This morning’s exchange of strikes between Israel and Hezbollah appears to be a significant escalation.

The Israeli military says around 100 fighter jets carried out what it described as pre-emptive strikes on Hezbollah targets across southern Lebanon on Sunday morning. Hezbollah later fired rockets and missiles into northern Israel.

If that 100 figure is correct, it would be the largest Israeli attack on Lebanon since the full-scale war between Israel and Hezbollah in 2006.

Israel’s strikes happened at around 04:30 local time (01:30 GMT), and it said that Hezbollah was planning a large-scale attack half an hour later, at 05:00 local time.

According to reporting by the New York Times, quoting an anonymous Israeli intelligence official, this included rocket strikes on Tel Aviv, the country’s biggest city, deep inside central Israel.

In the end Hezbollah said it had fired more than 300 rockets and missiles targeting military facilities in northern Israel, where air raid sirens have been sounding.

Across the region, the fear is this latest escalation could once again lead to all-out war.

• FOLLOW LIVE: Latest updates after strikes from Israel and Hezbollah

In a statement, Hezbollah said this was the first phase of its response to the Israeli assassination of a senior commander Fouad Shukr in a strike in Beirut on 30 July.

It is widely believed Israel was behind the assassination of the political leader of Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh, in a strike in the Iranian capital Tehran the following day.

Ever since, the region has been waiting for a response from both Hezbollah and Iran.

From Iran, it is yet to come.

But this appears to be Hezbollah’s first significant retaliation.

For weeks now diplomats have been working to try to avoid the crisis in Gaza escalating into a wider regional conflict.

The United States has warned the ongoing failure to agree a ceasefire and hostage release deal between Israel and Hamas could see those diplomatic efforts fail.

But despite intense US pressure, talks to establish a ceasefire deal for Gaza after more than 10 months of war have led to nothing.

Israel’s military says it is ready to fight a war on two fronts: in Gaza and on its northern border with Lebanon.

But Hezbollah is a far more formidable force than Hamas.

It’s estimated it has around 150,000 rockets, some capable of reaching targets across Israel.

Its fighters, some of whom have fought in the war in Syria, are well trained and better equipped than those of Hamas.

Almost a year into the conflict in Gaza, some question whether there is appetite in Israel for another war.

Hundreds of thousands of Israeli army reservists have been called up to fight in Gaza, often serving several tours.

But many Israelis, especially those from the north, say Hezbollah needs to be dealt with.

Tens of thousands of people living there have been evacuated from their homes since the start of the war in Gaza. Many have lost their businesses.

In southern Lebanon too, tens of thousands of people have been forced to leave their homes because of fears of Israeli strikes.

Hezbollah, for now, has said it has concluded the first phase of its retaliation for the killing of Fouad Shukr.

Its strikes on Israel this morning appear to have caused relatively little damage and there have been few casualties on either side.

Israel believes it successfully thwarted a major Hezbollah attack.

The question becomes: will we now see a return to the more routine cross-border “tit for tat” that has been going on since the start of the war in Gaza last October?

Or could today’s violence escalate into something far more dangerous?

Israeli and Hezbollah leaders say they do not want another full-scale war. But both sides say they are ready for it.

If brat described our wild and unapologetically messy summers, then exemplary manners, politeness and being a stickler for rules is what’s taking us into autumn.

In recent weeks, thousands of videos showing us how to refine our etiquette have popped up on TikTok, all off the back of the “very demure, very mindful” trend.

The satirical idea started out as poking fun at the stereotypical ideas of femininity, but it has since taken on a life of its own.

While half of the internet are using the phrase ironically, others are concerned that the trend is just another way of setting unrealistic standards for women.

So, is anyone actually trying to be demure, or is this just a massive in-joke that’s been blown out of proportion?

The seemingly harmless catchphrase was coined by content creator Jools Lebron, who posted a TikTok earlier this month on her demure work outfit and mindful make-up.

“You see how I do my make-up for work? Very demure, very mindful,” she told her millions of followers.

“A lot of you girls go to the interview looking like Marge Simpson and go to the job looking like Patty and Selma. Not demure.”

She also reminds us that when dressing for the office, her shirt “only has a little chi-chi out, not my cho-cho”, adding: “You should never “come to work with a green cut crease”.

