch his eye again until one day in February. Tony was at home and bored because his weekly round of golf had been rained off. He spat into the sample tube, sent the kit off, and didn’t think about it for weeks.

The results came on a Sunday evening. Tony was on the phone to his mother, Joan, when the email arrived.

At first, everything looked as he’d expected. The test pinpointed the place in Ireland where his maternal family came from. A cousin was on his family tree. His sister was there too.

But when he looked at his sister’s name, it was wrong. Instead of Jessica, someone called Claire was listed as his full sibling (Jessica and Claire are not their real names – both have been changed, to protect the women’s identity).

Tony is the eldest of Joan’s four children. After three sons, she had longed for a daughter. She finally got her wish when Jessica arrived in 1967.

“It was a wonderful feeling, at long last having a girl,” Joan tells me.

However, she was immediately anxious when she heard there was something unexpected in Tony’s DNA results. He was, too, but he tried not to show it. Ten years after his father’s death, Tony’s mother was in her 80s and living alone. He didn’t want to worry her.

The next morning, he used the DNA testing company’s private messaging facility to contact Claire, the woman it claimed was his sister.

“Hi,” he wrote. “My name’s Tony. I’ve done this DNA test. You’ve come up as a full sibling. I’m thinking it’s a mistake. Can you shed any light on it?”

Claire had been given the same brand of DNA test two years earlier, as a birthday present from her son.

Her results had also been strange – there was no connection to where her parents were born, and she had a genetic link to a first cousin she didn’t know and couldn’t explain.

Then, in 2022, she received a notification – a full sibling had joined her family tree.

It was baffling. But in one way, it made perfect sense. Growing up, Claire had never felt like she belonged.

“I felt like an imposter,” she says. “There were no similarities, in looks or traits,” she tells me. “I thought, ‘yes – I’m adopted.’”

The Gift: Switched

In the first series of The Gift, Jenny Kleeman looked at the extraordinary truths that can unravel when people take at-home DNA tests like Ancestry and 23andMe.

For the second series, Jenny is going deeper into the unintended consequences – the aftershocks – set in motion when people link up to the enormous global DNA database.

Listen on BBC Sounds or on BBC Radio 4 at 09:30, Wednesday 6 November

When Claire and Tony started exchanging messages and biographical details, they discovered that Claire had been born about the same time and in the same hospital as Jessica, the sister Tony had grown up with.

An unavoidable explanation began to emerge – the two baby girls had been switched at birth, 55 years previously, and brought up in different families.

Cases where babies have been accidentally swapped on maternity wards are practically unheard of in the UK. In response to a 2017 Freedom of Information request, the NHS replied that as far as its records showed, there were no documented incidents of babies being sent home with the wrong parents.

Since the 1980s, newborns have been given radio frequency identification (RFID) tags immediately after their birth, which allow their location to be tracked. Before then, maternity wards relied on handwritten tags and cards on cots.

As they tried to absorb the news, Claire and Tony had to decide what to do next.

“The ripples from this will be enormous,” Tony wrote to Claire. “If you want to leave it here, then I’ll absolutely accept that, and we won’t progress this at all.”

Without hesitation, Claire knew that she wanted to meet Tony and the mother they shared.

“I just wanted to see them, meet them, talk to them and embrace them,” she says.”

When Tony finally told Joan what the DNA test had revealed, she was desperate for answers. How could this have happened?

Joan’s memories of the night her daughter was born are vivid. She had been due to give birth at home, but because she had high blood pressure, her labour was induced in a West Midlands hospital.

“They took me in on a Sunday,” she says. “It snowed that day.”

The baby was born at about 22:20. Joan held her much-longed-for daughter for only for a few minutes – she remembers gazing at the newborn’s red face and matted hair.

The baby was then taken away to the nursery for the night so her mother could rest. This was common practice in the 1960s.

A couple of hours later, just after midnight, Jessica was born in the same hospital.

The next morning, Joan was handed Jessica instead of her biological daughter, Claire.

This baby had fair hair – unlike the rest of the family, who were all dark – but Joan thought nothing of it. There were aunts and cousins with similar colouring.

By the time her husband arrived at the hospital to meet baby Jessica, they were too delighted with their new arrival to have any doubts.

Fifty-five years later, Joan was desperate to know what kind of life Claire had had. Had she grown up happy?

But before she could get answers, she and Tony had to break the news to Jessica, who had lived her entire life believing Joan was her mother, and Tony was her brother.

Tony and Joan travelled to Jessica’s home to tell her in person. Joan says she reassured her that they would always be mother and daughter, but ever since, she says their relationship has not been the same.

Jessica did not want to be interviewed in connection with this story.

A day later – and only five days after Tony got his DNA results – Claire travelled the short distance between her home and Joan’s.

For years, she had been driving through Joan’s village on her way to and from work, never knowing that this was where her biological mother lived.

Tony was waiting for her in the driveway. “Hi Sis,” he said. “Come and meet Mum.”

Claire says that from the moment she saw Joan, it felt like they had always known each other: “I looked at her, and I said, ’Oh my God, I’ve got your eyes! We have the same eyes. Oh my God, I look like someone!’”

“It just felt right,” Joan says. “I thought, she looked just like I did in my younger days.”

They spent the afternoon poring over family photographs. Claire told Tony and Joan about her partner, her children and grandchildren. They told her all about the biological father she would never get to meet.

But when it came to questions about whether she had had a happy childhood, Claire was evasive.

“I couldn’t tell the truth then,” she says. “My parents separated when I was very young. I don’t remember them being together. I was raised in absolute poverty, homelessness, often went hungry, and all that entails. It was a very difficult childhood.”

Claire says that breaking the news to the mother who raised her was the hardest thing she’s ever had to do.

She says she did her best to reassure both the parents she had grown up with, that nothing would change in their relationship. Her mother died earlier this year.

As well as coming to terms with a new genetic identity, there were practical implications for Claire, too. Because she had been born before midnight, she discovered she was a day older than she previously thought: “My birth certificate is wrong, my passport, my driving licence – everything is wrong.”

A couple of weeks after making the discovery, Tony wrote to the NHS trust that oversees the hospital where Claire and Jessica were switched, explaining what the home DNA tests had revealed.

The trust admitted liability – although two-and-a-half years later, the level of compensation has yet to be agreed. Tony and Joan say they were told it would be finalised last year.

We contacted NHS Resolution which handles complaints against the NHS. It said the baby swap was an “appalling error” for which it had accepted legal liability.

However, it said that it was a “unique and complex case” and that it was still working to agree on the amount of compensation that was due.

Claire and Joan have been discovering how much they have in common, such as their tastes in clothes and food, and how they take their tea. They’ve been on holiday, exploring their biological roots in Ireland, and they spent last Christmas together.

“We’re very close,” Claire says of her newly discovered family. “I’d like to spend as much time as I can with them, of course, but that time is gone. It was taken away.”

While Claire now calls her “Mum”, Joan tells me that Jessica no longer does. But Joan feels only that she has gained a daughter.

“It doesn’t make any difference to me that Jessica isn’t my biological daughter,” she says. “She’s still my daughter and she always will be.”

Scientists say there has been an alarming lack of progress in saving nature as the UN biodiversity summit, COP 16, draws to a close.

The scale of political ambition has not risen to the challenge of reducing the destruction of nature that costs the economy billions, said one leading expert.

Representatives of 196 countries have been meeting in Cali, Colombia, to agree on how to halt nature decline by 2030.

The biodiversity summit is separate from the more well-known COP climate summit, which is set to take place in Baku later this month.

Countries were meant to come to the table with a detailed plan on how they intended to meet biodiversity targets at home, but most missed the deadline.

However, plans were agreed to raise money for conservation through making companies pay for using genetic resources from nature.

The summit comes as one million species face extinction and nature is declining at rates unprecedented in human history.

We are stuck in a “vicious cycle where economic woes reduce political focus on the environment” while the destruction of nature costs the economy billions, said Tom Oliver, professor of biodiversity at the University of Reading.

“Until we have world leaders with the wisdom and courage to put nature as a top political priority then nature-related risks will continue to escalate,” he told BBC News.

The UN biodiversity summit, COP 16, was the first chance to take stock of progress towards a landmark deal to restore nature agreed in 2022.

However, scientists lamented the pace of progress. Nathalie Seddon, professor of biodiversity at the University of Oxford, said while some meaningful progress was made, the overarching picture was “undoubtedly deeply concerning”.

“Biodiversity still takes a back seat to climate action – even though the science speaks strongly to the need for fully coordinated approaches,” she said.

• An agreement was reached that companies profiting from nature’s genetic data should pay towards its protection through a global fund
• The fund, to be known as the Cali fund after the COP16 host city, will be financed with payments from companies who make use of genetic information from living things
• The role of Indigenous Peoples as vital stewards of nature was officially recognised through the setting up of a permanent body to represent their interests

The next biodiversity summit will take place in 2026, with time running out for solutions. Astrid Schomaker, executive secretary of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, said through such gatherings governments, NGOs and scientists could share knowledge and resources.

“This collective spirit is critical as we work to develop and implement effective policies to confront the complex and interconnected crises facing our planet’s ecosystems,” she said.

Commenting on the talks, the renowned scientist, Dr Jane Goodall, said our future is “ultimately doomed” if we don’t address biodiversity loss.

She told BBC News: “We have to take action too. We can’t only blame the government and big corporations, although a huge part of the blame lies on them.”

When Donald Trump lost to Joe Biden in 2020, it seemed to be the death knell of his political career.

His first term in office ended in chaos and condemnation – even from members of his own party.

If he wins the election on Tuesday, it will be only the second time anyone has ever returned to the White House after previously losing a presidential re-election bid.

“He gets knocked down and gets up twice as focused,” said Bryan Lanza, who has been a political adviser for the former president since Trump launched his 2016 campaign. “I don’t think anybody should be surprised about this comeback.”

Such an extraordinary reversal of fortune for the former president would also vault him back into the White House as a man who seems politically bulletproof, with a detailed plan of action and ranks of loyalists behind him.

• Harris v Trump poll tracker
• What is the electoral college?
• How the election could change the world

Four years ago, Trump appeared a beaten man. His Democratic opponent, Biden, had defeated him by a comfortable electoral margin in the 2020 presidential contest.

Courts had batted away his attempts to contest those results. His last-ditch rally in which he urged his supporters to march on the US Capitol as lawmakers were certifying the results culminated in the crowd launching a violent attack that sent those inside scrambling for safety. Hundreds of law enforcement officers were injured.

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos and Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao were among a spate of Trump administration officials who quit in protest. “There is no mistaking the impact your rhetoric had on the situation, and it is the inflection point for me,” DeVos wrote in her letter of resignation to the president.

Even South Carolina Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, one of Trump’s closest allies, broke with the president.

“All I can say is count me out,” he said on the floor of the Senate. “Enough is enough.”

The movement away from Trump extended into the corporate world, as dozens of large companies – including American Express, Microsoft, Nike and Walgreens – announced they were suspending support for Republicans who had challenged the results of the 2020 election.

On the day of Biden’s inauguration, Trump broke with 152 years of tradition by declining to attend the ceremony, instead flying back to his private club in Mar-a-Lago earlier that morning, accompanied by a handful of his closest aides and family.

His mood was sullen, according to Meridith McGraw, author of Trump in Exile, an account of the former president’s time after leaving the White House.

“He was angry, frustrated, unsure of how to spend his days and without a plan for his political future,” she said.

The media coverage and political chatter that month reflected this uncertainty over his future. After a clear electoral defeat followed by the chaotic scenes at the Capitol, some were even more definitive, suggesting there was no way back for Trump.

“And just like that, the bold, combustible and sometimes brilliant political career of Donald J. Trump comes to an end,” one opinion piece in The Hill read.

The subheading of a January 2021 opinion piece in The New York Times declared: “The terrible experiment is over.” The headline was even more direct: “President Donald J. Trump: The End.”

But before Trump left for Florida on inauguration day, he hinted at what was to come.

“We love you,” he said in remarks to supporters on a Maryland Air Force base tarmac. “We will be back in some form.”

A week later, it became clear that Trump wouldn’t have to wait long to assert his continued political influence. The party came back to him.

California Congressman Kevin McCarthy, the Republican leader in the House of Representatives, paid the former president a visit at Mar-a-Lago, posing for a photo next to a beaming Trump.

In the immediate aftermath of the 6 January attack, McCarthy had said that Trump “bears responsibility” for the mob violence and recommended that Congress formally censure him for his conduct. Now he was pledging to work with the former president to win a congressional majority in the next year’s mid-term elections.

Even as the Democrat-controlled US Senate was preparing to hold Trump’s impeachment trial, McCarthy’s Palm Beach pilgrimage illustrated that one of the most powerful Republicans in Congress still viewed the former president as a king-maker.

“McCarthy’s visit really opened the door for Trump,” said McGraw.

“It was a permission slip to Republicans who had criticised Trump to forgive him and move on.”

Trump’s Senate trial would end in acquittal, as most Republicans – including some outspoken critics like minority leader Mitch McConnell – voted against a conviction that could have led to the former president being banned from future elective office.

McConnell had said that Trump’s conduct on 6 January was “a disgraceful dereliction of duty”, but he chose not to take the one step that could have conclusively ended the former president’s political career – perhaps out of fear of effectively ending his own.

Republicans also worried that the former president might start a third party that would siphon off support from Republicans – concerns that Trump’s closest aides did little to dispel.

“It’s clearly up to Republicans if this is something that becomes more serious,” Jason Miller, a long-time Trump communications aide, said in an interview with Fox News.

The former president spent the next month mostly within the comfortable confines of his Mar-a-Lago club, venturing out only for a round of golf or a private dinner.

By the end of February, as the furore around 6 January ebbed, he was ready to hold his first public event.

At the Conservative Political Action Conference – the right-wing confab typically held near Washington, DC but relocated to Orlando, Florida, due to Covid restrictions – the former president demonstrated that he still commanded the loyalty of the Republican base.

Addressing thousands of cheering supporters in a sprawling hotel conference centre, Trump basked in the glow of their adoration.

“I stand before you today to declare that the incredible journey we began together,” he said, “is far from over.”

He also hinted, coyly, that he might beat the Democrats “for a third time” in 2024.

An official straw poll of conference attendees only underlined what by then was obvious. Sixty-eight percent of respondents said Trump should run again. Fifty-five percent said they would vote for him in a contested primary – more then double the second-place candidate, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.

“Trump and his team were pretty nervous about that speech,” McGraw said. “Psychologically it was a really important moment for Trump and his allies when he got such a positive reception.”

After a brief hiatus, Trump reactivated his steady stream of fundraising emails to supporters and resumed holding his carnival-like outdoor rallies.

“Do you miss me?” Trump asked at a June gathering in Ohio. The crowd responded with cheers.

“They miss me,” he concluded.

If 2021 hinted at Trump’s continuing influence within the Republican Party, the 2022 midterm elections confirmed it.

By then, American military forces had haphazardly withdrawn from Afghanistan, leading to the fall of that nation’s US-backed government. Gas prices and inflation were approaching highs not seen in decades. US economic growth, which had been bouncing back from pandemic disruptions, sputtered.

Biden’s approval ratings tumbled into negative territory. The political environment that had seemed so hostile to Trump at the beginning of 2021 was starting to shift.

“Joe Biden failed to address the primary concerns of the voters,” said Lanza. “That gave Donald Trump an opening.”

Mar-a-Lago became an obligatory stopping point for any conservative candidate seeking to become their party’s nominee. The former president’s endorsement was the most coveted prize – a key to unlocking fundraising dollars and grassroots conservative support.

Four of the six Republican House members who voted for Trump’s second impeachment and were running for re-election were defeated by Trump-backed candidates in party primaries. Meanwhile, Senate candidates like JD Vance in Ohio and Herschel Walker in Georgia pulled ahead in crowded primary fields with the help of Trump’s support.

”His endorsement all but guarantees you a primary win,” said Brian Seitchik, who worked as Arizona state director for Trump’s campaign in 2016 and as the western regional director in 2020.

But if the first half of 2022 was unambiguous good news for the former president, November’s elections painted a much different picture.

Of four prominent Trump-endorsed Senate candidates, only one – author turned politician Vance – defeated his Democratic opponent. While Republicans narrowly regained control of the House of Representatives, elevating Kevin McCarthy to the speakership, the party largely underperformed and Democrats retained control of the Senate.

In Florida, Governor DeSantis, the distant second-place finisher in that 2021 presidential straw poll, won a surprising double-digit re-election victory, fuelling speculation that he might be the real frontrunner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.

Meanwhile, Trump fumed – blaming the Republican shortcomings on the party’s support of unpopular abortion restrictions and insufficient fealty to his own brand of conservative populism. Only a few weeks after the midterms, when pundits were still wondering if the former president’s political moment had passed, Trump formally launched his 2024 presidential campaign.

