Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has acknowledged, for the first time, that his military is conducting an offensive inside Russia’s western Kursk region.

In his nightly televised address on Saturday, Mr Zelensky said Ukraine’s military is pushing the war “onto the aggressor’s territory.”

This comes five days after Ukraine began its operation, which has taken Russia by surprise and prompted mass evacuations across both sides of the border.

In Ukraine, explosions were reported in the capital Kyiv and in the Sumy region in the early hours of Sunday.

Kyiv mayor Vitali Klitschko said air defence units are “operating” and air raid alerts continue in the city. Writing on the Telegram messaging app he warned civilians to stay in shelters.

Kyiv, its surrounding region and all of eastern Ukraine are under air alert, the country’s air force said.

In his Saturday address, President Zelensky thanked Ukraine’s “warriors”, and said he had discussed the operation in Russia with the country’s senior military commander Oleksandr Syrsky.

“Ukraine is proving that it can indeed restore justice and ensure the necessary pressure on the aggressor,” he added.

Reports say Ukrainian troops are threatening to seize one regional town as they fight more than 10km (six miles) inside Russia – the deepest advance since Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

At least 13 people were injured – two seriously – in Kursk in the early hours of Sunday, the region’s acting governor Alexei Smirnov said.

More than 76,000 people have already been evacuated from the border area, according to Russia’s state Tass news agency, and Mr Smirnov said on Sunday he had ordered officials to speed up the operation to get civilians to safety.

Russia’s National Counter-Terrorism Committee imposed a “counter-terrorism operation” regime across three regions on Friday in response to Ukraine’s surprise cross-border incursion.

This means authorities in the border regions of Kursk, Belgorod and Bryansk regions can restrict the movement of people and vehicles and use phone tapping among other measures.

Russia said that up to 1,000 Ukrainian troops, supported by tanks and armoured vehicles, entered the Kursk region on Tuesday morning.

The Ukrainians have since reportedly seized a number of villages, and are also threatening the regional town of Sudzha.

On Friday, a video emerged purportedly showing armed Ukrainian soldiers who claimed to have control over the town, as well as a key Russian gas facility there owned by the Gazprom company.

BBC Verify has now confirmed that the footage was indeed from the Gazprom facility on the north-western outskirts of Sudzha, about 7km from the border with Ukraine. The video alone does not verify the claim that Ukrainian troops have taken the whole town.

Russian military bloggers earlier claimed that the town was in Moscow’s hands.

BBC Verify checked and confirmed the location of another video posted online on Friday morning. It shows a 15-vehicle Russian convoy damaged, burned and abandoned on a road through the town of Oktyabrskoe, roughly 38km from the border on the Russian side.

The footage also shows Russian soldiers – some injured, some possibly dead – among the vehicles.

Moscow has since sent reinforcements – including tanks and rocket-launcher systems – to the Kursk region.

In its latest report on Saturday morning, the Russian defence ministry said its troops were “continuing to repel the attempted invasion” of Ukrainian forces.

It claimed that Ukraine’s attempts to “break through deep into Russian territory” had been foiled.

The Russian claims have not been independently verified.

On Friday, the UN nuclear agency urged both Russia and Ukraine to “exercise maximum restraint” as the fighting was edging closer to the Kursk nuclear power plant – one of the biggest such facilities in Russia.

International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief Rafael Grossi said measures must be taken “to avoid a nuclear accident with the potential for serious radiological consequences”.

The power plant is located about 60km north-east of Sudzha.

Mosques attacked with bricks and stones. Marchers chanting “we want our country back.” And a man’s head reportedly stamped on during a racist attack.

These scenes from the past week in England and Northern Ireland have sparked painful memories among British Asians who remember the 1970s and 80s, when racist violence was widespread and the National Front was on the rise.

Harish Patel, in his 70s, says it broke his heart.

He says teenagers will have heard from their parents and grandparents about what life could be like in this country.

“They’ll have thought it was all over. And now they are experiencing it for themselves.”

The disorder was triggered by the fatal stabbing of three young girls in Southport – followed by false speculation that the suspect was a Muslim asylum seeker.

It sent a thunderbolt of fear down Asian and minority communities.

Mungra, an elderly Asian woman who arrived from Kenya 50 years ago, was taken back to her early days in London.

She worried the escalating violence would make it too frightening to get milk from the corner shop. “That’s how we felt in those days, and I worry.”

Tens of thousands of South Asians came to work in the the UK’s factories and public services in the 1950s, as the country rebuilt its post-war economy.

By the early 1970s, the population had grown to around half a million – because of family reunions and Asians fleeing East Africa, many of whom had been expelled from Uganda.

Immigration became a politically charged issue. In 1968, Conservative MP Enoch Powell had given his explosive “rivers of blood” speech, in which he said that by permitting mass immigration, the country was “heaping up its own funeral pyre”.

The extreme right-wing National Front was at its most vocal and regularly held rallies. Asians had to contend with day-to-day harassment and police brutality.

“The climate and fear of racism was so profound that it was hard to ignore that I was of coloured skin,” Mungra says.

“It was the usual name-calling when walking on the street, the p-word.“

Mungra witnessed the riots in Southall, a predominantly Asian part of west London. They took place in 1979, three years after the racist murder of local Sikh teenager Gurdip Singh Chaggar.

Weeks before a general election, the National Front decided to hold a meeting in Southall’s town hall.

Thousands – mainly Asians, but also anti-racist allies – took to the streets in protest against the far-right and police brutality.

Forty were injured, including 21 police, 300 were arrested and a teacher was killed, probably by an officer who struck a fatal blow, according to a Met Police report.

These were brutal times which left a lasting trauma on those who lived through them. And they bring me back to my own childhood.

I was only a toddler when a lit firework was put through the letterbox of my parents’ home in Hampshire. Our neighbours didn’t like Asians living on the street.

My mum recalls grabbing my brother – a hyperactive child a few years older than me – as he ran towards the front door.

She was shaking for hours afterwards. She’ll never forget how frightened she felt in that moment.

It happened months after the p-word was scrawled on our garage door. We were living with my Gujarati sari-wearing grandmother at the time, and my parents felt incredibly vulnerable.

They felt they were being targeted for looking different when all they were doing was trying to live a happy life in 1980s Britain. We moved shortly afterwards.

It’s striking that decades later, I’ve heard Asians – including members of my own family – saying they were again scared to leave their homes.

Nervously tugging his fingers, Iqbal, a father from Bolton in his 50s, told me he was terrified and that his children had told him to not go outside.

“I thought these days of race hatred were over,” he said.

Over the seven days of riots, hotels housing asylum seekers were attacked, minority-owned businesses were looted and cars and buildings set alight. More than 400 arrests were made.

Muslims were particularly targeted – with missiles hurled at mosques, Islamophobic chants and Muslim gravestones in Burnley vandalised.

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Police patrols were ramped up, but some younger people said they didn’t trust officers to protect them.

“We don’t feel like they’ve got our back when they haven’t protected us so far. We feel vulnerable and feel like we’ve got to protect ourselves,” said Mohammad, in his 20s.

But Wednesday felt like a turning point.

As communities braced for a night of disorder, after names and addresses of immigration lawyers were spread online, the unrest largely failed to materialise.

Instead, thousands of anti-racism protesters rallied in cities and towns across England. People chanted “racism off our streets”.

In Accrington, Lancashire, Muslim anti-fascist protesters who went to protect a local mosque were embraced by pubgoers, in a “massive” moment of unity.

“There were a few shouts of ‘respect’ which was fantastic; we need to see unity to stop all this far-right violence,” said Haddi Malik, who was in the group.

The show of force has offered people a moment of hope and courage, and a sense of relief.

But the ripples of intimidation haven’t yet settled. Some have been left wondering whether they’re really accepted in this country.

“I don’t want to be made to feel like that,” says 20-year-old Muslim Hamza Moriss. “I’m a part of this country as much as they are.”

Meanwhile, Mungra feels a deep sense of unease.

“The last week has made me think that not much has really changed, that racism is still very much alive and we won’t ever actually be seen as the same… not really.”

On the face of it, the earthquake that struck southern Japan on Thursday was not a big deal.

The magnitude 7.1 quake did little damage and the tsunami warning was quickly scaled back.

But the earthquake was swiftly followed by a warning – one which had never been given before.

There was, Japan’s meteorological agency said, an increased risk of a “major earthquake”. Japan’s prime minister has cancelled a planned trip to a summit in Central Asia to be in the country for the next week.

For many in Japan, thoughts turned to the “big one” – a once-in-a-century quake that many had grown up being warned about.

Worst-case scenarios predict more than 300,000 dead, with a wall of water potentially 30m (100ft) striking along the East Asian nation’s Pacific coast.

Which sounds terrifying. And yet, the overwhelming feeling that Masayo Oshio was left with was confusion.

“I am baffled with the advisory and don’t know what to make of it,” she admitted to the BBC from her home in Yokohama, south of the capital, Tokyo.

“We know we cannot predict earthquakes and we have been told the big one is coming one day for so long, so I kept asking myself: is this it? But it does not seem real to me.”

So, what is the “big one”, can it be predicted – and is it likely to strike any time soon?

Japan is a country used to earthquakes. It sits on the Ring of Fire and, as a result, experiences about 1,500 earthquakes a year.

The vast majority do little damage, but there are some – like the one which struck in 2011 measuring magnitude 9.0, sending a tsunami into the north-east coast and killing more than 18,000 people.

But the one that authorities fear may strike in this more densely populated region to the south could – in the absolute worst-case scenario – be even more deadly.

Earthquakes along the Nankai Trough – an area of seismic activity which stretches along Japan’s Pacific coast – have already been responsible for thousands of deaths.

In 1707, a rupture along its entire 600km length caused the second-biggest earthquake ever recorded in Japan and was followed by the eruption of Mount Fuji.

These so-called “megathrust” earthquakes tend to strike every hundred years or so, often in pairs: the last ones were in 1944 and 1946.

Experts say there is a 70% to 80% chance of a magnitude 8 or 9 quake striking somewhere along the trough in the next 30 years, with worst-case scenarios suggesting it would cause trillions in damage, and potentially kill hundreds of thousands.

And this long-anticipated event is, according to geologists Kyle Bradley and Judith A Hubbard, “the original definition of the ‘Big One’”.

“The history of great earthquakes at Nankai is convincingly scary” so as to be concerning, the pair acknowledged in their Earthquake Insights newsletter on Thursday.

Not according to Robert Geller, professor emeritus of seismology at the University of Tokyo.

“The issuance of the warning yesterday has almost nothing to do with science,” he told the BBC.

This, he argues, is because while earthquakes are known to be a “clustered phenomenon”, it is “not possible to tell in advance whether a quake is a foreshock or an aftershock”.

Indeed, only about 5% of earthquakes are “foreshocks”, say Bradley and Hubbard.

However, the 2011 earthquake was preceded by a 7.2 magnitude foreshock, they note – one which was largely ignored.

The warning system was drawn up after 2011 in an attempt to prevent a disaster of this scale again, and Thursday was the first time the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) used it.

But, crucially, while it told people to be prepared, it did not tell anyone to evacuate. Indeed, they were keen to play down any massive imminent risk.

“The likelihood of a new major earthquake is higher than normal, but this is not an indication that a major earthquake will definitely occur,” the JMA said.

Even so, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida announced he had cancelled his plans to travel out of Japan to “ensure our preparations and communications are in order”.

He added that he feared people would be “feeling anxious”, given it was the first time such an advisory had been issued.

Masayo Oshio does not seem to be, however.

“I feel that the government is overplaying it,” she said.

Prof Geller was more scathing, saying the advisory was “not a useful piece of information”.

The system allows for either a warning or a lower-level alert to be sent out. Thursday was an alert, advising people to be prepared to evacuate.

And, anecdotally, it seems to have worked. Even in a country used to receiving alerts on their phones, the “Nankai Trough” effect – and threat of the “Big One” – made people stop and take notice.

“One thing I did when I saw the advisory was to check what we have at home and make sure we are prepared, since I have not done that for a while,” admitted Masayo Oshio.

And this has been replicated along the Pacific coast.

In Nichinan, Miyazaki Prefecture, near the epicentre of Thursday’s 7.1, officials were inspecting the conditions of already-opened evacuation shelters. In Kochi Prefecture, western Japan, 10 municipalities opened at least 75 evacuation shelters by Friday morning , according to Kyodo news agency.

The thermal plant operator Jera Co., a joint venture between Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc. and Chubu Electric Power Co., said it was on emergency alert, reaffirming communication routes with fuel carriers and evacuation protocols for piers.

In the town of Kuroshio, also in Kochi, elderly residents and others were urged to evacuate voluntarily to safer locations. Officials of Wakayama Prefecture, western Japan, confirmed evacuation routes in co-operation with local municipalities.

Prof Geller – for all his scepticism – says it is a good opportunity to “make sure you’re doing all the routine precautions you should be doing anyway”.

“Have a week’s worth of water on hand, some canned food, and then maybe have some batteries for your flashlight,” he advises.

An Israeli air strike on a school building sheltering displaced Palestinians in Gaza City has killed more than 70 people, the director of a hospital has told the BBC.

Fadl Naeem, head of al-Ahli Hospital where many of the casualties were taken, said those were the victims who had been identified so far, with the remains of many others so badly disfigured that identification was difficult.

An Israeli military spokesman said al-Taba’een school “served as an active Hamas and Islamic Jihad military facility”, which Hamas denies.

The strike has been criticised by Western powers, as well as regional countries which have said it shows Israel has no desire to reach a ceasefire or end the Gaza war.

Israel has attacked several such shelters in Gaza in the past few weeks.

According to the United Nations, 477 out of 564 school buildings in Gaza had been directly hit or damaged as of 6 July, with more than a dozen targeted since.

Al-Taba’een school housed more 1,000 people – having recently received dozens of displaced people from the town of Beit Hanoun, after the Israeli army ordered them to leave their homes.

The building also served as a mosque and the Israeli strike hit during dawn prayers, witnesses said.

Jaafar Taha, a student who lives near the school, told the BBC the sound of the bombing was followed by screaming and noise.

“‘Save us, save us,’ they were screaming,” he said.

“The scene was horrific. There were body parts everywhere and blood covering the walls.”