After achieving overnight fame with her videos, the internet sensation has quit her checkout job, appeared on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, and updated fans that she’s now able to finance her gender transition.

Not only have content creators and celebrities been jumping on the trend, but even companies like Nasa have joined the bandwagon.

“You see how Earth looks in space? It’s very demure, very mindful. Earth looks very cutesy in the solar system,” the space agency posted on X.

Lebron has explained that her motto is “obviously a joke” and while the definition of being demure means to be “reserved, modest, and shy”, she isn’t here to promote a Bridgerton-esque lifestyle for women.

Most content creators have been mocking the trend by subtly joking about how to be demure while being totally extravagant.

For example, RuPaul explains how he reads a book in a considerate way, while Penn Badgley, who plays Joe Goldberg in Netflix’s You, posted a TikTok saying: “playing a romantic icon for five seasons, I’m very modest, I’m very mindful.”

Demure has also made its way into our fashion – content creator Ambika Dhir says being “demure and mindful in outfits is about well-crafted quiet luxury, chic outfits and a strong personal style that grabs attention without being shouty”.

Similarly, Isa Lavahun, a social media strategist, says she interprets Lebron’s demure catchphrase as the “embodiment of subtle self-love – knowing that as long as you carry yourself with grace and empathy, no other opinion matters”.

But, not everyone sees it like that.

One Tik Toker, Sabrina Thulander, says she’s “always interpreted demure as a negative thing, like how a Victorian era man wants his wife to act. It all feels very trad wife to me”.

But some women have been leaning into the “trad wife” – traditional wife – trend, which has risen in popularity due to the artistic portrayal of women in shows like Bridgerton and Downton Abbey who are demure and mindful.

Author Gershom Mabaquiao explains that the trend started off being about “the unseriousness of self-presentation”, but since it has become bigger than social media and permeated society, it’s being interpreted in a “very literal way”.

The fact some people are posting about being demure, cutesty and mindful in a serious way shows “how nuances are lost when messages travel from the high-context in-groups to the low-context outgroups”, he says.

“The sarcasm and deliberate ‘double standards’ of the joke has gotten lost.”

Nöel Wolf, a cultural and linguistic expert, says the word demure dates back to the 1600s, and was used a lot in the 1800s to describe young women who were “modest and reserved”.

The recontextualisation of the word now shows “how old language can take on a new life in the hands of the younger generations”.

As TikTok trends come and go at an increasingly rapid pace, it’s hard to know which word or phrase will be the next big thing.

A former English teacher and now content creator who goes by the name of ExemplaryPotato, shares new words every week on the platform.

In response to demure, he has shared a video explaining the meaning of vituperative, an antonym to demure.

Wolf says the phrases that Gen Z have used this year are unexpected and obscure, like raw-dogging, rizz and bed rotting.

He added that demure isn’t the “only archaic word making a comeback this year” as Inside Out 2 brought “ennui” back into fashion, while Taylor Swift’s Tortured Poets Department re-popularised the word “tryst”.

“There’s a tendency for online trends to yo-yo: we moved from the clean girl aesthetic to brat summer as a rejection of that, and now to ‘demure’, so, there’s a good chance that whatever the next trend is, it’ll be far from demure.”

Having a pet crocodile in the backyard sounds like a far-fetched Australian fable – like riding kangaroos to school or the existence of drop bears.

But in the Northern Territory (NT), it’s a reality.

And Trevor Sullivan has 11 of the reptiles sharing his tropical home in Batchelor, about an hour south of Darwin.

Among them is Big Jack, who is named after a Jack in the Box toy due to his alarming propensity for lunging. Despite his antics, the giant predator is adored, having joined Mr Sullivan’s household as a hatchling the same day his daughter was born 22 years ago.

“He’s been part of our family ever since… [my daughter] refers to him as brother.”

Also on the 80-acre property is Cricket, still a tiny critter, and Shah, who – at the complete other end of the scale – is more than a century old and has truly lived a life.

“He’s possibly seen two world wars and maybe federation in Australia [in 1901],” Mr Sullivan says of the 4.7m (15.4ft) beast.