The start of his presidential bid seemed shockingly ill-timed. Just a few weeks after the Republican midterm misfire, it put the former president in the headlines when many were still wondering if he had lost his political instincts.

His formal announcement, held within the cozy confines of Mar-a-Lago, made his campaign feel insular and ill-suited to the current political realities.

He would subsequently make news for all the wrong reasons – dining at Mar-a-Lago with Nick Fuentes, a prominent white nationalist, and posting on social media that rules in the US Constitution should be “terminated”, allowing him to be re-instated as president.

“Thanksgiving through New Year’s was a pretty dark time on the Trump campaign,” McGraw said. Republicans were having their doubts.

“He’s announced that he’s running for president, but are we sure that he’s going to be able to pull this off?” she said, describing the mood at the time. “Does he have the discipline to actually do this?”

Behind the scenes, however, Trump was assembling a campaign staff that – unlike 2016 and even 2020 – was headed by seasoned political operatives. Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles may not be household names, but the former was a bare-knuckled veteran of Republican politics with decades of experience and the latter had helped turn Florida into a conservative stronghold.

The two worked with Trump to formulate a presidential primary strategy.

While DeSantis was bogged down with official duties in Florida, Trump moved early to define the contours of the campaign, Lanza said. And while others deferred to the Florida governor, Trump hit him head-on, demeaning and diminishing him.

“Everybody thought Ron DeSantis was at this powerful apex of politics that could not be torn down,” Lanza said. “Donald Trump tore the guy down.”

The Trump side also received a boost from the unlikeliest of sources – prosecutors in New York, Georgia and the Justice Department in Washington, DC.

Starting with the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago for sensitive national security documents in August 2022 and culminating in a series of indictments in 2023, the former president’s criminal jeopardy became a central issue in the rapidly unfolding Republican presidential nomination fight. Trump’s mugshot, glaring in a photograph taken at an Atlanta jail in August, was soon plastered on campaign t-shirts and yard signs.

For many on the left, justice was finally being served. But among the kind of conservative voters who choose their party’s nominee in early voting states like Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, it became a moment to rally around their party’s embattled leader.

Conservative pollster Sarah Longwell interviewed a panel of Iowa Republicans for PBS in June 2023, a week after the Justice Department indicted Trump on charges related to mishandling sensitive government documents.

“I think he’s being set up,” said one.

“This is election interference like we have never seen before,” said another.

The indictments, according to Lanza, created a divide within the Republican Party between those who saw the indictment as an abuse of power and those who didn’t.

“Initially, Ron DeSantis took the ‘didn’t’ approach,” he said. “And he became roadkill.”

DeSantis had at first called the March 2023 New York indictment, which he noted was about Trump’s hush-money payments to an adult film star, a “manufactured circus” that wasn’t a “real issue”.

By autumn 2023, Trump had opened a massive lead in most Republican primary polls – a margin he would never relinquish. He skipped the Republican primary debates, depriving them of political oxygen. He focused instead on cementing support among rank-and-file voters through his trademark rallies and grass-roots organising.

Despite raising nearly $200 million in campaign funds, DeSantis was out of the race within days of finishing a distant second in the January 2024 Iowa Caucuses. After Trump easily beat former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley in New Hampshire, the Republican primary fight was effectively over. For the third straight presidential election, the party’s nomination was his.

The former president’s courtroom drama may have been a boon to his political fortunes, but it also came with very real legal jeopardy. In May 2024, a Manhattan jury convicted Trump on 34 felony counts involving hush-money payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels.

Every judicial setback, however, seemed to be followed by a bigger victory. His sentencing was delayed until after the election, the document indictments in Florida were discarded, and the Supreme Court ruled that presidents have sweeping immunity for official acts.

Outside of court chambers, Trump’s campaign was rolling from his primary victory into the general election faceoff. A halting, confused performance by Biden in his late June debate with the former president left Democrats in a full-blown panic.

Trump’s approval ratings and head-to-head polling numbers were ticking ever higher. And after his brush with an assassin’s bullet in Pennsylvania in mid-July, he arrived at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee a day later as a conquering hero to his supporters.

“What we saw at the convention was how unified the Republican Party appeared, really for the first time in a long time,” said McGraw. “They were feeling incredibly confident.”

Tesla chief Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, publicly endorsed the former president and began funding a massive organising operation in key battleground states. Republican pride – pride in Trump – was running high.

At that moment, it seemed like Trump’s return to the pinnacles of American power from the depths of 6 January 2021 was all but complete. A campaign that had first vanquished DeSantis and his other Republican rivals was now set to deliver a knock-out punch to Biden and the Democrats.

But three days after Trump formally accepted the Republican Party’s presidential nomination, Biden abandoned his re-election bid and endorsed his vice-president, Kamala Harris.

In a matter of a few weeks, Harris consolidated her party’s support, injected new enthusiasm into Democrats and even pulled ahead of the former president in some head-to head polls.

Trump’s efforts were not helped by a scattershot debate performance against Harris in September and an apparent difficulty reorienting his campaign to take on his new opponent, whose strengths – and weaknesses – are decidedly different from Biden’s.

“Trump really wasn’t tested until Harris got into the race,” said Seitchik. “Everything up to that point almost felt like an extended preseason for the campaign.”

With election day looming, the season is almost over and the champion is still in doubt.

The race is where it seemed to be headed at the beginning of the year – a photo finish where either candidate could end up on top. And for a campaign that had focused on Biden’s age and frailty, it is now Trump whose stamina and coherence are under the microscope.

“Trump can have an incredibly professional, streamlined operation around him, but at the end of the day, he’s still going to do what he wants and do things the way he wants,” said McGraw.

That includes a continued public insistence that he did not lose the 2020 election, extended rhetorical diversions during rally speeches and last-minute cancellations of media appearances that some have attributed to “exhaustion”.

Trump has been in the whirlwind of presidential politics for nine years now – and in the public spotlight for more than four decades. He has seemed indefatigable. But with another four years in the White House looming on the horizon, are the cracks beginning to show?

While Trump’s victory is far from guaranteed, simply being this close to the prize once again is itself a remarkable achievement. And if his political comeback culminates in another presidential term, he will return to the White House having overcome obstacles – legal, political, many of his own creation – that few presidents have confronted.

With control of the reins of power, and without the burden of having to face the judgement of voters again, Trump will be able to make those legal dangers disappear. And unlike his first term, he will be entering the White House with a team of advisers and potential administration staff who are fully loyal to him.

His intent to dramatically reorganise the federal bureaucracy could replace career civil service employees with political acolytes. And even if he doesn’t win full control of Congress, he could use existing presidential powers to impose new restrictions on immigration, enact his plans for mass deportation of undocumented residents and impose tariffs that are designed to protect US jobs but could significantly increase the cost of imported goods.

Democrats warn that this would be a presidency without “guardrails” to limit what they say are Trump’s more dangerous proposals. Republicans, in a party that has been remade in Trump’s image, hope that he will be able to more effectively enact his agenda without the internal resistance he faced in his first term.

“Donald Trump has converted the party from fiscal issues and social issues being the dominant force to a Trump populism,” Seitchik said. “This is all a fundamental reorientation of the Republican Party.”

And if he wins next week, Trump could fundamentally reshape American government for generations to come.

• SIMPLE GUIDE: When is the US election and how does it work?
• EXPLAINER: What Harris or Trump would do in power
• GLOBAL: Vote weighs on minds of Ukraine’s frontline soldiers
• PATH TO 270: The states they need to win – and why
• IN PICS: Different lives of Harris and Trump
• POLLS: Who is winning the race for the White House?

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

Kemi Badenoch has promised to win back voters who have deserted the Conservatives after securing an historic victory in a party leadership contest.

The 44-year-old becomes the first black woman to lead a major political party in the UK.

She defeated fellow right-winger Robert Jenrick by 12,418 votes after a marathon contest to replace Rishi Sunak, who led the party to the biggest defeat in its history in July’s general election.

In her victory speech, Badenoch promised to “renew” the party and told cheering supporters it was “time to get down to business”.

Badenoch, who is the sixth Tory leader in less than nine years, now faces the task of uniting a fractured party and leading opposition to Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour government.

The Saffron Walden MP said the Conservatives need to “bring back” voters who abandoned them, adding: “Our party is critical to the success of our country.

“But to be heard, we have to be honest.”

The party must admit it “made mistakes” and “let standards slip” over the last 14 years in government, she said.

Badenoch chose not to set out detailed policies during her campaign, focusing instead on returning the Conservatives to “first principles”.

All eyes will now turn to who she appoints to her top team as she sets out the future shape of the party over the coming days.

She praised Jenrick despite a sometimes bruising campaign and hinted he may be offered a senior job, telling him “you have a key role in our party for years to come”.

Badenoch, who became an MP in 2017 after a career in banking and IT, has said she would offer jobs to all of the Tories who launched leadership bids in July.

But shadow home secretary James Cleverly, who came third in the race, has ruled himself out.

The BBC understands, Badenoch plans to reveal her shadow cabinet by Wednesday, ahead of the critical Budget vote and her debut clash with Sir Keir at Prime Minister’s Questions.

Jenrick did not speak to reporters after the result was announced, but on social media called on his supporters “to unite behind Kemi and take the fight to this disastrous Labour government”.

He also thanked “everyone who supported my vision for a Conservative Party rooted in the common ground of British politics”.

Badenoch got 53,806 votes to Jenrick’s 41,388 – making it the closest Tory leadership race of recent times.

Bob Blackman, who oversaw the election as chair of the Conservative 1922 Committee, revealed the party membership had shrunk to 132,000 – the lowest level on record and down 40,000 members since the last vote by members in 2022.

Badenoch was congratulated by her several of her predecessor, including Sunak, who posted on social media: “I know that she will be a superb leader of our great party.”

Ex-prime minister Boris Johnson lauded Badenoch’s “courage and clarity” and said she “brings a much needed zing and zap to the Conservative Party”.

In a social media post, Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said “the first Black leader of a Westminster party is a proud moment for our country”.

He added: “I look forward to working with you and your party in the interests of the British people.”

But Labour Party Chair Ellie Reeves said the Conservative leadership campaign showed the party had “learned nothing since the British people resoundingly rejected them in July”.

Lib Dem Leader Sir Ed Davey also congratulated Badenoch, saying “the first Black leader of a major UK political party is a historic moment for the country”.

But Reform UK Deputy Leader Richard Tice called Badenoch “another in a long line of Tory politicians who say one thing and do another”.

In a statement, he said: “Kemi Badenoch was front and centre of a government that failed Britain.”

Over the 14-week campaign, the debate was dominated by immigration, the economy and how the Conservatives can rebuild trust with voters.

The party was reduced to a record low of 121 seats in the House of Commons at the general election, with under 24% of the vote.

It lost voters in all directions to Labour, the Liberal Democrats and Reform UK, with thousands of Conservative voters also choosing to stay at home on 4 July poll.

Dame Priti Patel, Mel Stride and Tom Tugendhat spent the summer campaigning alongside Jenrick, Badenoch and Cleverly after they put their names forward in the nominations at the end of July.

Dame Priti and Stride were the first two contenders to be eliminated in September in ballots of Tory MPs, leaving four by the time the party gathered in Birmingham for its autumn conference at the end of the month.

Cleverly appeared to be in the lead after the conference, topping the third MP ballot. But in the final MP vote, he slid to 37 votes, behind Badenoch’s 42 and Jenrick’s 41.

The final two then went to a vote of the membership, which turned out to be closer than many had expected, with Badenoch long seen as a favourite among the party’s grassroots.

Some artists become legends in their lifetime yet remain a mystery years after their death.

Indian painter Vasudeo Santu Gaitonde, born 100 years ago on 2 November 1924, was one such master.

Considered one of South Asia’s greatest abstract painters, Gaitonde was part of a rebellious generation of artists who laid the foundation for a new era of Indian art in the mid-20th Century.

He was deeply inspired by the techniques used by Western painters but his work remained rooted in Asian philosophy, infusing light and texture in ways that, admirers say, evokes a profound sense of calmness.

His paintings were meant to be “meditations on the light and universe”, says Yamini Mehta, who worked as the international head of South Asian Art at Sotheby’s.

“The play of light and shadows and texture makes these paintings dynamic.”

In a career that spanned decades, Gaitonde never pursued fame or fortune. But his works continue to grab attention at auctions, years after his death in 2001.

In 2022, an untitled oil painting by him fetched 420m rupees (nearly $5m; £3.9m), setting a new record for Indian art at that time. The bluish shades of the work reminded viewers of large expanses of the sea or sky.

Gaitonde lived as a recluse for most of his life. He was deeply impacted by Japanese Zen philosophy and this meditative mindset was often reflected in his paintings.

“Everything starts from silence. The silence of the canvas. The silence of the painting knife. The painter starts by absorbing all these silences… Your entire being is working together with the brush, the painting knife, the canvas to absorb that silence and create,” he told journalist Pritish Nandy in a rare interview in 1991.

Originally from the western state of Goa, Gaitonde’s family lived in Mumbai city (formerly Bombay) in a small, three-room dwelling in a chawl – an affordable tenement complex for the city’s working class.

A born artist, he joined Mumbai’s famous JJ School of Arts for training in 1946. Despite his father’s disapproval – art was not seen as a viable career in India at the time – Gaitonde funded his own studies and earned a diploma in 1948.

For some time, he was part of a group of influential Indian artists called the Progressive Artists Group, which was set up to encourage new forms of art. Formed in 1947 in Mumbai, the group counted leading artists such as Francis Souza, SH Raza, MF Husain and Bhanu Athaiya – the first Indian to win an Oscar – as its members.

Gaitonde also worked at the city’s Bhulabhai Desai Memorial Institute, another hub frequented by legends such as sitarist Ravi Shankar and theatre artist Ebrahim Alkazi.

“This was an interesting time as Mumbai was a hotbed of creativity,” says artist and writer Satish Naik, who has published an anthology on Gaitonde in the Marathi language.

Indian art at that time was largely dominated by realism, found in the murals of the Ajanta caves and in Mughal art or miniature paintings.

“Gaitonde began with realistic works but soon sought a different path. He was one of the first ones to reject the form and adopt the formless,” Naik said.

“In that sense, he was a rebel. He wanted to paint as it pleased him, not as someone dictated to him.”

Gaitonde’s deep interest in spirituality helped him progress towards his craft.

“My paintings are nothing else but the reflection of nature,” he once wrote in a 1963 questionnaire for New York’s Museum of Modern Art.

In 1963, Morris Graves, a famous abstract painter from the US, saw Gaitonde’s work during a trip to India, and was heavily impressed.

He immediately sent a letter to Dan and Marian Johnson of the Willard Gallery in New York, describing him as “one of the finest” painters he had ever seen.

“He’s as fine – or superb – as Mark Rothko at his best and will be a world-known painter one of these days,” Graves wrote.

“He is an abstract painter with something unspeakably beautiful and clean. They are the most beautiful landscapes of the mind plus light.”

In 1964, Gaitonde moved to New York after getting the Rockefeller Fellowship. The next two years were a formative phase in his career as the young artist got a chance to meet American modern artists and see their works, which further developed his style.

In 1971, Gaitonde received the Padma Shri, the fourth-highest civilian award in India, for his outstanding contribution to art.

But despite his growing fame, he became increasingly withdrawn in the coming years.

His disciple and renowned artist Laxman Shreshtha recounts in Naik’s book how MF Husain would often try to visit Gaitonde at his Delhi residence.

“If Gaitonde didn’t want to meet anyone, he would not open the door, not even for Husain who would sketch something on the door and go. That was Husain’s way of saying ‘I had dropped by’.”

Even his work underwent a shift. Usually, the artist would paint anywhere between six and seven canvases in a year. But after a spinal injury in 1984, the numbers went down considerably.

“I still continue to paint; I make paintings in my head. I now have limited energy which I need to conserve and cannot waste putting paint to canvas,” he once told art gallerist Dadiba Pundole.

As Gaitonde’s stature as an artist grew, his paintings became fewer and rarer, all of which added to the charm and mystery surrounding his work.

It is perhaps also one of the reasons why his paintings command such high prices even today.

When Gaitonde died in 2001 at the age of 77, his death went widely unreported as the artist lived his last years in obscurity.

But his thought-provoking canvases continued to make waves around the world.

Cara Manes, an associate curator at the Museum of Modern Art, once said that Gaitonde’s works were an embodiment of what silence might look like. “And yet there’s a certain shimmering effect that emerges out of that silence which is then pitted against these very solid marks, assertive application of colours.”

For the artist, though, art remained a deeply personal form of self-expression.

He often said: “I let the colours flow and watch. That is my painting.”

The US and Israel “will definitely receive a crushing response”, Iran’s supreme leader has said, following an Israeli attack on Iran a week ago.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei made the comments while speaking to students on Saturday ahead of the 45th anniversary of the 1979 seizure of the US embassy in Tehran.

