Australia’s third-largest airline has gone into voluntary administration and cancelled flights on some of its routes.

Rex Airlines specialises in flying to dozens of smaller regional towns and cities across the country – many of which are not serviced by larger rivals Qantas and Virgin Australia.

Trading in Rex shares was halted earlier this week ahead of the announcement that Ernst & Young Australia has been appointed as administrator.

It comes just months after another Australian carrier – Bonza – went out of business in a turbulent domestic market.

Founded in 2002 after the collapse of Ansett, Rex flies in and out of around 56 airports.

It has a fleet of 66 aircraft – mostly 34-seater Saab 340 planes, but also nine Boeing 737-800s.

Since 2020 it has used those larger aircraft to operate between bigger cities such as Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane – routes already lucrative for other carriers.

Those flights have now been cancelled, with its 737-800s grounded.

Passengers who hold bookings will not get refunds, but can change their flight to travel with Virgin Australia free of charge.

Services on regional routes using the smaller planes will continue to operate.

Speaking before the administration was announced, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said that Rex was “important” to regional Australia.

“One thing we need to do is to make sure that we have a viable and ongoing Australian aviation industry,” he told ABC News.

Transport minister Catherine King said the government was prepared to “work with Rex”.

“We want to make sure that they have a future as part of aviation in this country, and we’re very determined to make sure that happens,” she said.

“We obviously don’t want to do that just at any cost. We want to be involved very closely in what that future might look like. I know this is a very uncertain time for staff, a very uncertain time for passengers.”

In a statement earlier on Tuesday, opposition transport spokeswoman Bridget McKenzie said there was not enough competition in the sector, given the dominance of Qantas – which also owns Jetstar – and Virgin Australia.

“Two aviation companies control more than 93% of the domestic space and companies like Rex create more competition which means cheaper airfares across the board,” she said.

Shares in Rex have roughly halved in the past 12 months.

The company also owns a 50% stake in another aviation business used to fly workers in and out of remote worksites such as mines.

Another Australian airline, low-cost carrier Bonza, went into administration earlier this year.

More than 300 Bonza employees were stood down in April, after it entered voluntary administration following the sudden repossession of its fleet of six Boeing 737 Max-8 aircraft.

It later collapsed after no rescue deal could be found.

After months of negotiation, Taiwan and China have “reached an agreement” on how to respond to the deaths of two Chinese fishermen following a sea chase by Taiwan’s coastguard, Taipei said.

The settlement involves compensation to the victims’ families and the repatriation of their bodies to China, according to reports. Taiwan’s coastguard declined to share details.

The deal may reduce tensions in the sensitive Taiwan Strait, which Beijing claims as its own.

China had condemned the incident in February as “malicious” and started regular patrols around Taiwan’s Kinmen archipelago following it.

The regular patrols aimed to “maintain operational order in sea areas and safeguard fishermen’s lives and property”, Beijing’s coastguard said in February.

The two men who died were among four people on board a fishing boat which trespassed into Taiwanese waters off Kinmen on 14 February and resisted inspection.

The boat capsized when Taiwanese authorities gave chase and the two fishermen drowned while trying to flee.

Beijing and Taipei used to be more flexible about each other’s fishing fleets, especially around Taiwan’s off-shore islands, which lie extremely close to the Chinese coast. Kinmen – Taiwan’s northernmost archipelago – lies just 3km (1.9 mi) from China.

But in recent years Taiwan has been enforcing its own waters more strictly – a response to what it says is a massive increase in poaching by fishermen from China’s coastal Fujian province.

Kinmen residents have reported seeing an increased presence of Chinese dredging vessels in its vicinity.

China’s Taiwan Affairs Office had for months urged Taiwanese authorities to investigate the incident and offer assistance to the victims’ families. It also accused the self-ruled Taiwan – which Beijing sees as a breakaway province which will eventually be part of China – of “using various excuses to forcefully seize Chinese fishing vessels”.

Taiwan has defended its coastguard’s actions and called on Beijing to “restrain similar behaviours” on its waters.

On Tuesday, Taiwan’s coast guard director Chang Chung-lung apologised to the victims’ families “for the suffering [they have] endured” and also “for not recording evidence in this case”.

Both sides “will actively implement the agreed consensus as quickly as possible” said Hsieh Chin-chin, deputy director-general of the coastguard administration.

“We respect the families and the content of the consensus, so we are unable to provide further details,” Mr Hsieh added.

A spokesman for Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council revealed the compensation will be paid by private donors, while stressing it does not have any impact on the outcome of the investigation into what happened, and who was responsible.

Beijing said it hopes Taiwan will “actively implement the terms of the agreement to provide peace of mind to the victims and offer an explanation to their families”.

At least 93 people have been killed and dozens are still feared trapped after heavy rains triggered massive landslides in the southern Indian state of Kerala.

The landslides struck hilly areas in Wayanad district in the early hours of Tuesday.

Rescue operations are under way, but are being hindered by heavy rains and the collapse of a crucial bridge.

“The situation continues to remain very grave. The causalities may go up,” V Venu, the state’s top civil servant, told media.

The landslides are the worst disaster to hit Kerala since 2018, when deadly floods killed more than 400 people.

Officials say more than 200 army personnel have been deployed to assist security forces in search and rescue efforts.

Chief Minister Pinari Vijayan told a press conference that Tuesday’s “landslide has wiped out an entire area”.

Local hospitals are treating at least 123 injured, and more than 3,000 people have been rescued and moved to 45 relief camps, he said.

Apart from 65 confirmed deaths in Wayanad, 16 bodies have been found in the Chaliyar river, which flows into neighbouring Malappuram district. The body parts of a number other people have also been found.

Wayanad, a hilly district which is part of the Western Ghats mountain range, is prone to landslides during the monsoon season.

The landslides have hit several areas in the district, including Mundakkai, Attamala, Chooralmala and Kunhome.

Videos on social media showed muddy water gushing through unpaved streets and forested areas, washing away homes and leaving people and vehicles stranded.

A bridge connecting Chooralmala to Mundakkai and Attamala has collapsed, isolating the two places and making it difficult for rescue personnel to reach trapped families.

Rashid Padikkalparamban, a resident, told Reuters news agency that at least three landslides had hit the area around midnight, washing away the bridge.

State and national disaster relief teams are conducting rescue operations, with the help of local people.

Mr Venu said a small team had managed to cross the river and reach the areas that were cut off. He added that more resources were required, but strong river currents were making it difficult for rescue personnel to cross the river.

Air-relief operations also had to be postponed due to heavy rains, he said.

Raghavan C Arunamala, a local, described horrifying scenes.

“I saw a man trapped in the debris shouting for help. Firefighters and rescue workers have been trying to reach him for the last few hours,” he said.

Local media reports say that people are flocking to hospitals to search for their loved ones.

Nearly 350 families are believed to have lived in the affected regions, where a number of tea and cardamom estates are located.

Most victims are people who worked on the estates and were likely to have been asleep in their makeshift tents when landslides struck.

Wayanad district and neighbouring areas are still on alert due to the forecast of heavy rains.

Schools and colleges were closed in 10 of 14 districts.

In 2019, 17 people had died after a landslide hit Puthumala in Wayanad, around 10km from the areas currently affected.

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, who is a former MP from Wayanad, is set to visit the district on Wednesday.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi posted on X (formerly Twitter) that he had spoken to Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan and assured the federal government’s help in relief efforts.

Mr Modi also announced compensation of 200,000 rupees ($2,388; £1,857) to the victims’ families and 50,000 rupees to the injured.

Injured and critically ill Palestinians are on their way from Gaza to the United Arab Emirates for treatment, the World Health Organization (WHO) says, in the largest single medical evacuation since the war began following the brutal Hamas attack on southern Israel on 7 October.

Hospital sources in Gaza said 150 patients had boarded five buses, but WHO has yet to confirm exact numbers.

The sweeping Israeli military operations that followed have wrecked Gaza’s healthcare system.

And the main route for medical evacuees through Gaza’s Rafah border crossing with Egypt was shut down after the Israeli military took control there in early May.

The WHO says so far some 5,000 Gazans have received treatment outside of the territory, but another 10,000 still need to leave.

This latest group began to gather on Sunday at pickup points for transport to a central location before departing.

In the central city of Deir al-Balah the bus station was crowded with patients and their families.

“I call on the whole world to look at us with compassion,” said Shaza Abu Selim, who was pushing her daughter, Lamis, in a wheelchair. The young girl needs major surgery for scoliosis, which has been delayed now by six months. She barely moved, her face stained with tears and exhaustion.

“I could not believe it when they contacted me [to say] that my daughter was among those on the list going outside Gaza for treatment,” said her mother. “I do not know when the war will end… and may God make it easy and heal everyone.”

Even before the conflict some Gazans got care outside the territory because the health system wasn’t equipped to deal with complex medical conditions.

But Israeli bombardments have closed hospitals, killed doctors, blocked medicines, and overwhelmed remaining facilities with casualties.

Nasima al-Ajeel’s story encapsulates the misery and desperation this has caused.

“We were struck” she says. “My eldest son was killed, my father was killed, my youngest son, Asser, lost his sight.”

Ms al-Ajeel is sitting and holding little Asser, his eyelid closed over an empty socket. Her leg is wrapped in bandages.

“His left eye was blown out with a skull fracture,” she said. “My middle son suffers from a leg injury and leg deformities, and I suffer a skull fracture, blindness in my left eye, and a broken shoulder and ribs.”

The Israeli army says it has discovered Hamas combatants and infrastructure inside hospitals and health clinics, something the militant Islamist movement, which controlled Gaza before the war, denies.

But human rights activists have accused Israel of obstructing medical evacuations.

Physicians for Human Rights in Israel and other groups filed a petition in Israel’s High Court of Justice in early June after the Rafah crossing was closed.

Since Israeli forces captured the border area at the start of their ground operation there two months ago, Egypt has refused to reopen the crossing, the only route out of Gaza that does not lead into Israel and previously a main exit point for fleeing civilians and a major channel for aid.

Egyptian officials have insisted that the Gazan side of the crossing must be returned to Palestinian control.

As a result of the court action, the Israeli government committed to establishing a permanent mechanism for allowing regular medical evacuations.

But it has yet to do so, and on Sunday it announced it was cancelling the expected evacuation without saying why.

The Kan public broadcaster reported that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had made the decision himself, following a deadly Hezbollah attack in the Israeli occupied Golan Heights at the weekend which killed 12 children and teenagers.

That seems to have been quickly reversed. Azza Ahmed Kafarneh, a 57-year-old mother and grandmother suffering from cancer, told the BBC that the patients had prepared to go back home on hearing the news, but were told to stay because “there is a big potential that they will agree for you to leave”.

Nothing is certain in this war, and for those fortunate enough to escape it, the goodbyes are bittersweet.

Sarah Marzouk, a 12-year-old girl who says she lost her foot when her neighbour’s house was bombed, was wiping away tears at the bus station on Sunday.

“I wish that the war would end and that all children like me would be able to come with me and have artificial limbs fitted and receive treatment abroad,” she said. “I also hope that I will return to see my father in peace.”

Ms Ahmed Kafarneh said she wouldn’t leave if she didn’t feel so sick. She hasn’t heard of any medical evacuees who’ve returned to Gaza.

“I am confused between leaving my family and going out to get treated,” she said. “And things maybe will take a longer time and the war maybe will take a long time and things might get worse. Nobody knows.”

An Indian teenager is now among a handful of people in the world to survive a rare brain-eating amoeba, partly due to his father coming across a public awareness campaign on social media.

Afnan Jasim, 14, is thought to have become infected in June after he went for a swim in a local pond in the southern state of Kerala.

His doctor said that the amoeba – called Naegleria fowleri – likely entered his body from the water that had been contaminated by it.

Primary Amoebic Meningoencephalitis (PAM), the disease caused by the amoeba, has a mortality rate of 97%.

According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, between 1971 and 2023, just eight other people have survived the disease across four countries – Australia, US, Mexico and Pakistan.

In all the cases, the infection was diagnosed between nine hours and five days after the symptoms appeared – which played a crucial role in their recovery.

Medical experts say that timely treatment is key to curing the disease. Symptoms of PAM include headache, fever, nausea, vomiting, disorientation, a stiff neck, a loss of balance, seizures and/or hallucinations.

Afnan began experiencing the symptoms five days after he had gone for a swim in a local pond in Kozhikode district. He developed seizures and began complaining of severe headaches.

His parents took him to the doctor, but Afnan did not improve.

Luckily, his father MK Siddiqui, 46, had the presence of mind to connect his son’s symptoms with something he had read on social media.