Salim Oweis, spokesman for the UN children’s agency, Unicef, told the BBC the attack was “really outrageous”.

“All those schools are really packed with civilians, children, mothers and families, who are taking refuge in any empty space whether it’s a school or it’s a mosque, whatever it is, even in hospital yards.”

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Israel’s military said it had “precisely struck Hamas terrorists operating within a Hamas command and control centre embedded in the al-Taba’een school”.

A statement by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and the Israeli Security Agency said “at least 19 Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists” were “eliminated” in the attack.

An earlier statement by the IDF said “approximately 20 Hamas and Islamic Jihad militants” had been “operating” at the compound.

Earlier estimates of the number of dead were also in the dozens, with the Hamas-run health ministry’s ambulance service saying more than 60 had been killed, according to AP. The civil defence agency put the number at more than 90.

The BBC cannot independently verify figures from either side.

The Israeli spokesman said the casualty figures released by Hamas officials “do not align with the information held by the IDF, the precise munitions used, and the accuracy of the strike”.

Hamas described the attack as a “horrific crime and a dangerous escalation” in Israel’s “war of extermination against the Palestinian people”.

Fatah, Hamas’s political Palestinian rival in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, said Israel’s aim was “to exterminate Palestinians through a policy of cumulative killing”.

The US said it was “deeply concerned” about reports of civilian casualties and was seeking further details.

A US National Security Council spokesman said: “We know Hamas has been using schools as locations to gather and operate out of.

“But we have also said repeatedly and consistently that Israel must take measures to minimise civilian harm.”

He said “far too many civilians continue to be killed and wounded”, adding that it “underscores the urgency of a ceasefire and hostage deal”.

Philippe Lazzarini, head of Unrwa, the UN agency which helps Palestinians, said: “It’s time for these horrors unfolding under our watch to end.”

The French foreign ministry said it condemned the strike “in the firmest of terms”.

“For several weeks, school buildings have been repeatedly targeted, with an intolerable number of civilian victims,” it said.

“Israel must respect international humanitarian law,” it added.

The UK’s Foreign Secretary, David Lammy, said he was “appalled” by the “tragic loss of life” and stressed the need for “an immediate ceasefire”.

This strike has again drawn graphic attention to a controversial dynamic of the Gaza war.

Israel claims that Hamas is using civilian infrastructure to plan and carry out attacks, and that is why it has been targeting hospitals and schools – sites protected under international law.

Hamas has consistently denied the accusations.

Whatever the case, these are both locations where Gazans displaced by the conflict have sought shelter – especially in schools, more than 80% of which have been directly hit or damaged.

Since early July, Israel has struck at least 13 of them – including four in a four-day period – each time declaring that they take steps to decrease the risk of harming civilians, including the use of precise munitions.

Many of the schools were run by the UN before the war, and the UN has strongly condemned the strikes.

This seems a particularly deadly incident. No doubt it will increase pressure for a ceasefire, but the reaction of regional mediators suggests concern that it could further set back struggling efforts to achieve one.

Egypt, one of the mediators, said Israel’s “deliberate killing” of unarmed Palestinians showed that Israel lacked the political will to end the war.

Qatar, also involved in ceasefire talks, demanded an urgent international investigation.

Hamas-led gunmen killed about 1,200 people in an attack on Israel on 7 October, taking 251 others back to Gaza as hostages.

That attack triggered a massive Israeli military offensive on Gaza and the current war.

More than 39,790 Palestinians have been killed in the Israeli campaign, according to Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry.

As the Olympics come to a close in Paris, the Olympic flag will shortly be handed over to the 2028 host city, Los Angeles.

US citizens who travelled to Paris for this year’s Games told the BBC they have high hopes for 2028.

LA resident Marisa was confident the event would be appropriately sprinkled with local “Hollywood glamour”.

But she maintained Paris had set a very high bar.

Fellow Americans who spoke to the BBC had concerns Los Angeles would not be able to match France’s impressive public transport network.

As the countdown to LA gets under way, here’s what we know currently about the forthcoming Games – which will also mark LA’s first Paralympics.

The Los Angeles Olympics opening ceremony will take place on 14 July 2028, with the closing ceremony just over two weeks later, on 30 July.

The Paralympic opening ceremony will be on 15 August, and the closing event will be on 27 August.

In all, more than 50 Olympic and Paralympic sports will be contested across more than 800 events.

The 2028 Games marks the third time LA has hosted the Olympics, and organisers – who have been eager to emphasise their sustainability credentials – have said no new, permanent constructions will be needed for the event.

Instead, dozens of existing sites have been earmarked for use, including the home stadium of football team LA Galaxy and the LA Memorial Coliseum, which will host the athletics events as it did in LA’s two previous Olympics.

Perhaps unsurprisingly in a city that is famous for its palm-fringed shoreline, beach volleyball is expected to be hosted on an actual beach – something that was not possible in Paris this year.

But some venues will need to be adapted. For example, the SoFi Stadium, as it is currently known, in the suburb of Inglewood, will be converted to host the swimming races, with a resplendent Olympic pool added.

Meanwhile, student housing at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) will be turned into the athletes’ village for the summer, and provide training facilities.

From a sustainability perspective, it remains to be seen whether LA can pull off the “car-free” Games it pledged after winning the bid in 2017.

Moving thousands of spectators across the sprawling Californian city poses a huge challenge for organisers – with current hopes for car-free transit pinned on a fleet of buses, after plans for a major rail network upgrade fizzled out, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Nor will it come cheap.

The most recent budget forecasts expenditure of nearly $7bn (£5.5bn) on the Games themselves, in addition to any transport upgrades.

In addition to the more familiar Olympic sports, the Los Angeles Games will see a revival of some disciplines not seen for a while, as well as some new additions.

• Cricket will be played at the Olympics for the first time since 1900. In LA, we can expect to see tournaments in T20 – a shortened format that sees both teams limited to bowling and batting for no more than 20 overs each. Great Britain will fancy its medal chances, as it has some of the world’s top cricketers
• Lacrosse is also making a comeback. Despite being one of the oldest sports to be played in North America, lacrosse has not been played at Olympic level for more than a century. A new format will be introduced in 2028, which will see teams of six using their lacrosse sticks to fire a ball into a goal
• Baseball/softball – bat-and-ball sports of a similar type, played by men and women respectively, will also return, having been omitted in Paris in 2024
• Squash is due to make its first appearance at an Olympics after years of campaigning from aficionados
• Flag football will also make its Olympic debut. This is a non-contact version of gridiron (American) football, played on a smaller pitch with smaller teams, in which tackles are made by removing a flag from an opponent. It is the fastest-growing variant of the sport in the UK, according to the British American Football Association
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Certain other Olympic sports that are relatively new to the line-up will continue, including surfing, skateboarding and sport climbing.

But breaking, which debuted at the Paris Games, has not been picked as one of the disciplines – to the disappointment of some, given that this type of street dance was pioneered by the US.

We can expect to see some of the biggest names from Paris 2024 in Los Angeles, too.

Keely Hodgkinson stormed to gold in the women’s 800m in France. She will be 26 come the next Olympics – still in her athletics prime.

One of the breakout stars from this year’s Games has been swimmer Léon Marchand, cheered to four gold medals by the Parisian crowds with cries of “allez!” whenever his head emerged above water.

Marchand, too, will be 26 in 2028, and looks likely to be in LA to fend off any challengers to his Olympic crown in the pool.

The majority of contenders in this year’s skateboarding event will remain in contention for 2028, particularly given the remarkable youth of the athletes in Paris, such as 11-year-old Zheng Haohao of China and Britain’s Sky Brown.

Brown, twice an Olympic bronze medallist, will still only be 20 by the next Games – the question will be whether she skates, or qualifies for surfing next time.

However, the participation of other global stars is less certain. Simone Biles, arguably the most recognisable name at Paris, will be 31. Few gymnasts continue competing into their 30s, but megastar Biles may fancy an Olympics in front of a home crowd, and a bid to add to her 11 medals.

Newly-crowned men’s 100m champion Noah Lyles will also be 31 come LA 2028 – but should still be fit and well primed to emulate US compatriot Carl Lewis in his defence of that most celebrated of Olympic titles.

But there may be a changing of the guard for Team GB. Swimmer Adam Peaty has hinted that Paris was his last Games, and diver Tom Daley only came out of retirement, to win bronze in Paris, at his young son’s request.

However, GB rower Helen Glover has not ruled out a fourth Games and a bid for a fourth medal in LA – when she will be 42.

During one lunch break, fans gathered at 3rd Base Sports Bar in Los Angeles to watch the US women’s Olympic basketball team compete in Paris. Loud cheers erupted as soon as the US team walked out on court.

In just four years, many of those sporting events will be held just a few miles away.

The excitement here, though, is mixed with concern – and some dread.

The city is no stranger to hosting big-scale events, from the Oscars to the Super Bowl, but it is also well acquainted with the downsides of hosting major spectacles.

LA is also known to have some of the worst traffic in the US, and its poor transit system is bemoaned nationally and internationally.

At the time of the bid, it was hoped the Games would force the city to fix some of its transport woes, but the scrapping of plans to extend the train network, and the decision to add a fleet of buses instead, has not thrilled residents.

Nor does it bode well for the millions of tourists the Olympics typically brings to a host city.

“There’s already a lot of traffic every day,” said Cory, while enjoying a burger in the bar. “And then you’re bringing people here who don’t know where they’re going…”

Los Angeles also has one of the highest concentrations of homelessness in the US.

Elisha told the BBC she was “hopeful” the 2028 Games might be a catalyst to finally addressing homelessness in the city and finding a long-term solution.

The Games will celebrate LA’s dramatic and picturesque coastline and the legendary Hollywood sign that hangs over the city’s skyline, but the West Coast metropolis can’t boast the same extravagant, historic backdrop as Paris.

But while Los Angeles might not offer iconic sites like the Eiffel Tower or the Palace of Versailles, the city has its own charms, Elisha stressed.

“It’s not Paris, but LA has Hollywood – and we can make anything happen in Hollywood.”

The last time Los Angeles hosted the Olympics, in 1984, Prince topped the US Billboard singles’ chart and the Games were boycotted by a Cold War-era Soviet Union over commercialisation and security issues.

Great Britain won five gold medals. Among its champions were decathlete Daley Thompson, javelin thrower Tessa Sanderson, a young rower named Steve Redgrave, and 1,500m runner Seb Coe – who went to lead the World Athletics body.

But the undoubted sporting superstar of Los Angeles 1984 was home talent Carl Lewis, who won gold in the men’s 100m, 200m, long jump and 4x100m relay events.

The US dominated the medals table, and – unlike today – was unrivalled by China.

Among a number of historic moments, the 1984 Games saw the first women’s Olympic marathon.

That year’s Paralympics were jointly hosted in Stoke Mandeville, England, and New York – marking the final time that a single host city did not host both the Olympics and Paralympics.

The 1932 Olympics in Los Angeles took place under the cloud of the Great Depression, in a California that was much less built-up than it is today.

There was no event equivalent to the modern-day Paralympics.

The Games were significantly shorter than previous editions, and saw fewer competitors than previously.

But the crowds are reported to have been huge – including a turnout of approximately100,000 people at the opening ceremony.

The year also marked the debut of the now-familiar medals podium.

For decades, many new mothers have heard the message “breast is best”.

It’s meant to encourage breastfeeding, but it can also create immense pressure for those who struggle with the practicalities.

Some women are desperate to breastfeed but are forced, for various reasons, to stop earlier than planned.

A number of them spoke to the BBC to discuss “breastfeeding grief” – a period of immense sadness, and even shame, following their decision to stop.

Jemma Munford, who gave birth to her son Max in 2017, had planned to exclusively breastfeed. By the third day, however, she was finding it hard.

“I was sitting on the sofa, holding my baby, and I couldn’t stop crying,” she recalls.

She describes the next two weeks as “hell” and says she dreaded every feed. Her son had a tongue-tie, a condition where the strip of skin connecting the tongue to the mouth is tighter than usual, making it almost impossible for him to latch on to her breast.

At her lowest point Jemma asked visitors to leave her house as she hid in her bedroom with the curtains closed, trying desperately to get her baby to latch.

“I found the experience of breastfeeding exhausting and embarrassing,” she adds.

After a couple of weeks, her baby started losing weight. Faced with the possibility of returning to the hospital, she decided to switch to feeding him exclusively with formula milk.

Her second child was born two years later – and even though her newborn daughter didn’t suffer from a tongue-tie she decided early on that she “couldn’t face” attempting to breastfeed longer than a couple of days.

She still grapples with the decision today. “I wasn’t able to do the most natural and unique thing a mother can do, and I felt ashamed – I still do,” she says.

She believes she may have been suffering from postnatal depression, though it wasn’t diagnosed at the time.

Professor Amy Brown, a public health researcher who has written a book on breastfeeding grief, explains that feelings of sadness about breastfeeding experiences are common.

“Many women stop breastfeeding much earlier than they wanted to and feel let down or that they missed out on an experience,” she says.

Research shows that many women still want to breastfeed. In the UK, 81% of women initiate exclusive breastfeeding, but after six months, fewer than 26% are still exclusively feeding their babies breast milk.

Currently, the World Health Organisation (WHO) recommends exclusive breastfeeding for the first six months of life, while UNICEF notes that breastfeeding reduces the risk of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), childhood diabetes, heart disease, and obesity.

Globally, the percentage of infants under six months exclusively breastfed has reached 48%, a 10% increase on the last decade.

Deepti, who is seven months pregnant with her second child, hopes her breastfeeding journey will be better than her previous one.

She gave birth to her son in 2021 and struggled with getting him to latch due to a tongue-tie. Even after the condition was corrected, she continued to have issues.

Deepti decided to express her milk and feed him with a bottle, but found the routine to be impractical and “relentless”.

“It was every two hours, including during the night and I felt like a failure – like I was doing a bad job,” she says.

The feeding schedule kept her from getting out of the house almost entirely. By the time her son was 12 weeks old, she had switched to formula so she could enjoy time with him outside and attend baby classes, important for his development.

A month later, Deepti learned the tongue-tie procedure had been done wrong and needed more treatment due to scar tissue – but by then, it was too late to return to breastfeeding.