The threat comes as Iran assesses whether and how to respond to Israel’s attack last month, that Iran said killed four soldiers, which was in retaliation for an Iranian missile attack against Israel earlier in October.

The Iranian attack came in response to the killings of the leaders of Hezbollah and Hamas – Iranian-backed armed groups fighting Israel – and a senior Iranian commander.

Khamenei said Iran’s enemies, including Israel and the US, “will definitely receive a crushing response to what they are doing to Iran, the Iranian people, and the resistance front”.

Iran’s so-called “axis of resistance” is an alliance of Tehran-backed groups that include Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen, and well-armed groups in Iraq and Syria. Most have been designated as terrorist entities by some Western states.

Israel is said to have inflicted severe damage on Iranian air defences and missile capacities in its 26 October attack, even though Iran has not admitted this.

Israel sees Iran as the crucial backer of the Hamas attacks which killed about 1,200 people on 7 October last year.

More than 250 were also taken into the Gaza Strip as hostages.

Since then, Israel has launched a major operation in Gaza, during which more than 43,300 people have been killed, according to the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry.

Israel also went on the offensive against Hezbollah in Lebanon in September, after almost a year of cross-border fighting and rocket fire, which Hezbollah had launched in support of Palestinians the day after the Hamas attacks.

Israel said it wanted to ensure the safe return of tens of thousands of residents from northern Israel displaced by the conflict.

More than 2,800 people have been killed in Lebanon since then, and 1.2 million others displaced, according to Lebanese authorities.

Israeli authorities say more than 60 people have been killed by Hezbollah rocket, drone, and missile attacks in northern Israel and the occupied Golan Heights.

Relations between the US and Iran have not properly stabilised since 4 November 1979, when Iranian protesters seized more than 50 US diplomats and embassy staff, triggering a hostage drama that lasted 444 days.

The world’s largest crocodile in captivity has died at a wildlife sanctuary in Australia.

Cassius was nearly 5.5m (18ft) long, weighed nearly one tonne and was thought to be at least 110 years old – although no one knew for sure.

The huge saltwater crocodile lived in the sanctuary on an island off the coast of Queensland since being caught in Australia’s Northern Territory in the 1980s.

In 2011, he was awarded the Guinness World Record for the largest crocodile in captivity.

Marineland Melanesia Crocodile Habitat said in a post on social media that Cassius was “our beloved mate” and “a cherished member of our family”.

Cassius had previously lived in the wild, where he was known for catching and eating cattle, and attacking boat propellers before being captured.

The habitat’s founder, George Craig, bought Cassius in 1987, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation reported.

Cassius “brought joy and companionship to his best mate George for over 37 years”, the habitat said.

The habitat added that Mr Craig relocated to Cairns last month and Cassius’s health declined soon after.

“He was very old and believed to be living beyond the years of a wild croc,” the post said.

The habitat also thanked “everyone who visited Cassius throughout his life and offered kindness”, adding that the site may be operating “in a limited capacity over the next few days”.

A former police officer in the US state of Kentucky has been found guilty of violating the civil rights of Breonna Taylor, a black woman killed in her own home during a botched raid four years ago.

Brett Hankison, 47, could face up to life in prison after being convicted of using excessive force against the 26-year-old emergency room technician.

But the jury also found him not guilty on another charge of violating the civil rights of one of Taylor’s neighbours. It was the third time Hankison had stood trial in the case.

The verdict marks the first time any officer has been convicted in the deadly raid on 13 March 2020 that made Taylor’s name a rallying cry during the racial justice unrest of that year.

Members of Taylor’s family in court collapsed in tears after the verdict on Friday, according to the Louisville Courier Journal.

Prosecutors wanted Hankison to be immediately taken into custody, but their request was rejected by the judge, reports the local newspaper.

The jury of five white men, one black man and six white women began their deliberations on Wednesday.

The indictment accused Hankison of depriving Taylor of the right to be free from unreasonable seizures and depriving her neighbours of the right to be free from the deprivation of liberty without due process of law.

He fired 10 times into her apartment, in order, he said, to protect fellow officers as Taylor’s boyfriend opened fire when officers broke down the door.

According to the Courier Journal, Taylor’s mother, Tamika Palmer, said after the verdict that she began to feel “defeated” as jury deliberations continued, but that she was “glad” the trial was over.

“1,694 days it took. It was long, it was hard, it was — I don’t know if I’ve got some words (other than) ‘thank God.'”, she said.

Hankison took the stand over two days of testimony during the retrial, telling the jurors he was “trying to stay alive, trying to keep my partners alive”.

He was the first of the four officers charged in the case to face a jury.

Another former officer, Kelly Goodlett, pleaded guilty to falsifying the search warrant for Taylor’s home.

The remaining two officers had their federal charges thrown out by a judge earlier this year. The US Justice Department recently indicted the two on new charges.

Taylor was killed after officers wearing plain clothes executed a “no-knock” search warrant at her home. They burst into her apartment in the early morning hours while she and her boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, were asleep.

Authorities believed Taylor’s former boyfriend was using her home to hide narcotics.

Mr Walker fired a single shot when they knocked the door down, hitting one officer, Sgt John Mattingly, in the leg. Mr Walker said the officers did not announce themselves as police, and he thought they were intruders.

The three officers returned fire, shooting 32 bullets into the flat.

Another officer fired the shot that killed Taylor, but prosecutors said his use of deadly force was justified because Walker had opened fire first.

None of Hankison’s bullets hit anyone, but they did enter a neighbouring property, where a pregnant woman, a five-year-old and a man had been sleeping.

A subsequent police report contained errors, including listing Taylor’s injuries as “none” and saying no force was used to enter, when a battering ram had been used.

Hankison was fired from Louisville Metro Police Department in June 2020.

His previous federal case last year ended in a mistrial when the jury told the judge it could not reach a unanimous verdict.

He was previously tried by a Kentucky state jury in March 2022, and acquitted on three counts of felony wanton endangerment.

Taylor’s family and Walker both received settlements from the city over the incident.

A series of police reforms also were introduced in Louisville.

Hankison is due to be sentenced on 12 March next year.

American voters will face a clear choice for president on election day, between Democratic Vice-President Kamala Harris and Republican Donald Trump.

Here’s a look at what they stand for and how their policies compare on different issues.

Harris has said her day-one priority would be trying to reduce food and housing costs for working families.

She promises to ban price-gouging on groceries, help first-time home buyers, increase housing supply and raise the minimum wage.

Inflation soared under the Biden presidency, as it did in many western countries, partly due to post-Covid supply issues and the Ukraine war. It has fallen since.

Trump has promised to “end inflation and make America affordable again” and when asked he says more drilling for oil will lower energy costs.

He has promised to deliver lower interest rates, something the president does not control, and he says deporting undocumented immigrants will ease pressure on housing. Economists warn that his vow to impose higher tax on imports could push up prices.

• US election polls – is Harris or Trump ahead?
• Comparing Biden’s economy to Trump’s

Harris wants to raise taxes on big businesses and Americans making $400,000 (£305,000) a year.

But she has also unveiled a number of measures that would ease the tax burden on families, including an expansion of child tax credits.

She has broken with Biden over capital gains tax, supporting a more moderate rise from 23.6% to 28% compared with his 44.6%.

Trump proposes a number of tax cuts worth trillions, including an extension of his 2017 cuts which mostly helped the wealthy.

He says he will pay for them through higher growth and tariffs on imports. Analysts say both tax plans will add to the ballooning deficit, but Trump’s by more.

• Where Kamala Harris stands on 10 issues
• Where Donald Trump stands on 10 issues

Harris has made abortion rights central to her campaign, and she continues to advocate for legislation that would enshrine reproductive rights nationwide.

Trump has struggled to find a consistent message on abortion.

The three judges he appointed to the Supreme Court while president were pivotal in overturning the constitutional right to an abortion, a 1973 ruling known as Roe v Wade.

Harris was tasked with tackling the root causes of the southern border crisis and helped raise billions of dollars of private money to make regional investments aimed at stemming the flow north.

Record numbers of people crossed from Mexico at the end of 2023 but the numbers have fallen since to a four-year low. In this campaign, she has toughened her stance and emphasised her experience as a prosecutor in California taking on human traffickers.

Trump has vowed to seal the border by completing the construction of a wall and increasing enforcement. But he urged Republicans to ditch a hardline, cross-party immigration bill, backed by Harris. She says she would revive that deal if elected.

He has also promised the biggest mass deportation of undocumented migrants in US history. Experts told the BBC this would face legal challenges.

• What Harris really did about the border crisis
• Could Trump really deport a million migrants?

Harris has vowed to support Ukraine “for as long as it takes”. She has pledged, if elected, to ensure the US and not China wins “the competition for the 21st Century”.

She has been a longtime advocate for a two-state solution between the Israelis and Palestinians, and has called for an end to the war in Gaza.

Trump has an isolationist foreign policy and wants the US to disentangle itself from conflicts elsewhere in the world.

He has said he would end the war in Ukraine in 24 hours through a negotiated settlement with Russia, a move that Democrats say would embolden Vladimir Putin.

Trump has positioned himself as a staunch supporter of Israel but said little on how he would end the war in Gaza.

Harris has criticised Trump’s sweeping plan to impose tariffs on imports, calling it a national tax on working families which will cost each household $4,000 a year.

She is expected to have a more targeted approach to taxing imports, maintaining the tariffs the Biden-Harris administration introduced on some Chinese imports like electric vehicles.

Trump has made tariffs a central pledge in this campaign. He has proposed new 10-20% tariffs on most foreign goods, and much higher ones on those from China.

He has also promised to entice companies to stay in the US to manufacture goods, by giving them a lower rate of corporate tax.

Harris, as vice-president, helped pass the Inflation Reduction Act, which has funnelled hundreds of billions of dollars to renewable energy, and electric vehicle tax credit and rebate programmes.

But she has dropped her opposition to fracking, a technique for recovering gas and oil opposed by environmentalists.

Trump, while in the White House, rolled back hundreds of environmental protections, including limits on carbon dioxide emissions from power plants and vehicles.

In this campaign he has vowed to expand Arctic drilling and attacked electric cars.

Harris has been part of a White House administration which has reduced prescription drug costs and capped insulin prices at $35.

Trump, who has often vowed to dismantle the Affordable Care Act, has said that if elected he would only improve it, without offering specifics. The Act has been instrumental in getting health insurance to millions more people.

He has called for taxpayer-funded fertility treatment, but that could be opposed by Republicans in Congress.

Harris has tried to contrast her experience as a prosecutor with the fact Trump has been convicted of a crime.

Trump has vowed to demolish drugs cartels, crush gang violence and rebuild Democratic-run cities that he says are overrun with crime.

He has said he would use the military or the National Guard, a reserve force, to tackle opponents he calls “the enemy within” and “radical left lunatics” if they disrupt the election.

• Trump’s legal cases, explained

Harris has made preventing gun violence a key pledge, and she and Tim Walz – both gun owners – often advocate for tighter laws. But they will find that moves like expanding background checks or banning assault weapons will need the help of Congress.

Trump has positioned himself as a staunch defender of the Second Amendment, the constitutional right to bear arms. Addressing the National Rifle Association in May, he said he was their best friend.

Harris has called for the decriminalisation of marijuana for recreational use. She says too many people have been sent to prison for possession and points to disproportionate arrest numbers for black and Latino men.

Trump has softened his approach and said it’s time to end “needless arrests and incarcerations” of adults for small amounts of marijuana for personal use.

• SIMPLE GUIDE: When is the US election and how does it work?
• GLOBAL: Vote weighs on minds of Ukraine’s frontline soldiers
• PATH TO 270: The states they need to win – and why
• IN PICS: Different lives of Harris and Trump
• POLLS: Who is winning the race for the White House?

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.

The polls were relatively stable in September and early October but they have tightened in the last couple of weeks, as shown in the chart below, with trend lines showing the averages and dots for individual poll results for each candidate.

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

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 leads in the swing states are so small that it’s impossible to know who is really ahead from looking at the polling averages.

Polls are designed to broadly explain how the public feels about a candidate or an issue, not predict the result of an election by less than a percentage point so it’s important to keep that in mind when looking at the numbers below.

It’s also important to remember that the individual polls used to create these averages have a margin of error of around three to four percentage points, so either candidate could be doing better or worse than the numbers currently suggest.

If you look at the trends since Harris joined the race, it does highlight some differences between the states.

In Arizona, Georgia, Nevada and North Carolina, the lead has changed hands a few times since the start of August but Trump has a small lead in all of them at the moment.

In the three other states – Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin – Harris had led since the start of August, sometimes by two or three points, but the polls have tightened significantly and Trump now has a very small lead in Pennsylvania.

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.

The polls have underestimated support for Trump in the last two elections and the national polling error in 2020 was the highest in 40 years according to a post-mortem by polling experts – so there’s good reason to be cautious about them going into this year’s election.

The polling miss in 2016 was put down to voters changing their minds in the final days of the campaign and because college-educated voters – who were more likely to support Hillary Clinton – had been over-represented in polling samples.

In 2020, the experts pointed to problems with getting Trump supporters to take part in polls, but said it was “impossible” to know exactly what had caused the polling error, especially as the election was held during a pandemic and had a record turnout.

Pollsters have made lots of changes since then and the polling industry “had one of its most successful election cycles in US history” in the 2022 midterm elections, according to analysts at 538.

But Donald Trump wasn’t on the ballot in the midterms and we won’t know until after election day whether these changes can deal with the influx of irregular voters he tends to attract.

• Listen: How do election polls work?

• PATH TO 270: The states they need to win – and why
• IN PICS: Different lives of Harris and Trump
• SIMPLE GUIDE: How you can get most votes but lose
• EXPLAINER: What Harris or Trump would do in power
• FACT-CHECK: What the numbers really say about crime
• Read more about: Kamala Harris | Donald Trump | US election

An artist said it was “the most surreal moment” of his life to be invited to hand deliver two charcoal drawings of Tom Cruise to the Top Gun actor.

Wilf Elliott, from Clacton-on-Sea in Essex, had previously given artwork to singers, like Sam Ryder and Zara Larsson, but he could not believe his luck when Cruise’s team reached out to him.

“I found out Tom had opened up my artwork on set, and I decided it would be a great idea to draw another one, and then I got a text to say he’d like to meet me in person,” the 21-year-old tattoo artist said.

“I don’t think I’m ever going to be able to get someone as big as that ever again.”

Mr Elliott started recreating a scene from Top Gun: Maverick, one of his favourite films, about 18 months ago.

“Actually seeing someone like that and him knowing who I was before I met him was incredibly surreal,” he continued.

He said he started drawing during the coronavirus lockdown to keep himself busy, and his artwork has attracted attention on social media from celebrities, like former Welsh football captain and Real Madrid star Gareth Bale.

Earlier this year, he flew to Sweden to deliver a portrait of the late DJ Avicii to the musician’s father, Klas Bergling.

The rapper Post Malone and actor Jim Carrey were high on his “wish list”, he added.

Lawyers hired by MrBeast to investigate claims that his former co-host groomed a teenager have concluded that the allegations were “without basis”, the star YouTuber has said.

Ava Kris Tyson stopped working with MrBeast in July after other YouTubers accused her of sending inappropriate messages to a minor, reportedly then 13, when she was 20.

At the time, Tyson apologised for her “past actions”, but said her behaviour never “extended beyond bad edgy jokes” and denied ever grooming anyone.

The alleged victim – who was named online – also defended her, saying the claims were “massive lies” and that they had never been “exploited or taken advantage of”.

MrBeast, 26, real name Jimmy Donaldson, hosts the largest channel on YouTube, with 325m subscribers, and is known for making videos of stunts, challenges and acts of philanthropy.

Tyson, 28, who last year came out as transgender, has appeared regularly on the channel since it was launched in 2012.

After the initial claims in July, MrBeast said he was “disgusted” by the “serious allegations of Ava Tyson’s behaviour online” and “opposed to such unacceptable acts”.

On Friday, he shared a letter on X from Quinn Emanuel Urqhart & Sullivan LLP, the law firm he hired to conduct an investigation into the claims.

The letter said the firm had conducted 39 interviews with current and former employees of MrBeast’s company and reviewed over 4.5m documents collected from mobile phones, e-mails, and a variety of messaging platforms.

“Allegations of sexual misconduct… between company employees and minors are without basis. The allegations were soundly rejected, including by alleged victims,” it said.

It added that allegations the company had knowingly employed “individuals with proclivities or histories towards illegal… conduct” were “similarly without basis”.

The letter said some “isolated instances of workplace harassment and misconduct were identified” and that, once informed about them, the company had taken “swift and appropriate actions”.

Following the publication of the letter, the alleged victim of Tyson’s behaviour said again that the claims were “completely false”.

“People used my name to make very serious allegations and claims without ever speaking to me,” they said.

“It was incredibly difficult having my name thrown around in a public forum without being given the opportunity to share the truth.