Mr Siddiqui, who is a dairy farmer, said he was reading about the effects of the Nipah virus – a boy recently died of it in Kerala – on social media when he chanced upon information about the deadly brain-eating amoeba.

“I read something about seizures being caused by an infection. As soon as Afnan developed seizures, I rushed him to the local hospital,” Mr Siddiqui said.

When the seizures didn’t stop, he took his son to another hospital, but this one didn’t have a neurologist.

Finally, they went to the Baby Memorial Hospital in Kozhikode, where the boy was treated by Dr Abdul Rauf, a consultant intensive care paediatrician.

“The disease was diagnosed within 24 hours of the onset of symptoms,” Dr Rauf told the BBC.

Dr Rauf credits Mr Siddiqui with informing doctors about Afnan’s swim in the local pond and his subsequent symptoms, which helped them diagnose the disease in time.

The amoeba is known to enter the human body through nasal passages and it travels through the cribriform plate – which is located at the base of the skull and transmits olfactory nerves to enable the sense of smell – to reach the brain.

“The parasite then releases different chemicals and destroys the brain,” says Dr Rauf.

Most patients die because of intracranial pressure [exercised by fluids inside the skull and on the brain tissue].

He added that the amoeba was found in freshwater lakes, particularly in water that was warm.

“People should not jump or dive into water. That is a sure way for the amoeba to enter the body. If the water is contaminated, the amoeba enters through your nose,” he says.

The best thing to do, he says, is to avoid contaminated water bodies. Even in swimming pools, people are advised to keep their mouths above the water level.

“Chlorination of water resources is very important,” Dr Rauf adds.

A research paper published in Karnataka state has also reported cases of infants locally and in places like Nigeria contracting the infection from bathwater.

Since 1965, some 400 cases of PAM have been reported around the world, while India has had fewer than 30 cases so far.

“Kerala reported a PAM case in 2018 and 2020,” the doctor said.

Just this year, six cases have been recorded in Kerala. Of these, three have died and one is in a critical condition. While Afnan has been discharged, the sixth person has also responded to treatment and is recovering.

“After two deaths at our hospital, we informed the government as it was a public health issue and an awareness campaign was launched,” Dr Rauf said. It was this awareness campaign that Mr Siddiqui had come across on social media.

Doctors conducted tests on Afnan which helped detect the presence of the amoeba in the boy’s cerebrospinal fluid – which is found in the brain and spinal cord – and then administered a combination of antimicrobial drugs by injecting them into his spine.

The treatment also included administering miltefosine – a drug that the state government imported from Germany.

“This drug is used for rare diseases in India but it is not very costly,” Dr Rauf said.

“On the first day, the patient was not very conscious due to the seizures. But within three days, Afnan’s condition started improving,” he added.

A week later, doctors repeated the tests and found the amoeba was no longer present in his body. But he will continue taking medicines for a month, after which he plans to resume his studies.

The experience has left a profound impact on Afnan, who says he now wants to do a degree in nursing.

“He told the doctor that nurses work so hard for the patients,” Mr Siddiqui says.

Technology giant Microsoft has apologised after thousands of people across the world reported issues with its products, ranging from email service Outlook to the hit game Minecraft.

Downdetector, which tracks websites, showed thousands had reported problems on Tuesday afternoon.

The incident comes less than two weeks after a major global IT outage left over eight million computers using Microsoft systems inaccessible, impacting healthcare and travel, after a flawed software update by the cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike.

Microsoft said it had implemented a fix for the problem which “shows improvement”, and it will monitor the situation “to ensure full recovery”.

But it has separately told people it has “no ETA” for how long the issue would take to resolve.

The tech giant previously said it was “investigating reports of issues connecting to Microsoft services globally”.

“We sincerely apologise for the inconvenience,” it said in a post on X, formerly Twitter.

“Our experts are currently investigating the situation in order to resolve it as soon as possible.”

It comes hours before Microsoft is set to announce its latest financial reports at 2230 BST.

An alert on the technology giant’s service status website said the outage impacted Microsoft Azure – the cloud computing platform behind many of its services – and Microsoft 365, which includes systems like Microsoft Office and Outlook.

It also listed its cloud systems Intune and Entra as among those impacted.

“It seems slightly surreal that we’re experiencing another serious outage of online services from Microsoft,” said computer security expert Professor Alan Woodward.

“The culprit appears to be network infrastructure but you would have hoped that with such important cloud-based systems there would not be a single point of failure.

“You’d expect Microsoft’s network infrastructure to be bomb-proof.”

The outage appears to have also impacted other services which rely on Microsoft’s platforms, with Cambridge Water among those affected.

“Due to worldwide issues with Microsoft Azure, a problem with our website is affecting several services including MyAccount and PayNow,” it said in a post on X.

Air New Zealand has abandoned a 2030 goal to cut its carbon emissions, blaming difficulties securing more efficient planes and sustainable jet fuel.

The move makes it the first major carrier to back away from such a climate target.

The airline added it is working on a new short-term target and it remains committed to an industry-wide goal of achieving net zero emissions by 2050.

The aviation industry is estimated to produce around 2% of global carbon dioxide emissions, which airlines have been trying to reduce with measures including replacing older aircraft and using fuel from renewable sources.

“In recent months, and more so in the last few weeks, it has also become apparent that potential delays to our fleet renewal plan pose an additional risk to the target’s achievability,” Air New Zealand Chief Executive Officer, Greg Foran, said in the statement.

In 2022, Air New Zealand adopted a 2030 target to cut its emissions by almost 29%.

It was much more ambitious than a 5% reduction goal over the same period set by the global aviation industry.

Sustainable Aviation Fuels (SAF) are a key part of the sector’s strategy to cut emissions but airlines have struggled to purchase enough of it.

“The price of [SAF] is more expensive than traditional fuels, and there is not enough capacity to produce that at scale,” said Ellis Taylor from aviation analytics firm Cirium.

International airlines body IATA said the industry’s emissions reduction target was “net zero 2050 and airlines are not cutting back on the pledge”.

It added that while this target was achievable, “we are also reliant on the right supportive measures from governments”.

“We need scale up of all solutions including SAF production as well as emerging technological solutions including the use of hydrogen and carbon removals.”

Mr Taylor said that airlines were also being affected by delays to new aircraft deliveries, “with both Boeing and Airbus under-delivering new jets over the last few years, largely due to snags in the wider supply chains of the manufacturers”.

Aerospace giant Boeing has faced a number of major issues in recent years.

This month, Boeing agreed to plead guilty to a criminal fraud conspiracy charge after the US found the company violated a deal meant to reform it after two fatal crashes by its 737 Max planes that killed 346 passengers and crew.

The firm has also come under increased scrutiny after a door panel in a Boeing plane operated by Alaska Airlines blew out soon after take-off and forced the jet to land.

A former US officer who was the only person to be convicted in connection with the My Lai massacre during the Vietnam War has died, according to reports.

William Calley died on 28 April at the age of 80, the Washington Post and New York Times reported, citing official death records.

Calley led the US Army platoon that carried out the mass murder of hundreds of civilians, including women and children, in the Vietnamese village of Son My in 1968.

He was sentenced to life in prison in 1971 for killing 22 civilians, but only served three days behind bars after then-President Richard Nixon ordered his release under house arrest.

The My Lai massacre is known as one of the worst war crimes in American military history. The killings shocked the US public at the time and galvanised the anti-Vietnam war movement.

According to the Vietnamese government, 504 people were killed in the massacre.

Calley, a junior college dropout from South Florida, enlisted in the army in 1964.

He was quickly promoted to junior officer and then second lieutenant, at a time when the US army was desperate for soldiers.

On the morning of 16 March 1968, Calley’s unit was airlifted to a hamlet in Son My – known to US soldiers at the time as My Lai 4 – on a mission to search and kill Viet Cong members and sympathisers.

When they arrived, the officers were met with no resistance from the residents of the village, who were found cooking breakfast over outdoor fires, according to a 1972 report by journalist Seymour Hersh in the New Yorker.

Mr Hersh reported that Calley and his unit proceeded to kill the civilians in the following hours. Many were rounded up in small groups and shot, he said. Others were pushed into a drainage ditch and shot, or were killed in or near their homes.

Women and girls were raped by American officers and then murdered, Mr Hersh reported.

The massacre was initially covered up but became public a year and a half later, thanks in large part to Mr Hersh’s reporting, which earned him a Pulitzer Prize.

Calley was one of 26 soldiers who were charged with criminal offences and the only one convicted.

His conviction polarised Americans. Some deemed him a war criminal while others felt the junior officer was used as a scapegoat to shift blame for a massacre that was ultimately the responsibility of his superiors.

While he was given a life sentence, Calley only served three-and-a-half years under house arrest after President Nixon commuted his sentence.

Calley married Penny Vick, the daughter of a jewelry store owner in Columbus, Georgia, in 1976. The couple had one son, William Laws Calley III, and divorced in the mid-2000s.

He rarely spoke about his role in the My Lai massacre and had refused to sit down with historians and reporters.

In 2009, he apologised while speaking to the Kiwanis Club of Greater Columbus.

“There is not a day that goes by that I do not feel remorse for what happened that day in My Lai,” he said. “I feel remorse for the Vietnamese who were killed, for their families, for the American soldiers involved and their families.”

The Washington Post first reported Calley’s death on Monday, after receiving a tip from a Harvard Law School graduate who uncovered it in public records.

No cause of death has been cited.

Olympic organisers have issued a “deep apology” after South Korea’s athletes were mistakenly introduced as North Korea at the opening ceremony in Paris.

As the excited, flag-waving team floated down the River Seine, both French and English announcers introduced them as the “Democratic People’s Republic of Korea” – the official name of North Korea.

The same name was then used – correctly – when North Korea’s delegation sailed past.

The two Koreas have been divided since the end of World War Two, with tensions between the states further escalating recently.

The subtitle which ran across the bottom of the television broadcast showed the correct title, however.

The South Korean sports ministry said it planned to lodge a “strong complaint with France on a government level” over the embarrassing gaffe.

In a statement, the ministry expressed “regret over the announcement… where the South Korean delegation was introduced as the North Korean team.”

The statement added that the second vice sports minister, Jang Mi-ran, a 2008 Olympic weightlifting champion, had demanded a meeting with Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach.

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) issued an apology on its official Korean-language X account, saying: “We would like to offer a deep apology over the mistake that occurred in the introduction of the South Korean delegation during the opening ceremony.”

South Korea, formally known as the Republic of Korea, has 143 athletes in its Olympic team this year, competing across 21 sports.

North Korea has sent 16 athletes. This is the first time it has competed in the games since Rio 2016.

There have been protests across Venezuela following the announcement on Monday of the disputed result of the presidential election.

The National Electoral Council (CNE) – which is dominated by government allies – declared Nicolás Maduro the winner.

The CNE’s announcement has been widely decried as fraudulent both inside and outside Venezuela with the Carter Center demanding the CNE publish the detailed voting tallies.

The opposition says the tallies it has had access to – which it has made public – show that its candidate, Edmundo González, is the clear winner.

Here we look at some of the key moments which have led to thousands of Venezuelans taking to the streets in protest.

Even before polling stations opened at 06:00 local time on Sunday, long lines formed at many locations with some voters queueing overnight.

There were reports of some voters being blocked from accessing their polling stations, while at others there were long delays.

Some of those keen to cast their ballot joined in a chorus of “We want to vote”.

Many of the 7.8m Venezuelans who have fled their country’s economic and political crisis were not able to cast their votes after they encountered problems adding their names to the electoral register.

The hurdles they faced included strict requirements such as having to provide proof of legal residence in the host country and providing a valid identity card as passports were not accepted as a form of identification.

As identity cards are not issued by Venezuelan consulates abroad, this meant many Venezuelans whose IDs had expired could not vote.

Many also reported being left off the list of voters altogether or appearing on local registers in Venezuela rather than in their current countries of residence.

Others complained of consulates only opening for voter registration for very limited times.

Official figures from the CNE show that fewer than 68,000 people overseas were registered to vote, even though an estimated half of the 7.8m Venezuelans abroad are of voting age.

Venezuela’s National Electoral Council (CNE) has five members who are nominated by the legislative body, the National Assembly.

While it was created as an independent body to organise and oversee elections, it has long been dominated by allies of the governing PSUV party.

Its president, Elvis Amoroso, is a former lawmaker for President Maduro’s socialist PSUV party who went to work as Mr Maduro’s legal adviser.

Before being named head of the CNE, he served as comptroller general. In that post, he barred opposition leader María Corina Machado from running for office for 15 years.