Deepti felt a sense of shame and “mum guilt” when using a bottle among her breastfeeding friends. “No one ever judged me, but I felt ashamed I was bottle-feeding and sad that I couldn’t breastfeed like them,” she says.

While Jemma and Deepti’s babies both had a tongue-tie, there are several reasons why a mother can struggle to breastfeed. Sore, cracked or bleeding nipples due to latching issues, and low or high milk supply are common problems.

Engorgement – when breasts can become overly full with milk – can in some cases lead to mastitis, an infection caused by a blocked milk duct resulting in soreness and pain when breastfeeding.

Lisa Mandell from the International Lactation Consultant Association provides counselling and advice to women experiencing issues with breastfeeding. She says it’s vital that women get expert lactation advice and breastfeeding support as early as possible.

“There may be multifaceted issues, for example if a mother with low milk production has thyroid issues then that can be identified and treated, it is likely to improve her milk production,” she says.

She points out that breastfeeding “should never be painful” and is a sign that a baby is not positioned or attached well.

“Breastfeeding cessation should never be considered a failure on the part of the mother,” she adds.

Clare Murphy, director of Feed UK, says that infant feeding isn’t straightforward and that we should be focussing on supporting women, however they choose to feed their baby.

“No one – least of all mothers and their babies – benefit from an environment in which women feel guilty and their mental health suffers because they have needed to use formula when they hoped to avoid it,” she says.

Deepti plans to attempt breastfeeding again but says she won’t put herself under the same pressure next time. “I will 100% try again and I feel much more equipped now as I’ve already been through it once.”

Jemma’s son Max is seven now but she says she still gets upset. She tearfully admits she has “a deep and overwhelming regret that breastfeeding didn’t work out” – but hopes that there is now more awareness in supporting all women, regardless of their feeding choices.

What to do if you are struggling with breastfeeding:

• The NHS has a useful guide and advice on common breastfeeding issues such as sore nipples, latching and positioning and high or low milk supply.

• Video tutorials and other resources can be found on the UNICEF website

• Feed UK supports all forms of feeding, whether it’s breast, formula or a combination.

A lingering fragrance of bun maska (bread and butter), plates loaded with freshly cooked samosas and cups of piping hot and creamy Irani chai.

These are some of the sights you would typically find at a Persian-style cafe in India.

Popularly known as Irani cafes, these iconic restaurants – with their signature marble-topped tables, old-style clocks, chequered floors and a distinctive menu – have been a part of India’s culture for more than 100 years.

And their influence has spread beyond India: Dishoom, one of London’s most recognisable restaurant chains, was inspired by these cafes.

They came up in cities like Mumbai and Pune in the 18th and 19th centuries when there was an influx of Persian immigrants from Iran.

There’s a third lesser known pocket of the country – the southern city of Hyderabad – where these cafes have been an intrinsic part of the local culture for decades.

But despite their many charms and the rich cultural heritage, the cafes of this city – like their counterparts in Pune and Mumbai – are on the verge of dying out, with owners blaming rising prices, competition from fast-food restaurants and changing consumer tastes.

Hyderabad has the most number of Irani cafes after Mumbai even today. That’s because the city was a centre for Iranian trade in the late 19th Century.

Persian was widely spoken under the rule of a Muslim Nizam, or prince. The Niloufer café, located in the old quarters of the city, was actually named after the Nizam’s Iranian daughter-in-law.

This was also a period when parts of modern-day Pakistan were still in Hyderabad, with Iran as its neighbour, making the city easily accessible to Persian traders.

Most of the families who moved to Hyderabad – and other Indian cities – came to escape persecution and famine back home. Some came in search of better jobs and business.

Their arrival coincided with colonial rule when the British were actively promoting a tea drinking culture in the country.

When the Iranians arrived, they brought their own style of making tea – with cream and condensed milk – giving rise to a distinct Iranian chai culture in the cities.

“At first, the tea was sold under the name Chai Khana and only Muslims drank it,” Hyderabad-based historian Mohammed Safiullah says. “But soon, people from all religions caught on to its distinct flavour.”

By the 20th Century, Irani cafes were present in every nook and corner of Hyderabad.

The customers would sip on the lip-smacking tea as they would spend hours chatting away at the coffee shops.

At some cafes, patrons would also be able to play their favourite songs on a jukebox for a small fee.

Historians say these cafes played a crucial role in breaking down social barriers and religious taboos and became an important part of the city’s public life.

“Irani cafes in Hyderabad have stood as symbols of secularism,” historian Paravastu Lokeshwar said. “The names didn’t have any religious connotations. People of all religions and castes patronised them.”

Now they are under threat.

From an estimated 450 cafes over two decades ago, Hyderabad now has only 125 left, said Jaleel Farooq Rooz, owner of The Grand Hotel, a famous Irani cafe.

Mr Rooz’s maternal grandfather came from Iran in 1951 and took over the hotel that was started by 12 Iranians in 1935.

“We used to sell 8,000-9,000 cups a day once. Now we sell just 4,000 cups a day,” he told the BBC.

He cites competition from fast-food chains as one of the reasons. Now one of the most rapidly developing Indian cities, Hyderabad was a quiet little town until the early 1990s. Things changed in the mid-90s, when the city joined the IT boom in India and became a powerhouse of the industry.

The transformation was accompanied by a slew of economic reforms in the country, which allowed global fast-food chains and cafes to penetrate the Indian market. Similar to Iranian cafes, these food joints also offered extended seating options, but with far better amenities and more options.

Mr Rooz said most Irani cafes operated from rented premises as they required large spaces where patrons could relax and unwind over tea.

But rising real estate prices in Hyderabad have forced many owners to move to other work.

“Inflation also took a toll. Tea powder and milk prices have risen three times compared to five years ago,” he added.

Others say the number of Iranian families entering the business has also gone down.

“The current generation is not interested in the café and restaurant business. They prefer other jobs and many migrate to other countries,” said the owner of popular Farasha Restaurant, Mahmood, who goes by only one name.

But despite the challenges, there are still a few in the business who continue to swim against the tide.

Syed Mohammed Razak manages the Red Rose Restaurant in Hyderabad. His grandfather migrated from Tehran and established the City Light Hotel in the 1970s. Later, Mr Razak’s father started the Red Rose Restaurant.

An engineer and graphic designer by profession, Mr Razak admits that “selling just chai and biscuits” is neither easy, nor profitable.

He has now introduced new dishes to the menu to attract more customers and is using his graphic designing skills to expand business and promote it online.

“I want to continue my family’s legacy,” he said.

And it’s not just the owners, there are also loyal customers – many of whom have been frequenting these cafes for generations – who say they would always come back for “another cup of Irani chai”.

“Irani tea is a part of my life, I love the taste and drink it every time I step out,” said Yanni, who goes by only one name and is a regular at the Grand Hotel.

“There is nothing like it even today.”

From cats and cucumbers to pimple popping and unboxings, the internet is awash with a vast array of videos to send people into a social media wormhole.

But for millions the latest content catnip is the simple sight of a man sanding wooden floors.

Danny Stenhouse – better known to his followers as Danny Sandhouse – is setting TikTok and YouTube alight with viral clips of his work restoring floors. One video has wracked up over eight million views.

As well as bringing pleasure to others, he said sharing the videos had also helped give him the focus he needed.

Mr Stenhouse, who has ADHD and Asperger’s syndrome, started working as a floor sander around ten years ago.

“I started sanding after a guy came to sand our floors at home and, having ADHD, I was hooked by the immediate satisfaction of seeing the sander strip and that hyper-focus the sander could have on one thing, and I thought that’s what I want to do,” he said.

Once he had built up a popular business he decided to try sharing videos on social media to give him a new outlet.

“I’d found lockdown really hard and was making some bad choices, ending up drinking more so I thought I needed to focus on things I could do to improve my life, so I tried making a video,” he said.

From a first couple of attempts, trying different camera angles and voiceovers, it did not take long before his videos were reaching millions of people.

To date, Mr Stenhouse has more than 180,000 followers on Instagram, more than 33,000 followers on TikTok and more than 90,000 subscribers on YouTube, with his videos showing him sanding historic floors or giving tips to anyone who might want to try it themselves.

“I feel people like Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson and Justin Bieber get millions of likes, not people like me,” he said.

His videos have hit such high numbers he is also able to earn money for them.

“Everything has happened so fast, but to be able to earn this extra is amazing and I love receiving questions from people about all their sanding queries and helping them.

“When I was at school, having ADHD, I couldn’t focus, couldn’t sit down and I found it hard but now when I get stuck into something I’m hyper-focused and have to be the best at it and with the sanding, I never get bored of it,” he said.

He said he also hopes to inspire other young people who may have had tough past experiences.

“I had a really difficult start in life on Bell Farm in York with a single parent, but everything can be turned into a strength,” he said.

“I got bullied as a kid, but now the world is saying, ‘Danny, you’re cool’ and I just want people to know it’s a long old life and you are not your past or your trauma, just believe in yourself.”

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Eyewitnesses have described seeing the moment a passenger plane crashed in the Brazilian state of São Paulo killing all 62 people on board.

“I saw it passing over my house. It was in a tailspin and smoke was coming out of it,” Edival Monteiro de Souza, 67, told BBC Brasil.

“Then it came straight down and fell on top of the hill. It was all very fast. The noise was very loud, it made you shudder. Then black smoke went up and that was it.”

Letícia Oliveira do Nascimento, 25, said that the falling aircraft looked like a paper plane.

“It was clear that the pilot had lost control and that something bad could happen,” she told BBC Brasil.

“It was very close to the neighbourhood where I live. As soon as it fell, all the smoke rose and there was silence.”

Nathalie Cicari lives near to where the plane crashed in the town of Vinhedo and said she was having lunch when she heard a “very loud noise very close by”.

She described it as being similar to the sound of a drone but “much louder”.

“I went out on the balcony and saw the plane spinning,” Ms Cicari told CNN Brasil.

“Within seconds, I realised that it was not a normal movement for a plane.”

The moment of impact was “terrifying”, she said. She was not hurt despite having to evacuate her house which was filled with a huge plume of black smoke after the crash.

“When I heard the sound of the plane falling, I looked out my window at home and saw the moment it crashed,” Felipe Magalhaes told Reuters news agency.

He ran out of his house in the town of Vinhedo to see where the plane had fallen. “Terrified and not knowing what to do, I jumped over the wall,” he said.

Another witness called Pietro told Reuters he had seen “a lot of people” breaking into an apartment “to make videos”.

“What I saw was the wreckage of the plane, all that was left was the cabin,” he said.

At Cascavel Airport in the southern state of Paraná, from where the plane bound for São Paulo city had taken off, a handful of passengers who missed the Voepass flight spoke of their feelings.

Adriano Assis said that when he had arrived at the airport, there was a lack of information on take-off and nobody was at the counter to answer questions.

When someone did arrive, they told him he could not board yet, he said.

“I even argued with him, but he ended up saving my life,” Mr Assis told a local newspaper, as reported by Brazilian news agency Globo.

Another passenger, Jose Felipe, was initially going to book on to a Latam flight but instead went to try and board the Voepass plane.

“We thought we were going to go through Latam, but Latam was closed,” Mr Felipe told Reuters.

“I arrived early, waited, waited, waited, waited and nothing.”

“When it was 11:00, I came to look for [information] here,” he went on.

“Then they told me, ‘You’re not getting on this plane anymore because you’re past the boarding [time] limit.’

“So I fought, I even pushed a little bit, I told him, ‘Let me get on, I have to leave on this plane and he said, ‘No, I can rebook your ticket.’

“Man, it’s such an overwhelming feeling. I’m here shaking, my legs are here… Only God and I were aware of this moment.”

Model Chloe Ayling was kidnapped after being lured to a fake photo shoot in Milan. She was released six days later, but her ordeal was far from over – seven years on, she is still being called a liar.

“Headlines really stick in people’s minds, even years later,” Ms Ayling tells the BBC, explaining that she still receives online abuse from people questioning her account.

Her story is being told in a new six-part BBC series, Kidnapped: The Chloe Ayling Story. The series, which follows Chloe’s experience being kidnapped and the media storm that followed, is based on police interviews, court transcripts and personal accounts – with some scenes created for dramatic purposes.

Ms Ayling faced years of doubts about her ordeal with people accusing her of faking her abduction, profiting from it and being involved in a publicity stunt.

But she’s since worked with the drama’s writer Georgia Lester and producers to tell her story.

“All I wanted was [the] facts to be laid out and everyone to know what actually happened,” Ms Ayling says.

She hopes her experience will help others. “This should be a lesson for people not to judge victims based on the way they act or react,” she adds.

Ms Ayling’s ordeal began in July 2017 when she was lured from London to Italy on the promise of a photo shoot by Lukasz Herba, who drugged her and took her to a remote farmhouse in a holdall bag.

Lukasz Herba said she would be sold online if she could not provide a $300,000 (approximately £230,000) ransom fee. He released her to the British consulate in Milan six days later.

When Ms Ayling, then 20 years old, returned to the UK she came under fire – she was accused of posing for the cameras and smiling.

Finding herself at the centre of so much media attention, Ms Ayling remembers: “It was just so big and overpowering.

“It was blown out of proportion, there were things that were missed out and it was going in a direction that was not true.”

On the topic of smiling when she arrived home from Italy, Ms Ayling says: “That was genuinely how I was feeling at the time. I was happy to be home. I was happy this was over, so why shouldn’t I be smiling?”

Even after Lukasz Herba, a Polish national, was jailed for 16 years and nine months for her kidnapping, people continued to accuse her of not telling the truth.

Ms Ayling feels her work as a model contributed to how she was treated: “I do believe if my job was different, it wouldn’t be the same reaction,” adding that the way a victim dresses, acts or shows emotion shouldn’t be a reason not to believe them.

After her kidnapping, Ms Ayling published a book and appeared as a contestant on Celebrity Big Brother.

Despite the backlash she received, she wouldn’t change anything about how she behaved, she says.

“I was true to myself and did what I want[ed] to do, so I don’t have any regrets.”

The BBC drama comes as her kidnapper’s brother, Michal Herba, who was also involved in Ms Ayling’s abduction, has been released from prison. He was sentenced to 16 years and eight months in prison but had his sentence reduced after an appeal.

“I think he should have been in prison for a lot longer,” Ms Ayling says of Michal Herba.