“The private investigators reviewed all my [direct messages] and interactions with Kris.

“I was not groomed. These were false allegations made up by other people with my name thrown in them.”

Responding to the initial allegations in July, Tyson apologised for her “unacceptable social media posts, past actions, and to those who may feel betrayed by how I used to act online”, but added: “I never groomed anyone”.

“To lump these two factors together to create a narrative that my behavior extended beyond bad edgy jokes is disgusting and did not happen,” she said.

“I have learned that my old humor is not acceptable. I cannot change who I was, but I can continue to work on myself.”

A US carrier strike group – a major fleet of warships – is a potent symbol of American military power and a signal that it’s willing to defend allies and deter enemies.

So the presence of such a force in the North Sea over the past few weeks is meant to reassure European allies, despite the political uncertainties back home.

American military power has helped protect Europe for the past 75 years – but the US presidential election raises the question: for how much longer?

Military commanders do their best to avoid politics.

But among a group of journalists invited on board the USS Harry S Truman, the US presidential race was high on the agenda. The question was: will America still have Europe’s back?

Rear Adm Sean Bailey said: “What I can tell you is we are firmly committed to our alliance, firmly committed to Nato.”

But he’s not the one who will be deciding US foreign policy, and nor is his answer likely to assuage doubts.

Germany’s Defence Minister, Boris Pistorius, knows change is in the air.

Asked about the likely impact of the US election on Europe last week, he said it was a question of whether America does “a lot less, or a little bit less”.

He didn’t mention names, but it’s Donald Trump who’s likely to do a lot less.

USS Harry S Truman proudly bears the name of the president who helped establish Nato 75 years ago.

But a second Trump term could once again shake the alliance to its very core.

The Truman doctrine of giving military, economic and political support to democratic nations under threat is very different to Trump’s policy of America First.

He recently said Russia can “do whatever the hell they want” to allies who don’t spend enough on defence.

Any US withdrawal from Europe would leave a large hole.

The USS Harry S Truman is proof of what America brings in sheer size and numbers – with 5,000 crew and more than 60 aircraft.

The Royal Navy’s carrier, HMS Prince of Wales, sailing nearby, provided a reminder of Europe’s more modest defences.

The British carrier was sailing with an air wing of a few helicopters and eight F-35 jets – a pale reflection of US military clout.

• How the election could change the world
• US allies try to ‘Trump-proof’ Nato
• What is Nato and which countries are members?

Overall the US has more than 100,000 military personnel deployed in Europe.

Last time he was president, Trump threatened to withdraw some of those forces. If elected he could do the same again.

Many Republicans believe Europe should look after itself. That’s certainly the view of Elbridge Colby, a senior Pentagon official in the last Trump administration.

He says the US should “withhold” its forces from Europe to focus on the threat posed by China.

The election will also have an impact on US military aid to Ukraine – America is by far its biggest military backer.

But a senior Nato official, who did not want to be named, recently told the BBC “regardless of who wins the share of America’s contribution to Ukraine will probably decrease in relative terms”.

Europe, he said, can’t expect the US to continue giving an “outsized” contribution.

The reality is that America’s military focus has already been shifting east to the Indo-Pacific region and the rise of China.

The Pentagon identifies China as its greatest security challenge. China now has a larger navy than the US. It’s building a fleet the size of the entire Royal Navy every two years.

The sailors and pilots on board the carrier recognise there’s a pivot east too.

Cdr Bernie Lutz has spent much of his naval career flying F-18s off a US carrier in the Pacific and Middle East.

He recognises why they’re now sailing in European waters. “There’s a lot going on,” he says.

But he adds, “I think the Pacific theatre is the bigger, overarching long-term goal”.

Like the rest of the 5,000-strong crew of the carrier, he has not yet been told where they’ll be sailing next – but it’s been widely reported that the USS Harry S Truman will soon be on its way to the Middle East.

That region, too, will remain a challenge for whoever’s president next.

Capt Dave Snowden says he’s happy to carry the banner of de-escalation or deterrence or even sail into harm’s way – wherever the carrier’s sent.

But the lack of serious foreign policy debate in the election reflects a reluctance to get directly involved in more wars.

America will still remain the world’s most pre-eminent military power.

The question is how will the next president use it.

When Vimal Yoganathan first stepped on to the pitch for Barnsley, bosses at the club knew they’d found a special talent.

The 18-year-old is praised for his speed, mentality and his ability to play with both feet – but that’s not the only thing special about him.

Vimal is the first Tamil footballer to play professionally in England – one of just a handful of players from a South Asian background employed in the top four leagues.

“Being a role model will be a big part of being a footballer,” he says. “Hopefully I can do that and inspire younger players coming through – especially Tamil people.”

Vimal’s family comes from Sri Lanka and the midfielder grew up in Trelawnyd, a small village in north Wales.

He says he didn’t have many friends from a similar background as a child and sometimes “it was a bit difficult”.

He tells BBC Asian Network that while his family was welcomed by the community, “there weren’t people you could 100% relate to in terms of fitting in to a predominantly white area”.

It wasn’t long before he was scouted by his boyhood club, Liverpool, signing for their academy by the time he was eight.

He went on to join Barnsley’s under-16s side and rose through the ranks there.

In August, he scored his first senior goals for the League One club and earlier in the year made his debut for the under-19s Welsh national team, coming on as a sub during a clash with Belgium.

At 6ft 3in (191cm), it wasn’t just his height that made Vimal stand out at Barnsley, according to the club’s academy director Bobby Hassell – but it certainly helped.

“He came in at 15 years old, a really tall, gangly, skinny lad – didn’t look like a footballer at all in all honesty,” he says.

“It was his aggression really that was a stand-out for all the coaches.

“You don’t generally find 15-year-olds coming in and tackling like he did.”

In 2023, there were just 22 professional players with South Asian heritage aged 17 or over in England’s top four leagues.

With about 5,000 professional footballers in the UK, that represents about 1% of players.

Although still small, those figures, from the Professional Footballers’ Association (PFA), did show a 29% rise on the previous season – when there had only been 17.

“Whenever I’d step on to an academy pitch, I’d be the only brown player and obviously the only Tamil player,” says Vimal.

“It almost became normal to me – but that has to change.”

In 2021, the PFA launched its Asian Inclusion Mentoring Scheme (AIMS), which has supported Vimal in his career so far.

“It shows me how many brown players there are in the game,” he says.

“And it’s grown as well – it’s good to see.”

Bobby says he was aware of the extra pressure on Vimal in terms of representing the British Asian community.

“I understand the difficulties in terms of families allowing young players to play soccer,” he says.

Vimal says there’s a stereotype that British Asian parents prefer their children to focus on their school work.

“I think the thing that scares a lot of parents is the risk,” he says.

“You put a lot of hours and a lot of dedication into becoming a footballer but obviously there’s no guarantee.”

He says he’s very lucky his parents were supportive.

“Being a footballer wasn’t only my dream,” he says. “It was also theirs.”

Bobby thinks Vimal’s “certainly showing the way” for families when it comes to the opportunities that are out there.

“I think they can look now and see kids don’t just need an education,” he says.

“There is a pathway in football.”

Vimal shies away from the word “trailblazer” when people talk about what he’s achieved already, as well as what’s to come.

Football is his main priority, he says. Being a role model “should just come naturally”.

But one word Barnsley’s sporting director Mladen Sormaz uses to describe Vimal is “humble”.

“There aren’t a tonne of role models,” he says.

“But I think this is the generation where we’re going to start seeing icons.”

He sees a bright future for Vimal, saying he’s “got everything in terms of the tools to become a top level professional”.

“All he needs now is the pathway and a little bit of luck.”

Mladen remembers his own childhood where gradually the number of British Asian kids joining in for a kick about dropped off as he got older.

He believes players like Vimal could help keep them in the game.

“It’s just having role models out there, seeing people do it successfully,” he says.

“Hopefully Vimal will be one of them.

“As a representative, he’s shown that he’s quite keen to take that on for the community.”

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

Dublin is in the midst of a crack cocaine crisis, according to the city’s drug counsellors.

The number of people seeking treatment for the use of the drug in the Republic of Ireland increased by 594% from 173 cases in 2017 to 1,201 in 2023, statistics from the Health Research Board (HRB) show.

One user said he came to the city in his 20s where he became an addict.

“I kind of slipped from maybe taking a few beers, to taking a couple of ecstasy, to taking some other stuff, and then I ended up on heroin and crack cocaine,” said John (not his real name).

Crack is the street name given to a solid form of cocaine that is usually smoked.

Daithi Doolan, from the South Inner City Drug and Alcohol Partnership, said many homes in Dublin had some form of addiction.

“It’s actually a crisis,” he added.

“It’s happening at the school gate in the playground.”

Doolan, who is also a Sinn Féin councillor, said communities cannot cope with the scale of drug use.

“The drug-related intimidation is affecting individuals, families and whole communities are being held to ransom by the drug dealers.”

In previous decades, Dublin had been battling heroin in inner city communities.

Those at the frontline of addiction say a heroin shortage, due to geopolitical changes in Afghanistan, has sparked an increase of crack cocaine use.

• Poppy crops slashed in the Taliban’s war on drugs

In 2023, 4,923 people sought drug treatment with cocaine, in its powder or crack form, as the main problem.

Cheryl Kelly, an addiction counsellor in the Donore Community Drug and Alcohol Team, said women need separate services from men for their “complex” needs.

“Women would find themselves in situations where they may be engaging in forced sex work, or they might be afraid of social services, and the women face an awful lot of shame and stigma in and around their drug use,” she said.

The HRB statistics showed an increase in females seeking treatment for cocaine use from 284 cases in 2017 to 1,387 in 2023.

Where crack cocaine was the main problem, nearly half were female, just over one in 20 were employed and the median age was 39.

Ms Kelly said setting up a dedicated scheme for women was important.

“They face an awful lot of shame and stigma because they’re nurturing and minding their children, their family or whoever it may be.

“It was very important for me to engage or to help in our community drugs and alcohol team to set up the pilot programme for women.

“Women won’t engage in services if they feel like the man that’s been intimidating them down at a shop on Friday is also going to be in the same service seeking support, so there is definitely a need for female-only spaces where women can feel safe.”

Alan Kinsella, a case worker in the city centre’s Coolmine Therapeutic community, said: “We have a specific programme which is aimed to work with people who are using cocaine, both powder cocaine and crack cocaine; it has consistently had full numbers,” he said.

“When a programme which is so specific to a drug which is busy and full, it kind of tells the story of the scope of what cocaine is like, particularly in Dublin city centre.”

Alan said there is no social border that defines cocaine addiction.

“We see people presented with cocaine as an issue from all walks of life, and people who have jobs – there is no kind of differentiation between the people that we see and the drug that they’re using.”

Some artists become legends in their lifetime yet remain a mystery years after their death.

Indian painter Vasudeo Santu Gaitonde, born 100 years ago on 2 November 1924, was one such master.

Considered one of South Asia’s greatest abstract painters, Gaitonde was part of a rebellious generation of artists who laid the foundation for a new era of Indian art in the mid-20th Century.

He was deeply inspired by the techniques used by Western painters but his work remained rooted in Asian philosophy, infusing light and texture in ways that, admirers say, evokes a profound sense of calmness.

His paintings were meant to be “meditations on the light and universe”, says Yamini Mehta, who worked as the international head of South Asian Art at Sotheby’s.

“The play of light and shadows and texture makes these paintings dynamic.”

In a career that spanned decades, Gaitonde never pursued fame or fortune. But his works continue to grab attention at auctions, years after his death in 2001.

In 2022, an untitled oil painting by him fetched 420m rupees (nearly $5m; £3.9m), setting a new record for Indian art at that time. The bluish shades of the work reminded viewers of large expanses of the sea or sky.

Gaitonde lived as a recluse for most of his life. He was deeply impacted by Japanese Zen philosophy and this meditative mindset was often reflected in his paintings.

“Everything starts from silence. The silence of the canvas. The silence of the painting knife. The painter starts by absorbing all these silences… Your entire being is working together with the brush, the painting knife, the canvas to absorb that silence and create,” he told journalist Pritish Nandy in a rare interview in 1991.

Originally from the western state of Goa, Gaitonde’s family lived in Mumbai city (formerly Bombay) in a small, three-room dwelling in a chawl – an affordable tenement complex for the city’s working class.

A born artist, he joined Mumbai’s famous JJ School of Arts for training in 1946. Despite his father’s disapproval – art was not seen as a viable career in India at the time – Gaitonde funded his own studies and earned a diploma in 1948.

For some time, he was part of a group of influential Indian artists called the Progressive Artists Group, which was set up to encourage new forms of art. Formed in 1947 in Mumbai, the group counted leading artists such as Francis Souza, SH Raza, MF Husain and Bhanu Athaiya – the first Indian to win an Oscar – as its members.

Gaitonde also worked at the city’s Bhulabhai Desai Memorial Institute, another hub frequented by legends such as sitarist Ravi Shankar and theatre artist Ebrahim Alkazi.

“This was an interesting time as Mumbai was a hotbed of creativity,” says artist and writer Satish Naik, who has published an anthology on Gaitonde in the Marathi language.

Indian art at that time was largely dominated by realism, found in the murals of the Ajanta caves and in Mughal art or miniature paintings.

“Gaitonde began with realistic works but soon sought a different path. He was one of the first ones to reject the form and adopt the formless,” Naik said.

“In that sense, he was a rebel. He wanted to paint as it pleased him, not as someone dictated to him.”

Gaitonde’s deep interest in spirituality helped him progress towards his craft.

“My paintings are nothing else but the reflection of nature,” he once wrote in a 1963 questionnaire for New York’s Museum of Modern Art.

In 1963, Morris Graves, a famous abstract painter from the US, saw Gaitonde’s work during a trip to India, and was heavily impressed.

He immediately sent a letter to Dan and Marian Johnson of the Willard Gallery in New York, describing him as “one of the finest” painters he had ever seen.

“He’s as fine – or superb – as Mark Rothko at his best and will be a world-known painter one of these days,” Graves wrote.

“He is an abstract painter with something unspeakably beautiful and clean. They are the most beautiful landscapes of the mind plus light.”

In 1964, Gaitonde moved to New York after getting the Rockefeller Fellowship. The next two years were a formative phase in his career as the young artist got a chance to meet American modern artists and see their works, which further developed his style.

In 1971, Gaitonde received the Padma Shri, the fourth-highest civilian award in India, for his outstanding contribution to art.

But despite his growing fame, he became increasingly withdrawn in the coming years.

His disciple and renowned artist Laxman Shreshtha recounts in Naik’s book how MF Husain would often try to visit Gaitonde at his Delhi residence.

“If Gaitonde didn’t want to meet anyone, he would not open the door, not even for Husain who would sketch something on the door and go. That was Husain’s way of saying ‘I had dropped by’.”

Even his work underwent a shift. Usually, the artist would paint anywhere between six and seven canvases in a year. But after a spinal injury in 1984, the numbers went down considerably.

“I still continue to paint; I make paintings in my head. I now have limited energy which I need to conserve and cannot waste putting paint to canvas,” he once told art gallerist Dadiba Pundole.

As Gaitonde’s stature as an artist grew, his paintings became fewer and rarer, all of which added to the charm and mystery surrounding his work.

It is perhaps also one of the reasons why his paintings command such high prices even today.

When Gaitonde died in 2001 at the age of 77, his death went widely unreported as the artist lived his last years in obscurity.

But his thought-provoking canvases continued to make waves around the world.

Cara Manes, an associate curator at the Museum of Modern Art, once said that Gaitonde’s works were an embodiment of what silence might look like. “And yet there’s a certain shimmering effect that emerges out of that silence which is then pitted against these very solid marks, assertive application of colours.”

For the artist, though, art remained a deeply personal form of self-expression.

He often said: “I let the colours flow and watch. That is my painting.”

Cyclists using a mobile phone while riding in Japan could face up to six months jail under strict new rules introduced Friday.

Those who breach the revised road traffic law can be punished with a maximum sentence of six months in prison, or a fine of 100,000 yen ($655; £508).

The number of accidents involving cyclists started climbing in 2021, as more people opted to cycle instead of using public transport during the pandemic, according to local media. Authorities are now racing to regulate riders.

Besides cracking down on phone usage, the new rules also target cyclists riding under the influence of alcohol, with a penalty of up to three years in prison or a fine of 500,000 yen ($3,278; £2,541).

Hours after the new laws came into effect, Osaka authorities confirmed on Friday that they had already recorded five violations, including two men who were caught riding bicycles while drunk. One of the men had collided with another cyclist, but no injuries were reported.

Under the new rules, cyclists who cause accidents can be fined up to 300,000 yen ($2,000; £1,500 ) or jailed up to a year.

The total number of traffic accidents across Japan may be declining, but bicycle accidents are on the rise. More than 72,000 bicycle accidents were recorded in Japan in 2023, accounting for over 20% of all traffic accidents in the country, according to local media.