As head of the CNE, he revoked the invitation which had been issued to the European Union to send independent electoral observers to monitor the presidential election.

In the early hours on Monday, Mr Amoroso announced that with 80% of the votes counted, President Maduro had an “unassailable lead” with 51% of the vote.

He said that the opposition candidate, Edmundo González, had 44% of the vote.

However, the CNE did not provide a detailed breakdown of the results from individual polling stations.

The incumbent celebrated the announcement outside the Miraflores presidential palace.

“I am Nicolás Maduro Moros, the re-elected president of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela and I will defend our democracy, our laws and our people,” he shouted.

Before a crowd of loyal supporters, he mocked and mimicked former opposition and current opposition leaders , whom he accused of “crying fraud” every time they lost an election.

He praised the electoral system and urged “respect” for the “Venezuela’s sovereignty”.

Mr Maduro also alleged that the CNE had been the target of a “massive hacking attack” on election night because “the demons didn’t want the total tally to be announced”. “We already he know who it was,” he said.

“We are setting an example for the world,” he told his cheering supporters.

Shortly after the CNE had declared Mr Maduro’s victory, opposition leader María Corina Machado denounced the result as fraudulent.

She said that the opposition had had access to 40% of the voting tallies and they suggested that opposition candidate Edmundo González had won with 70% of the votes.

In a news conference some hours later on Monday, Ms Machado said the opposition had been able to review 73.2% of the voting tallies and they confirmed that Mr González was the winner of the election.

She said that those voting tallies showed that Nicolás Maduro had 2.75m votes compared to Mr González’s 6.27m votes.

She added that even if all the votes in the remaining 26.8% of tallies the opposition had not had access to yet were for Mr Maduro, it would not be enough to beat Mr González.

“We have the records showing our categorical and mathematically irreversible victory,” Mr González said.

Ms Machado also announced that the opposition had uploaded the voting tallies to a website so that the Venezuelan people and independent observer could scrutinise them.

Despite international and national scepticism and criticism expressed about the result released by the CNE, the electoral authority doubled down on Monday.

It announced that all of the votes had been counted and declared Mr Maduro re-elected to a third consecutive term.

Elvis Amoroso, who has been a close ally of Mr Maduro for years, handed him the credentials for the presidential term from 2025-2031.

Even though it pressed ahead with the formalities, the CNE still failed to provide access to all of the voting tallies, despite pressure by the Carter Center, one of the few international organisations allowed as observers, to do so.

The already tense atmosphere was further inflamed by pro-government groups, the so-called colectivos and by clashes between protesters and the security forces.

In one incident, members of a colectivo attacked people who were waiting to enter a polling station to witness the vote count.

A non-governmental group said on Tuesday that three people had died and dozens were injured in the protests which have erupted across Venezuela.

Also on Tuesday, a venezuelan opposition party – Voluntad Popular – said its national coordinator Freddy Superlano had been detained.

The party said it was a “repressive escalation” by Mr Maduro against opposition supporters who “peacefully demand the publication of the electoral results that give our elected president”.

Eyewitnesses have spoken of horrific scenes in the aftermath of the Southport attack, with one describing it as the “worst thing I’ve seen in my life”.

Two children died and nine suffered critical injuries in a knife attack on a Taylor Swift-themed dance class on Monday, prompting a local children’s hospital to declare a major incident. Two adults were also critically injured.

Colin Parry, owner of Masters Vehicle Body Repairs, which is next to where the workshop was being held, told BBC 5Live he was first aware of a commotion because a young man in a face mask was refusing to pay a taxi driver.

He said he and a customer confronted the man but that he asked them, “What are you going to do?”, and walked off.

A 17-year-old boy, from Banks in Lancashire, has been arrested on suspicion of murder and attempted murder.

• Live updates: Police question 17-year-old after two children killed

• What we know so far about the Southport stabbings

Mr Parry said he went back to work but then received a call from an employee who had gone to the building next door because he heard children screaming, “and not like a normal play scream”.

“We all ran out and there’s young kids, all bleeding,” Mr Parry said.

He said many of the children were then ushered into a nearby home and that the scene outside was “mayhem”.

“It was the worst thing I’ve seen ever in my life,” he said.

“Why? Why would you do these things to these kids? It’s horrific.”

Mr Parry also told the PA news agency that he had heard mothers arriving on the street “screaming” and that it was “like a scene from a horror movie”.

Multiple people reported seeing several young children bleeding in the road after being stabbed.

Photos from the scene after the attack showed a police cordon on the street as well as large numbers of emergency service vehicles and personnel.

Forensic workers could also be seen in white hazmat suits.

Tim Johnson, a journalist with Eye on Southport, arrived about 20 minutes after the police had been called and said he saw one young girl on a stretcher.

“Her parents were running after her. It was horrendous. I’ve never seen anything like it,” he told the BBC.

“I saw ambulance men and women in tears. People were in tears in the streets.”

Ryan Carney, who lives on the street with his mother, said she was at home when she heard screaming and crying on the street.

She went outside to see a woman being allowed through the cordon by police as she tried to find her child.

One local parent who did not want to be named said his daughter had been present at the attack but had managed to run away.

He said she was safe but had been left “traumatised”.

Therapy nurse Joanne Newman, who lives in the area, said she had run out of work after hearing about the incident from a friend.

She said her daughters had not been harmed in the attack but that one had heard a “sinister scream” around the time of the attack.

“Nobody can believe it. All the local mums have checked in with one another,” she said.

She added that she had been consoling the mothers of one of the children who had been injured.

“How do you even comprehend? There’s nothing you can do,” she said.

Lhakpa Sherpa has a startling life story – to the outside world she holds the record for climbing Mount Everest a staggering 10 times, the most of any woman.

But behind the scenes, her personal life has been dangerous and fearful.

While conquering the world’s highest mountain, she says she was enduring domestic abuse from her husband – including during their 2004 descent from Everest.

Now based in America, she has raised three children, supporting them by working in a grocery store and as a cleaner.

Her life – on and off the mountain – has been made into a Netflix documentary, Mountain Queen: The Summits of Lhakpa Sherpa, directed by Lucy Walker.

Sherpa is proud of the film.

Eyes blazing, she tells the BBC: “I want to show people women can do it.”

What is perhaps surprising about her record-breaking climbs is that she does so with little training.

Climbing Everest can be fatal – there have been more than 300 deaths in the region since records of mountain climbing there began a century ago.

So it’s vital to be in peak condition.

In the film, we see Sherpa keep fit by walking in the Connecticut mountains. But she also carries on with her normal working life, out of necessity.

“You’re an exceptional athlete,” Walker tells Sherpa during our interview. “Very tall. Very strong.

“People underestimate it. It’s an unbelievable accomplishment that you can climb Everest from doing your day job.”

Sherpa responds: “I’m not good with being educated, but I’m very good with the mountains.”

Born in 1973 to yak farmers in the Nepalese Himalayas, she was one of 11 children.

Crucially, she was raised in an area where education for girls wasn’t a priority – she carried her brother to school for hours through the hills, but wasn’t allowed inside.

Things are now improving in Nepal – women’s literacy rocketed from 10% in 1981 to 70% by 2021.

But Sherpa’s lack of education left lasting consequences – she’s still unable to read.

Things people take for granted, like using a TV remote control, are difficult for her.

Her son Nima, born in the late 90s, and daughters Sunny, 22, and Shiny, 17, help bridge the gaps.

With no schooling, by the time she was 15, Sherpa was working as a porter on mountain expeditions – often as the only girl.

Through her climbing work she was able to avoid a traditional arranged marriage.

But life got difficult when she became pregnant after a brief relationship in Kathmandu.

An unmarried mother, she was too ashamed to return home.

Still climbing when she could, she met and fell for Romanian-US mountaineer and home-renovation contractor, George Dijmărescu.

He’d escaped Romania, under dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu, by swimming across the Danube river.

Dijmărescu had already forged a new life in the US when he and Sherpa married in 2002, settling in Connecticut, where they went on to have Sunny and Shiny.

But the couple’s relationship fractured when Dijmărescu became violent, Sherpa says.

In 2004, this became apparent when they ascended Everest with a New England climbing group.

After reaching the summit they encountered bad weather.

Dijmărescu’s behaviour “took a turn almost immediately”, according to journalist Michael Kodas, who reported on the climb for a local paper.

Recalling it in the documentary, he says things around Dijmărescu got “hostile”.

Sherpa, who was in a tent with him, says on camera: “He look like thunder, look like bullet… George was yelling and he punch me.”

We then see multiple photographs taken by Kodas, of her lying unconscious afterwards.

The journalist says he witnessed Dijmărescu say “get this garbage out of here”, as he dragged his wife from the tent.

In the film, Sherpa describes being unconscious as an out-of-body experience.

“People’s voices turned to lots of birds. I saw my whole life. I fly near my mom’s house. I saw through everything… I felt ashamed of myself. I want to go die.”

Then she remembered her children, and says: “I’m not ready to die.”

Kodas included the violent incident in his 2008 book, High Crimes: The Fate of Everest in the Age of Greed.

Walker later persuaded him to release his film footage to her, including the raw tapes, calling it a “huge act of trust”.

“It’s such a difficult subject and people don’t sort of want to get involved, because it’s controversial… but I didn’t take no for an answer,” she tells the BBC.

Despite their relationship being damaged, they stayed together for several more years.

But she says she was admitted to hospital when Dijmărescu assaulted her again in 2012.

This was a turning point.

With the help of a social worker, Sherpa moved with the girls to a women’s refuge, where she started to rebuild her life.

The couple divorced in 2015, and in 2016 a court awarded Sherpa “sole legal custody of the girls”.

A report at the time, in OutsideOnline, said Dijmărescu received a six-month suspended sentence and a year of probation, after a conviction for breach of the peace.

He was found not guilty of second-degree assault because court documents stated she did not have a visible head injury.

Dijmărescu died in 2020 of cancer, but the trauma he left behind is tangible.

Sherpa found it really hard discussing their relationship for the documentary.

“I wish all the turmoil keep secret, I don’t want in my life it’s everybody know[ing],” she says.

But her son advised her to make the film with Walker, after researching her previous work.

The director says to Sherpa: “When you tell your story, you skipped bits, saying, ‘We’re not talking about these years’.

“And slowly, slowly, we go to the difficult things.

“It is very traumatic for you. You get very upset, you don’t sleep. It’s very intense.

“But actually, if you can share it, people love you more. Because when you let people know you have difficult times, other people, I think, connect much more now.”

Sunny and Shiny echo this.

They appear in the film, and found it “a bit overwhelming to watch at first, because of how vulnerable we were to have our whole life put on display”.

They agreed to take part because “the struggle we have been through as a family, and how we have used it to strengthen not weaken us, is such a crucial part of our mother’s story”.

Not surprisingly, Sherpa says life was tough after the trauma of her marriage.

“Oh my God, yeah, crying. I carry so much in my life. I work hard, I courage hard,” she says.

“Sometimes I say, ‘Why am I alive, why am I not dead, so many danger. Almost I’ve been in heaven, and come back. So difficult. But somehow I did it…

“Hurt woman is very tough. Does not give up easily. And I keep doing.”

Climbing is not only her passion – it’s also a healing process.

“My darkness I leave behind [on the mountain],” she says.

We see her begin her record-breaking 10th Everest ascent in 2022.

Whispering goodbye to Shiny, sleeping in a nearby tent in base camp, the climb begins at night, by torchlight.

This means her descent from the summit can take place in daylight.

It’s clear her daughters are proud of their mum.

Sherpa says she is creating a “better life” for her children in the US, including giving them an education.

“I really want changing my life, my daughters – I work hard,” she says.

She wants to earn her living with her own guiding company, and to find more sponsorship.

“I know the mountains, I wish I can share my expertise and experience with other people,” she says.

Sunny and Shiny add: “Women have started climbing big peaks and following our mom’s footsteps.”

It was early in the day, but already hot. As she wiped sweat from her brow, Chieko Kiriake searched for some shade. As she did so, there was a blinding light – it was like nothing the 15-year-old had ever experienced. It was 08:15 on 6 August 1945.

“It felt like the sun had fallen – and I grew dizzy,” she recalls.

The United States had just dropped an atomic bomb on Chieko’s home city of Hiroshima – the first time a nuclear weapon had ever been used in warfare. While Germany had surrendered in Europe, allied forces fighting in World War Two were still at war with Japan.

Chieko was a student, but like many older pupils, had been sent out to work in the factories during the war. She staggered to her school, carrying an injured friend on her back. Many of the students had been badly burnt. She rubbed old oil, found in the home economics classroom, onto their wounds.