“The fact that they still don’t take accountability and still want to make lies and not be responsible for what they did [is] even more annoying,” she adds.

Now, years on from her abduction, Ms Ayling is trying to put what happened behind her.

“I don’t get flashbacks or anything like that,” she says, but in making this drama the 27-year-old had to relive the experience.

“I [had] to put myself back in that position to remember key details and how I felt at the time,” she says.

The series writer, Georgia Lester – who has also worked on dramas Killing Eve and Skins – says: “I think the wider story here is about how we treat victims, specifically women.”

She adds: “It feels like a timely and important drama.”

In July, the National Police Chiefs’ Council outlined the scale of violence against women and girls across the nation in a report – and the body estimates that one in every 12 women will be a victim of violence every year.

Amanda Rowe, the lead for violence against women and girls at the Independent Office for Police Conduct, acknowledges some people “do not have a good experience” when it comes to reporting violence against women and girls.

“Fear of being made to feel responsible for what has happened to them can put people off reporting these crimes,” she says.

Ms Lester says she was enraged to learn how Ms Ayling had been treated following her kidnapping. She hopes the BBC drama “encourages people to believe women” and that it will “vindicate” Ms Ayling in “the eyes of people who judged her”.

Ms Ayling adds: “I want the world to know that what I’m saying is true.”

You can watch Kidnapped: The Chloe Ayling Story on BBC iPlayer on Wednesday 14 August.

Mosques in at least four English cities were targeted in the recent far-right disorder – one was pelted with bricks, bottles and rocks.

Several community groups sprang up in response. One of them is “Protect”, which deploys people to places of worship that are potentially under threat.

Within 48 hours of being set up, more than 1,500 people had signed up in the north-west of the country, where the group is based.

Protect put out a call in Accrington on Wednesday, after a mosque asked for help – a viral video later showed pubgoers hugging some of the young men who had come to defend the building.

Though the mood has become much calmer in recent days, those running the group say it will continue as a means of remaining vigilant.

Given concerns about how they would be perceived, organisers were initially reluctant to speak, but agreed to do so anonymously.

“The group is there to notify each other of problems in our areas so we can tell people to be careful. But if they do come towards our places of worship, the community will come out and we protect those places,” says the group’s founder.

He says that communities were caught out by the scale and suddenness of the trouble, and fear it could return any time, so part of the group’s function is to check the many rumours of further unrest to see if there is basis to them.

But when help is asked for by a mosque or community centre, he says the word will go out.

“We will go there to defend, not with weapons, but just physically standing in front (of places). If anyone is attacking the mosque, we won’t allow it,” says Protect’s founder.

“If I’ve got family members inside that mosque and it’s getting attacked, then by all means – even if I do get injured, by a brick or a firebomb or whatever it is – I’ll protect them,” he says.

But why not leave the protection of communities and mosques completely to the police?

“The police are doing an amazing job, and they’re trying their utmost to keep us safe, but they’re already understaffed and they’ve got their hands full with these riots,” the Protect founder says.

“We’ve seen what happened in some other places, the police couldn’t cover it, they weren’t ready for it. Somebody needs to be there just by having a presence with the police as well,” adds one of those running the group.

We approached local police forces but they said they could not specifically comment on the group’s actions.

Earlier this week, in response to fears of threats to the mosque in Accrington, Lancashire Constabulary acknowledged concerns and promised they had a “robust policing response in place to tackle possible disorder”.

The founder of Protect says he had been unhappy at incidents, unrelated to the group, in Stoke-on-Trent and in Birmingham where Muslim men had shown up with weapons, saying it was a central rule of Protect that people neither turn up with weapons or with face coverings.

He, and many other Muslim groups, also condemned an attack on a man who was punched and kicked outside a pub in Birmingham.

“We’ve not made (the group) to incite racial hatred or start riots, but to protect ourselves and be vigilant,” says the Protect founder, who says creation of the group has been purely driven by the fear of further violence, particularly among Muslim women, some of whom have reported having headscarves pulled off or having faced abuse or assault.

“We keep saying if there’s a protest going on, don’t go there. Don’t be stupid. Let them protest. As long as they’re not coming to our places to cause damage, don’t put yourself where you don’t need to be,” he says.

During the week we saw some of the group’s rules in action. One evening Protect had made its members aware that a mosque in Accrington had put out a call for help because of concerns of violence.

We saw dozens of young men gathered outside the mosque. They were repeatedly told by organisers not to wear masks or balaclavas, there was no evidence of any weapons as they stood alongside police.

In fact, the evening passed off peacefully, with some of the evening’s most viral video moments playing out in Accrington, as pubgoers came out to hug the young Muslim men as they walked away from the mosque when it was clear there would be no trouble.

The young men had been with the police throughout and had been chatting with officers.

“We don’t want war, and we’re not asking for all this to happen,” says Protect’s founder.

“But this country belongs to us as much to them. We were born here, our parents were born here. Some of our grandparents or great-grandparents fought in the World War II.

“So I think we’ve got as much right as anybody else to call this country.”

Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight says American rapper Snoop Dogg told him how much he relates to the show.

Mr Knight told BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs how the rapper talked about his life and family when the two met, and said the show “reminded him of how he got involved in gang culture”.

Meeting Snoop Dogg made the creator understand Peaky Blinders “is pretty universal”, with people from Eastern Europe to Buenos Aires “getting it and feeling the same thing”.

Mr Knight, who based the hit show and a forthcoming film on stories from his parents and his own childhood in Birmingham, also co-created game show Who Wants to be a Millionaire?.

Peaky Blinders followed gangsters in 1920s Birmingham. The show ran for six seasons, from 2013 to 2022, and starred Cillian Murphy, who won the best actor Oscar for Oppenheimer this year, as Tommy Shelby.

Mr Murphy will reprise his role as Shelby in the film version.

The show aired in 180 countries and counts celebrities including Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise among its fans.

Mr Knight described meeting celebrity fan Snoop Dogg and his manager in a room – the rapper smoking, him drinking beer, and the manager gin.

Hearing about Snoop Dogg’s life was “really interesting”, he said.

“It was all about family keeping you in, and escaping from family to do the bad stuff, and then the family relocating their emotions and loyalties to follow you, and then escaping again,” he said.

“He was such a great bloke. He was so nice to talk to,” Mr Knight added.

Mr Knight, who grew up as the youngest of seven kids, said Peaky Blinders was inspired by myth-like stories his parents told him about their childhoods.

When his mother was around eight or nine, she worked for bookmakers – who were called peaky blinders – when betting was illegal.

In her adult life, she worked as a cleaner and in a factory, supergluing grit to the soles of her shoes so she could get to work when it snowed.

His father was a blacksmith who received work from a nearby Romany camp and scrap metal yard.

“The people we would meet were so larger than life, so rebellious, they were so on the other side of the law, but really warm and great people,” Mr Knight said.

He wanted to get some of that “respect for one’s own life” into Peaky Blinders, showing that people living “big, glamorous, dramatic lives” had emotions and passions that “are the same as anybody else”.

Mr Knight said he began writing poetry around the age of 10. His first job after university was writing commercials for local Birmingham radio before he moved to work in radio and production in London.

It was in London where he and two colleagues created Who Wants to be a Millionaire?, the game show that became globally successful.

He also wrote the film Dirty Pretty Things, which was nominated for an Oscar for best original screenplay in 2004, and three novels.

Mr Knight is now writing a Star Wars script and recently opened a TV and film studio in Birmingham called Digbeth Loc, where the Peaky Blinders film will be shot.

“It’s a fitting end to this part of the story, and we’ve got an absolutely fantastic cast,” the writer said. “I want it to be a sort of legacy for Birmingham, but also a place where people come who want to do different stuff, brave stuff, bold stuff.”

He also started a scheme financing courses for local people to get trained in film industry trades.

“We want this to be absolutely part of the community and for local people to be walking to work,” he said.

Mr Knight said that growing up working class “you have no expectation of yourself” and it took him until he was 35 to think “I can actually do this”.

Now, whenever he gives talks, such as one recently at his old school, he says: “You’ve got to understand you are as good as someone else, you just haven’t had the same guidance.”

Donald Trump continues to insist that he once took a scary helicopter trip with former San Francisco mayor Willie Brown, even as Mr Brown dismissed the story as “fiction”.

But it turns out another California politician, Nate Holden, did accompany Trump decades ago on a turbulent chopper ride, US media report.

Both Mr Brown and Mr Holden are black.

The former president said during a news conference that he and Mr Brown had gone “down” in a helicopter together and Mr Brown had been “a little concerned”.

The story became an issue after Trump recounted it on Thursday, in response to a question about Mr Brown’s relationship with Kamala Harris. The pair dated in the 1990s.

Trump was asked whether he thought the relationship had played a role in Ms Harris’s career journey. At the time, Ms Harris was a prosecutor and in 2002 was elected district attorney in San Francisco.

“Well, I know Willie Brown very well,” Trump said, before speaking about his memories of the flight.

“We thought maybe this was the end,” Trump said. “We were in a helicopter… and there was an emergency landing. This was not a pleasant landing.”

He then claimed the former mayor had told him “terrible things” about Ms Harris.

“He had a big part in what happened with Kamala,” Trump said.

Mr Brown, 90, told US media he had never shared a helicopter with Trump, adding: “I don’t think I’d want to ride on the same helicopter with him.”

He also denied he said anything disparaging about Ms Harris.

“That’s so far-fetched, it’s unbelievable,” he told local TV station KRON. “I could not envision thinking of Kamala Harris in any negative way.

“She’s a good friend a long time ago, absolutely beautiful woman, smart as all hell, very successful, electorally speaking.

“He was doing what Donald does best, his creative fiction.”

Despite a flat denial from the former San Francisco mayor, Trump insisted the story was true in a call to the New York Times, saying he was “probably going to sue” without elaborating.

Campaign spokesman Steven Cheung posted a photo of a page of Trump’s book “Letters to Trump” showing the former president pictured with Mr Brown and including a caption mentioning the helicopter incident.

Meanwhile Mr Holden, 95, a former Los Angeles city councilman and state senator, told US media outlets he had a distinct recollection of a helicopter trip with Trump.

In the 1990s, Trump was attempting to develop property in Los Angeles.

Mr Holden said that they took a very turbulent helicopter ride around 1990, during a visit with Trump to his Atlantic City casino.

The helicopter experienced mechanical trouble and was forced to make an emergency landing in New Jersey.

Others speculated that Trump, 78, may have confused Willie Brown with Jerry Brown, California’s former governor, with whom he shared a helicopter in 2018 to visit the aftermath of the Paradise wildfires. Gavin Newsom, the current state governor, was also on the flight.

But both men told US media there had been no emergency landing or danger on that flight.

Trump’s remarks at an hour-long news conference at his Mar-a-Lago estate come as recent polls show him slipping against Ms Harris.

A survey conducted by the New York Times and Siena College from 5 to 9 August puts Ms Harris ahead of Trump by 50% to 46% in three key battleground states – Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan.

The RealClearPolitics polling average gives Ms Harris a slight edge in the popular vote, although Mr Trump retains a lead in a number of the most important swing states.

“They’re weird.”

With that simple diss – as well as an overall more streamlined message – Vice-President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign has shifted the conversation away from the weaknesses of her boss, President Joe Biden, and shone a spotlight on her opponent, Donald Trump.

The change of tone was on full display at rallies this week, where she appeared with her new vice-presidential pick, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz. With Beyonce’s Freedom as their soundtrack, the pair made the case that they were out to protect American freedoms while their “weird” Republican opponents, Trump and his running mate JD Vance, threatened to take them away.

“We’re not going back,” Ms Harris told an enthusiastic crowd in Philadelphia, leading a chorus of what has become the campaign’s de-facto slogan.

It is a stripped-back version of Mr Biden’s 2020 message – that Trump is a “threat to democracy” – that casts the former president as out of touch with American life.

Even the vice-president’s press releases, sent from a campaign that once served Mr Biden, have reflected the tone shift from deeply serious to something more light-touch.

Just five days after Mr Biden stepped aside, a Harris spokesperson quipped that a Trump speech made him sound “like someone you wouldn’t want to sit near at a restaurant”.

Campaign strategists say this new messaging appears to be cutting through with Democrat-leaning voters because it makes voting for Ms Harris sound more like a common-sense choice, and less like a civic chore. But it is too early to tell if this fresh goodwill for a vice-president who, until recently, struggled to grab the attention of American voters will last until November’s election day.

California Lieutenant Gov Eleni Kounalakis, a Democrat who considers the vice-president a close friend, said the campaign’s fresh rhetoric reflects Ms Harris’s “great sense of humour” and her ability to be “a good communicator on a very basic level”.

“The fact is, these things are proving to be her strengths, and her joyfulness is breaking through the dark, menacing undertones of Donald Trump and his running mate.”

Meanwhile, Trump, who has long been known as an effective mudslinger and energetic campaigner since he entered politics during the 2016 presidential campaign, has struggled to punch back – especially against the “weird” framing.

“They’re the weird ones. Nobody’s ever called me weird. I’m a lot of things, but weird I’m not,” Trump said last week in an interview with conservative radio host Clay Travis.

He returned to the theme at a rally on Friday in Montana, telling the crowd: “We’re very solid people. We want to have strong borders, we want to have good elections, we want low interest rates, we want to be able to buy a house.”

“I think we’re the opposite of weird, they’re weird.”

Ms Harris, who once trailed Trump, is now on the front foot, polls suggest.

David Polyansky, who served as deputy campaign manager for Florida’s Republican Governor Ron DeSantis’s 2024 presidential campaign, said that this shift could be because Ms Harris was beating Trump at his own game.

Since he first ran for president, Trump has benefited from being the main political story in the country, enjoying what political insiders like to call “earned media”, or free press.

But it is Ms Harris’s dramatic swing to the top of the Democratic ticket just weeks before the Democratic National Convention that has dominated headlines and airwaves in recent weeks – and she has done it without sitting down for a major media interview.

To upstage the former president, who only recently faced an assassination attempt, is no small feat, said Mr Polyansky.

“It’s really pretty remarkable,” he said.

Her campaign appears further buoyed by picking Mr Walz as her running mate.