In the first half of 2024 there was one fatality and 17 serious injuries from accidents involving cyclists using their phones — the highest number since the police started recording such statistics in 2007.

Between 2018 and 2022 there were 454 accidents caused by cyclists using phones, according to police — a 50% increase from the previous five-year period.

The latest rules come amid a series of safety regulations aimed at protecting the safety of riders and pedestrians.

Last year, authorities made it compulsory for cyclists to wear helmets. In May, Japan’s parliament passed a bill allowing police to fine cyclists for traffic violations.

Unlike in many other countries, cycling on pavements is legal in Japan, and is a common practice.

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

US intelligence agencies say “Russian influence actors” are behind a suspected fake video of a Haitian man who claims to have voted “multiple times” in Georgia.

The 20-second video, which has been viewed hundreds of thousands of times on X and other social networks, shows two men in a car claiming to be Haitian.

One says they obtained US citizenship within six months of arriving and have voted for Kamala Harris in Gwinnett and Fulton counties in Georgia. They encourage other Haitians to come to the United States.

The BBC has found clear indications, including false addresses and stock photos, which indicate the video is a fake.

In a statement, three US security agencies said that the video “falsely depicted individuals claiming to be from Haiti” and was made by “Russian influence actors”.

“This Russian activity is part of Moscow’s broader effort to raise unfounded questions about the integrity of the US election and stoke divisions among Americans,” said the joint statement from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.

The Russian embassy in the US said the accusations were “baseless”, adding that Russia “has not and does not interfere in the internal affairs of other countries” in a statement on Telegram.

But researchers at Clemson University said that the video bore the hallmarks of a Russian disinformation operation known as Storm-1516.

“This narrative is consistent with what we’ve seen from Storm-1516, especially in recent weeks since they’ve turned their focus squarely on the US election,” said Clemson’s Darren Linvill.

“We should absolutely not be surprised that they are focused on undermining the integrity of the US election.

“This is consistent with Russian strategy over the last two election cycles.”

Linvill said the “narrative focus, style and production of the video” match previous efforts by the Russian operation, which is linked, Clemson researchers say, to an organisation called the Russian Foundation to Battle Injustice.

The organisation was founded by Yevgeny Prigozhin, the mercenary leader who headed the Wagner Group until he launched a rebellion against Moscow and died in a plane crash.

Georgia’s chief elections official, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, said that the clip is “fake and part of a disinformation effort”.

He asked X owner Elon Musk and owners of other social media platforms to remove the video.

One man in the clip shows multiple driving licences to the camera, presumably as proof of identity. BBC Verify took screenshots of these and enhanced the images to be able to read the details on them.

The addresses on two of the licences match up to a business site and a location in the middle of a road near a petrol station – not residential addresses.

A reverse image search of the photograph on one of the licences showed it was a stock image of a man originally produced by a production company in South Africa.

US intelligence agencies said last week that a video purporting to show a poll worker destroying mail-in ballots marked for Donald Trump in Pennsylvania was “manufactured and amplified” by Russians.

What do you want BBC Verify to investigate?

An armed group has taken control of a military facility near the Bolivian city of Cochabamba, the country’s military says, and is holding some soldiers captive.

The army had started an operation to remove blockades around the country on Friday morning, local media reported, after weeks of clashes between supporters of former President Evo Morales and the police.

In a statement, the army said the group had seized arms and ammunition and urged them to leave, warning that such actions amounted to “treason”.

Images of a row of soldiers with their hands behind their backs, surrounded by members of the armed group, were shown on local television.

• Bolivian government denies attempt to kill Evo Morales
• Evo Morales says his car was shot at in assassination attempt
• Street battles in Bolivia as Evo Morales leads march to capital

Cochabamba is in central Bolivia and is home to many supporters of the former president.

Shortly after the facility was taken over by the group, the military announced the evacuation of personnel and their families, local media reported.

One of the soldiers being held in the facility said, in a message to his command centre, that the group were demanding that authorities stop interfering with blockades, Bolivian news agency ANF said.

Morales’ supporters have created blockades around the country for 19 days, demanding an end to an investigation into the former president for alleged statutory rape and human trafficking, which he denies.

On Sunday, Morales shared a video of his car being shot at, in what he called an “assassination attempt” against him.

The Bolivian government rejected Morales’ claims that it ordered a targeted attack on him.

His supporters had clashed with followers of his rival, current President Luis Arce, on several occasions earlier this year. Both men intend to run as candidate for the ruling Mas party in the country’s 2025 presidential elections.

Morales, who was president from 2006 to 2019, was declared the winner of the 2019 election but resigned weeks later after nationwide protests triggered by claims of election fraud.

Rohit Bal, one of India’s most celebrated fashion designers, has died aged 63 after a long period of illness.

The Fashion Design Council of India (FDCI) announced his death in a post on Instagram, saying that his work “redefined Indian fashion”.

One of India’s first designers, Bal popularised fashion designing as a viable, glamorous profession in the 1990s and many who came after him credit him for their success.

He had been forced to take a prolonged break due to ill health but made an emotional comeback just weeks ago.

“We will always need a Rohit Bal around to show what classic elegance is – and why it crosses the generational divide,” said an article in The Indian Express newspaper after Bal, looking frail but delighted, appeared alongside his models at the grand finale of the India Fashion Week in October.

Bal’s designs won acclaim for his deep understanding of Indian textiles and meticulous attention to detail.

His innovative creations were worn by Hollywood stars and supermodels and he became synonymous with blending India’s rich cultural heritage with a contemporary flair.

Born in Srinagar in Indian-administered Kashmir in 1961, Bal graduated from Delhi’s St Stephens College with an honours degree in history. He then worked in his family’s export business for a few years, learning the ropes.

After completing his formal education in fashion design at the National Institute of Fashion Technology (NIFT) in Delhi, Bal embarked on a journey that would redefine Indian fashion.

He set up his own label and designer line in 1990 and later opened several stores in India, the Middle East and Europe.

On his website, Bal described himself as a designer who “combines the right mix of history, folklore, village craft, and dying arts to create imaginative and innovative masterpieces for catwalks and fashion talks”.

In 1996, Time magazine listed him as India’s ‘Master of fabric and fantasy’.

Bal’s designs reached far and wide, with Hollywood actress Uma Thurman and supermodels Cindy Crawford, Naomi Campbell and Pamela Anderson wearing his creations. In 2001, tennis star Anna Kournikova walked the ramp for his Paris show.

Best known for his use of lotus and peacock motifs, Bal used rich fabrics like velvet and brocade – his designs were elaborate, inspired by Indian grandeur and royalty.

Apart from designing clothes in his own label, Bal lent his name to endorse products from shoes to linen, had tie-ups with textile giants like the Aditya Birla Group and even ventured into designing jewellery and luxury watches.

He also opened a line for children, saying that he believed that “children are a major consumer class in urban India”.

Bal crafted costumes for the widely-watched Indian game show Kaun Banega Crorepati (Who Wants to be a Millionaire?) and designed costumes for the cabin crew of British Airways.

He unveiled his inaugural prêt line for online retailer Jabong in 2014.

“I want to separate Rohit Bal from the House of Bal – in products as well as style, in expensiveness and expanse,” Bal told Shefalee Vasudev in Mint newspaper.

“Rohit Bal stores (there will be no prêt here) will be special. People come to me only for special things – they want garments that are like handmade pieces of art. I have it in me to balance the right and left sides of my creative and business leanings.”

When I met Bal years ago in his studio, his characteristic flamboyance was evident in dazzling neon coloured silks embellished with intricate embroidery; sleek blouses and skirts along with taffeta skirts and netted blouses, in bright, warm and cool colours.

“Fabric is the seed of designing a garment, it is the lifeblood of fashion,” he told me.

His earliest memories of fabric were totally sensory, he said, recalling the downy feel of a jamawar shawl at home in Srinagar and the soft warmth of his mother’s shahtoosh saris.

His early years in Srinagar contributed to what he described as a “blissful childhood”. The idyllic life, he said, was disrupted by the violence in the region, compelling the family to relocate to Delhi.

Bal remembered embarking on a sartorial adventure at the age of 11 when he coaxed his father into a tailor’s shop in Delhi to craft his own cowboy pants adorned with tassels.

Bal also diversified into the restaurant business and designed the interiors of one of Delhi’s posh restaurants, Veda, whose opulent and extravagant interiors created a buzz in the Indian media.

He told me it was also okay with him if foreign brands like Armani or Hilfiger came to take up high street space in India.

“They can’t do what I can with Indian designs,” Bal said.

His flamboyant lifestyle prompted the Indian media to call him “the bad boy of fashion”.

“People see me in photographs surrounded by pretty models and think that I am a snobbish, high-maintenance designer who is about beauty and hedonism. When they meet me, they realise how fake that perception is,” he told Vasudev.

Peanut, a squirrel made famous by his large and devoted Instagram following, has been euthanised just days after being seized by New York authorities.

The state Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) raided the home of Mark Longo on Wednesday following complaints of potentially unsafe housing for the animal.

Earlier this week, Mr Longo pleaded with authorities for Peanut’s safe return, writing on Instagram that there was a “special place in hell” for the DEC.

Authorities, however, said that they put the animal down after he bit an official involved in his seizure. The DEC also said it had euthanised a raccoon named Fred that they took away during the raid from Mr Longo’s home.

News of Peanut’s death came as a petition calling for his return had garnered more than 30,000 signatures by Friday afternoon.

On Thursday, Mr Longo had said he was raising money for legal fees against the DEC. A GoFundMe he set up had raised about $13,500 (£10,400).

The ordeal, he said in a Friday morning post, had become a “terrible nightmare”.

After Peanut’s death, Mr Longo posted the phone number of the DEC online and urged supporters to call the organisation to “express your feelings”.

“We will not let this be Pnuts final memory,” he wrote.

In a separate Instagram story, he thanked Peanut’s fans for the “love and support” his family had received and called for donations to help other animals kept in his “freedom farm”.

A DEC statement said an investigation had been launched after receiving “multiple reports from the public about the potentially unsafe housing of wildlife that could carry rabies and the illegal keeping of wildlife as pets”.

Mr Longo took Peanut in seven years ago after he spotted the baby squirrel by his mother, who had been hit by a car.

He cared for Peanut until he was strong enough to be released, but said he found the critter back on his porch the following morning with “a chunk of his tail missing”.

Peanut’s Instagram account has amassed more than 500,000 followers in the time since.

The account features videos of Peanut playing out skits with Mr Longo, occasionally dressed in hats, often climbing over him or being hugged, and regularly eating waffles.

An illustrator from Bristol, who felt on the “edge of burnout” before being diagnosed with ADHD, is calling for increased awareness of the condition in the workplace.

Ana Jaks from Stokes Croft was diagnosed with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in 2020 at the age of 27.

She is now part of a campaign called Staring Back At Me, which was created to combat ADHD stigma, particularly around women and non-binary people.

“I thought it was normal for people to feel as constantly stressed as I did,” said Ana, describing her work life before diagnosis.

Staring Back at Me is an awareness campaign, aiming to help people recognise the symptoms of ADHD, while highlighting the stigma that women may face in the workplace.

The first phase of the project, which focused on signs and symptoms of ADHD, was launched in 2022, while the second phase, which focuses on ADHD in the workplace, was launched in October.

As part of the campaign Ana designed illustrations for the lining on suit jackets that represent the invisible nature of ADHD in the workplace.

The illustrations featured inside the linings of the suit jackets, which were worn by two ambassadors in the campaign’s movie.

“I hope other women with ADHD do not fear being seen,” said Jenny Mclaughlin, Staring Back at Me campaign ambassador.

“I hope this campaign and my story shows the strengths someone with ADHD can bring to the workplace.

“All we need is the right environment and support to thrive.”

Before the increase in ADHD awareness, Ana said she felt she had to “mask” her condition while at work, which only exacerbated her symptoms.

“Eventually you start to slip and you start to wobble and fall apart. The longer that you’ve been doing that, the more severe the collapse of that is going to be.”

“You’re pretending to be something that you’re not and that imposter syndrome turns into self-esteem issues and it can manifest itself as anxiety and depression.”

Although we are now seeing an increase in awareness of ADHD, approximately 50-75% of women remain undiagnosed and there is still a lack of understanding of the condition, said Professor Amanda Kirby, chair of the ADHD Foundation.

“This is especially true in the workplace,” she added.

ADHD is a neurodevelopment condition that can cause differences in the way people think, learn, process and behave.

Research conducted in 2018 found that up to 75% of women living with ADHD are currently undiagnosed in the UK.

Research shows that women are consistently under-diagnosed in childhood.

According to the National Library of Medicine, ADHD symptoms present differently in girls and boys, with girls exhibiting more “internalised” symptoms such as distraction, disorganisation and forgetfulness.

Adults with ADHD may find they have problems with:

• Organisation and time management
• Following instructions
• Focusing and completing tasks
• Coping with stress
• Feeling restless or impatient
• Impulsiveness and risk taking

Some adults may also have issues with relationships or social interaction.

Ana first noticed her symptoms at school when she found that she was overly-distracted and impulsive.

She dropped out of her A-Levels because she felt she could not keep up as she struggled with anxiety and depression.

Ana was diagnosed in 2020. She had just graduated from university and was working as a freelancer in a studio space.

“I wasn’t functioning in the same way as everybody else and I couldn’t quite understand what it was.

“And I remember saying to myself – ‘I just want to grow out of this’ – but I didn’t know what ‘this’ was.”

Finally receiving her ADHD diagnosis at 27, Ana felt she was finally able to understand herself.

“There’s a relief, but it quickly turns into thinking, ‘Oh, my life could have been a lot easier’ if I’d known sooner.

“I remember crying a lot. It was quite strange to have someone affirm everything that I had struggled with and it wasn’t because I was rubbish at life.

“There’s a lot of grief that comes with it. From speaking to other people that have had a diagnosis it’s quite a common feeling.”

Since her diagnosis, Ana has found that prioritising sleep, daily exercise and spending time outdoors have helped with her ADHD.

She said she now feels better-equipped to understand her mind and communicate her needs.

“In the workplace I do still have to push myself forward a bit more to act a certain way. But then everyone does,” she said.

“The clients I have spoken to [about my diagnosis] have been really great and really accommodating. I’ve only had positive experiences when I have spoken about it.”

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.

The polls were relatively stable in September and early October but they have tightened in the last couple of weeks, as shown in the chart below, with trend lines showing the averages and dots for individual poll results for each candidate.

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

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 leads in the swing states are so small that it’s impossible to know who is really ahead from looking at the polling averages.

Polls are designed to broadly explain how the public feels about a candidate or an issue, not predict the result of an election by less than a percentage point so it’s important to keep that in mind when looking at the numbers below.

It’s also important to remember that the individual polls used to create these averages have a margin of error of around three to four percentage points, so either candidate could be doing better or worse than the numbers currently suggest.

If you look at the trends since Harris joined the race, it does highlight some differences between the states.

In Arizona, Georgia, Nevada and North Carolina, the lead has changed hands a few times since the start of August but Trump has a small lead in all of them at the moment.

In the three other states – Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin – Harris had led since the start of August, sometimes by two or three points, but the polls have tightened significantly and Trump now has a very small lead in Pennsylvania.

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.

The polls have underestimated support for Trump in the last two elections and the national polling error in 2020 was the highest in 40 years according to a post-mortem by polling experts – so there’s good reason to be cautious about them going into this year’s election.

The polling miss in 2016 was put down to voters changing their minds in the final days of the campaign and because college-educated voters – who were more likely to support Hillary Clinton – had been over-represented in polling samples.

In 2020, the experts pointed to problems with getting Trump supporters to take part in polls, but said it was “impossible” to know exactly what had caused the polling error, especially as the election was held during a pandemic and had a record turnout.

Pollsters have made lots of changes since then and the polling industry “had one of its most successful election cycles in US history” in the 2022 midterm elections, according to analysts at 538.

But Donald Trump wasn’t on the ballot in the midterms and we won’t know until after election day whether these changes can deal with the influx of irregular voters he tends to attract.

• Listen: How do election polls work?

• PATH TO 270: The states they need to win – and why
• IN PICS: Different lives of Harris and Trump
• SIMPLE GUIDE: How you can get most votes but lose
• EXPLAINER: What Harris or Trump would do in power
• FACT-CHECK: What the numbers really say about crime
• Read more about: Kamala Harris | Donald Trump | US election

The world’s largest crocodile in captivity has died at a wildlife sanctuary in Australia.

Cassius was nearly 5.5m (18ft) long, weighed nearly one tonne and was thought to be at least 110 years old – although no one knew for sure.

The huge saltwater crocodile lived in the sanctuary on an island off the coast of Queensland since being caught in Australia’s Northern Territory in the 1980s.

In 2011, he was awarded the Guinness World Record for the largest crocodile in captivity.