“That was the only treatment we could give them. They died one after the next,” says Chieko.

“Us older students who survived were instructed by our teachers to dig a hole in the playground and I cremated [my classmates] with my own hands. I felt so awful for them.”

Chieko is now 94 years old. It is almost 80 years since the atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and time is running out for the surviving victims – known as hibakusha in Japan – to tell their stories.

Many have lived with health problems, lost loved ones and been discriminated against because of the atomic attack. Now, they are sharing their experiences for a BBC Two film, documenting the past so it can act as a warning for the future.

After the sorrow, new life started to return to her city, says Chieko.

“People said the grass wouldn’t grow for 75 years,” she says, “but by the spring of the next year, the sparrows returned.”

In her lifetime, Chieko says she has been close to death many times but has come to believe she has been kept alive by the power of something great.

The majority of hibakusha alive today were children at the time of the bombings. As the hibakusha – which translates literally as “bomb-affected-people” – have grown older, global conflicts have intensified. To them, the risk of a nuclear escalation feels more real than ever.

“My body trembles and tears overflow,” says 86-year-old Michiko Kodama when she thinks about conflicts around the world today – such as the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the Israel-Gaza war.

“We must not allow the hell of the atomic bombing to be recreated. I feel a sense of crisis.”

Michiko is a vocal campaigner for nuclear disarmament and says she speaks out so the voices of those who have died can be heard – and the testimonies passed on to the next generations.

“I think it is important to hear first-hand accounts of hibakusha who experienced the direct bombing,” she says.

Michiko had been at school – aged seven – when the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima.

“Through the windows of my classroom, there was an intense light speeding towards us. It was yellow, orange, silver.”

She describes how the windows shattered and splintered across the classroom – the debris spraying everywhere “impaling the walls, desk, chairs”.

“The ceiling came crashing down. So I hid my body under the desk.”

After the blast, Michiko looked around the devastated room. In every direction she could see hands and legs trapped.

“I crawled from the classroom to the corridor and my friends were saying, ‘Help me’.”

When her father came to collect her, he carried her home on his back.

Black rain, “like mud”, fell from the sky, says Michiko. It was a mixture of radioactive material and residue from the explosion.

She has never been able to forget the journey home.

“It was a scene from hell,” says Michiko. “The people who were escaping towards us, most of their clothes had completely burned away and their flesh was melting.”

She recalls seeing one girl – all alone – about the same age as her. She was badly burnt.

“But her eyes were wide open,” says Michiko. “That girl’s eyes, they pierce me still. I can’t forget her. Even though 78 years have passed, she is seared into my mind and soul.”

Michiko wouldn’t be alive today if her family had remained in their old home. It was only 350m (0.21 miles) from the spot where the bomb exploded. About 20 days before, her family had moved house, just a few kilometres away – but that saved her life.

Estimates put the number of lost lives in Hiroshima, by the end of 1945, at about 140,000.

In Nagasaki, which was bombed by the US three days later, at least 74,000 were killed.

Sueichi Kido lived just 2km (1.24 miles) from the epicentre of the Nagasaki blast. Aged five at the time, he suffered burns to part of his face. His mother, who received more serious injuries, had protected him from the full impact of the blast.

“We hibakusha have never given up on our mission of preventing the creation of any more hibakusha,” says Sueichi, who is now 83 and recently travelled to New York to give a speech at the United Nations to warn of the dangers of nuclear weapons.

When he woke up after fainting from the impact of the blast, the first thing he remembers seeing was a red oil can. For years he thought it was that oil can that had caused the explosion and surrounding devastation.

His parents didn’t correct him, choosing to shield him from the fact it had been a nuclear attack – but whenever he mentioned it, they would cry.

Not all injuries were instantly visible. In the weeks and months after the blast, many people in both cities began to show symptoms of radiation poisoning – and there were increased levels of leukaemia and cancer.

For years, survivors have faced discrimination in society, particularly when it came to finding a partner.

“‘We do not want hibakusha blood to enter our family line,’ I was told,” says Michiko.

But later, she did marry and had two children.

She lost her mother, father and brothers to cancer. Her daughter died from the disease in 2011.

“I feel lonely, angry and scared, and I wonder if it may be my turn next,” she says.

Another bomb survivor, Kiyomi Iguro, was 19 when the bomb struck Nagasaki. She describes marrying into a distant relative’s family and having a miscarriage – which her mother-in-law attributed to the atomic bomb.

“‘Your future is scary.’ That’s what she told me.”

Kiyomi says she was instructed not to tell her neighbours that she had experienced the atomic bomb.

Since being interviewed for the documentary, Kiyomi has sadly died.

But, until she was 98, she would visit the Peace Park in Nagasaki and ring the bell at 11:02 – the time the bomb hit the city – to wish for peace.

Sueichi went on to teach Japanese history at university. Knowing he was a hibakusha cast a shadow on his identity, he says. But then he realised he was not a normal human being and felt a duty to speak out to save humankind.

“A sense that I was a special person was born in me,” says Sueichi.

It is something the hibakusha all feel that they share – an enduring determination to ensure the past never becomes the present.

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has promised that Hezbollah will pay “a heavy price” for an attack that killed 12 children at a football pitch in Majdal Shams on the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights on Saturday.

The costs that Mr Netanyahu, his Defence Minister Yoav Gallant and Israel’s military chiefs decide to inflict on Hezbollah will determine whether the war either side of the Israel-Lebanon border stays limited and relatively controlled or explodes into something much worse.

The border war started the day after Hamas attacked Israel on 7 October last year, when Hezbollah fired rockets into Israel to support the Palestinians.

Since then, it has been fought within a grisly set of unspoken understandings. Israel and Hezbollah have mostly aimed at military targets, though both have also killed civilians.

As a result, the war, though highly dangerous, has stayed limited. Even so, tens of thousands of people on both sides of the border have left their homes. Busy communities have become ghost towns.

The fear from the outset has been that a big attack on either side’s civilians would cause uncontrolled escalation and in turn, cause a much worse war, as both Israel and Hezbollah bring their full force to bear.

Action against Hezbollah in the largely depopulated areas of south Lebanon might avoid escalation. Killing Lebanese civilians in Beirut or destroying infrastructure like bridges or power stations would not.

Hezbollah claims, unconvincingly, that it did not carry out the attack in Majdal Shams. Even so, it is hard to see why it would target Druze children at a football match.

Hezbollah has mostly stuck to the tacit rules of the conflict, trying to kill soldiers, not civilians since it started the border war on 8 October.

It might have been aiming for the extensive Israeli early warning stations on military positions on Mount Hermon.

Hezbollah is a much more formidable enemy of Israel than Hamas. It is more powerful than the fragile Lebanese state and operates without consulting it.

Hezbollah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah is close to the Supreme Leader of Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Hezbollah fighters are disciplined and well trained, and Iran has supplied them with a formidable arsenal of missiles that can hit Israel’s cities.

Hezbollah fought Israel to a standstill in their last big war in 2006. Its men have extensive combat experience after fighting for years in Syria in support of the regime of President Bashar al-Assad.

Israel’s leadership know all that. They also know that despite their vast firepower they have not yet subdued Hamas in Gaza, and the reservists their army relies on are feeling considerable strain.

Israel is also under heavy pressure from its allies, including the US – without which it cannot sustain its war effort – not to take action that would escalate the war into an all-out fight.

The Americans and the French have tried to negotiate a way of de-escalating the Israel-Hezbollah border war. The absence of a ceasefire in Gaza blights their chances of success.

The border between Israel and Lebanon remains the mostly likely place for the wider Middle East war to intensify.

Even if the crisis caused by the killing of young football players and spectators in Majdal Shams passes without a much worse conflagration, the “rules” of the border war are tattered, imperfect, unstable and continue to carry the risk that a single bloody incident will touch off another catastrophic war.

A deadly strike on a playing field in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights has sharply escalated fears of a new war in the region.

Israel says the Lebanon-based Hezbollah militant group was behind the attack, though the group has denied this.

On the evening of Saturday 27 July, a blast hit a playing field in the town of Majdal Shams, killing 12 children and young people from the minority Druze community.

It was the deadliest incident in or around Israel’s border with Lebanon since hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah escalated in October.

The strike, with its young victims, caused outrage and shock in Israel and around the world.

Israel says Hezbollah carried out the attack with an Iranian-made rocket, fired from a short distance away in Lebanon. The US also says Hezbollah was to blame.

Hezbollah has strongly denied involvement.

Hezbollah is a heavily armed militant and political movement based in Lebanon – Israel’s northern neighbour.

Its military wing is one of the most powerful forces in the region, equipped with up to 200,000 missiles and rockets, as well as attack drones. It is separate to the Lebanese army, and is much stronger.

Hezbollah is also politically influential in the Lebanese government.

The movement follows the Shia branch of Islam and is financed, equipped and trained by Iran, the dominant Shia power in the Middle East.

Hezbollah and its supporters consider it a legitimate resistance movement against Israel, which it claims still occupies part of Lebanese territory. Hezbollah is a strong supporter of Hamas and the Palestinians and rejects Israel’s right to exist.

The movement is banned as a terrorist organisation by Western states, Israel, Gulf Arab countries and the Arab League

• Bowen: Golan attack leaves border war’s unspoken rules in tatters
• Will Hezbollah go to war with Israel?
• Thousands mourn children killed in Golan Heights strike

The Golan Heights is a rocky plateau in south-west Syria, extending towards north-east Israel.

In the 1967 Middle East war, Israel captured about 1,200 km sq (about 460 square miles) of the Golan Heights, from which Syria had attacked it.

Israel annexed the area in 1981, in a move which has not been recognised by the vast majority of the international community. The Trump administration broke with decades of US policy by recognising Israeli sovereignty over the occupied Golan Heights in 2019.

Syria says the land has always belonged to it and has vowed to recover the territory, while Israel says the heights are crucial for its defence and will remain in its hands forever.

About 20,000 Jewish settlers live on the Golan Heights, which is also home to Israeli military bases and listening posts. The settlements are considered illegal under international law, though Israel disputes this.

The Druze people are an Arabic-speaking ethnic and religious group who mostly live in Lebanon, Israel, Jordan and Syria. Part of the community has lived on the Golan Heights for centuries.

Those on the Golan Heights went from Syrian to Israeli rule in June 1967, when Israel occupied most of it. Majdal Shams is the largest of four Druze-majority towns there.

Israel offered citizenship to all of the Golan Height’s residents, though many chose to retain their allegiance to Syria.

About 20% of the approximately 21,000 Druze who live there today have accepted or inherited Israeli citizenship. Those who have kept Syrian citizenship also have Israeli residency status, with most of the same rights as Israeli nationals apart from the right to vote.

Beyond the occupied Golan Heights, there about about 110,000 Druze who are full Israeli citizens. They are the largest non-Jewish community which serves in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), as part of the country’s mandatory national service.

There are about a million Druze in the world, though estimates vary. Their faith is an offshoot of a branch of Shia Islam but theirs is a distinct religion with its own set of practices and beliefs.

Hezbollah fired at Israeli targets the day after Israel was attacked by Hamas in the south on 7 October. Hezbollah says it is acting in solidarity with the Palestinians.

Since then, the two sides have exchanged fire on a regular basis, forcing thousands of people in Lebanon and Israel from their homes.

Israeli security officials say the rocket which killed the youngsters was part of a barrage which struck several locations on the occupied Golan Heights. That followed an Israeli strike that killed four Hezbollah fighters in south Lebanon.

Most Hezbollah attacks since 8 October have hit northern Israel, with fewer strikes on the Golan Heights. It has, though, repeatedly targeted Israeli military positions on part of the Golan Heights called the Shebaa Farms/Mount Dov, just a few miles from Majdal Shams.

Hezbollah may have calculated that the international reaction to attacking an area considered to be under Israeli occupation would be relatively muted, while keeping up pressure on the Israeli government and military as they fight a war in Gaza.

Hezbollah supports Hamas, which has been at war with Israel since 7 October, when Hamas gunmen launched an unprecedented attack on Israel, killing about 1,200 people and taking 251 others back to Gaza as hostages.

Hezbollah opened up a limited second front in Israel’s north the next day and the two sides have been exchanging fire ever since.

Both Hamas and Hezbollah are backed by Iran (although Hamas is a Sunni Muslim group and Hezbollah is Shia). Both are part of what Iran calls an “axis of resistance”, a loose alliance of like-minded, Iran-backed groups across the Middle East, acting against Israel and Israel’s key ally, the US, in the region.

Hezbollah has not got directly involved in the war in Gaza and has said it will stop firing at Israel if and when there is a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas.