A survey conducted by the New York Times and Siena College from 5 to 9 August puts Ms Harris ahead of Trump by 50% to 46% in three key battleground states – Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan.

It comes after a recent YouGov poll, conducted on 4-6 August, which suggested she would win the popular vote, with 45% of respondents saying they would vote for her in November, compared to 43% for Trump.

That is a reversal of fortunes. A similar poll by YouGov, conducted almost three weeks ago, showed her losing by three points.

It was, in fact, Mr Walz who was the first to use the “weird” label when making media appearances last month in support of Ms Harris’s fledgling candidacy. He was quick to use it again at that Philadelphia rally with Ms Harris when speaking of their Republican opponents: “These guys are creepy and yes, just weird as hell.”

Mr Walz’s folksy ways seemed to resonate with several voters who spoke to the BBC. They said they liked the Minnesota governor because he was plainspoken.

Between drags of a cigarette, Tyler Engel – an independent Ohio voter on vacation in St Augustine, Florida – said that Mr Walz “seems like a normal guy, a family man”.

“And if there is one thing that we are starved for in this country, it’s normal people,” Mr Engel added.

Another voter, John Patterson of Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, said he found Mr Walz to be “a very genuine person”.

“What you see is what you get with him,” he added.

Some political consultants marveled at the “weird” label’s effectiveness. Many said that it broke through because it felt authentic, was not an audience-tested catchphrase or cliche, and it came about “fast and organically”.

Calling Trump and JD Vance “weird” effectively repackaged President Biden’s “threat to democracy” theme in a “very understandable – almost light-hearted – way that was maybe less severe and more colloquial”, said Brian Brokaw, who worked on several of Ms Harris’ campaigns and ran a Super PAC that supported her presidential campaign in 2020.

He said the term immediately helped to recast the race from a referendum on Mr Biden’s four years in office to a question of “do we really want to go back to what we were doing during the Trump era?”

Republican pollster Frank Luntz was more sceptical.

On BBC Newsnight on Tuesday, he declared Ms Harris the new front runner, noting she had captured fresh “momentum”.

But he dismissed the “weird” label as “weird in itself”, saying it didn’t resonate with voters.

The catchphrase did seem to land with several undecided voters interviewed by the BBC. Jacob Fisher, an independent voter from Atlanta, said he thought calling Trump and Mr Vance “weird” was appropriate and only mildly insulting in an age of political name-calling.

“I think it’s fair,” Mr Fisher said. “You can’t say that it’s very harsh because you have the other guy talking about how his opponents are vermin. So ‘weird’? I don’t know, but you can’t really complain if you’re Donald Trump.”

Still, voters who said they were backing Trump were unimpressed with the campaign’s recent messaging.

Frank and Theresa Walker of Illinois shared the view that the US was “going to hell” under the Biden-Harris administration, and Gem Lowery – a Trump voter in Florida – said she did not like Harris’s pick for vice-president or the “weird” label they have used when discussing Trump, Mr Vance and the Republican platform.

“I think the Democrats are the weird ones,” Lowery told the BBC. “So no, I don’t think that’s right to call Republicans ‘weird.’”

Ms Harris’s “brat summer” will not last forever.

While the pick of Mr Walz and the upcoming Democratic National Convention will be certain to maintain Ms Harris’s media dominance, experts agree that the campaign will have to change gears soon.

Mr Brokaw, a long-time adviser to Ms Harris, said that her campaign will need to work to bottle the enthusiasm it has enjoyed since the vice-president became the Democratic nominee.

“The peak of the honeymoon period is the convention, and then it’s going to be a grind for two months probably with some debates,” Mr Brokaw said. “This is an exciting period of time, but at a certain point it’s going to come back to reality and then it’s go time.”

“If we’re still talking about Trump and Vance being weird in October, I think I’d be surprised,” he added.

David Polyansky, the Republican strategist, said the label “works well from a 60,000 foot view”, but he believed a message on the economy and immigration would ultimately sway voters in November.

“So for Trump, it’s key he doesn’t take the bait, he focuses on his message and he reminds folks of his record and the administration’s failures on both of those issues.”

• SIMPLE GUIDE: Everything you need to know about the vote
• ANALYSIS: Three ways Trump will try to end Harris honeymoon
• SWING STATES: Where the election could be won and lost
• EXPLAINER: RFK Jr and others running for president
• VOTERS: US workers in debt to buy groceries

The ousted Bangladeshi Prime Minister, Sheikh Hasina, will return to the country when elections are declared, her son Sajeeb Wazed Joy says.

Ms Hasina, who resigned and fled the country earlier this week following a massive unrest, is currently in India.

Bangladeshi media say more than 500 people were killed in weeks of demonstrations against Ms Hasina. Many of them were shot by the police.

Thousands were injured in the worst violence Bangladesh has seen since its war of independence in 1971.

• Sheikh Hasina’s final hours as a hated autocrat
• The Nobel winner tasked with leading a nation out of chaos

“Absolutely, she will come [to Bangladesh],” Mr Wazed tells the BBC, saying his mother will return as and when the interim government decides to hold the polls.

The military-backed interim government, headed by Nobel Laureate Muhammad Yunus, was sworn in on Thursday along with 16 advisers.

Two of the student protest leaders are among the advisers.

Mr Wazed is an information technology expert who now lives in the US.

He worked as an IT adviser for Ms Hasina for several years during her tenure as prime minister from 2009 to 2024.

“She will certainly go back,” her son says.

“Whether she comes back into politics or not, that decision has not been made. She is quite fed up with how she was treated.”

The student-led movement started as a protest against quotas in civil service jobs last month before becoming massive unrest to oust Ms Hasina following a brutal police crackdown.

Mr Joy is confident that when the polls are held, the Awami League, the party of Ms Hasina, will emerge victorious.

“I am convinced that If you have elections in Bangladesh today, and if they are free and fair and if there’s a level playing field, then the Awami League will win,” he says.

Ms Hasina became prime minister for a fourth consecutive term in a controversial election held in January 2024.

The main opposition parties boycotted the election saying under Ms Hasina’s government there could not be “any free and fair election”.

Her son termed the current interim government as unconstitutional and said elections should be held within 90 days.

However, he was a bit circumspect about his political ambitions or whether he would return to the country to stand for the leadership of the Awami League, following in the footsteps of his grandfather, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the founding leader of Bangladesh, and Ms Hasina.

“No decision has been made in this regard. I never had political ambitions,” he says.

But he adds that he was upset over the way the protesters had ransacked and set fire to their ancestral homes, including the museum dedicated to his grandfather in Dhaka.

“Under these circumstances, I am quite angry, I will do whatever it takes,” he says.

He says he is in touch with party supporters who are very upset and outraged over what happened in the past few weeks.

“If 40,000 protesters or so can force the government to resign, then what happens if protests are held by the Awami League, which has millions of supporters?” he asserts.

Ms Hasina and her sister (Rehana Siddiq) have been stranded in Delhi since Monday.

India has been a strong supporter of the Bangladeshi leader.

There have been reports she is trying to seek asylum in the UK, the United Arab Emirates or Saudi Arabia.

“Those questions about her visa and asylum, they are all rumours,” her son says.

“She’s not applied anywhere. She’s staying put for the time being, watching how the situation unfolds in Bangladesh.

“Her ultimate goal is always to go back home in Bangladesh.”

Asked about well-documented human rights violations and extra-judicial killings during his mother’s 15-year tenure, he says some mistakes were made.

“Of course, there were individuals in our government who made mistakes, but we always righted the ship,” he adds.

“We had one minister’s son, who was a member of the special police force. He is in jail convicted of extra-judicial killings. That’s unprecedented.”

“My mother tried to do the right thing in terms of arrests,” her son insists.

A fisherman from Devon has landed the first shark of its kind – one made of Lego lost at sea off a cargo ship 27 years ago.

Richard West, a 35-year-old fisherman living in Plymouth, found the plastic toy on the top of his fishing nets 20 miles (32km) south of Penzance on Tuesday.

He contacted the project Lego Lost at Sea, whose founder Tracey Williams confirmed the piece to be the first-ever reported shark from the 51,800 Lego sharks lost off the Tokio Express cargo ship on 13 February 1997.

A freak wave in a severe gale swept 62 shipping containers into the sea 20 miles (32km) off Land’s End, one of which held 4,756,940 pieces of Lego, much of it sea-themed.

Mr West was trawling on board the Defiant FY848, which sails between Plymouth, Brixham and Newlyn, for monkfish, sole and doreys, when he landed his unique catch.

He said: “I could tell straight away what it was because I had Lego sharks in the pirate ship set when I was little. I loved them.

“It’s been 25 years since I’ve seen that face.”

He contacted Ms Williams who told him it was the first recorded Lego shark found from the spilled cargo that she had encountered.

She told him the official Lego inventory showed that 22,200 dark grey Lego sharks and 29,600 light grey ones were in the lost container.

Mr West said: “I was so excited. I was more happy about finding the shark that anything else I caught this week.

“It’s priceless – it’s treasure!”

Ms Williams said: “This Lego shark is one of 51,800 lost overboard from the Tokio Express and the only one we’ve ever seen.

“Richard and I now have joint custody of the shark.”

The Lego sharks featured in several Lego sets from 1997, including Shark Cage Cove, Shark Attack and Deep Sea Bounty, she explained.

She asked anyone else who has found Lego from the spill to get in touch with the Lego Lost at Sea project so it could be added to the project’s map, which is recording sightings for a scientific paper on the Lego spill.

Recently Lego from the container lost overboard has been found not just in Cornwall but in the Isle of Man, the Channel Islands, Wales and Ireland, she added.

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Taxi drivers are often hoping to pick up a five star review, but Olympic chauffeur Elisabeth Lomholdt is hoping she gets a chance to pick up real life stars.

The volunteer driver from Denmark is spending the summer behind the wheel, zig-zagging between venues across Paris.

So far she hasn’t seen a medallist, instead taking officials to and from the Games but says she’s had no shortage of interesting conversations.

“The longer the ride, the better,” the 25-year-old tells BBC Newsbeat. “I feel so inspired after hearing people’s stories.”

Elisabeth, who lives in Copenhagen, says: “Every time I have passengers, I have one question, because I’m really interested in learning what the biggest sports are from their country.

“Because in Denmark, it’s mostly soccer and handball and in all other countries, those are not the main sports.”

Elisabeth has been living in Paris for five weeks and says when she first arrived, “a lot of people told me, ‘you’re crazy that you want to drive in Paris’.”

Traffic in the French capital can be notoriously difficult to navigate.

“When you drive in Paris, people, mostly the motorcycles, put on the light and just go beep, beep, beep, and they just continue in between cars,” says Elisabeth.

“What I’m used to is like roundabouts with lanes, stuff like that. Here, there are no lanes.

“You just have to kind of adapt.”

Lots of people volunteer straight after graduating but Elisabeth might have the best stories.

She loves sport, but more than that she says she was drawn to the opportunity to see behind the scenes at such an enormous event when she first applied more than a year-and-a-half ago.

“It’s not what you see on televisions, it’s all that, all the things that are in the back,” she says.

“Like, how is it structured? I think that’s really interesting.”

Elisabeth is one of 45,000 people volunteering at the Paris Olympics out of more than 300,000 who applied.

“It’s really inspiring how our help is such a big part of the Olympics,” she says.

“The Olympics wouldn’t be the Olympics without volunteers.”

Paris 2024 pledged to be the most sustainable Games yet.

That’s why TikTok has been full of videos of athletes bouncing on cardboard beds and vegan options in the canteen.

Organisers also made plans when it came to getting around the city, making all the venues accessible by public transport and creating 400km (250 miles) of new bike lanes.

Elisabeth’s taxi has had a sustainable makeover. The car she drives is part of an electric fleet and fewer vehicles have been commissioned overall than in previous Games.

The 25-year-old hopes to see more people inspired to volunteer their time.

“I know we don’t get paid, but it gives you so much more than what money is,” she says.

“It gives you perspectives on life.”

And with the closing ceremony on Sunday, Elisabeth still has a chance to pick up her dream passengers.

“I think it would be fun to have some of the Danish athletes,” she says.

“But I am biased.”

Listen to Newsbeat live at 12:45 and 17:45 weekdays – or listen back here.

Susan Wojcicki, the former boss of YouTube and one of Google’s earliest employees, has died aged 56.

Google’s chief executive Sundar Pichai announced that Ms Wojcicki had passed away after two years of living with lung cancer.

Mr Pichai, who is also the boss of Google’s parent company Alphabet, said on X/Twitter he was “unbelievably saddened” and Ms Wojcicki was “as core to the history of Google as anyone”.

Once described as the “most important Googler you’ve never heard of”, Ms Wojcicki was present at the company’s beginnings when, in 1998, she rented out her Menlo Park garage to the search engine firm’s founders, Sergey Brin and Larry Page.

She was later persuaded to leave her job at chip giant Intel to join Google, becoming the firm’s 16th employee.

Ms Wojcicki would go on to lead YouTube, the online video sharing company owned by Google, for nine years until 2023 when she stepped down to focus “on my family, health and personal projects I’m passionate about”.

Ms Wojcicki was one of relatively few women to hold a senior role in the technology industry.

She wanted to encourage more girls to go into the field, telling the BBC’s Newshour in 2013 that the future was going to be “increasingly digitally influenced”.

“But then I see there are very few women in the industry,” she said. “Overall the tech industry has, on average, probably about 20% women and I also look at the pipeline of girls coming out of technical degrees and it is very small.”

While Ms Wojcicki rose to become the boss of YouTube, her tenure was not without controversy. The platform faced criticism over its handling of online disinformation, including during the Covid pandemic.

In 2022, a number of fact-checking organisations wrote to her accusing YouTube of being “one of the major conduits of online disinformation and misinformation worldwide”.

Ms Wojcicki stepped down a year later to focus on her personal life and health.

Announcing her death “with profound sadness”, her husband Dennis Troper said: “My beloved wife of 26 years and mother to our five children left us today after two years of living with non-small-cell lung cancer.”

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has acknowledged, for the first time, that his military is conducting an offensive inside Russia’s western Kursk region.

In his nightly televised address on Saturday, Mr Zelensky said Ukraine’s military is pushing the war “onto the aggressor’s territory.”