Marineland Melanesia Crocodile Habitat said in a post on social media that Cassius was “our beloved mate” and “a cherished member of our family”.

Cassius had previously lived in the wild, where he was known for catching and eating cattle, and attacking boat propellers before being captured.

The habitat’s founder, George Craig, bought Cassius in 1987, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation reported.

Cassius “brought joy and companionship to his best mate George for over 37 years”, the habitat said.

The habitat added that Mr Craig relocated to Cairns last month and Cassius’s health declined soon after.

“He was very old and believed to be living beyond the years of a wild croc,” the post said.

The habitat also thanked “everyone who visited Cassius throughout his life and offered kindness”, adding that the site may be operating “in a limited capacity over the next few days”.

Kemi Badenoch has promised to win back voters who have deserted the Conservatives after securing an historic victory in a party leadership contest.

The 44-year-old becomes the first black woman to lead a major political party in the UK.

She defeated fellow right-winger Robert Jenrick by 12,418 votes after a marathon contest to replace Rishi Sunak, who led the party to the biggest defeat in its history in July’s general election.

In her victory speech, Badenoch promised to “renew” the party and told cheering supporters it was “time to get down to business”.

Badenoch, who is the sixth Tory leader in less than nine years, now faces the task of uniting a fractured party and leading opposition to Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour government.

The Saffron Walden MP said the Conservatives need to “bring back” voters who abandoned them, adding: “Our party is critical to the success of our country.

“But to be heard, we have to be honest.”

The party must admit it “made mistakes” and “let standards slip” over the last 14 years in government, she said.

Badenoch chose not to set out detailed policies during her campaign, focusing instead on returning the Conservatives to “first principles”.

All eyes will now turn to who she appoints to her top team as she sets out the future shape of the party over the coming days.

She praised Jenrick despite a sometimes bruising campaign and hinted he may be offered a senior job, telling him “you have a key role in our party for years to come”.

Badenoch, who became an MP in 2017 after a career in banking and IT, has said she would offer jobs to all of the Tories who launched leadership bids in July.

But shadow home secretary James Cleverly, who came third in the race, has ruled himself out.

The BBC understands, Badenoch plans to reveal her shadow cabinet by Wednesday, ahead of the critical Budget vote and her debut clash with Sir Keir at Prime Minister’s Questions.

Jenrick did not speak to reporters after the result was announced, but on social media called on his supporters “to unite behind Kemi and take the fight to this disastrous Labour government”.

He also thanked “everyone who supported my vision for a Conservative Party rooted in the common ground of British politics”.

Badenoch got 53,806 votes to Jenrick’s 41,388 – making it the closest Tory leadership race of recent times.

Bob Blackman, who oversaw the election as chair of the Conservative 1922 Committee, revealed the party membership had shrunk to 132,000 – the lowest level on record and down 40,000 members since the last vote by members in 2022.

Badenoch was congratulated by her several of her predecessor, including Sunak, who posted on social media: “I know that she will be a superb leader of our great party.”

Ex-prime minister Boris Johnson lauded Badenoch’s “courage and clarity” and said she “brings a much needed zing and zap to the Conservative Party”.

In a social media post, Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said “the first Black leader of a Westminster party is a proud moment for our country”.

He added: “I look forward to working with you and your party in the interests of the British people.”

But Labour Party Chair Ellie Reeves said the Conservative leadership campaign showed the party had “learned nothing since the British people resoundingly rejected them in July”.

Lib Dem Leader Sir Ed Davey also congratulated Badenoch, saying “the first Black leader of a major UK political party is a historic moment for the country”.

But Reform UK Deputy Leader Richard Tice called Badenoch “another in a long line of Tory politicians who say one thing and do another”.

In a statement, he said: “Kemi Badenoch was front and centre of a government that failed Britain.”

Over the 14-week campaign, the debate was dominated by immigration, the economy and how the Conservatives can rebuild trust with voters.

The party was reduced to a record low of 121 seats in the House of Commons at the general election, with under 24% of the vote.

It lost voters in all directions to Labour, the Liberal Democrats and Reform UK, with thousands of Conservative voters also choosing to stay at home on 4 July poll.

Dame Priti Patel, Mel Stride and Tom Tugendhat spent the summer campaigning alongside Jenrick, Badenoch and Cleverly after they put their names forward in the nominations at the end of July.

Dame Priti and Stride were the first two contenders to be eliminated in September in ballots of Tory MPs, leaving four by the time the party gathered in Birmingham for its autumn conference at the end of the month.

Cleverly appeared to be in the lead after the conference, topping the third MP ballot. But in the final MP vote, he slid to 37 votes, behind Badenoch’s 42 and Jenrick’s 41.

The final two then went to a vote of the membership, which turned out to be closer than many had expected, with Badenoch long seen as a favourite among the party’s grassroots.

Chinese tourists huddle together against the brisk autumn breeze on a 12-storey building, vying for the best spot to photograph the point where their country meets Russia and North Korea.

The three national flags overlap on a map on the wall, which explains that Fangchuan in China’s north-east corner is a unique place for that reason.

“I feel very proud to be standing here… with Russia on my left and North Korea on my right,” declares one woman on a trip with her co-workers. “There are no borders among the people.”

That might be overly optimistic. Like the sliver of sandwiched Chinese territory she has travelled to see, Beijing too is caught between its sanctioned neighbours.

Fears over the budding alliance between Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un have peaked in recent weeks, with reports of North Korea deploying thousands of troops to support Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

And that was before Pyongyang fired a banned intercontinental missile on Thursday, on the longest flight recorded yet – after turning up the rhetoric against Seoul for weeks.

“China seeks a relationship with a reasonable, high level of control over North Korea,” says Christopher Green, an analyst from the International Crisis Group. “And North Korea’s relationship with Russia threatens to undermine that.”

If Chinese leader Xi Jinping is unable shape the Putin-Kim alliance to suit his interests, China may well remain stuck in the middle as western anger and anxiety grows.

Moscow and Pyongyang deny that North Korean soldiers are headed for Ukraine, widely seen as a significant escalation. But the United States says it has seen evidence of this, following allegations by South Korean and Ukrainian intelligence.

The first reports emerged just before Xi met his Russian counterpart at the Brics summit earlier in October, overshadowing a gathering that was meant to send the West a defiant message.

It increasingly appears as though China’s allies are spiralling out of its control. Beijing, the senior partner in the triad, seeks to be the stable leader of a new world order, one that is not led by the US. But that’s difficult to do when one ally has started a war in Europe, and another is accused of aiding the invasion.

“China is unhappy with the way things are going,” Mr Green says, “but they are trying to keep their discontent relatively quiet.”

It’s certainly a sensitive topic for Beijing, judging by the response to our presence in the border town, where it seems tourists are welcome – but journalists are not.

We were in public areas at all times, and yet the team was stopped, repeatedly questioned, followed and our footage deleted.

The hotel demanded to keep my passport for “my safety and the safety of others”. Police visited our hotel rooms, and they also blocked the road to the port at Hunchun, which would have given us a closer view of the current trade between Russia and China.

On the viewing platform in Fangchuan, it’s clear that most tourists have come to see North Korea.

“I saw a person cycling,” says one girl peering through a telescope. Her friend rushes over to see: “Ooooh! It’s such a mysterious country.”

Close by is the Tumen river that gently cuts through all three countries. It is China’s gateway into the Sea of Japan, where it has territorial disputes with Tokyo.

The 1,400km-long (870 mile) Chinese border has some of the only platforms with a clear view into North Korea. South Korea’s frontier with the North is an almost impenetrable barrier, the heavily mined and fortified Demilitarized Zone.

Someone offers me a pair of binoculars. Some people are cycling through the village on ageing bicycles, but there are few other signs of life. One of the largest buildings is a school with a sign calling for children to “learn well for Chosun”, another name for North Korea.

“North Korea has always been our neighbour. It’s no stranger to us,” says a middle-aged man. “To be able to see how they live makes me realise China is prosperous and strong.”

Kim Jong Un’s regime would certainly struggle to survive without its biggest benefactor, China, which accounts for more than 90% of foreign trade, including food and fuel.

That was not always the case. In the early 1960s it was the Chinese who fled famine across the Tumen river. Some even went to school in North Korea because they believed its education system at the time was better.

The North Korean economy crashed after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 – which had been its main source of aid and cheap oil – sparking severe food shortages and, eventually, famine.

Soon, North Korean refugees began wading through an often freezing river at the risk of being shot dead to escape hunger, poverty and repression. There are now more than 30,000 of them in South Korea and an unknown number still live in China.

“Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, North Korea hasn’t really had any choice but to maintain good relations with China, which has been its sole benefactor,” Mr Green says.

But now, he adds, Russia “is offering an alternative and the North Koreans are seeking to exploit that”.

Mao Zedong, the first leader of the People’s Republic of China, had likened the relationship between Beijing and Pyongyang to the closeness between “lips and teeth”: “If the lips are gone, the teeth will be cold.”

Now, Beijing finds itself smarting from a lack of gratitude as Kim’s lips are “kissing elsewhere”, according to sociologist Aidan Foster-Carter, who has studied North Korea for several decades.

“North Korea has consistently been the comrade from hell to both Russia and China. They take as much money as they can and [then] do what they like.”

Analysts have noted that Kim has consistently flattered Putin over Xi in the last year. While Kim hasn’t met Xi since 2019, he has met Putin twice in the past year or so. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has drawn the two sanctioned leaders closer than ever. Putin seeks more support for his war and Kim wants to bolster his regime with alliances and attention.

From the Chinese border, it’s easy to see the burgeoning relationship between the two sides.

The whistle of a train interrupts the tourist chatter, and a steam engine pulling a long line of freight carriages slowly chugs across the railway bridge from Russia to North Korea. It stops in front of a Korean sign facing China which reads: “Towards a new victory!”

The US estimates that Kim has sold more than a million artillery shells and Grad rockets to Moscow for use in Ukraine, which North Korea denies.

But there is no doubt that the pair have stepped up cooperation after signing a security pact in June to help each other in the event of “aggression” against either country.

“You have very stiff and formal language to Xi Jinping on the occasion of what is actually an historically important event – the 75th anniversary of relations of the People’s Republic of China,” Mr Foster-Carter says.

“And yet on Putin’s birthday, Kim calls him ‘my closest comrade’. If you are Xi Jinping, what are you thinking?”

It’s hard to know, because China has shown no signs of interfering with the Russia-North Korea alliance.

The US has noticed Beijing’s disquiet and for once the two rivals may have similar goals.

In the last week, State Department officials have raised the issue of North Korean troops in Russia with Chinese diplomats.

Beijing does have options – in the past, they have cut supplies of oil and coal to North Korea, and complied with US-led sanctions to curb Pyongyang’s nuclear programme.

Already, China is battling US accusations that it is selling components to Russia that aid its invasion of Ukraine. Beijing’s trade with Moscow is also flourishing, even as it tries to cope with Western tariffs.

Xi has kept Russia close because he needs Putin’s help to challenge the US-led world order. But he has not stopped trying to repair ties with Europe, the UK and even the US. China has also been holding talks with Japan and South Korea to ease historic tensions.

But Kim’s increasingly aggressive rhetoric against Seoul has the South once again debating whether it should have its own nuclear arsenal. North Korean troops on a Ukrainian battlefield would only further unravel Beijing’s plans.

The possibility has already seen South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol discuss “concrete counter-measures” and talk of strengthening security cooperation with Ukraine and Nato.

A nuclear-armed South Korea or an “East Asian Nato” are not ideal in a region where China wants greater sway. An emboldened Kim could also draw a stronger show of support from the US – in the form of warships or even weapons – towards its allies, Seoul and Tokyo.

“For a very long time, China has had a policy of three nos in Northeast Asia – one of those nos was a no nuclear North Korea. Obviously that has been a failure,” Mr Green says.

Now Beijing fears that the alliance with Russia could destabilise North Korea, he adds: “That could even benefit Vladimir Putin in a way it really would not benefit Xi Jinping.”

Experts say Beijing is just as worried as the West about what military technology Putin might sell to Kim in exchange for troops.

“Satellites, for sure,” Mr Foster-Carter says. “But Putin is bad – not mad. Russia knows just as China knows that North Korea is a loose cannon. Giving [Kim] more technology for nukes is not a good thing for anybody.”

Experts believe Xi is unlikely to do anything drastic because China needs a stable North Korea – if he cuts off aid, he would likely have a refugee crisis at the border.

But Kim too might have a decision to make.

Although Russia is paying for shells and troops, Mr Foster-Carter says, it is China that “has actually kept North Korea going all this time, often through gritted teeth. I just wonder at what point Beijing will turn on Pyongyang?”.

Kim’s deadly gamble could also have a profound impact closer to home – the 25 million North Koreans who are cut off from the outside world and completely dependent on the regime for their survival.

Across the Tumen river in Fangchuan, a North Korean soldier watches us, while we watch him.

Steam rises from snack stands selling noodles and sizzled octopus on sticks on the Chinese side. And he can probably hear the giggling tourists taking pictures with the latest cameras and phones, which he is forbidden from owning.

The shallow river is a gulf neither the tourists nor the soldier can cross.

When Donald Trump lost to Joe Biden in 2020, it seemed to be the death knell of his political career.

His first term in office ended in chaos and condemnation – even from members of his own party.

If he wins the election on Tuesday, it will be only the second time anyone has ever returned to the White House after previously losing a presidential re-election bid.

“He gets knocked down and gets up twice as focused,” said Bryan Lanza, who has been a political adviser for the former president since Trump launched his 2016 campaign. “I don’t think anybody should be surprised about this comeback.”

Such an extraordinary reversal of fortune for the former president would also vault him back into the White House as a man who seems politically bulletproof, with a detailed plan of action and ranks of loyalists behind him.

• Harris v Trump poll tracker
• What is the electoral college?
• How the election could change the world

Four years ago, Trump appeared a beaten man. His Democratic opponent, Biden, had defeated him by a comfortable electoral margin in the 2020 presidential contest.

Courts had batted away his attempts to contest those results. His last-ditch rally in which he urged his supporters to march on the US Capitol as lawmakers were certifying the results culminated in the crowd launching a violent attack that sent those inside scrambling for safety. Hundreds of law enforcement officers were injured.

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos and Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao were among a spate of Trump administration officials who quit in protest. “There is no mistaking the impact your rhetoric had on the situation, and it is the inflection point for me,” DeVos wrote in her letter of resignation to the president.

Even South Carolina Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, one of Trump’s closest allies, broke with the president.

“All I can say is count me out,” he said on the floor of the Senate. “Enough is enough.”

The movement away from Trump extended into the corporate world, as dozens of large companies – including American Express, Microsoft, Nike and Walgreens – announced they were suspending support for Republicans who had challenged the results of the 2020 election.

On the day of Biden’s inauguration, Trump broke with 152 years of tradition by declining to attend the ceremony, instead flying back to his private club in Mar-a-Lago earlier that morning, accompanied by a handful of his closest aides and family.

His mood was sullen, according to Meridith McGraw, author of Trump in Exile, an account of the former president’s time after leaving the White House.

“He was angry, frustrated, unsure of how to spend his days and without a plan for his political future,” she said.

The media coverage and political chatter that month reflected this uncertainty over his future. After a clear electoral defeat followed by the chaotic scenes at the Capitol, some were even more definitive, suggesting there was no way back for Trump.

“And just like that, the bold, combustible and sometimes brilliant political career of Donald J. Trump comes to an end,” one opinion piece in The Hill read.

The subheading of a January 2021 opinion piece in The New York Times declared: “The terrible experiment is over.” The headline was even more direct: “President Donald J. Trump: The End.”

But before Trump left for Florida on inauguration day, he hinted at what was to come.

“We love you,” he said in remarks to supporters on a Maryland Air Force base tarmac. “We will be back in some form.”

A week later, it became clear that Trump wouldn’t have to wait long to assert his continued political influence. The party came back to him.

California Congressman Kevin McCarthy, the Republican leader in the House of Representatives, paid the former president a visit at Mar-a-Lago, posing for a photo next to a beaming Trump.

In the immediate aftermath of the 6 January attack, McCarthy had said that Trump “bears responsibility” for the mob violence and recommended that Congress formally censure him for his conduct. Now he was pledging to work with the former president to win a congressional majority in the next year’s mid-term elections.

Even as the Democrat-controlled US Senate was preparing to hold Trump’s impeachment trial, McCarthy’s Palm Beach pilgrimage illustrated that one of the most powerful Republicans in Congress still viewed the former president as a king-maker.

“McCarthy’s visit really opened the door for Trump,” said McGraw.

“It was a permission slip to Republicans who had criticised Trump to forgive him and move on.”

Trump’s Senate trial would end in acquittal, as most Republicans – including some outspoken critics like minority leader Mitch McConnell – voted against a conviction that could have led to the former president being banned from future elective office.