British military veterans affected by a long-running toxic water scandal in the US, say they feel let down by a lack of support from the Ministry of Defence (MoD).

Between the 1950s and the 1980s, hundreds of UK personnel and civilians were posted or spent time at Camp Lejeune military base in North Carolina, where they were exposed to cancer-causing chemicals from a polluted water supply.

Relatives of those who have since died told the BBC that the MoD has done nothing to help them access a US compensation scheme for victims, which closes next month.

The MoD says it takes the safety of its personnel very seriously.

Joe House served 31 proud years with the Royal Marines, but a shadow now looms over those memories. The 69-year-old loved his decades of service, which included parachute training with the then-Prince Charles.

However, events of the past few years have left him wondering how far the British military had his back.

In 2021, Joe’s wife Carol died from a rare form of leukaemia, associated with a toxic water scandal at the US base where they lived for two years in the 1980s.

For decades, chemicals had been leaking into the water supplies at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina, increasing the risk of some cancers.

This contamination prompted one of the biggest mass civil legal actions in US history – about one million people were potentially exposed to the toxic water between the 1950s and 1980s.

Research by File on 4 suggests those put at risk included more than 1,000 British military personnel and civilians who went to Camp Lejeune in this period.

The Ministry of Defence has been criticised for not doing more to trace and alert any of these veterans or their families.

What’s more, a deadline for making compensation claims to the US government falls next month.

Joe only found out about the contamination by chance two years after Carol died.

“You expect as the service person to go into danger,” he says. “You don’t expect your family to go into danger and receive no support.”

Joe was posted at Camp Lejeune in 1982 with Carol and their one-year-old son, Paul, as part of an officers’ exchange programme run by the Royal and US Marines.

Home in the vast base, which hugs 14 miles of North Carolina’s coastline, was a neighbourhood called Paradise Point. Joe remembers that they were “looked after so well” by the US Marines.

“I don’t remember anyone saying anything about the water being a problem – it would have struck a chord because of having children,” he says.

Joe’s daughter, Sarah, was born on the camp in 1983. The posting was a “thoroughly enjoyable” highlight of a busy military life, which saw the family move 17 times over three decades.

In 2021, Joe and Carol were living in Portsmouth when blood tests ahead of a hip replacement operation revealed that Carol, a teacher, had acute myeloid leukaemia.

“The doctors said to her, ‘Why have you got this type of leukaemia normally associated with asbestos and nuclear submariners?’” says Joe.

“Which I thought, ‘Yeah this is odd.’”

Something in the Water: The Secrets of Camp Lejeune

File on 4 investigates the toxic water contamination at a US military base and asks if enough is being done to trace the British veterans and their families who lived there.

Listen on BBC Sounds

Carol died just before Christmas in 2021. Two years later, Joe spotted a notice in a veterans’ newsletter from a legal firm pursuing Camp Lejeune compensation claims.

“[My] immediate reaction was, ‘Oh my goodness, what’s gone on here?’

“You get thoughts like, ‘If we hadn’t gone would she still have been here? If we’d have known earlier could the treatment have been different?’”

Joe has now filed a compensation claim in the US on behalf of Carol but is frustrated with what he sees as a lack of action and support from the MoD.

“When it [the contamination] was known back in the US, what happened then? Why wasn’t the information passed back?”

The strong ties between US and British Marines at Camp Lejeune are illustrated in the camp’s now defunct newspaper, The Globe.

Reports of training programmes and visits from senior UK military figures, including then-defence secretary John Nott in 1981, run alongside adverts for the English Wives Club and Union Jack groceries shop.

The MoD has not been able to provide the BBC with details of how many British servicepeople were posted to Camp Lejeune.

However, research by File on 4 – based on decades-worth of archive files and military newsletters – suggests nearly 1,200 British personnel and civilians were there for at least one day between 1953 and 1987.

They, and the tens of thousands of Americans who lived and worked at the camp at that time, did not know the water supply was contaminated.

The pollution was found to come from multiple sources, including a leaking fuel farm and dumped solvents from a dry cleaner’s, that had seeped through the ground and into the water wells.

A series of public health studies found there was an increased risk of Parkinson’s disease and some cancers for people who had lived on the base.

This included a 20% higher chance of developing acute myeloid leukaemia, the cancer that killed Joe’s wife, when compared to people stationed at another military base.

An outcry led to legislation being passed in the US to help those affected. President Biden signed a law in 2022 allowing compensation claims.

This is open to any service personnel from around the world, or their families, who lived at the base for at least 30 non-consecutive days over the four decades in question.

The BBC’s research suggests at least 205 British people would qualify.

But a two-year window to submit a compensation claim closes on 10 August.

The Royal Marine Joe replaced on the exchange scheme was Jonathan Lear, who had been there since 1980 with his wife Chris and their two young daughters.

The posting was one of many during a 30-year military career for Jonathan that saw him reach the rank of major and awarded an OBE for his service.

Jonathan was diagnosed in 2002 with kidney cancer and died seven years later.

In May this year, BBC News broke the news of the water contamination scandal to his widow, Chris.

“Obviously lots of things were running around my head, thinking, ‘why is a journalist ringing me up to tell me this news?’” she says.

“There must be some other way that I should have been told.”

Chris says she feels very let down and thinks the MoD should have told her and other veterans’ families about the compensation in 2022.

More than 266,000 compensation claims have been submitted to the US Department of the Navy, which oversees the US Marines. It says it is not possible to break down how many of these are from British people.

The US Navy has not replied to questions about how news of the contamination was communicated to its allies, but a spokesman says it “remains committed to quickly, equitably, and transparently addressing claims submitted under the Camp Lejeune Justice Act”.

Responding to the BBC, the MoD said: “We take the safety of our personnel very seriously.” However, it did not answer a series of questions about the steps it had taken to publicise the toxic water scandal and the US compensation scheme.

A spokesman told us that British veterans who had served at Camp Lejeune – and believed their health was affected – could apply for compensation under the War Pension Scheme (WPS).

This offers compensation for any injury, illness or death caused by service before 2005.

However, the WPS has faced criticism for the high burden of proof required, and for not being open to posthumous claims by family members.

Andrew Buckham, a military lawyer for Irwin Mitchell, the firm handling Chris and Joe’s compensation claims, says the WPS route is not as straightforward as the US scheme.

The WPS is focused on the veteran and not their family members, he argues. “The onus is very much on the individual to link their condition to their military service, in this case in Camp Lejeune.”

This could complicate claims on behalf of victims such as Joe’s wife Carol, who was a civilian.

Under the US scheme, however, Mr Buckham points out that there is also the opportunity for relatives to make compensation claims.

Joe says finding out about the contamination, and what he describes as the MoD’s inaction on the matter, has taken away a lot of his goodwill towards the military.

“You’ve given 31 years and others have given longer,” he says. “You need support – it’s not there.”

Record-breaking rain left thousands of people stranded by floods in North Korea over the weekend, prompting leader Kim Jong Un to declare an “emergency”, state media reports.

Photographs show submerged farmland and homes after heavy rain hit Sinuiju city and Uiju county, which border China, according to the Rodong Sinmun.

State media said many were later rescued by airlift, although the BBC is unable to independently verify details of the report.

Such natural disasters are likely to compound existing issues like food scarcity and poor infrastructure in North Korea.

The secretive state – which is perhaps better known for concealing negative issues happening within its borders to the outside world – appears to have been relatively open about this latest disaster, with the official newspaper noting it was a “grave crisis”.

However, the report did not mention any casualty figures. It did say more than 4,200 North Korean residents were evacuated after “over 10 planes made as many as 20 consecutive round-trip flights”.

Even more unusual were the photographs of Mr Kim travelling through floodwaters in a black Lexus, according to Gordon Kang, a senior North Korean analyst at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies.

Previously, senior leaders fronted disaster management, Mr Kang pointed out. The pictures of Mr Kim amounted to “never-before-seen imagery”.

State media were also keen to say Mr Kim had “personally directed the battle”, adding that he had declared parts of three provinces as “special disaster emergency zones”.

“Kim Jong Un is putting himself out there and demonstrating that the state is able to provide for its people,” Mr Kang explained to the BBC.

He noted the rescue efforts seen in this instance were also noticeably more extensive than those seen after previous disasters.

“North Korea is able to do more because it has strengthened its relationships with China and Russia. It now has more resources to back up its rhetoric,” he added.

It is difficult to get an accurate picture of what is happening in North Korea, as state media reports – which are almost exclusively directed at its own population – typically only publish information putting the country or its leader in a positive light.

Flooding is not uncommon in North Korea. In fact, seasonal rains and monsoons have made floods a yearly affair, according to Mr Kang.

Such floods are exacerbated by major deforestation in its mountains and hills.

There are fears these could cripple North Korea’s agricultural sector – that is already limited in size because of its mountainous terrain.

North Korea is one of the poorest countries in the world. Recent estimates are scarce, but CIA World Factbook estimates its gross domestic product per capita was around $1,700 in 2015.

That said, the actual situation and numbers are unclear, given North Korea’s opaque economy.

Singer Taylor Swift has said the knife attack at a dance workshop themed around her music which left three children dead and nine more injured has left her “completely in shock”.

Children and adults were attacked at the event on Hart Street, Southport, on Monday.

Posting on Instagram, the star said she was “at a complete loss” for how to convey her sympathies.

Her fans have raised more than £100,000 for the families of the victims of a knife attack on Merseyside.

Swift, who played in nearby Liverpool as part of her European tour in June, said the “horror” of the attack, which had left three children dead, five critically injured and three more hurt, was “washing over her”.

She said the “loss of life of life and innocence” and the “horrendous trauma inflicted on everyone who was there” had left her at a “complete loss for how to ever convey my sympathies to these families”.

A crowdfunding page called Swifties for Southport has raised more than £102,000 for Alder Hey Children’s Hospital, where many of the injured have been treated.

The Taylor Swift UK & EU Facebook group organisers said the money would go to the hospital’s charity arm.

In a statement, the group said it was working with the hospital to “help raise money for the families affected by the tragedy in Southport”.

It said it was also “raising funeral funds for the two young Swifties who have tragically passed”.

They added that every donation would go to the hospital’s charity and would “help make a difference to those impacted in a time of great sadness”.

The attack also left two adults critically injured.

A 17-year-old boy, from Banks in Lancashire, has been arrested on suspicion of murder and attempted murder over the attack.

Police said the motivation for the attack was “unclear” but it was not being treated as terror-related.

Australia’s third-largest airline has gone into voluntary administration and cancelled flights on some of its routes.

Rex Airlines specialises in flying to dozens of smaller regional towns and cities across the country – many of which are not serviced by larger rivals Qantas and Virgin Australia.

Trading in Rex shares was halted earlier this week ahead of the announcement that Ernst & Young Australia has been appointed as administrator.

It comes just months after another Australian carrier – Bonza – went out of business in a turbulent domestic market.

Founded in 2002 after the collapse of Ansett, Rex flies in and out of around 56 airports.

It has a fleet of 66 aircraft – mostly 34-seater Saab 340 planes, but also nine Boeing 737-800s.

Since 2020 it has used those larger aircraft to operate between bigger cities such as Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane – routes already lucrative for other carriers.

Those flights have now been cancelled, with its 737-800s grounded.

Passengers who hold bookings will not get refunds, but can change their flight to travel with Virgin Australia free of charge.

Services on regional routes using the smaller planes will continue to operate.

Speaking before the administration was announced, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said that Rex was “important” to regional Australia.

“One thing we need to do is to make sure that we have a viable and ongoing Australian aviation industry,” he told ABC News.

Transport minister Catherine King said the government was prepared to “work with Rex”.

“We want to make sure that they have a future as part of aviation in this country, and we’re very determined to make sure that happens,” she said.

“We obviously don’t want to do that just at any cost. We want to be involved very closely in what that future might look like. I know this is a very uncertain time for staff, a very uncertain time for passengers.”

In a statement earlier on Tuesday, opposition transport spokeswoman Bridget McKenzie said there was not enough competition in the sector, given the dominance of Qantas – which also owns Jetstar – and Virgin Australia.

“Two aviation companies control more than 93% of the domestic space and companies like Rex create more competition which means cheaper airfares across the board,” she said.

Shares in Rex have roughly halved in the past 12 months.

The company also owns a 50% stake in another aviation business used to fly workers in and out of remote worksites such as mines.

Another Australian airline, low-cost carrier Bonza, went into administration earlier this year.

More than 300 Bonza employees were stood down in April, after it entered voluntary administration following the sudden repossession of its fleet of six Boeing 737 Max-8 aircraft.