This comes five days after Ukraine began its operation, which has taken Russia by surprise and prompted mass evacuations across both sides of the border.

In Ukraine, explosions were reported in the capital Kyiv and in the Sumy region in the early hours of Sunday.

Kyiv mayor Vitali Klitschko said air defence units are “operating” and air raid alerts continue in the city. Writing on the Telegram messaging app he warned civilians to stay in shelters.

Kyiv, its surrounding region and all of eastern Ukraine are under air alert, the country’s air force said.

In his Saturday address, President Zelensky thanked Ukraine’s “warriors”, and said he had discussed the operation in Russia with the country’s senior military commander Oleksandr Syrsky.

“Ukraine is proving that it can indeed restore justice and ensure the necessary pressure on the aggressor,” he added.

Reports say Ukrainian troops are threatening to seize one regional town as they fight more than 10km (six miles) inside Russia – the deepest advance since Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

At least 13 people were injured – two seriously – in Kursk in the early hours of Sunday, the region’s acting governor Alexei Smirnov said.

More than 76,000 people have already been evacuated from the border area, according to Russia’s state Tass news agency, and Mr Smirnov said on Sunday he had ordered officials to speed up the operation to get civilians to safety.

Russia’s National Counter-Terrorism Committee imposed a “counter-terrorism operation” regime across three regions on Friday in response to Ukraine’s surprise cross-border incursion.

This means authorities in the border regions of Kursk, Belgorod and Bryansk regions can restrict the movement of people and vehicles and use phone tapping among other measures.

Russia said that up to 1,000 Ukrainian troops, supported by tanks and armoured vehicles, entered the Kursk region on Tuesday morning.

The Ukrainians have since reportedly seized a number of villages, and are also threatening the regional town of Sudzha.

On Friday, a video emerged purportedly showing armed Ukrainian soldiers who claimed to have control over the town, as well as a key Russian gas facility there owned by the Gazprom company.

BBC Verify has now confirmed that the footage was indeed from the Gazprom facility on the north-western outskirts of Sudzha, about 7km from the border with Ukraine. The video alone does not verify the claim that Ukrainian troops have taken the whole town.

Russian military bloggers earlier claimed that the town was in Moscow’s hands.

BBC Verify checked and confirmed the location of another video posted online on Friday morning. It shows a 15-vehicle Russian convoy damaged, burned and abandoned on a road through the town of Oktyabrskoe, roughly 38km from the border on the Russian side.

The footage also shows Russian soldiers – some injured, some possibly dead – among the vehicles.

Moscow has since sent reinforcements – including tanks and rocket-launcher systems – to the Kursk region.

In its latest report on Saturday morning, the Russian defence ministry said its troops were “continuing to repel the attempted invasion” of Ukrainian forces.

It claimed that Ukraine’s attempts to “break through deep into Russian territory” had been foiled.

The Russian claims have not been independently verified.

On Friday, the UN nuclear agency urged both Russia and Ukraine to “exercise maximum restraint” as the fighting was edging closer to the Kursk nuclear power plant – one of the biggest such facilities in Russia.

International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief Rafael Grossi said measures must be taken “to avoid a nuclear accident with the potential for serious radiological consequences”.

The power plant is located about 60km north-east of Sudzha.

A lingering fragrance of bun maska (bread and butter), plates loaded with freshly cooked samosas and cups of piping hot and creamy Irani chai.

These are some of the sights you would typically find at a Persian-style cafe in India.

Popularly known as Irani cafes, these iconic restaurants – with their signature marble-topped tables, old-style clocks, chequered floors and a distinctive menu – have been a part of India’s culture for more than 100 years.

And their influence has spread beyond India: Dishoom, one of London’s most recognisable restaurant chains, was inspired by these cafes.

They came up in cities like Mumbai and Pune in the 18th and 19th centuries when there was an influx of Persian immigrants from Iran.

There’s a third lesser known pocket of the country – the southern city of Hyderabad – where these cafes have been an intrinsic part of the local culture for decades.

But despite their many charms and the rich cultural heritage, the cafes of this city – like their counterparts in Pune and Mumbai – are on the verge of dying out, with owners blaming rising prices, competition from fast-food restaurants and changing consumer tastes.

Hyderabad has the most number of Irani cafes after Mumbai even today. That’s because the city was a centre for Iranian trade in the late 19th Century.

Persian was widely spoken under the rule of a Muslim Nizam, or prince. The Niloufer café, located in the old quarters of the city, was actually named after the Nizam’s Iranian daughter-in-law.

This was also a period when parts of modern-day Pakistan were still in Hyderabad, with Iran as its neighbour, making the city easily accessible to Persian traders.

Most of the families who moved to Hyderabad – and other Indian cities – came to escape persecution and famine back home. Some came in search of better jobs and business.

Their arrival coincided with colonial rule when the British were actively promoting a tea drinking culture in the country.

When the Iranians arrived, they brought their own style of making tea – with cream and condensed milk – giving rise to a distinct Iranian chai culture in the cities.

“At first, the tea was sold under the name Chai Khana and only Muslims drank it,” Hyderabad-based historian Mohammed Safiullah says. “But soon, people from all religions caught on to its distinct flavour.”

By the 20th Century, Irani cafes were present in every nook and corner of Hyderabad.

The customers would sip on the lip-smacking tea as they would spend hours chatting away at the coffee shops.

At some cafes, patrons would also be able to play their favourite songs on a jukebox for a small fee.

Historians say these cafes played a crucial role in breaking down social barriers and religious taboos and became an important part of the city’s public life.

“Irani cafes in Hyderabad have stood as symbols of secularism,” historian Paravastu Lokeshwar said. “The names didn’t have any religious connotations. People of all religions and castes patronised them.”

Now they are under threat.

From an estimated 450 cafes over two decades ago, Hyderabad now has only 125 left, said Jaleel Farooq Rooz, owner of The Grand Hotel, a famous Irani cafe.

Mr Rooz’s maternal grandfather came from Iran in 1951 and took over the hotel that was started by 12 Iranians in 1935.

“We used to sell 8,000-9,000 cups a day once. Now we sell just 4,000 cups a day,” he told the BBC.

He cites competition from fast-food chains as one of the reasons. Now one of the most rapidly developing Indian cities, Hyderabad was a quiet little town until the early 1990s. Things changed in the mid-90s, when the city joined the IT boom in India and became a powerhouse of the industry.

The transformation was accompanied by a slew of economic reforms in the country, which allowed global fast-food chains and cafes to penetrate the Indian market. Similar to Iranian cafes, these food joints also offered extended seating options, but with far better amenities and more options.

Mr Rooz said most Irani cafes operated from rented premises as they required large spaces where patrons could relax and unwind over tea.

But rising real estate prices in Hyderabad have forced many owners to move to other work.

“Inflation also took a toll. Tea powder and milk prices have risen three times compared to five years ago,” he added.

Others say the number of Iranian families entering the business has also gone down.

“The current generation is not interested in the café and restaurant business. They prefer other jobs and many migrate to other countries,” said the owner of popular Farasha Restaurant, Mahmood, who goes by only one name.

But despite the challenges, there are still a few in the business who continue to swim against the tide.

Syed Mohammed Razak manages the Red Rose Restaurant in Hyderabad. His grandfather migrated from Tehran and established the City Light Hotel in the 1970s. Later, Mr Razak’s father started the Red Rose Restaurant.

An engineer and graphic designer by profession, Mr Razak admits that “selling just chai and biscuits” is neither easy, nor profitable.

He has now introduced new dishes to the menu to attract more customers and is using his graphic designing skills to expand business and promote it online.

“I want to continue my family’s legacy,” he said.

And it’s not just the owners, there are also loyal customers – many of whom have been frequenting these cafes for generations – who say they would always come back for “another cup of Irani chai”.

“Irani tea is a part of my life, I love the taste and drink it every time I step out,” said Yanni, who goes by only one name and is a regular at the Grand Hotel.

“There is nothing like it even today.”

Donald Trump’s campaign has said some of its internal communications have been hacked and suggested it was targeted by Iranian operatives.

US news website Politico reported on Saturday that it had been emailed campaign documents including internal research carried out on Trump’s running mate, Ohio Senator JD Vance.

“These documents were obtained illegally from foreign sources hostile to the United States, intended to interfere with the 2024 election,” a campaign spokesman told the BBC.

Politico said it had confirmed the authenticity of the documents. The BBC has not independently verified the claims.

The campaign did not give any further details or any evidence linking the document leak to Iranian hackers or the Iranian government.

Its statement came one day after Microsoft released a report indicating that Iranian hackers targeted the campaign of an unnamed US presidential candidate in June.

Microsoft’s Threat Analysis Center (MTAC) said that the campaign was sent a spear phishing email – a message designed to look trustworthy in order to get the target to click on a malicious link.

“Over the past several months, we have seen the emergence of significant influence activity by Iranian actors,” the MTAC report said.

Trump campaign spokesperson, Steven Cheung said the June hacking attempt mentioned in the MTAC report “coincides with the close timing of President Trump’s selection of a vice presidential nominee”.

“The Iranians know that President Trump will stop their reign of terror just like he did in his first four years in the White House,” Mr Cheung said.

Politico said that in late July it began receiving emails from a person who identified themselves only as “Robert” using an AOL email account.

The news outlet said the Vance file was 271 pages long and based on publicly available information about Vance’s past record and statements. The email account also sent part of a research document about Florida Senator Marco Rubio, who was also a vice presidential contender, it said.

Presidential campaigns routinely research potential vice-presidential nominees in order to ferret out any potentially embarrassing revelations. Politico reported that some of Mr Vance’s previous – and well-known – criticisms of Trump were labelled in the document as “potential vulnerabilities”.

The Microsoft report noted: “Iranian cyber-enabled influence operations have been a consistent feature of at least the last three US election cycles.”

Microsoft had released a similar report during the 2020 election saying Iranian hackers had targeted presidential campaigns.

US security sources have also warned of an Iranian plot to assassinate Trump, unconnected to last month’s attempted shooting in Pennsylvania. And on Tuesday, the US justice department charged a Pakistani man alleged to have ties to Iran with plotting to assassinate US officials, potentially including the former president.

The BBC has contacted Iranian officials for comment.

Elaine Foo’s legs are streaked with thick, purple scars – each one a reminder of a leg-lengthening procedure which went badly wrong.

Since 2016, the 49-year-old has had five surgeries and three bone grafts, exhausted her life savings and brought a legal action against her surgeon, which was finally settled in July, with no admission of liability.

At one point, Elaine had a metal nail break through a bone and on another occasion, she says her legs felt like they were being “roasted from the inside”.

“My  journey has been a trial of fire – but I survived,” she says.

Her doctor consistently denied any negligence and says that some of the issues arose from complications she had been warned of, and others arose through her own actions.

Elaine always hated her height.

“At 12, I was taller than most girls,” she says. “By 14, I was suddenly shorter than everyone. Over time it became an obsession. Taller means better. Taller means more beautiful. I just felt that taller people had more chances.”

By adulthood the obsession was overwhelming.

Elaine believes she had body dysmorphia, a mental health condition where a person sees a flaw in their appearance no matter how others see them. The impact of the condition can be devastating.

At the age of 25, Elaine came across an article about a Chinese clinic where people were having surgery to make their leg bones longer. The piece contained grisly details of medieval-looking leg cages and rampant infection. It sounded nightmarish but left Elaine intrigued.

“I know people will question the vanity of it,” she says. “But when you face body dysmorphia, there’s no rational explanation for why you feel so overwhelmingly bad.”

Sixteen years later, Elaine discovered a private clinic offering the procedure in London. It was being provided by the orthopaedic surgeon Jean-Marc Guichet, a limb-lengthening specialist who had even created his own lengthening device – the Guichet Nail.

“That was really a hallelujah moment, because I could do it in London and could recover at home,” she recalls.

“Dr Guichet was open about the kinds of things that could go wrong. Nerve injuries, blood clots, the possibility of bones not fusing back together.

“But I’d done my research, was going to a very expensive doctor and I expected commensurate medical care. My dream was to grow from 5ft 2in to 5ft 5in.”

On 25 July, at a cost of around £50,000, she went in for surgery and set in motion a process which would change her life.

Leg-lengthening procedures are relatively uncommon, but available at private clinics around the world. Depending on where it’s carried out, it can cost anything from £15,000 to upwards of £150,000.

“Waking up was very exciting, because it felt like nothing happened. No pain. But 90 minutes later, it starts. It felt like someone was cooking my legs. Like being roasted from the inside. That first night I screamed until 6am, until I fell asleep screaming.”

With this procedure, some pain is to be expected. During the operation, the leg bones are broken in two and a metal rod is fitted inside.

The metal rods are gradually extended to increase their length and pull the two halves of bone apart. This process is meant to increase the patient’s height. The broken bones should gradually heal back together, to fill the gap in between.

The operation is complex, and it’s only the start of a long process.

“The lengthening process takes about two or three months and then you have at least double that time before you’ve recovered reasonable function,” warns Professor Hamish Simpson, former chair of the British Orthopaedic Association. “For most people, it’s going to take a year out of your life.”

Once surgery was over, Elaine’s lengthening process began. Several times a day she carried out an uncomfortable regime, rotating her legs to trigger the rod’s ratchet mechanism. This is what makes the nail lengthen and her legs grow. But two weeks later, she says disaster struck.

“I’d been feeling a lot of pain in my left leg. Then one night, while I was moving around in bed, I heard what sounded like a Kit Kat crunch, followed by severe pain.”

Elaine went in for a scan, which confirmed her fears. The nail in her left leg had broken through her femur – the thigh bone – the strongest bone in the human body. She was distraught, but she says she was reassured by Dr Guichet.

“He told me that all you need to do now is not worry. Wait for it to heal and once it’s healed, we’ll begin the process again.”

They would continue lengthening Elaine’s right leg, while scheduling another operation to deal with her left leg – which would eventually be lengthened the same amount as the right.

Elaine says she was told the extra operation would cost thousands of pounds, but was happy to pay if it meant she could see the process through.

By September, her right leg had reached its 7cm target. But things weren’t quite right. The discrepancy between her right and left leg was causing problems, curving her spine and leaving her in constant pain.

Six weeks later, scans of her right leg showed an alarming lack of bone growth. Her femur was essentially two bits of bone held together by the metal rod.