McConnell had said that Trump’s conduct on 6 January was “a disgraceful dereliction of duty”, but he chose not to take the one step that could have conclusively ended the former president’s political career – perhaps out of fear of effectively ending his own.

Republicans also worried that the former president might start a third party that would siphon off support from Republicans – concerns that Trump’s closest aides did little to dispel.

“It’s clearly up to Republicans if this is something that becomes more serious,” Jason Miller, a long-time Trump communications aide, said in an interview with Fox News.

The former president spent the next month mostly within the comfortable confines of his Mar-a-Lago club, venturing out only for a round of golf or a private dinner.

By the end of February, as the furore around 6 January ebbed, he was ready to hold his first public event.

At the Conservative Political Action Conference – the right-wing confab typically held near Washington, DC but relocated to Orlando, Florida, due to Covid restrictions – the former president demonstrated that he still commanded the loyalty of the Republican base.

Addressing thousands of cheering supporters in a sprawling hotel conference centre, Trump basked in the glow of their adoration.

“I stand before you today to declare that the incredible journey we began together,” he said, “is far from over.”

He also hinted, coyly, that he might beat the Democrats “for a third time” in 2024.

An official straw poll of conference attendees only underlined what by then was obvious. Sixty-eight percent of respondents said Trump should run again. Fifty-five percent said they would vote for him in a contested primary – more then double the second-place candidate, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.

“Trump and his team were pretty nervous about that speech,” McGraw said. “Psychologically it was a really important moment for Trump and his allies when he got such a positive reception.”

After a brief hiatus, Trump reactivated his steady stream of fundraising emails to supporters and resumed holding his carnival-like outdoor rallies.

“Do you miss me?” Trump asked at a June gathering in Ohio. The crowd responded with cheers.

“They miss me,” he concluded.

If 2021 hinted at Trump’s continuing influence within the Republican Party, the 2022 midterm elections confirmed it.

By then, American military forces had haphazardly withdrawn from Afghanistan, leading to the fall of that nation’s US-backed government. Gas prices and inflation were approaching highs not seen in decades. US economic growth, which had been bouncing back from pandemic disruptions, sputtered.

Biden’s approval ratings tumbled into negative territory. The political environment that had seemed so hostile to Trump at the beginning of 2021 was starting to shift.

“Joe Biden failed to address the primary concerns of the voters,” said Lanza. “That gave Donald Trump an opening.”

Mar-a-Lago became an obligatory stopping point for any conservative candidate seeking to become their party’s nominee. The former president’s endorsement was the most coveted prize – a key to unlocking fundraising dollars and grassroots conservative support.

Four of the six Republican House members who voted for Trump’s second impeachment and were running for re-election were defeated by Trump-backed candidates in party primaries. Meanwhile, Senate candidates like JD Vance in Ohio and Herschel Walker in Georgia pulled ahead in crowded primary fields with the help of Trump’s support.

”His endorsement all but guarantees you a primary win,” said Brian Seitchik, who worked as Arizona state director for Trump’s campaign in 2016 and as the western regional director in 2020.

But if the first half of 2022 was unambiguous good news for the former president, November’s elections painted a much different picture.

Of four prominent Trump-endorsed Senate candidates, only one – author turned politician Vance – defeated his Democratic opponent. While Republicans narrowly regained control of the House of Representatives, elevating Kevin McCarthy to the speakership, the party largely underperformed and Democrats retained control of the Senate.

In Florida, Governor DeSantis, the distant second-place finisher in that 2021 presidential straw poll, won a surprising double-digit re-election victory, fuelling speculation that he might be the real frontrunner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.

Meanwhile, Trump fumed – blaming the Republican shortcomings on the party’s support of unpopular abortion restrictions and insufficient fealty to his own brand of conservative populism. Only a few weeks after the midterms, when pundits were still wondering if the former president’s political moment had passed, Trump formally launched his 2024 presidential campaign.

The start of his presidential bid seemed shockingly ill-timed. Just a few weeks after the Republican midterm misfire, it put the former president in the headlines when many were still wondering if he had lost his political instincts.

His formal announcement, held within the cozy confines of Mar-a-Lago, made his campaign feel insular and ill-suited to the current political realities.

He would subsequently make news for all the wrong reasons – dining at Mar-a-Lago with Nick Fuentes, a prominent white nationalist, and posting on social media that rules in the US Constitution should be “terminated”, allowing him to be re-instated as president.

“Thanksgiving through New Year’s was a pretty dark time on the Trump campaign,” McGraw said. Republicans were having their doubts.

“He’s announced that he’s running for president, but are we sure that he’s going to be able to pull this off?” she said, describing the mood at the time. “Does he have the discipline to actually do this?”

Behind the scenes, however, Trump was assembling a campaign staff that – unlike 2016 and even 2020 – was headed by seasoned political operatives. Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles may not be household names, but the former was a bare-knuckled veteran of Republican politics with decades of experience and the latter had helped turn Florida into a conservative stronghold.

The two worked with Trump to formulate a presidential primary strategy.

While DeSantis was bogged down with official duties in Florida, Trump moved early to define the contours of the campaign, Lanza said. And while others deferred to the Florida governor, Trump hit him head-on, demeaning and diminishing him.

“Everybody thought Ron DeSantis was at this powerful apex of politics that could not be torn down,” Lanza said. “Donald Trump tore the guy down.”

The Trump side also received a boost from the unlikeliest of sources – prosecutors in New York, Georgia and the Justice Department in Washington, DC.

Starting with the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago for sensitive national security documents in August 2022 and culminating in a series of indictments in 2023, the former president’s criminal jeopardy became a central issue in the rapidly unfolding Republican presidential nomination fight. Trump’s mugshot, glaring in a photograph taken at an Atlanta jail in August, was soon plastered on campaign t-shirts and yard signs.

For many on the left, justice was finally being served. But among the kind of conservative voters who choose their party’s nominee in early voting states like Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, it became a moment to rally around their party’s embattled leader.

Conservative pollster Sarah Longwell interviewed a panel of Iowa Republicans for PBS in June 2023, a week after the Justice Department indicted Trump on charges related to mishandling sensitive government documents.

“I think he’s being set up,” said one.

“This is election interference like we have never seen before,” said another.

The indictments, according to Lanza, created a divide within the Republican Party between those who saw the indictment as an abuse of power and those who didn’t.

“Initially, Ron DeSantis took the ‘didn’t’ approach,” he said. “And he became roadkill.”

DeSantis had at first called the March 2023 New York indictment, which he noted was about Trump’s hush-money payments to an adult film star, a “manufactured circus” that wasn’t a “real issue”.

By autumn 2023, Trump had opened a massive lead in most Republican primary polls – a margin he would never relinquish. He skipped the Republican primary debates, depriving them of political oxygen. He focused instead on cementing support among rank-and-file voters through his trademark rallies and grass-roots organising.

Despite raising nearly $200 million in campaign funds, DeSantis was out of the race within days of finishing a distant second in the January 2024 Iowa Caucuses. After Trump easily beat former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley in New Hampshire, the Republican primary fight was effectively over. For the third straight presidential election, the party’s nomination was his.

The former president’s courtroom drama may have been a boon to his political fortunes, but it also came with very real legal jeopardy. In May 2024, a Manhattan jury convicted Trump on 34 felony counts involving hush-money payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels.

Every judicial setback, however, seemed to be followed by a bigger victory. His sentencing was delayed until after the election, the document indictments in Florida were discarded, and the Supreme Court ruled that presidents have sweeping immunity for official acts.

Outside of court chambers, Trump’s campaign was rolling from his primary victory into the general election faceoff. A halting, confused performance by Biden in his late June debate with the former president left Democrats in a full-blown panic.

Trump’s approval ratings and head-to-head polling numbers were ticking ever higher. And after his brush with an assassin’s bullet in Pennsylvania in mid-July, he arrived at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee a day later as a conquering hero to his supporters.

“What we saw at the convention was how unified the Republican Party appeared, really for the first time in a long time,” said McGraw. “They were feeling incredibly confident.”

Tesla chief Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, publicly endorsed the former president and began funding a massive organising operation in key battleground states. Republican pride – pride in Trump – was running high.

At that moment, it seemed like Trump’s return to the pinnacles of American power from the depths of 6 January 2021 was all but complete. A campaign that had first vanquished DeSantis and his other Republican rivals was now set to deliver a knock-out punch to Biden and the Democrats.

But three days after Trump formally accepted the Republican Party’s presidential nomination, Biden abandoned his re-election bid and endorsed his vice-president, Kamala Harris.

In a matter of a few weeks, Harris consolidated her party’s support, injected new enthusiasm into Democrats and even pulled ahead of the former president in some head-to head polls.

Trump’s efforts were not helped by a scattershot debate performance against Harris in September and an apparent difficulty reorienting his campaign to take on his new opponent, whose strengths – and weaknesses – are decidedly different from Biden’s.

“Trump really wasn’t tested until Harris got into the race,” said Seitchik. “Everything up to that point almost felt like an extended preseason for the campaign.”

With election day looming, the season is almost over and the champion is still in doubt.

The race is where it seemed to be headed at the beginning of the year – a photo finish where either candidate could end up on top. And for a campaign that had focused on Biden’s age and frailty, it is now Trump whose stamina and coherence are under the microscope.

“Trump can have an incredibly professional, streamlined operation around him, but at the end of the day, he’s still going to do what he wants and do things the way he wants,” said McGraw.

That includes a continued public insistence that he did not lose the 2020 election, extended rhetorical diversions during rally speeches and last-minute cancellations of media appearances that some have attributed to “exhaustion”.

Trump has been in the whirlwind of presidential politics for nine years now – and in the public spotlight for more than four decades. He has seemed indefatigable. But with another four years in the White House looming on the horizon, are the cracks beginning to show?

While Trump’s victory is far from guaranteed, simply being this close to the prize once again is itself a remarkable achievement. And if his political comeback culminates in another presidential term, he will return to the White House having overcome obstacles – legal, political, many of his own creation – that few presidents have confronted.

With control of the reins of power, and without the burden of having to face the judgement of voters again, Trump will be able to make those legal dangers disappear. And unlike his first term, he will be entering the White House with a team of advisers and potential administration staff who are fully loyal to him.

His intent to dramatically reorganise the federal bureaucracy could replace career civil service employees with political acolytes. And even if he doesn’t win full control of Congress, he could use existing presidential powers to impose new restrictions on immigration, enact his plans for mass deportation of undocumented residents and impose tariffs that are designed to protect US jobs but could significantly increase the cost of imported goods.

Democrats warn that this would be a presidency without “guardrails” to limit what they say are Trump’s more dangerous proposals. Republicans, in a party that has been remade in Trump’s image, hope that he will be able to more effectively enact his agenda without the internal resistance he faced in his first term.

“Donald Trump has converted the party from fiscal issues and social issues being the dominant force to a Trump populism,” Seitchik said. “This is all a fundamental reorientation of the Republican Party.”

And if he wins next week, Trump could fundamentally reshape American government for generations to come.

• SIMPLE GUIDE: When is the US election and how does it work?
• EXPLAINER: What Harris or Trump would do in power
• GLOBAL: Vote weighs on minds of Ukraine’s frontline soldiers
• PATH TO 270: The states they need to win – and why
• IN PICS: Different lives of Harris and Trump
• POLLS: Who is winning the race for the White House?

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

The US and Israel “will definitely receive a crushing response”, Iran’s supreme leader has said, following an Israeli attack on Iran a week ago.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei made the comments while speaking to students on Saturday ahead of the 45th anniversary of the 1979 seizure of the US embassy in Tehran.

The threat comes as Iran assesses whether and how to respond to Israel’s attack last month, that Iran said killed four soldiers, which was in retaliation for an Iranian missile attack against Israel earlier in October.

The Iranian attack came in response to the killings of the leaders of Hezbollah and Hamas – Iranian-backed armed groups fighting Israel – and a senior Iranian commander.

Khamenei said Iran’s enemies, including Israel and the US, “will definitely receive a crushing response to what they are doing to Iran, the Iranian people, and the resistance front”.

Iran’s so-called “axis of resistance” is an alliance of Tehran-backed groups that include Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen, and well-armed groups in Iraq and Syria. Most have been designated as terrorist entities by some Western states.

Israel is said to have inflicted severe damage on Iranian air defences and missile capacities in its 26 October attack, even though Iran has not admitted this.

Israel sees Iran as the crucial backer of the Hamas attacks which killed about 1,200 people on 7 October last year.

More than 250 were also taken into the Gaza Strip as hostages.

Since then, Israel has launched a major operation in Gaza, during which more than 43,300 people have been killed, according to the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry.

Israel also went on the offensive against Hezbollah in Lebanon in September, after almost a year of cross-border fighting and rocket fire, which Hezbollah had launched in support of Palestinians the day after the Hamas attacks.

Israel said it wanted to ensure the safe return of tens of thousands of residents from northern Israel displaced by the conflict.

More than 2,800 people have been killed in Lebanon since then, and 1.2 million others displaced, according to Lebanese authorities.

Israeli authorities say more than 60 people have been killed by Hezbollah rocket, drone, and missile attacks in northern Israel and the occupied Golan Heights.

Relations between the US and Iran have not properly stabilised since 4 November 1979, when Iranian protesters seized more than 50 US diplomats and embassy staff, triggering a hostage drama that lasted 444 days.

Two families in the West Midlands are waiting for compensation in the first documented case of babies being switched at birth in NHS history.

It was only taken out of idle curiosity one rainy winter’s day – but the shocking result of a DNA test was to force two women and their families to reassess everything they knew about themselves.

When Tony’s friends bought him a DNA home-testing kit for Christmas in 2021, he left it on his kitchen sideboard and forgot about it for two months.

It did not catch his eye again until one day in February. Tony was at home and bored because his weekly round of golf had been rained off. He spat into the sample tube, sent the kit off, and didn’t think about it for weeks.

The results came on a Sunday evening. Tony was on the phone to his mother, Joan, when the email arrived.

At first, everything looked as he’d expected. The test pinpointed the place in Ireland where his maternal family came from. A cousin was on his family tree. His sister was there too.

But when he looked at his sister’s name, it was wrong. Instead of Jessica, someone called Claire was listed as his full sibling (Jessica and Claire are not their real names – both have been changed, to protect the women’s identity).

Tony is the eldest of Joan’s four children. After three sons, she had longed for a daughter. She finally got her wish when Jessica arrived in 1967.

“It was a wonderful feeling, at long last having a girl,” Joan tells me.

However, she was immediately anxious when she heard there was something unexpected in Tony’s DNA results. He was, too, but he tried not to show it. Ten years after his father’s death, Tony’s mother was in her 80s and living alone. He didn’t want to worry her.

The next morning, he used the DNA testing company’s private messaging facility to contact Claire, the woman it claimed was his sister.

“Hi,” he wrote. “My name’s Tony. I’ve done this DNA test. You’ve come up as a full sibling. I’m thinking it’s a mistake. Can you shed any light on it?”

Claire had been given the same brand of DNA test two years earlier, as a birthday present from her son.

Her results had also been strange – there was no connection to where her parents were born, and she had a genetic link to a first cousin she didn’t know and couldn’t explain.

Then, in 2022, she received a notification – a full sibling had joined her family tree.

It was baffling. But in one way, it made perfect sense. Growing up, Claire had never felt like she belonged.

“I felt like an imposter,” she says. “There were no similarities, in looks or traits,” she tells me. “I thought, ‘yes – I’m adopted.’”

The Gift: Switched

In the first series of The Gift, Jenny Kleeman looked at the extraordinary truths that can unravel when people take at-home DNA tests like Ancestry and 23andMe.

For the second series, Jenny is going deeper into the unintended consequences – the aftershocks – set in motion when people link up to the enormous global DNA database.

Listen on BBC Sounds or on BBC Radio 4 at 09:30, Wednesday 6 November

When Claire and Tony started exchanging messages and biographical details, they discovered that Claire had been born about the same time and in the same hospital as Jessica, the sister Tony had grown up with.

An unavoidable explanation began to emerge – the two baby girls had been switched at birth, 55 years previously, and brought up in different families.

Cases where babies have been accidentally swapped on maternity wards are practically unheard of in the UK. In response to a 2017 Freedom of Information request, the NHS replied that as far as its records showed, there were no documented incidents of babies being sent home with the wrong parents.

Since the 1980s, newborns have been given radio frequency identification (RFID) tags immediately after their birth, which allow their location to be tracked. Before then, maternity wards relied on handwritten tags and cards on cots.

As they tried to absorb the news, Claire and Tony had to decide what to do next.

“The ripples from this will be enormous,” Tony wrote to Claire. “If you want to leave it here, then I’ll absolutely accept that, and we won’t progress this at all.”

Without hesitation, Claire knew that she wanted to meet Tony and the mother they shared.

“I just wanted to see them, meet them, talk to them and embrace them,” she says.”

When Tony finally told Joan what the DNA test had revealed, she was desperate for answers. How could this have happened?