It later collapsed after no rescue deal could be found.

Sweet Valley High author Francine Pascal has died at the age of 92.

Her agent Amy Bekower told the BBC she died on Sunday.

Pascal died of lymphoma in hospital in New York, her daughter Laurie Wenk-Pascal confirmed to the New York Times.

Pascal’s popular book series about identical US twins Elizabeth and Jessica Wakefield was a hit around the world with its tales of teen romance, friendship and sibling rivalry.

Set in the fictional Los Angeles suburb of Sweet Valley, the first book from the series was published in 1983, with 180 more produced over the following 20 years.

There were also several spin-offs, including Sweet Valley Twins and Sweet Valley University.

The books were translated into 27 languages, selling hundreds of millions of copies worldwide.

There was also an accompanying TV series, starring real-life twins Cynthia and Brittany Daniel, which ran for four seasons from 1994 to 1997.

In fact, Sweet Valley had gone full circle as Pascal had originally planned to sell the idea for a daytime drama featuring teenage characters “until a friend suggested that a book series, rather than a television series, might be the best way to fully develop the fictitious southern California town of Sweet Valley.”

She said some of her ideas came from her three daughters but also from her own experiences of growing up.

Pascal came up with the idea of Jessica and Elizabeth because she “always had a fascination with twins. The trick is to think of Elizabeth and Jessica as the good and bad sides of one person”.

A graphic novel called Sweet Valley Twins was published in 2022.

Pascal’s writing career began in the 1960s, co-writing for the soap opera The Young Marrieds alongside husband John Pascal.

She wrote several other young adult novels before creating Sweet Valley, including Hangin’ Out with Cici, My First Love and Other Disasters and The Hand-Me-Down-Kid.

She also penned adult novels Save Johanna! in 1981 and If Wishes Were Horses in 1994.

A mother has become the first person to be jailed under Australia’s forced marriage laws, for ordering her daughter to wed a man who would later murder the 21-year-old.

Sakina Muhammad Jan, who is in her late 40s, was found guilty of coercing Ruqia Haidari to marry 26-year-old Mohammad Ali Halimi in 2019, in exchange for a small payment.

Six weeks after the nuptials, Halimi killed his new bride – a crime for which he is now serving a life sentence.

On Monday, Jan – who pleaded not guilty – was sentenced to at least a year in jail, for what a judge called the “intolerable pressure” she had placed on her daughter.

Forced marriage laws were introduced in Australia in 2013 and carry a maximum penalty of seven years imprisonment. There are several cases pending, but Jan is the first person to be sentenced for the offence.

An Afghan Hazara refugee who fled persecution from the Taliban and migrated to regional Victoria with her five children in 2013, Jan’s lawyers have said she suffers enduring “grief” over the death of her daughter but continues to maintain her innocence.

The trial heard that Haidari had been first forced to enter an unofficial religious marriage at the age of 15 – a union that ended after two years – and did not want to marry again until she was 27 or 28.

“She wanted to pursue study and get a job,” Judge Fran Dalziel said in her sentencing remarks.

While Jan may have believed she was acting in the best interests of her daughter, Ms Dalziel said she had repeatedly ignored Haidari’s wishes and “abused” her power as a mother.

“[Haidari] would have known that not taking part in the marriage would raise questions about you and the rest of the family.”

“She was concerned not only about your anger, but your standing in the community.”

Jan was sentenced to three years in jail, but may be released after 12 months to serve the rest of her sentence in the community.

Afterwards, she sat in the court dock and told her lawyer she refused to accept the judge’s ruling before eventually being taken away, according to local media.

During Halimi’s sentencing for Haidari’s murder in 2021, a court in Western Australia – where the couple had lived – heard that he had been violent and abusive towards his new wife, forcefully insisting that she undertake household chores.

In a statement on Monday, Attorney General Mark Dreyfus described forced marriage as “the most reported slavery-like offence” in Australia, with 90 cases brought to the attention of federal police in 2022-23 alone.

Successive governments have promised to stamp out the practice – which police say is on the rise – and in May, Australia’s parliament voted to create an Anti-Slavery Commissioner to respond to claims of exploitation.

A surfer whose severed leg washed up on an Australian beach after it was bitten off by a shark has confirmed the limb has not been reattached.

Kai McKenzie, was surfing near Port Macquarie in New South Wales (NSW) last Tuesday, when what he describes as “the biggest shark I’ve ever seen” attacked him.

The 23-year-old managed to catch a wave into shore, where he was helped by an bystander who made a makeshift tourniquet to stem the bleeding.

His leg washed up a short time later and was put on ice by locals, before being taken to hospital, where a medical team had hoped surgery may save it.

But on Monday, almost a week after the attack, Mr McKenzie posted a picture of himself in hospital and an update on social media.

“Spot something missing? Hahah,” the post was captioned.

Detailing the “crazy shark attack”, in an earlier Instagram post he said the outpouring of public support has “meant the absolute world”.

“To be here… to be able to hold my beautiful Eve and my family is everything to me,” he wrote.

He also thanked the public for the donations that have flooded into a GoFundMe page that was set up to help him with medical bills, which has taken in over A$165,000 ($108,000; £84,000).

“I’ll be back in that water in no time!” he added.

A spokesperson for the local health district where Mr McKenzie is receiving treatment would not comment on whether reattachment surgery had been attempted, citing patient privacy.

Authorities say Mr McKenzie – who is a sponsored surfer – was bitten by a 3m great white shark and owes his life to an off-duty police officer who used a dog leash to make a tourniquet for the injured leg.

Mr McKenzie was rushed to a local hospital, before being flown to a major trauma centre in Newcastle, some 200km (124 miles) away. His severed leg also made the long journey.

The keen surfer had only recently returned to the water after suffering a significant neck injury which forced him to take time off from the sport.

In a statement on Thursday, the McKenzie family thanked all of the “medical staff… bystanders and first responders” who had worked to save the surfer’s life.

While Australia has more shark attacks than any other country except the US, fatal attacks remain relatively rare.

At least 93 people have been killed and dozens are still feared trapped after heavy rains triggered massive landslides in the southern Indian state of Kerala.

The landslides struck hilly areas in Wayanad district in the early hours of Tuesday.

Rescue operations are under way, but are being hindered by heavy rains and the collapse of a crucial bridge.

“The situation continues to remain very grave. The causalities may go up,” V Venu, the state’s top civil servant, told media.

The landslides are the worst disaster to hit Kerala since 2018, when deadly floods killed more than 400 people.

Officials say more than 200 army personnel have been deployed to assist security forces in search and rescue efforts.

Chief Minister Pinari Vijayan told a press conference that Tuesday’s “landslide has wiped out an entire area”.

Local hospitals are treating at least 123 injured, and more than 3,000 people have been rescued and moved to 45 relief camps, he said.

Apart from 65 confirmed deaths in Wayanad, 16 bodies have been found in the Chaliyar river, which flows into neighbouring Malappuram district. The body parts of a number other people have also been found.

Wayanad, a hilly district which is part of the Western Ghats mountain range, is prone to landslides during the monsoon season.

The landslides have hit several areas in the district, including Mundakkai, Attamala, Chooralmala and Kunhome.

Videos on social media showed muddy water gushing through unpaved streets and forested areas, washing away homes and leaving people and vehicles stranded.

A bridge connecting Chooralmala to Mundakkai and Attamala has collapsed, isolating the two places and making it difficult for rescue personnel to reach trapped families.

Rashid Padikkalparamban, a resident, told Reuters news agency that at least three landslides had hit the area around midnight, washing away the bridge.

State and national disaster relief teams are conducting rescue operations, with the help of local people.

Mr Venu said a small team had managed to cross the river and reach the areas that were cut off. He added that more resources were required, but strong river currents were making it difficult for rescue personnel to cross the river.

Air-relief operations also had to be postponed due to heavy rains, he said.

Raghavan C Arunamala, a local, described horrifying scenes.

“I saw a man trapped in the debris shouting for help. Firefighters and rescue workers have been trying to reach him for the last few hours,” he said.

Local media reports say that people are flocking to hospitals to search for their loved ones.

Nearly 350 families are believed to have lived in the affected regions, where a number of tea and cardamom estates are located.

Most victims are people who worked on the estates and were likely to have been asleep in their makeshift tents when landslides struck.

Wayanad district and neighbouring areas are still on alert due to the forecast of heavy rains.

Schools and colleges were closed in 10 of 14 districts.

In 2019, 17 people had died after a landslide hit Puthumala in Wayanad, around 10km from the areas currently affected.

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, who is a former MP from Wayanad, is set to visit the district on Wednesday.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi posted on X (formerly Twitter) that he had spoken to Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan and assured the federal government’s help in relief efforts.

Mr Modi also announced compensation of 200,000 rupees ($2,388; £1,857) to the victims’ families and 50,000 rupees to the injured.

It began with a group of black women on a Zoom call who hit a million-dollar fundraising target in about three hours.

A series of similar Zooms have followed, targeting other groups on behalf of the Kamala Harris presidential campaign.

The latest on Monday night was a three-hour call titled “White Dudes for Harris”, which organisers say attracted 190,000 people and raised more than $4m (£3.1m) in donations.

High-profile celebrities and politicians were among those present.

The US vice-president’s bid for the top job is barely more than a week old. Still, it is harnessing a grassroots energy that did not exist for President Joe Biden, with supporters using modern video conferencing to reach motivated voters and fundraise virtually.

In the past week – roughly 100 days from Election Day – the campaign has raised $200m (£155m) and signed up more than 170,000 new volunteers.

And unlike big donors who helped persuade Mr Biden to step aside and end his run just days ago, it is hundreds of thousands of ordinary Democrats now generating “Kamalamentum”.

Call attendance began in the tens of thousands – already a feat given Zoom meetings are usually restricted to 1,000 participants. But since then, two calls have drawn more than 150,000 people. Zoom did not respond to requests for comment on this story.

Republicans have criticised some of the identity-based virtual gatherings as “racist” and “desperate” pandering to liberal voters.

But while some may cringe at such overt use of identity to campaign, the impact of these virtual events is being taken seriously.

The Zoom sessions are “a signal that there is enormous enthusiasm out there for her candidacy,” said Republican consultant and pollster Whit Ayres.

And, he said, it would be a mistake for Republicans to criticise the identity-based sessions.

“It backfires when you start attacking people because of their identity. Because everyone else who shares their identity feels like you’re attacking them.”

Meanwhile, Ms Harris’s opponent Donald Trump and his party have said Democrats are more energised by Mr Biden’s surprise departure from the race, rather than by Ms Harris herself.

On 21 July, a matter of hours after the president announced he was dropping out and endorsing his deputy, Win with Black Women – a collective of black female political organisers – convened the first Zoom call.

The four-hour conversation attracted 44,000 participants and raised $1.6m for Ms Harris. The original goal was $1m in 100 days.

“I felt like when Obama got the nomination all over again. I actually felt more excited, to be honest,” Black Voters Matter co-founder LaTosha Brown, who joined the call, told The 19th News.

“My first response was, ‘OK, he’s out; now we’ve got to fight for this sister’.”

Ms Harris, 59, would be the first black woman – and first South Asian woman – to secure a major American party’s nomination for president. The official nomination will take place at the Democratic National Convention in August.

Gatherings of South Asian women have followed, celebrating their “auntie”, and Latinas have hailed a “hermana”.

On 22 July, the day after Mr Biden’s announcement, more than 53,000 black men met on Zoom and raised $1.3m in about six hours.

Another giant video conference on Thursday, “White Women: Answer the Call”, kept crashing as more than 160,000 people hopped aboard – the largest call in the history of Zoom, according to organisers.

Shannon Watts, a high-profile advocate for gun control and the call’s lead organiser, wrote on Twitter/X that the group had raised $11m for Ms Harris.

“White women are the largest voting bloc in this country. We make up 40% of the voters and so we are divided by religious, marital and education lines,” Ms Watts told CBS News, the BBC’s US partner.

“And even a tiny shift in our voting patterns can swing an entire election, and so that was a conversation that we needed to have on this call.”

By Monday evening, “White Dudes for Harris” appeared to have broken the Zoom record set by their female counterparts.

Supporters were told, sometimes in profane terms, not to let the Trump campaign speak for “all white men”.

“I’m white, I’m a dude and I’m for Harris – a woman president, man… how exciting,” actor Jeff Bridges, who played The Dude in the 1998 hit film The Big Lebowski, told the group.

Others who delivered remarks included actors Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Mark Ruffalo, Mark Hamill and Sean Astin, as well as four of Ms Harris’s vice-presidential contenders – Gary Peters, JB Pritzker, Pete Buttigieg and Tim Walz.