He claims Shah once killed a man, has been used for scientific research, was almost poisoned to death at a bird park, and lost half his bottom jaw in a fight at a Queensland crocodile farm, all before joining Mr Sullivan a few years ago.

The 60-year-old lights up as he tells the BBC about his crocodiles: “There’s nothing like them… crocodiles are the Harley Davidson of pets.”

But as the famously quirky region heads to the polls on Saturday, the right to own a pet croc has turned into a somewhat unlikely – and very Territory – election issue.

The cost of living, housing and crime are the prime concerns for many voters, but Mr Sullivan is one of scores left heartbroken after the governing Labor Party moved to ban crocodiles as pets.

It is one of the last places in the country the practice is allowed, but the government says they’re concerned for the wellbeing of both humans and the reptiles. The Country Liberal Party opposition, however, has pledged its support for the practice and has promised a review of the “rushed” decision if elected.

About 250,000 people call the NT home, but relatively few of them own crocodiles. The environment minister’s office said they could not provide a figure because the government is in election caretaker mode, but previous estimates have put the number of permit holders at around 100.

Many of the captive crocs are raised from hatchlings, others rehomed from farms or after causing trouble in the wild.

Regulations have long dictated strict conditions about where, and under what conditions, the animals can be kept. For example, hatchlings can only live in urban areas until they are 60cm long – usually about a year old – at which point they must be handed over to authorities or moved to a property outside the town limits.

Under those rules, however, owners were not required to have any special training or knowledge to keep the beasts.

Tom Hayes says owning – or “saving” – a crocodile is part of the Territory’s appeal, and one of the factors which drew his young family to the Darwin region, from Queensland, earlier this year.

The 40-year-old grew up taking trips to the NT with his dad, fishing in the Mary River alongside giant crocodiles, instilling a love of predators and, eventually, a dream to have his own one day.

“I’m not just some dude that wants a crocodile [for] when I’m having a barbecue with my mates on the weekend,” the tattooist and self-styled conservationist told the BBC.

“I wanted to have somewhere I could bring these poor old buggers and they could just live their lives out – happy, fed… not having to worry about people shooting them.”

He was in process of adopting a mega croc when the NT government announced it would not be issuing any new permits to keep the reptiles as pets.

It has left Mr Hayes reeling and the crocodile he’d hoped to rescue at risk of being put down.

NT Environment Minister Kate Worden said the decision was made “after public consultation” and “taking into account personal safety and animal welfare concerns”.

Existing permits will remain valid, but transfers of permits will not be allowed.

“Let’s remember they are an apex predator and probably not one that’s best kept for captivity,” Ms Worden told reporters, adding that there were instances of crocodiles attacking their owners in the region.

The new rules bring the NT in in line with every other state and territory in Australia – except, oddly, Victoria, which is well outside of the comfortable climate of a saltwater crocodile.

Animal activists, who had been pushing for the change, say it’s a big win.

While some of the people keeping crocodiles “may have good intentions”, no wild animal can have its needs fully met in captivity, argues Olivia Charlton, from World Animal Protection.

“There is no way to replicate the space and freedom these crocodiles would have in the wild, particularly given they live for up to 70 years,” she said in a statement.

Charles Giliam, from the RSPCA NT, said the dangerous nature of crocodiles also made it extremely hard for authorities to regulate the program and ensure the reptiles had an acceptable standard of living and medical care.

“I only know one vet who’s prepared to work with crocodiles,” he said, as an example.

But croc owners say they had no idea the change was coming and are distressed over what may now happen to their pets.

“I don’t think you spend many nights on the couch watching TV, snuggling with your four-and-a-half-meter crocodile… but there’s still that emotional attachment,” Mr Hayes says.

They accuse the government of hiding the change in a broader Crocodile Management Plan to avoid doing true consultation on the issue.

The opposition environment spokeswoman Jo Hersey said “the [Country Liberal Party] supports the rights of Territorians to own crocs as pets under a permit system” and has promised the party will look at the rules if elected.

Both Mr Hayes and Mr Sullivan said there is broad support for greater training and education requirements for permit holders.

But they say the reptiles are surprisingly easy to care for – and reject arguments that keeping them as pets is harmful.