Elaine turned to Dr Guichet for help, who scheduled another operation at a clinic he worked at in Milan. In April 2017, they restarted the lengthening process in Elaine’s left leg, while also injecting bone marrow into the right leg – to stimulate bone growth there. After the operation, Elaine woke to more bad news.

“Dr Guichet told me the nail had broken while he was taking it out,” she says. “He had a nail from another patient which he was able to insert.” She adds that this was going to cost even more money.

Three days later, hardly able to move, but desperate to be home, Elaine returned to London. She says communication with Dr Guichet had soured and feels that by summer the doctor-patient relationship had broken down.

She didn’t know where else to turn and by July 2017 she managed to see a specialist orthopaedic surgeon on the NHS.

She says the specialist told her “this will not be a short journey.”

“I had to prepare myself for at least five years of treatment before healing fully,” she says.

Eight years on from the initial surgery Elaine says she is still recovering from her mental and physical scars. She has a range of mobility issues and says she suffers from PTSD.

“From 2017 to 2020 I hid from the world. I was single, unemployed, penniless and disabled.”

But recently she’s begun to get closure. A four-year legal battle was finally settled in July when  Dr Guichet agreed to pay Elaine a “substantial” sum to settle her claim against him – without any admission of liability.

• Watch: Leg-lengthening – the people having surgery to be a bit taller

The surgeon’s lawyer denied any negligence on Dr Guichet’s part, telling the court: “Dr Guichet’s case is that there was no negligence, that the fracture and delayed bone healing were unfortunate non-negligent complications that Ms Foo was warned of before surgery, and that the limited right-sided bone regeneration was aggravated by Ms Foo’s undisclosed use of anti-depressants and by her deliberately extending the nail in her right leg beyond the agreed length.”

He also claimed in court that Ms Foo had “frequently declined” to follow Guichet’s advice and had neglected her rehabilitation and physiotherapy.

Elaine contests all of these claims. She says the anti-depressants were not linked to the complications and holds the doctor responsible for what happened to her.

Elaine assumed she was safe because she was paying so much. But she has paid more than just a financial price.

“I lost the best years of my life. I know people like to hear the word regret and if someone asked me today, would you have done it, if you knew you were going to go through all this? I would say a definite, ‘No, thank you very much’.”

On the face of it, the earthquake that struck southern Japan on Thursday was not a big deal.

The magnitude 7.1 quake did little damage and the tsunami warning was quickly scaled back.

But the earthquake was swiftly followed by a warning – one which had never been given before.

There was, Japan’s meteorological agency said, an increased risk of a “major earthquake”. Japan’s prime minister has cancelled a planned trip to a summit in Central Asia to be in the country for the next week.

For many in Japan, thoughts turned to the “big one” – a once-in-a-century quake that many had grown up being warned about.

Worst-case scenarios predict more than 300,000 dead, with a wall of water potentially 30m (100ft) striking along the East Asian nation’s Pacific coast.

Which sounds terrifying. And yet, the overwhelming feeling that Masayo Oshio was left with was confusion.

“I am baffled with the advisory and don’t know what to make of it,” she admitted to the BBC from her home in Yokohama, south of the capital, Tokyo.

“We know we cannot predict earthquakes and we have been told the big one is coming one day for so long, so I kept asking myself: is this it? But it does not seem real to me.”

So, what is the “big one”, can it be predicted – and is it likely to strike any time soon?

Japan is a country used to earthquakes. It sits on the Ring of Fire and, as a result, experiences about 1,500 earthquakes a year.

The vast majority do little damage, but there are some – like the one which struck in 2011 measuring magnitude 9.0, sending a tsunami into the north-east coast and killing more than 18,000 people.

But the one that authorities fear may strike in this more densely populated region to the south could – in the absolute worst-case scenario – be even more deadly.

Earthquakes along the Nankai Trough – an area of seismic activity which stretches along Japan’s Pacific coast – have already been responsible for thousands of deaths.

In 1707, a rupture along its entire 600km length caused the second-biggest earthquake ever recorded in Japan and was followed by the eruption of Mount Fuji.

These so-called “megathrust” earthquakes tend to strike every hundred years or so, often in pairs: the last ones were in 1944 and 1946.

Experts say there is a 70% to 80% chance of a magnitude 8 or 9 quake striking somewhere along the trough in the next 30 years, with worst-case scenarios suggesting it would cause trillions in damage, and potentially kill hundreds of thousands.

And this long-anticipated event is, according to geologists Kyle Bradley and Judith A Hubbard, “the original definition of the ‘Big One’”.

“The history of great earthquakes at Nankai is convincingly scary” so as to be concerning, the pair acknowledged in their Earthquake Insights newsletter on Thursday.

Not according to Robert Geller, professor emeritus of seismology at the University of Tokyo.

“The issuance of the warning yesterday has almost nothing to do with science,” he told the BBC.

This, he argues, is because while earthquakes are known to be a “clustered phenomenon”, it is “not possible to tell in advance whether a quake is a foreshock or an aftershock”.

Indeed, only about 5% of earthquakes are “foreshocks”, say Bradley and Hubbard.

However, the 2011 earthquake was preceded by a 7.2 magnitude foreshock, they note – one which was largely ignored.

The warning system was drawn up after 2011 in an attempt to prevent a disaster of this scale again, and Thursday was the first time the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) used it.

But, crucially, while it told people to be prepared, it did not tell anyone to evacuate. Indeed, they were keen to play down any massive imminent risk.

“The likelihood of a new major earthquake is higher than normal, but this is not an indication that a major earthquake will definitely occur,” the JMA said.

Even so, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida announced he had cancelled his plans to travel out of Japan to “ensure our preparations and communications are in order”.

He added that he feared people would be “feeling anxious”, given it was the first time such an advisory had been issued.

Masayo Oshio does not seem to be, however.

“I feel that the government is overplaying it,” she said.

Prof Geller was more scathing, saying the advisory was “not a useful piece of information”.

The system allows for either a warning or a lower-level alert to be sent out. Thursday was an alert, advising people to be prepared to evacuate.

And, anecdotally, it seems to have worked. Even in a country used to receiving alerts on their phones, the “Nankai Trough” effect – and threat of the “Big One” – made people stop and take notice.

“One thing I did when I saw the advisory was to check what we have at home and make sure we are prepared, since I have not done that for a while,” admitted Masayo Oshio.

And this has been replicated along the Pacific coast.

In Nichinan, Miyazaki Prefecture, near the epicentre of Thursday’s 7.1, officials were inspecting the conditions of already-opened evacuation shelters. In Kochi Prefecture, western Japan, 10 municipalities opened at least 75 evacuation shelters by Friday morning , according to Kyodo news agency.

The thermal plant operator Jera Co., a joint venture between Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc. and Chubu Electric Power Co., said it was on emergency alert, reaffirming communication routes with fuel carriers and evacuation protocols for piers.

In the town of Kuroshio, also in Kochi, elderly residents and others were urged to evacuate voluntarily to safer locations. Officials of Wakayama Prefecture, western Japan, confirmed evacuation routes in co-operation with local municipalities.

Prof Geller – for all his scepticism – says it is a good opportunity to “make sure you’re doing all the routine precautions you should be doing anyway”.

“Have a week’s worth of water on hand, some canned food, and then maybe have some batteries for your flashlight,” he advises.

All bodies have been recovered from the site of a plane crash in the Brazilian state of São Paulo which killed everyone on board, the authorities have confirmed.

Teams had been working to find and identify victims of the disaster after a twin-engine turboprop operated by airline Voepass came down in the town of Vinhedo.

The number of casualties was revised upwards on Saturday to 62.

Voepass said earlier that the ATR 72-500 was carrying 57 passengers and four crew between Cascavel in the southern state of Paraná to Guarulhos airport in São Paulo city. But it later confirmed there was another unaccounted-for passenger on the flight.

Footage circulating on social media showed a plane descending vertically, spiralling as it fell.

The aircraft crashed in a residential area, but no-one on the ground was injured. Officials said only one home in a local condominium complex was damaged.

The state of São Paulo said it concluded its operation to remove the victims’ bodies from the site at 18:30 local time (22:30 BST) on Saturday.

It added that the bodies – 34 males and 28 females – were being moved to a police morgue in the city of São Paulo, where they will be identified and released to the families.

Two of the victims, the captain and first officer, have already been identified, the state confirmed.

It added that family members will be staying in a hotel in the city to help with identifying the victims – 38 families have arrived so far.

Earlier, Capt Maycon Cristo, a spokesman for the fire department, said teams were relying on a number of factors to help identify passengers.

These include documents and the position of bodies in relation to seating, as well as mobile phones recovered from some of the victims.

The plane crash is Brazil’s worst since 2007, when a TAM Express plane crashed and burst into flames at São Paulo’s Congonhas airport, killing 199 people.

At this stage, it is not known what caused the ATR 72-500 to crash.

Authorities said the flight recorders had been retrieved.

ATR, the French-Italian plane maker, said it would co-operate with the investigation.

According to the tracking website Flightradar24, flight 2283 had taken off from Cascavel at 11:56 local time (14:56 GMT) on Friday and was due to arrive at 13:40.

The last signal received from the aircraft was about 20 minutes before it was scheduled to land.

Brazil’s civil aviation agency said the plane, which was built in 2010, had been “in good operating condition, with valid registration and airworthiness certificates”.

The four crew members on board at the time of the accident were all duly licensed and had valid qualifications, it added.

The Uopeccan Cancer Hospital in Cascavel told BBC Brasil that two of its trainee doctors were among the passengers who died.

The moment the passenger plane crashed was witnessed by local residents, while others described damage to their homes.

Luiz Augusto de Oliveira told Reuters that he, his wife and their maid were at home when “suddenly we saw the aircraft exploding in the backyard of my house”.

He said: “At the time of the collision, we thought it was a helicopter breaking down, due to the noise.”

He added that everyone in the house was unharmed and while there was some damage, it was “as minimal as possible, it was material goods. I just have to thank God for the way the aircraft crashed.”

Another resident, Nathalie Cicari, told CNN Brasil she had been having lunch when she heard a “very loud noise very close by”, describing it like the sound of a drone but “much louder”.

“I went out on the balcony and saw the plane spinning. Within seconds, I realised that it was not a normal movement for a plane.”

Brazil’s President, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, expressed solidarity with the families and friends of the victims at an event where he was speaking.

“I have to be the bearer of very bad news and I would like everyone to stand up so that we can have a minute of silence,” he told his audience.

He posted on social media that news of the crash was “very sad”. “All my solidarity to the families and friends of the victims,” he said.

São Paulo’s state Governor, Tarcísio Gomes de Freitas, has declared three days of mourning.

Celine Dion’s team has criticised former US President Donald Trump for the “unauthorised” use of a clip of one of her hits at a presidential campaign event.

The song My Heart Will Go On – which featured in a 1997 film about the doomed ship Titanic – was played to supporters before Trump appeared on stage at a rally in Bozeman, Montana, on Friday.

In a statement released on X, Dion’s team said she did not “endorse” the use of the song, adding: “And really, that song?”

Artists and bands including Neil Young, Queen and the Rolling Stones have previously complained about Mr Trump using their songs at campaign rallies.

The statement said: “Today, Celine Dion’s management team and her record label, Sony Music Entertainment Canada Inc, became aware of the unauthorised usage of the video, recording, musical performance, and likeness of Celine Dion singing My Heart Will Go On at a Donald Trump / JD Vance campaign rally in Montana.

“In no way is this use authorised, and Celine Dion does not endorse this or any similar use.

“…And really, that song?”

The Trump campaign has not responded to the statement.

My Heart Will Go On is one of five-time Grammy winner Dion’s best-known songs.

The Oscar-winning ballad was on the soundtrack of the 1997 blockbuster Titanic, starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet as two lovers who meet on the doomed ship’s maiden voyage in 1912.

Dion made a triumphant return to live singing last month at the opening ceremony of the Paris Olympics.

It was her first performance since revealing she had been diagnosed with Stiff Person Syndrome (SPS) in 2022.

SPS is a rare neurological disorder that causes muscles to spasm and can be debilitating.

The singer discussed her struggles with SPS in a film called I Am: Celine Dion, which Amazon Prime Video said last month had become its most successful documentary ever.

The Canadian artist Neil Young has also previously objected to Trump using his songs, and in 2020 the Rolling Stones threatened him with legal action after the song You Can’t Always Get What You Want was played at a political rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Ozzy and Sharon Osbourne sent a notice to Trump banning him from using Black Sabbath music in campaign videos in 2019.

The Republican Party’s presidential candidate is not the only politician to receive criticism from artists over the use of songs during campaign rallies.

Last year, rapper Eminem asked aspiring Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy to stop using his songs.

Bruce Springsteen castigated President Reagan for planning to use Born in the USA for his 1984 election campaign.

Fatboy Slim furiously denounced the UK Labour Party for using his hit Right Here, Right Now at their 2004 conference – the year after the Iraq War.

Legally, US politicians do not always need direct permission from artists.

Their campaigns can buy licensing packages from music rights organisations giving them legal access to more than 20 million songs.

However, artists have the right to remove their music from that list.

Crowds booed as a new Banksy artwork of a stretching cat on an empty, distressed billboard in north-west London was taken down just hours after being revealed.

The street artist posted a photo of the design on his Instagram on Saturday without any caption, marking the sixth in a series of animal-themed artworks over the last week.

The new Banksy appeared on Edgware Road in Cricklewood, with police taping off the path in front of the artwork as about 50 people gathered to take pictures, before they later saw it removed.

It followed the artwork of pelicans appearing to take fish from a chip shop sign, which emerged on Friday in Walthamstow, north-east London.

Hours after Banksy confirmed the design was his in an Instagram post, crowds gathered from across London to see the piece before men, who said they were contractors, arrived.

The billboard had been due to be taken down on Monday before the artwork appeared.

One contractor, who gave his name as Marc, said the date had been brought forward in case someone “rips it down and leaves it unsafe”.

Marc said the artwork will be brought back to their yard to see if anyone collects it.

He said: “We’ll store that bit [the artwork] in our yard to see if anyone collects it but if not it’ll go in a skip.

“I’ve been told to keep it careful in case he wants it.”