The Trump campaign should be concerned if Ms Harris can build on this momentum and avoid off-the-cuff gaffes during public events, Mr Ayres argues.

The Zoom sessions appear to be a helpful way for her message to reach voters in an informal setting while touching on her campaign’s stump points. It’s quite the opposite from her 2019 bid, when she was “incoherent” and spoke “gibberish” when challenged on key issues, he said.

“If she runs her campaign like she did the last time she ran for president, her campaign will collapse and Donald Trump will waltz into the White House,” Mr Ayres added.

“On the other hand, if she has learned how to be a competent national candidate under enormous pressure, she’s gonna give him a real run for his money.”

The enthusiasm for the Harris candidacy is a far cry from how July began, with wealthy Democratic donors, including Abigail Disney and George Clooney, publicly and privately voicing concerns about Mr Biden’s shaky re-election bid.

On Saturday, in the sprawling Florida retirement community of The Villages, residents in 500 golf carts rallied on behalf of Ms Harris – a remarkable event in a predominantly white and famously conservative stronghold.

Polls conducted over the past week show Ms Harris in a dead heat with Mr Trump, erasing his narrow lead or sitting within the margin of error in most cases.

Australia’s third-largest airline has gone into voluntary administration and cancelled flights on some of its routes.

Rex Airlines specialises in flying to dozens of smaller regional towns and cities across the country – many of which are not serviced by larger rivals Qantas and Virgin Australia.

Trading in Rex shares was halted earlier this week ahead of the announcement that Ernst & Young Australia has been appointed as administrator.

It comes just months after another Australian carrier – Bonza – went out of business in a turbulent domestic market.

Founded in 2002 after the collapse of Ansett, Rex flies in and out of around 56 airports.

It has a fleet of 66 aircraft – mostly 34-seater Saab 340 planes, but also nine Boeing 737-800s.

Since 2020 it has used those larger aircraft to operate between bigger cities such as Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane – routes already lucrative for other carriers.

Those flights have now been cancelled, with its 737-800s grounded.

Passengers who hold bookings will not get refunds, but can change their flight to travel with Virgin Australia free of charge.

Services on regional routes using the smaller planes will continue to operate.

Speaking before the administration was announced, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said that Rex was “important” to regional Australia.

“One thing we need to do is to make sure that we have a viable and ongoing Australian aviation industry,” he told ABC News.

Transport minister Catherine King said the government was prepared to “work with Rex”.

“We want to make sure that they have a future as part of aviation in this country, and we’re very determined to make sure that happens,” she said.

“We obviously don’t want to do that just at any cost. We want to be involved very closely in what that future might look like. I know this is a very uncertain time for staff, a very uncertain time for passengers.”

In a statement earlier on Tuesday, opposition transport spokeswoman Bridget McKenzie said there was not enough competition in the sector, given the dominance of Qantas – which also owns Jetstar – and Virgin Australia.

“Two aviation companies control more than 93% of the domestic space and companies like Rex create more competition which means cheaper airfares across the board,” she said.

Shares in Rex have roughly halved in the past 12 months.

The company also owns a 50% stake in another aviation business used to fly workers in and out of remote worksites such as mines.

Another Australian airline, low-cost carrier Bonza, went into administration earlier this year.

More than 300 Bonza employees were stood down in April, after it entered voluntary administration following the sudden repossession of its fleet of six Boeing 737 Max-8 aircraft.

It later collapsed after no rescue deal could be found.

US model Bella Hadid has spoken out after starring in an Adidas campaign which was criticised for what the brand called “unintentional” connections to the 1972 Munich Olympics.

Hadid, who is half Palestinian, said: “I am shocked, I am upset, and I am disappointed in the lack of sensitivity that went into this campaign.”

The advertising campaign for the retro trainers – the SL72s – referenced the 1972 Munich Olympics, which saw 11 Israeli athletes and a German police officer killed in the attack by a Palestinian group called Black September.

Adidas subsequently apologised and said it would “revise” its campaign, confirming to AFP that Hadid had been removed from it.

Hadid, 27, has been a vocal supporter of Palestinians and earlier this year donated money to support relief efforts for the war in Gaza.

“I would never knowingly engage with any art or work that is linked to a horrific tragedy of any kind,” Hadid said in a statement shared on an Instagram story on Monday evening.

“In advance of the campaign release, I had no knowledge of the historical connection to the atrocious events in 1972.”

She continued: “I am shocked, I am upset, and I am disappointed in the lack of sensitivity that went into this campaign. Had I been made aware, from the bottom of my heart, I would never have participated.

“My team should have known, Adidas should have known and I should have done more research so that I too would have known and understood, and spoken up.”

The campaign released earlier this month saw Hadid holding a floral bouquet for the relaunch of the trainer which originally debuted in 1972, the same year as the Munich Olympics.

Hadid continued: “While everyone’s intentions were to make something positive, and bring people together through art, the collective lack of understanding from all parties undermined the process.

“I do not believe in hate in any form, including antisemitism. That will never waver, and I stand by that statement to the fullest extent.

“Connecting the liberation of the Palestinian people to an attack so tragic, is something that hurts my heart.

“Palestine is not synonymous with terrorism and this campaign unintentionally highlighted an event that does not represent who we are.”

Hadid described herself as a “proud Palestinian woman”.

“I will forever stand by my people of Palestine while continuing to advocate for a world free of antisemitism,” she continued.

“Antisemitism has no place in the liberation of the Palestinian people.

“I will always stand for peace over violence, any day. Hate has no place here, and I will forever advocate for not only my people, but every person worldwide.”

A previous statement from Adidas Originals shared on Instagram said connections to the 1972 attack were “not meant”. The German company apologised “for any upset or distress caused to communities around the world”.

“We made an unintentional mistake,” the statement said, adding that it was “revising the campaign”.

When the ad was launched, it attracted criticism towards Hadid from some quarters, including on social media.

But other users defended the model and called for a boycott of Adidas following the move to pull the campaign.

The conflict in Gaza began when Hamas gunmen launched an unprecedented attack on Israel, killing about 1,200 people and taking 252 back to Gaza as hostages.

Israel responded by launching a military campaign in Gaza with the aims of destroying Hamas and freeing the hostages.

The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said on Monday that more than 39,000 people have been killed in almost 10 months of war between Israel and Palestinian militants.

A former US officer who was the only person to be convicted in connection with the My Lai massacre during the Vietnam War has died, according to reports.

William Calley died on 28 April at the age of 80, the Washington Post and New York Times reported, citing official death records.

Calley led the US Army platoon that carried out the mass murder of hundreds of civilians, including women and children, in the Vietnamese village of Son My in 1968.

He was sentenced to life in prison in 1971 for killing 22 civilians, but only served three days behind bars after then-President Richard Nixon ordered his release under house arrest.

The My Lai massacre is known as one of the worst war crimes in American military history. The killings shocked the US public at the time and galvanised the anti-Vietnam war movement.

According to the Vietnamese government, 504 people were killed in the massacre.

Calley, a junior college dropout from South Florida, enlisted in the army in 1964.

He was quickly promoted to junior officer and then second lieutenant, at a time when the US army was desperate for soldiers.

On the morning of 16 March 1968, Calley’s unit was airlifted to a hamlet in Son My – known to US soldiers at the time as My Lai 4 – on a mission to search and kill Viet Cong members and sympathisers.

When they arrived, the officers were met with no resistance from the residents of the village, who were found cooking breakfast over outdoor fires, according to a 1972 report by journalist Seymour Hersh in the New Yorker.

Mr Hersh reported that Calley and his unit proceeded to kill the civilians in the following hours. Many were rounded up in small groups and shot, he said. Others were pushed into a drainage ditch and shot, or were killed in or near their homes.

Women and girls were raped by American officers and then murdered, Mr Hersh reported.

The massacre was initially covered up but became public a year and a half later, thanks in large part to Mr Hersh’s reporting, which earned him a Pulitzer Prize.

Calley was one of 26 soldiers who were charged with criminal offences and the only one convicted.

His conviction polarised Americans. Some deemed him a war criminal while others felt the junior officer was used as a scapegoat to shift blame for a massacre that was ultimately the responsibility of his superiors.

While he was given a life sentence, Calley only served three-and-a-half years under house arrest after President Nixon commuted his sentence.

Calley married Penny Vick, the daughter of a jewelry store owner in Columbus, Georgia, in 1976. The couple had one son, William Laws Calley III, and divorced in the mid-2000s.

He rarely spoke about his role in the My Lai massacre and had refused to sit down with historians and reporters.

In 2009, he apologised while speaking to the Kiwanis Club of Greater Columbus.

“There is not a day that goes by that I do not feel remorse for what happened that day in My Lai,” he said. “I feel remorse for the Vietnamese who were killed, for their families, for the American soldiers involved and their families.”

The Washington Post first reported Calley’s death on Monday, after receiving a tip from a Harvard Law School graduate who uncovered it in public records.

No cause of death has been cited.

Record-breaking rain left thousands of people stranded by floods in North Korea over the weekend, prompting leader Kim Jong Un to declare an “emergency”, state media reports.

Photographs show submerged farmland and homes after heavy rain hit Sinuiju city and Uiju county, which border China, according to the Rodong Sinmun.

State media said many were later rescued by airlift, although the BBC is unable to independently verify details of the report.

Such natural disasters are likely to compound existing issues like food scarcity and poor infrastructure in North Korea.

The secretive state – which is perhaps better known for concealing negative issues happening within its borders to the outside world – appears to have been relatively open about this latest disaster, with the official newspaper noting it was a “grave crisis”.

However, the report did not mention any casualty figures. It did say more than 4,200 North Korean residents were evacuated after “over 10 planes made as many as 20 consecutive round-trip flights”.

Even more unusual were the photographs of Mr Kim travelling through floodwaters in a black Lexus, according to Gordon Kang, a senior North Korean analyst at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies.

Previously, senior leaders fronted disaster management, Mr Kang pointed out. The pictures of Mr Kim amounted to “never-before-seen imagery”.

State media were also keen to say Mr Kim had “personally directed the battle”, adding that he had declared parts of three provinces as “special disaster emergency zones”.

“Kim Jong Un is putting himself out there and demonstrating that the state is able to provide for its people,” Mr Kang explained to the BBC.

He noted the rescue efforts seen in this instance were also noticeably more extensive than those seen after previous disasters.

“North Korea is able to do more because it has strengthened its relationships with China and Russia. It now has more resources to back up its rhetoric,” he added.

It is difficult to get an accurate picture of what is happening in North Korea, as state media reports – which are almost exclusively directed at its own population – typically only publish information putting the country or its leader in a positive light.

Flooding is not uncommon in North Korea. In fact, seasonal rains and monsoons have made floods a yearly affair, according to Mr Kang.

Such floods are exacerbated by major deforestation in its mountains and hills.

There are fears these could cripple North Korea’s agricultural sector – that is already limited in size because of its mountainous terrain.

North Korea is one of the poorest countries in the world. Recent estimates are scarce, but CIA World Factbook estimates its gross domestic product per capita was around $1,700 in 2015.

That said, the actual situation and numbers are unclear, given North Korea’s opaque economy.

An Indian teenager is now among a handful of people in the world to survive a rare brain-eating amoeba, partly due to his father coming across a public awareness campaign on social media.

Afnan Jasim, 14, is thought to have become infected in June after he went for a swim in a local pond in the southern state of Kerala.

His doctor said that the amoeba – called Naegleria fowleri – likely entered his body from the water that had been contaminated by it.

Primary Amoebic Meningoencephalitis (PAM), the disease caused by the amoeba, has a mortality rate of 97%.

According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, between 1971 and 2023, just eight other people have survived the disease across four countries – Australia, US, Mexico and Pakistan.

In all the cases, the infection was diagnosed between nine hours and five days after the symptoms appeared – which played a crucial role in their recovery.

Medical experts say that timely treatment is key to curing the disease. Symptoms of PAM include headache, fever, nausea, vomiting, disorientation, a stiff neck, a loss of balance, seizures and/or hallucinations.

Afnan began experiencing the symptoms five days after he had gone for a swim in a local pond in Kozhikode district. He developed seizures and began complaining of severe headaches.

His parents took him to the doctor, but Afnan did not improve.

Luckily, his father MK Siddiqui, 46, had the presence of mind to connect his son’s symptoms with something he had read on social media.

Mr Siddiqui, who is a dairy farmer, said he was reading about the effects of the Nipah virus – a boy recently died of it in Kerala – on social media when he chanced upon information about the deadly brain-eating amoeba.