Joan’s memories of the night her daughter was born are vivid. She had been due to give birth at home, but because she had high blood pressure, her labour was induced in a West Midlands hospital.

“They took me in on a Sunday,” she says. “It snowed that day.”

The baby was born at about 22:20. Joan held her much-longed-for daughter for only for a few minutes – she remembers gazing at the newborn’s red face and matted hair.

The baby was then taken away to the nursery for the night so her mother could rest. This was common practice in the 1960s.

A couple of hours later, just after midnight, Jessica was born in the same hospital.

The next morning, Joan was handed Jessica instead of her biological daughter, Claire.

This baby had fair hair – unlike the rest of the family, who were all dark – but Joan thought nothing of it. There were aunts and cousins with similar colouring.

By the time her husband arrived at the hospital to meet baby Jessica, they were too delighted with their new arrival to have any doubts.

Fifty-five years later, Joan was desperate to know what kind of life Claire had had. Had she grown up happy?

But before she could get answers, she and Tony had to break the news to Jessica, who had lived her entire life believing Joan was her mother, and Tony was her brother.

Tony and Joan travelled to Jessica’s home to tell her in person. Joan says she reassured her that they would always be mother and daughter, but ever since, she says their relationship has not been the same.

Jessica did not want to be interviewed in connection with this story.

A day later – and only five days after Tony got his DNA results – Claire travelled the short distance between her home and Joan’s.

For years, she had been driving through Joan’s village on her way to and from work, never knowing that this was where her biological mother lived.

Tony was waiting for her in the driveway. “Hi Sis,” he said. “Come and meet Mum.”

Claire says that from the moment she saw Joan, it felt like they had always known each other: “I looked at her, and I said, ’Oh my God, I’ve got your eyes! We have the same eyes. Oh my God, I look like someone!’”

“It just felt right,” Joan says. “I thought, she looked just like I did in my younger days.”

They spent the afternoon poring over family photographs. Claire told Tony and Joan about her partner, her children and grandchildren. They told her all about the biological father she would never get to meet.

But when it came to questions about whether she had had a happy childhood, Claire was evasive.

“I couldn’t tell the truth then,” she says. “My parents separated when I was very young. I don’t remember them being together. I was raised in absolute poverty, homelessness, often went hungry, and all that entails. It was a very difficult childhood.”

Claire says that breaking the news to the mother who raised her was the hardest thing she’s ever had to do.

She says she did her best to reassure both the parents she had grown up with, that nothing would change in their relationship. Her mother died earlier this year.

As well as coming to terms with a new genetic identity, there were practical implications for Claire, too. Because she had been born before midnight, she discovered she was a day older than she previously thought: “My birth certificate is wrong, my passport, my driving licence – everything is wrong.”

A couple of weeks after making the discovery, Tony wrote to the NHS trust that oversees the hospital where Claire and Jessica were switched, explaining what the home DNA tests had revealed.

The trust admitted liability – although two-and-a-half years later, the level of compensation has yet to be agreed. Tony and Joan say they were told it would be finalised last year.

We contacted NHS Resolution which handles complaints against the NHS. It said the baby swap was an “appalling error” for which it had accepted legal liability.

However, it said that it was a “unique and complex case” and that it was still working to agree on the amount of compensation that was due.

Claire and Joan have been discovering how much they have in common, such as their tastes in clothes and food, and how they take their tea. They’ve been on holiday, exploring their biological roots in Ireland, and they spent last Christmas together.

“We’re very close,” Claire says of her newly discovered family. “I’d like to spend as much time as I can with them, of course, but that time is gone. It was taken away.”

While Claire now calls her “Mum”, Joan tells me that Jessica no longer does. But Joan feels only that she has gained a daughter.

“It doesn’t make any difference to me that Jessica isn’t my biological daughter,” she says. “She’s still my daughter and she always will be.”

Some artists become legends in their lifetime yet remain a mystery years after their death.

Indian painter Vasudeo Santu Gaitonde, born 100 years ago on 2 November 1924, was one such master.

Considered one of South Asia’s greatest abstract painters, Gaitonde was part of a rebellious generation of artists who laid the foundation for a new era of Indian art in the mid-20th Century.

He was deeply inspired by the techniques used by Western painters but his work remained rooted in Asian philosophy, infusing light and texture in ways that, admirers say, evokes a profound sense of calmness.

His paintings were meant to be “meditations on the light and universe”, says Yamini Mehta, who worked as the international head of South Asian Art at Sotheby’s.

“The play of light and shadows and texture makes these paintings dynamic.”

In a career that spanned decades, Gaitonde never pursued fame or fortune. But his works continue to grab attention at auctions, years after his death in 2001.

In 2022, an untitled oil painting by him fetched 420m rupees (nearly $5m; £3.9m), setting a new record for Indian art at that time. The bluish shades of the work reminded viewers of large expanses of the sea or sky.

Gaitonde lived as a recluse for most of his life. He was deeply impacted by Japanese Zen philosophy and this meditative mindset was often reflected in his paintings.

“Everything starts from silence. The silence of the canvas. The silence of the painting knife. The painter starts by absorbing all these silences… Your entire being is working together with the brush, the painting knife, the canvas to absorb that silence and create,” he told journalist Pritish Nandy in a rare interview in 1991.

Originally from the western state of Goa, Gaitonde’s family lived in Mumbai city (formerly Bombay) in a small, three-room dwelling in a chawl – an affordable tenement complex for the city’s working class.

A born artist, he joined Mumbai’s famous JJ School of Arts for training in 1946. Despite his father’s disapproval – art was not seen as a viable career in India at the time – Gaitonde funded his own studies and earned a diploma in 1948.

For some time, he was part of a group of influential Indian artists called the Progressive Artists Group, which was set up to encourage new forms of art. Formed in 1947 in Mumbai, the group counted leading artists such as Francis Souza, SH Raza, MF Husain and Bhanu Athaiya – the first Indian to win an Oscar – as its members.

Gaitonde also worked at the city’s Bhulabhai Desai Memorial Institute, another hub frequented by legends such as sitarist Ravi Shankar and theatre artist Ebrahim Alkazi.

“This was an interesting time as Mumbai was a hotbed of creativity,” says artist and writer Satish Naik, who has published an anthology on Gaitonde in the Marathi language.

Indian art at that time was largely dominated by realism, found in the murals of the Ajanta caves and in Mughal art or miniature paintings.

“Gaitonde began with realistic works but soon sought a different path. He was one of the first ones to reject the form and adopt the formless,” Naik said.

“In that sense, he was a rebel. He wanted to paint as it pleased him, not as someone dictated to him.”

Gaitonde’s deep interest in spirituality helped him progress towards his craft.

“My paintings are nothing else but the reflection of nature,” he once wrote in a 1963 questionnaire for New York’s Museum of Modern Art.

In 1963, Morris Graves, a famous abstract painter from the US, saw Gaitonde’s work during a trip to India, and was heavily impressed.

He immediately sent a letter to Dan and Marian Johnson of the Willard Gallery in New York, describing him as “one of the finest” painters he had ever seen.

“He’s as fine – or superb – as Mark Rothko at his best and will be a world-known painter one of these days,” Graves wrote.

“He is an abstract painter with something unspeakably beautiful and clean. They are the most beautiful landscapes of the mind plus light.”

In 1964, Gaitonde moved to New York after getting the Rockefeller Fellowship. The next two years were a formative phase in his career as the young artist got a chance to meet American modern artists and see their works, which further developed his style.

In 1971, Gaitonde received the Padma Shri, the fourth-highest civilian award in India, for his outstanding contribution to art.

But despite his growing fame, he became increasingly withdrawn in the coming years.

His disciple and renowned artist Laxman Shreshtha recounts in Naik’s book how MF Husain would often try to visit Gaitonde at his Delhi residence.

“If Gaitonde didn’t want to meet anyone, he would not open the door, not even for Husain who would sketch something on the door and go. That was Husain’s way of saying ‘I had dropped by’.”

Even his work underwent a shift. Usually, the artist would paint anywhere between six and seven canvases in a year. But after a spinal injury in 1984, the numbers went down considerably.

“I still continue to paint; I make paintings in my head. I now have limited energy which I need to conserve and cannot waste putting paint to canvas,” he once told art gallerist Dadiba Pundole.

As Gaitonde’s stature as an artist grew, his paintings became fewer and rarer, all of which added to the charm and mystery surrounding his work.

It is perhaps also one of the reasons why his paintings command such high prices even today.

When Gaitonde died in 2001 at the age of 77, his death went widely unreported as the artist lived his last years in obscurity.

But his thought-provoking canvases continued to make waves around the world.

Cara Manes, an associate curator at the Museum of Modern Art, once said that Gaitonde’s works were an embodiment of what silence might look like. “And yet there’s a certain shimmering effect that emerges out of that silence which is then pitted against these very solid marks, assertive application of colours.”

For the artist, though, art remained a deeply personal form of self-expression.

He often said: “I let the colours flow and watch. That is my painting.”

Rohit Bal, one of India’s most celebrated fashion designers, has died aged 63 after a long period of illness.

The Fashion Design Council of India (FDCI) announced his death in a post on Instagram, saying that his work “redefined Indian fashion”.

One of India’s first designers, Bal popularised fashion designing as a viable, glamorous profession in the 1990s and many who came after him credit him for their success.

He had been forced to take a prolonged break due to ill health but made an emotional comeback just weeks ago.

“We will always need a Rohit Bal around to show what classic elegance is – and why it crosses the generational divide,” said an article in The Indian Express newspaper after Bal, looking frail but delighted, appeared alongside his models at the grand finale of the India Fashion Week in October.

Bal’s designs won acclaim for his deep understanding of Indian textiles and meticulous attention to detail.

His innovative creations were worn by Hollywood stars and supermodels and he became synonymous with blending India’s rich cultural heritage with a contemporary flair.

Born in Srinagar in Indian-administered Kashmir in 1961, Bal graduated from Delhi’s St Stephens College with an honours degree in history. He then worked in his family’s export business for a few years, learning the ropes.

After completing his formal education in fashion design at the National Institute of Fashion Technology (NIFT) in Delhi, Bal embarked on a journey that would redefine Indian fashion.

He set up his own label and designer line in 1990 and later opened several stores in India, the Middle East and Europe.

On his website, Bal described himself as a designer who “combines the right mix of history, folklore, village craft, and dying arts to create imaginative and innovative masterpieces for catwalks and fashion talks”.

In 1996, Time magazine listed him as India’s ‘Master of fabric and fantasy’.

Bal’s designs reached far and wide, with Hollywood actress Uma Thurman and supermodels Cindy Crawford, Naomi Campbell and Pamela Anderson wearing his creations. In 2001, tennis star Anna Kournikova walked the ramp for his Paris show.

Best known for his use of lotus and peacock motifs, Bal used rich fabrics like velvet and brocade – his designs were elaborate, inspired by Indian grandeur and royalty.

Apart from designing clothes in his own label, Bal lent his name to endorse products from shoes to linen, had tie-ups with textile giants like the Aditya Birla Group and even ventured into designing jewellery and luxury watches.

He also opened a line for children, saying that he believed that “children are a major consumer class in urban India”.

Bal crafted costumes for the widely-watched Indian game show Kaun Banega Crorepati (Who Wants to be a Millionaire?) and designed costumes for the cabin crew of British Airways.

He unveiled his inaugural prêt line for online retailer Jabong in 2014.

“I want to separate Rohit Bal from the House of Bal – in products as well as style, in expensiveness and expanse,” Bal told Shefalee Vasudev in Mint newspaper.

“Rohit Bal stores (there will be no prêt here) will be special. People come to me only for special things – they want garments that are like handmade pieces of art. I have it in me to balance the right and left sides of my creative and business leanings.”

When I met Bal years ago in his studio, his characteristic flamboyance was evident in dazzling neon coloured silks embellished with intricate embroidery; sleek blouses and skirts along with taffeta skirts and netted blouses, in bright, warm and cool colours.

“Fabric is the seed of designing a garment, it is the lifeblood of fashion,” he told me.

His earliest memories of fabric were totally sensory, he said, recalling the downy feel of a jamawar shawl at home in Srinagar and the soft warmth of his mother’s shahtoosh saris.

His early years in Srinagar contributed to what he described as a “blissful childhood”. The idyllic life, he said, was disrupted by the violence in the region, compelling the family to relocate to Delhi.

Bal remembered embarking on a sartorial adventure at the age of 11 when he coaxed his father into a tailor’s shop in Delhi to craft his own cowboy pants adorned with tassels.

Bal also diversified into the restaurant business and designed the interiors of one of Delhi’s posh restaurants, Veda, whose opulent and extravagant interiors created a buzz in the Indian media.

He told me it was also okay with him if foreign brands like Armani or Hilfiger came to take up high street space in India.

“They can’t do what I can with Indian designs,” Bal said.

His flamboyant lifestyle prompted the Indian media to call him “the bad boy of fashion”.

“People see me in photographs surrounded by pretty models and think that I am a snobbish, high-maintenance designer who is about beauty and hedonism. When they meet me, they realise how fake that perception is,” he told Vasudev.

Scottish comedian Janey Godley has died at the age of 63.

She had been receiving palliative care after living for a number of years with ovarian cancer, which forced her to cancel her ‘Why Is She Still Here?’ tour in September.

Godley was perhaps best known for her viral dubbed videos of Nicola Sturgeon’s Covid briefings during the pandemic and her protest against Donald Trump’s 2016 visit to Scotland.

Her daughter Ashley Storrie thanked Godley’s “found family” for their support “throughout these last horrible days”.

In a video posted on social media, Storrie said: “I wanted to tell you face to face because it felt very much what she would have wanted.

“She went peacefully and I want to say a big thank you to all the staff at the Prince and Princess of Wales Hospice.”

Mentioning a number of loved ones, she said: “Thank you so much for being there and for making a very, very scary moment peaceful and a nice transition.”

She then addressed Godley’s followers, thanking them for their kindness and support.

“I believe in my heart of hearts that she felt every bit of love you sent to her,” she said. “I think it kept her going, genuinely we got her longer because of all the support and the love in the world.”

She finished her video with “Bye Ma”, adding: “Frank, get the door” – a reference to a character in Godley’s famed voice overs of Nicola Sturgeon.

Godley’s manager Chris David said she would be “hugely missed by her family, friends and her many fans”.

He said: “She will be remembered for her legendary voiceovers of Nicola Sturgeon during the pandemic, her hilarious and outspoken comedy, but most of all for just being ‘Janey’.”

Godley revealed she had ovarian cancer in November 2021.

She was given the all-clear in 2022 but a later scan discovered signs of the disease again.

Born in the east end of Glasgow in 1961, Godley was a pub landlady before establishing herself on the comedy circuit.

Storrie, who followed her mother into comedy, is the star of BBC Three comedy Dinosaur and was recently nominated for a Bafta Scotland award for the show.

Godley went viral in 2016 after she was pictured holding a placard with an offensive word at a protest against Donald Trump on his visit to Scotland.

Her profile was raised further when she voiced over videos of Nicola Sturgeon’s Scottish Covid briefings. She later became friends with the former first minister.

Godley has also been a regular co-presenter on BBC Radio 4’s Loose Ends, as well as fronting BBC Radio 4 series The C Bomb.

In 2023 she was honoured at the inaugural Sir Billy Connolly Spirit of Glasgow Award at the Glasgow International Comedy Festival.

She received an honorary degree from the University of Glasgow from her hospice bed earlier this week.

Posting on Instagram, Nicola Sturgeon said Godley was a “true force of nature, and one of the funniest people I have ever known”.

She said: “I was able to visit her in the hospice a couple of weeks ago and though she was fragile, she still had me in stitches.

“Janey was also incredibly kind. And she made the world a better place.

“In the toughest of times, she made people laugh – and that was precious.”

First Minister John Swinney also paid tribute on X, writing: “Very sorry to hear of the death of Janey Godley.

“She brought joy and laughter on many occasions when we needed it most.”

A number of celebrities paid tribute to Godley, including Nigella Lawson who forged a friendship with the comedian initially on social media.

The author and TV chef said said: “So hard to think of that great force and bright energy no longer in the world.”

Former Communards member and author the Reverend Richard Coles said he loved Godley, adding “she made me laugh every day”.

Comedian Dom Joly said she was “one-of-a-kind and a lovely, funny person.”

Julia McKenzie, Radio 4 comedy commissioning editor, said Godley was a “brilliant storyteller who embodied the stoic nature of Glasgow”.

She said: “Her stories were raw and truthful, both devastating and uplifting, very often in the same sentence; and all shot through with her sharp wit and ability to bring characters to life.”

Louise Thornton, head of commissioning at BBC Scotland, added that Godley was a “much-loved contributor” to BBC programmes.

She added: “Janey fought a brave health battle over the last few years and shared this emotional journey with her trademark honesty and humour.”