A black board was first used to cover the majority of the cat on the billboard at the request of the police, who wanted to stop people walking in the road in front of traffic.

The removal effort was briefly paused by police as officers checked the contractors were approved to take the piece down before they were allowed to continue with the work.

An officer at the scene said the owner of the billboard had told police he will donate it to an art gallery.

Ben Tansley, 71, a member of the NorthWestTwo Residents Association, said: “If it wasn’t guarded overnight somebody would take it. It’s such a shame.”

Chairwoman of the association, Carol Reeman, 64, added: “This is Cricklewood, this is our Banksy. You can’t even enjoy it for the whole day before someone wanted to take it down.

“You would wait for a lifetime for a Banksy to come into our neighbourhood. Cricklewood’s on the map.”

The image is one of many seen over the past week.

A stencilled image of a goat appeared in Kew on Monday while an image of two elephants touching trunks in Chelsea was revealed by the Bristol-based artist on Tuesday, although on Friday it was seen defaced with stripes.

Three monkeys hanging from a bridge in Brick Lane drew crowds on Wednesday, and a howling wolf on a satellite dish was seen in Peckham on Thursday.

When the artwork of two pelicans appeared above the sign of a fish and chip shop in Walthamstow on Friday, one resident told BBC News: “It’s genuinely really exciting.

“A friend messaged me early this morning telling me it’s appeared on my street so we arranged to come down as soon as we could.

“It’s so fun and wholesome – that’s what’s really nice to see.”

She believed the location, Bonners Fish Bar, was significant.

“It’s a bit of an icon of the area, so I’m sure that’s why it’s been chosen,” she said.

“It’s been here a long time and it’s well loved.”

Thursday’s stencil of a wolf on a satellite dish in Rye Lane, Peckham, was taken down from on top of a building within hours of it being revealed.

A video was filmed showing two people removing it and carrying it off down the street.

The Banksy press team told the BBC they “believed” it had been stolen.

A statement from the Metropolitan Police said it had received reports the dish had been stolen, and said there had been “no arrests” and “inquiries continue”.

The Banksy press team declined to comment about the possible meaning behind the series of stencils in London.

Images of the Algerian boxer Imane Khelif and Taiwan’s Lin Yu-ting on the medal podium in Paris will go down as some of the most unforgettable of the 2024 Olympics.

A frenzied debate has raged over the International Olympic Committee clearing the duo to compete in the women’s boxing in Paris, despite them having been disqualified from last year’s Women’s World Championships for failing to meet eligibility criteria.

Amid the heat, science is shedding increasing light on our different chromosomal make-ups and what advantages they may bring to sport.

But the research is ongoing and even among the experts who spend their professional lives working on it, there are differing interpretations on what the science tells us.

We do know that the process of sex determination starts when a foetus is developing. Most females get two X chromosomes (XX), while most males get an X and a Y chromosome (XY).

Chromosomes influence a person’s sex. But hormones are important too, before birth – as well as later on during puberty. While the baby is still growing in the womb, hormones help the reproductive organs develop.

However, at some point through the pregnancy some babies’ reproductive organs don’t develop in the way most people’s do.

This can be caused by conditions called DSDs: differences in sex development.

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There are a group of about 40 conditions involving genes, hormones and reproductive organs that develop in the womb. It means a person’s sex development is different from that of most other people’s.

These chromosome abnormalities are rare – but they have come into sharp focus because of the boxing row at the Olympics.

Both fighters were said to have failed International Boxing Association gender eligibility tests last year – but there has been conflicting information whether XY chromosomes or elevated testosterone were found.

While representatives of the fighters and the IOC insist the fighters were “born women, raised as women and always competed as women”, critics, including some of their opponents at Paris 2024, have speculated that perhaps the fighters have DSD.

Because these genetic variations are so many and so varied, some experts say it’s impossible to establish that everyone with a Y chromosome is a male and everyone without a Y chromosome is a female.

“Just looking at the presence of a Y chromosome on its own does not answer the question of whether someone is male or female,” says Prof Alun Williams, who researches genetic factors related to sport performance at the Manchester Metropolitan University Institute of Sport.

“It’s obviously a very good marker, as most people with a Y chromosome are male…but it’s not a perfect indicator.”

For some people with DSD, the Y chromosome is not a fully formed typical male Y chromosome. It may have some genetic material missing, damaged or swapped with the X chromosome, depending on the variation.

When it comes to being male or female, what is usually crucial is a specific gene called SRY – which stands for ‘sex-determining region of the Y chromosome’.

“This is what is called the make-male gene. It’s the master switch of sex development,” says Dr Emma Hilton, a developmental biologist who studies genetic disorders. She is also a trustee of the Sex Matters charity, which argues Imane Khelif and Lin Yu-ting shouldn’t be competing until further testing is done.

There are some people born with XY chromosomes who have lost what Dr Hilton calls the “make-male” gene.

“These people don’t make testosterone. They develop a very typical female anatomy,” Dr Hilton says.

So a test that identifies XY chromosomes does not offer a complete picture. And in the case of Imane Khelif and Lin Yu-ting, the IBA has not disclosed details of the way they were tested.

However, Dr Hilton also says that in most people with DSD who have XY chromosomes, the SRY “make-male” gene is present.

These people usually have testicles which are often inside the body.

“When they hit puberty they start producing testosterone – which is what underpins male advantage in sports,” says Dr Hilton.

The most famous example is Caster Semenya – a double Olympic gold medallist and three-time world champion over 800m, though Prof Alun Williams says there is not direct evidence that DSD athletes have the same advantage as typical males.

The roadblock is in a gene required to generate external genitalia – which boys need in order to grow a penis. Anyone with the same condition as Caster Semenya has a mutation within that gene that stops it functioning normally.

In the womb, they will develop a male anatomy until the final stage of growing a penis – and when they are not able to, then they’ll start developing a vulva and a clitoris.

But they don’t develop female reproductive organs: they don’t have a cervix or a uterus.

These people don’t have periods and they can’t get pregnant. Having sex with males can be difficult.

Discovering you have this kind of genetic mutation can be a shock.

“The most recent woman we diagnosed with having XY chromosomes was 33,” says Claus Højbjerg Gravholt – an endocrinology professor at Aarhus University who spent the past 30 years dealing with DSD.

His patient came to see him because she had no idea why she couldn’t get pregnant.

“We discovered she didn’t have a uterus, so she would never be able to have a baby. She was absolutely devastated.”

Prof Gravholt says the implications that come with questioning one’s gender identity can be destabilising – and he often refers his patients to a psychologist.

“If I showed you her photo, you would say: that’s a woman. She has a female body, she is married to a man. She feels like a female. And that is the case for most of my patients.”

When Prof Gravholt asked her why she didn’t consult a doctor about not getting periods, she said there was another older woman in her family who never menstruated – so she thought it wasn’t abnormal.

There is another genetic mutation Prof Gravholt has come across.

He has diagnosed males who have XX chromosomes – which are normally found in females. “These men are infertile. They look like normal males, but their testes are smaller than average and don’t produce sperm. It’s always devastating when they find out. As they grow older, they stop producing testosterone in the way most men do.”

In some cultures, talking openly about periods and female anatomy is not culturally acceptable. In some parts of the world, women may lack the education to understand that there’s something atypical going on in their bodies.

And that’s why experts believe that many DSDs are never diagnosed – which means that comprehensive data is scarce.

But Prof Gravholt points to figures from Denmark as a good indicator.

“Denmark is probably the best country in the world at collecting this data – we have a national registry with everyone who has ever had a chromosome examination.”

He says that XY chromosomes in females are very rare – in Denmark it’s about one in 15,000.

But he believes that when adding these many genetic conditions together, about one in 300 people are affected.

“We are learning that these variations are more common than we thought,” Prof Gravholt says. “A lot of patients are being diagnosed later in life. The oldest person I diagnosed was a male in his 60s.”

Do people with differences of sex development have an unfair advantage in sport? The short answer is that there is not enough data to reach a definitive conclusion.

“It wouldn’t surprise me if some people with a type of DSD had some physical advantage over women,” says Prof Alun Williams. Those advantages could include larger muscle mass, as well as bigger and longer bones and larger organs such as lungs and heart.

He says they may also have higher levels of blood haemoglobin that lead to improved oxygen delivery to where it’s needed in working muscles.

“Some people with some types of DSDs might have advantages in some or all of those elements, ranging from 0-100%, depending on the type of DSD and its precise genetic cause.”

He believes his opinion is representative of the experts in his field, but that more evidence is needed.

When it comes to Imane Khelif and Lin Yu-ting, we don’t have enough information to know if they have a DSD that would need to be regulated.

Regulating elite sports, which typically rely on male-female binary categories in competition, is complicated because the biology of sex itself is complex.

Dr Shane Heffernan has a PhD in molecular genetics in elite sports and is currently working on a paper on what athletes think about competitors with a DSD.

He says it’s all about the nuance of the individual’s genetic condition.

For example, females with a DSD known as androgen insensitivity syndrome have XY chromosomes; they produce testosterone; but their bodies aren’t equipped to process it. So they don’t get any of the benefits from that testosterone, like males do.

Dr Heffernan says that there aren’t enough known and studied athletes with a DSD to make a valid scientific conclusion as to whether they definitely have an advantage, and as to whether they should be eligible or ineligible to compete in the female category.

He believes that the International Olympic Committee is not basing its eligibility criteria on the best available science.

“This is worrying. The IOC makes an ‘assumption of no advantage’ – but there is no direct evidence for this, nor that there is a performance advantage with DSD athletes solely because of their genetic variations.

“We simply don’t have enough data. Many people hold an emotional position when it comes to inclusion in the female category, but how can the IOC justify this position – without the data to support it?”

He is one of many people who are urging the Olympics committee, international federations and funding councils to invest in research on athletes with a DSD – but he appreciates it’s difficult, because there can be a lot of stigma towards the individual athletes when it comes to these conditions.

Some are calling for mandatory sex testing at the next Olympics – including Reem Alsalem, the UN’s special rapporteur on violence against women and girls.

“Screening DNA is now a piece of cake,” Dr Emma Hilton says. “A simple cheek swab would be sufficient, and it’s minimally invasive.”

She says swabs should happen when athletes first register for their first affiliated competition – before they start winning medals and the spotlight hits them, so as to avoid what happened with Imane Khelif.

But there’s disagreement on that among scientists.

“A cheek swab wouldn’t allow you to reach a robust conclusion on someone’s sex and potential advantage in sport,” says Prof Williams.

He argues a comprehensive sex test would have to include these three categories:

1. Genetics (including looking for a Y chromosome and the SRY “make-male” gene).

2. Hormones (including, but not limited to, testosterone).

3. The body’s responsiveness to hormones like testosterone. Some people might have a Y chromosome, but be completely insensitive to testosterone.

He believes this is currently not being done because it’s expensive, it requires people with very specific expertise – and there are ethical concerns about the testing procedure.

“This assessment can be humiliating. It includes measurements of the most intimate parts of anatomy, like the size of your breast and your clitoris, the depth of your voice, the extent of your body hair.”

One thing is certain: this controversy is not going away.

For now, science is not yet able to offer a definitive view on how people with differing chromosomal make-ups should be categorised for the purposes of elite sport. For those who spend their lives trying to make sense of the science, their hope is that this latest row will propel much-needed research.

Donald Trump continues to insist that he once took a scary helicopter trip with former San Francisco mayor Willie Brown, even as Mr Brown dismissed the story as “fiction”.

But it turns out another California politician, Nate Holden, did accompany Trump decades ago on a turbulent chopper ride, US media report.

Both Mr Brown and Mr Holden are black.

The former president said during a news conference that he and Mr Brown had gone “down” in a helicopter together and Mr Brown had been “a little concerned”.

The story became an issue after Trump recounted it on Thursday, in response to a question about Mr Brown’s relationship with Kamala Harris. The pair dated in the 1990s.

Trump was asked whether he thought the relationship had played a role in Ms Harris’s career journey. At the time, Ms Harris was a prosecutor and in 2002 was elected district attorney in San Francisco.

“Well, I know Willie Brown very well,” Trump said, before speaking about his memories of the flight.

“We thought maybe this was the end,” Trump said. “We were in a helicopter… and there was an emergency landing. This was not a pleasant landing.”

He then claimed the former mayor had told him “terrible things” about Ms Harris.

“He had a big part in what happened with Kamala,” Trump said.

Mr Brown, 90, told US media he had never shared a helicopter with Trump, adding: “I don’t think I’d want to ride on the same helicopter with him.”

He also denied he said anything disparaging about Ms Harris.

“That’s so far-fetched, it’s unbelievable,” he told local TV station KRON. “I could not envision thinking of Kamala Harris in any negative way.

“She’s a good friend a long time ago, absolutely beautiful woman, smart as all hell, very successful, electorally speaking.

“He was doing what Donald does best, his creative fiction.”

Despite a flat denial from the former San Francisco mayor, Trump insisted the story was true in a call to the New York Times, saying he was “probably going to sue” without elaborating.

Campaign spokesman Steven Cheung posted a photo of a page of Trump’s book “Letters to Trump” showing the former president pictured with Mr Brown and including a caption mentioning the helicopter incident.

Meanwhile Mr Holden, 95, a former Los Angeles city councilman and state senator, told US media outlets he had a distinct recollection of a helicopter trip with Trump.

In the 1990s, Trump was attempting to develop property in Los Angeles.

Mr Holden said that they took a very turbulent helicopter ride around 1990, during a visit with Trump to his Atlantic City casino.

The helicopter experienced mechanical trouble and was forced to make an emergency landing in New Jersey.

Others speculated that Trump, 78, may have confused Willie Brown with Jerry Brown, California’s former governor, with whom he shared a helicopter in 2018 to visit the aftermath of the Paradise wildfires. Gavin Newsom, the current state governor, was also on the flight.

But both men told US media there had been no emergency landing or danger on that flight.

Trump’s remarks at an hour-long news conference at his Mar-a-Lago estate come as recent polls show him slipping against Ms Harris.

A survey conducted by the New York Times and Siena College from 5 to 9 August puts Ms Harris ahead of Trump by 50% to 46% in three key battleground states – Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan.

The RealClearPolitics polling average gives Ms Harris a slight edge in the popular vote, although Mr Trump retains a lead in a number of the most important swing states.