“I read something about seizures being caused by an infection. As soon as Afnan developed seizures, I rushed him to the local hospital,” Mr Siddiqui said.

When the seizures didn’t stop, he took his son to another hospital, but this one didn’t have a neurologist.

Finally, they went to the Baby Memorial Hospital in Kozhikode, where the boy was treated by Dr Abdul Rauf, a consultant intensive care paediatrician.

“The disease was diagnosed within 24 hours of the onset of symptoms,” Dr Rauf told the BBC.

Dr Rauf credits Mr Siddiqui with informing doctors about Afnan’s swim in the local pond and his subsequent symptoms, which helped them diagnose the disease in time.

The amoeba is known to enter the human body through nasal passages and it travels through the cribriform plate – which is located at the base of the skull and transmits olfactory nerves to enable the sense of smell – to reach the brain.

“The parasite then releases different chemicals and destroys the brain,” says Dr Rauf.

Most patients die because of intracranial pressure [exercised by fluids inside the skull and on the brain tissue].

He added that the amoeba was found in freshwater lakes, particularly in water that was warm.

“People should not jump or dive into water. That is a sure way for the amoeba to enter the body. If the water is contaminated, the amoeba enters through your nose,” he says.

The best thing to do, he says, is to avoid contaminated water bodies. Even in swimming pools, people are advised to keep their mouths above the water level.

“Chlorination of water resources is very important,” Dr Rauf adds.

A research paper published in Karnataka state has also reported cases of infants locally and in places like Nigeria contracting the infection from bathwater.

Since 1965, some 400 cases of PAM have been reported around the world, while India has had fewer than 30 cases so far.

“Kerala reported a PAM case in 2018 and 2020,” the doctor said.

Just this year, six cases have been recorded in Kerala. Of these, three have died and one is in a critical condition. While Afnan has been discharged, the sixth person has also responded to treatment and is recovering.

“After two deaths at our hospital, we informed the government as it was a public health issue and an awareness campaign was launched,” Dr Rauf said. It was this awareness campaign that Mr Siddiqui had come across on social media.

Doctors conducted tests on Afnan which helped detect the presence of the amoeba in the boy’s cerebrospinal fluid – which is found in the brain and spinal cord – and then administered a combination of antimicrobial drugs by injecting them into his spine.

The treatment also included administering miltefosine – a drug that the state government imported from Germany.

“This drug is used for rare diseases in India but it is not very costly,” Dr Rauf said.

“On the first day, the patient was not very conscious due to the seizures. But within three days, Afnan’s condition started improving,” he added.

A week later, doctors repeated the tests and found the amoeba was no longer present in his body. But he will continue taking medicines for a month, after which he plans to resume his studies.

The experience has left a profound impact on Afnan, who says he now wants to do a degree in nursing.

“He told the doctor that nurses work so hard for the patients,” Mr Siddiqui says.

Air New Zealand has abandoned a 2030 goal to cut its carbon emissions, blaming difficulties securing more efficient planes and sustainable jet fuel.

The move makes it the first major carrier to back away from such a climate target.

The airline added it is working on a new short-term target and it remains committed to an industry-wide goal of achieving net zero emissions by 2050.

The aviation industry is estimated to produce around 2% of global carbon dioxide emissions, which airlines have been trying to reduce with measures including replacing older aircraft and using fuel from renewable sources.

“In recent months, and more so in the last few weeks, it has also become apparent that potential delays to our fleet renewal plan pose an additional risk to the target’s achievability,” Air New Zealand Chief Executive Officer, Greg Foran, said in the statement.

In 2022, Air New Zealand adopted a 2030 target to cut its emissions by almost 29%.

It was much more ambitious than a 5% reduction goal over the same period set by the global aviation industry.

Sustainable Aviation Fuels (SAF) are a key part of the sector’s strategy to cut emissions but airlines have struggled to purchase enough of it.

“The price of [SAF] is more expensive than traditional fuels, and there is not enough capacity to produce that at scale,” said Ellis Taylor from aviation analytics firm Cirium.

International airlines body IATA said the industry’s emissions reduction target was “net zero 2050 and airlines are not cutting back on the pledge”.

It added that while this target was achievable, “we are also reliant on the right supportive measures from governments”.

“We need scale up of all solutions including SAF production as well as emerging technological solutions including the use of hydrogen and carbon removals.”

Mr Taylor said that airlines were also being affected by delays to new aircraft deliveries, “with both Boeing and Airbus under-delivering new jets over the last few years, largely due to snags in the wider supply chains of the manufacturers”.

Aerospace giant Boeing has faced a number of major issues in recent years.

This month, Boeing agreed to plead guilty to a criminal fraud conspiracy charge after the US found the company violated a deal meant to reform it after two fatal crashes by its 737 Max planes that killed 346 passengers and crew.

The firm has also come under increased scrutiny after a door panel in a Boeing plane operated by Alaska Airlines blew out soon after take-off and forced the jet to land.

Technology giant Microsoft has apologised after thousands of people across the world reported issues with its products, ranging from email service Outlook to the hit game Minecraft.

Downdetector, which tracks websites, showed thousands had reported problems on Tuesday afternoon.

The incident comes less than two weeks after a major global IT outage left over eight million computers using Microsoft systems inaccessible, impacting healthcare and travel, after a flawed software update by the cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike.

Microsoft said it had implemented a fix for the problem which “shows improvement”, and it will monitor the situation “to ensure full recovery”.

But it has separately told people it has “no ETA” for how long the issue would take to resolve.

The tech giant previously said it was “investigating reports of issues connecting to Microsoft services globally”.

“We sincerely apologise for the inconvenience,” it said in a post on X, formerly Twitter.

“Our experts are currently investigating the situation in order to resolve it as soon as possible.”

It comes hours before Microsoft is set to announce its latest financial reports at 2230 BST.

An alert on the technology giant’s service status website said the outage impacted Microsoft Azure – the cloud computing platform behind many of its services – and Microsoft 365, which includes systems like Microsoft Office and Outlook.

It also listed its cloud systems Intune and Entra as among those impacted.

“It seems slightly surreal that we’re experiencing another serious outage of online services from Microsoft,” said computer security expert Professor Alan Woodward.

“The culprit appears to be network infrastructure but you would have hoped that with such important cloud-based systems there would not be a single point of failure.

“You’d expect Microsoft’s network infrastructure to be bomb-proof.”

The outage appears to have also impacted other services which rely on Microsoft’s platforms, with Cambridge Water among those affected.

“Due to worldwide issues with Microsoft Azure, a problem with our website is affecting several services including MyAccount and PayNow,” it said in a post on X.

Two children have been killed and nine injured, six critically, in a “ferocious” knife attack at a children’s dance workshop.

Two adults are also in a critical condition after being stabbed as they tried to protect children at the Taylor Swift-themed event on Hart Street in Southport, Merseyside Police said.

A 17-year-old boy, from Banks in Lancashire, has been arrested on suspicion of murder and attempted murder.

Police said the motivation for the attack was “unclear” but it was not being treated as terror-related.

One witness described the scene as “horrendous” and said they had “never seen anything like it”.

The King and the prime minister have led tributes to the victims, offering their “heartfelt condolences” to those affected.

Merseyside Police declared a major incident after receiving emergency calls at 11.47 BST, on what was the first full week of the school summer holidays for many children in the UK.

Armed response vehicles, 13 ambulances and the fire service rushed to the dance class, which was being held for children aged six to 10.

Chief Constable Serena Kennedy told a news conference that officers responding to the calls “were shocked” to find that multiple people, many of whom were children, had been subjected to a “ferocious attack” and had suffered serious injuries.

“It is understood that the children were attending a Taylor Swift event at a dance school when the offender armed with a knife walked into the premises and started to attack the children,” she said.

“We believe that the adults who were injured were bravely trying to protect the children who were being attacked.”

She added: “As a mum of two daughters, and the nana of a five-year-old granddaughter, I cannot begin to imagine the pain and suffering the families of the victims are currently going through and I want to send them our heartfelt condolences and sympathies”.

Ms Kennedy said the 17-year-old suspect, who police said was born in Cardiff, will now be questioned by detectives.

Merseyside Police said it was not looking for anyone else in connection with the attack and that the “motivation for the incident remains unclear”.

Ms Kennedy added that Counter Terrorism Police North West had offered their support to Merseyside Police but that the incident was not currently being treated as terror-related.

Journalist Tim Johnson, from Eye on Southport, said the attack happened at the Hope of Hart children’s club, which is housed in a former warehouse building on a back street.

“It was horrendous. I’ve never seen anything like it,” Mr Johnson said.

“There were so many police cars, it was a mass of blue lights. I saw ambulance men and women in tears. People were in tears in the streets.”

Alder Hey Children’s Hospital declared a “major incident”, while the North West Ambulance Service said it had sent 13 ambulances to the scene.

Dave Kitchin, head of operations at the ambulance service, said they treated 11 casualties at the scene, who were sent by emergency ambulance and heli-med to Alder Hey and Royal Manchester Children’s hospitals, Aintree University Hospital, Southport and Formby District General Hospital and Ormskirk District General Hospital.

He described the scene that met paramedics as “devastating”, adding, “no doubt this incident will have a lasting impact on the whole community, and our thoughts are very much with them at this difficult time”.

Great North Air Ambulance Service confirmed its critical care team was also sent to the scene.

A spokesman added: “We delivered advanced emergency care to one patient before accompanying them to hospital by road.”

Colin Parry, owner of Masters Vehicle Body Repairs, which is next door to where the attack happened, said that shortly before it began there was a commotion outside because a young man wearing a green hoodie and a face mask had arrived by taxi but was refusing to pay the driver.

He said an employee called him back out a short time later and that he saw numerous “young kids, all bleeding”.

“It’s like something from America, not like sunny Southport.”

Mr Parry told BBC Radio 5 Live that a builder helped lead some of the children away from the scene of the attack and neighbours helped take “about 10 girls to safety”.

“The community was coming together, everyone was trying to help. Everyone was trying to save the young kids,” he added.

In a statement on X, The King said he and his wife were “profoundly shocked” to hear of the “utterly horrific incident”.

He added: “We send our most heartfelt condolences, prayers and deepest sympathies to the families and loved ones of those who have so tragically lost their lives, and to all those affected by this truly appalling attack.”

The Prince and Princess of Wales called the attack “horrid and heinous” adding that they were sending “love, thoughts and prayers to all those involved”.

They said on X: “As parents, we cannot begin to imagine what the families, friends and loved ones of those killed and injured in Southport today are going through.

“Thank you also to the emergency responders who, despite being met with the most horrific scenes, demonstrated compassion and professionalism when your community needed you most.”

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said: “I know the whole country is deeply shocked about what they’ve seen and what they’ve heard.

“I know I speak for everyone in the whole country in saying, our thoughts and condolences are with the victims, their families, their friends and the wider community and it’s almost impossible to imagine the grief that they’re going through, and the trauma that they’re going through.

“I do want to thank the emergency services and Merseyside Police who have had to respond to the most difficult of circumstances today.”

Southport FC, whose ground is only a few streets from the scene of the attack, said it had cancelled a pre-season friendly against Morecambe FC scheduled for Tuesday “out of respect to those who have so tragically lost their lives”.

It also said its club lounge would be open between 10:00 and 15:00 BST on Tuesday and specialist support staff available for anyone who wished to “gather, share their thoughts, and find support during this difficult time”.

Everton Football Club and Liverpool Football Club also offered their condolences to all those affected.

Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said she was “deeply concerned” about the “very serious incident”, while Southport MP Patrick Hurley added that he was “hoping for the best possible outcomes to the casualties affected”.

Steve Rotheram, mayor of Liverpool City Region, has urged the public not to spread “unconfirmed speculation and false information”.

Merseyside’s Police and Crime Commissioner Emily Spurrell said she was “utterly shocked and devastated” to hear of the “truly appalling” incident.

Councillor Marion Atkinson, Leader of Sefton Council, said the council was “deeply shocked and saddened at the tragic events”.

“Our thoughts are with all the victims of this attack and their families,” she said.

“I’d like to thank all those who responded to the incident and helped in any way they could in what must have been extremely difficult circumstances.

“We know this has caused concern and upset in the local community and while there is no immediate threat to the public we will be providing help and support in the coming days and weeks”.

A fundraiser for the victims and their families has been set up by a group of Taylor Swift fans, named “Swifties for Southport”.

Cristina Jones, from the UK and EU Taylor Swift Facebook group told BBC Newsbeat: “The idea that those parents are going through hell right now and the idea they had any financial stress over this breaks our hearts.”

“We can’t make it better in any way. But taking away some stress was definitely a priority for us”, she added.