“In the wild, they have a stretch of territory and they then have to fight to keep it. They’re forever hunting for food, forever chasing off their enemies or trying to keep their girlfriend sorted and life’s pretty tough going,” Mr Sullivan says.

“In captivity, if they got a good enclosure, plenty of water, sunlight, a bit of shade, and food on a regular basis, they just love it.

“I have a river running through my property and I actually have wild crocs always trying to get in and join my mob.”

The decision to end the practice is particularly bad timing for Mr Sullivan. He listed his home and his menagerie for sale last year, so he could join his partner in New Zealand.

“It is a bit like a Willy Wonka story – I want some young kids, of the right nature, to take on a property full of wildlife.”

But that’s left him with a quandary that belongs in a maths textbook: If you have 80 acres and 11 crocodiles on the market, but zero permits available to transfer, what’s the answer?

There is “not a chance” he’ll euthanise his crocs, he says. “I’ll have to stay on the property until I die, or until something else changes.”

His hope is resting on the election of a CLP government on Saturday, adding he thinks it is an issue which will galvanise voters.

But Mr Hayes, on the other hand, hopes it isn’t. There are greater issues at play which should decide votes, he explains, and he is optimistic that both parties will come to see sense anyway.

“Whoever’s in needs to really look at it… It’s an attack on the Territory way of life.”

An anthropomorphic monkey and a campaign against “feminist propaganda” set the video gaming community alight this week, following the release of the most successful Chinese title of all time.

Many players were furious after the company behind Black Myth: Wukong sent them a list of topics to avoid while livestreaming the game, including “feminist propaganda, fetishisation, and other content that instigates negative discourse”.

Still, within 24 hours of its release on Tuesday, it became the second most-played game ever on streaming platform Steam, garnering more than 2.1 million concurrent players and selling more than 4.5 million copies.

The game, based on the classic 16th-century Chinese novel Journey to the West, is being seen as a rare example of popular media broadcasting Chinese stories on an international stage.

Black Myth: Wukong is a single-player action game where players take on the role of “the Destined One”- an anthropomorphic monkey with supernatural powers.

The Destined One is based on the character of Sun Wukong, or the Monkey King, a key character in Journey to the West.

That novel, considered one of the greats of Chinese literature, draws heavily from Chinese mythology as well as Confucianism, Taoist and Buddhist folklore.

It has inspired hundreds of international films, TV shows and cartoons, including the popular Japanese anime series Dragon Ball Z and the 2008 Chinese-American fantasy film The Forbidden Kingdom.

First announced via a hugely popular teaser trailer in August 2020, Black Myth launched on Tuesday after four years of anticipation.

It is the Chinese video game industry’s first AAA release – a title typically given to big-budget games from major companies.

High-end graphics, sophisticated game design and hot-blooded hype have all contributed to its success – as well as the size of China’s gaming community, which is the largest in the world.

“It’s not just a Chinese game targeting the Chinese market or the Chinese-speaking world,” Haiqing Yu, a professor at Australia’s RMIT University, whose research specialises in the sociopolitical and economic impact of China’s digital media, told the BBC.

“Players all over the world [are playing] a game that has a Chinese cultural factor.”

This has become a huge source of national pride in the country.

The Department of Culture and Tourism in Shanxi Province, an area that includes many locations and set pieces featured in the game, released a video on Tuesday that showcased the real-world attractions, triggering a surge in tourism dubbed “Wukong Travel”.

Videos posted on TikTok in the wake of Black Myth’s release show tourists flooding temples and shrines featured in the game, in what one X user characterised as a “successful example of cultural rediscovery”.

Niko Partners, a company that researches and analyses video games markets and consumers in Asia, similarly pointed out that Black Myth “helps showcase Chinese mythology, traditions, culture and real-life locations in China to the world”.

Ahead of Black Myth’s release, some content creators and streamers revealed that a company affiliated with its developer had sent them a list of topics to avoid talking about while livestreaming the game: including “feminist propaganda, fetishisation, and other content that instigates negative discourse”.

While it is not clear what was precisely meant by “feminist propaganda”, a widely circulated report by video game publication IGN in November alleged a history of sexist and inappropriate behaviour from employees of Game Science, the studio behind Black Myth.

Other topics designated as “Don’ts” in the document, which has been widely shared on social media and YouTube, included politics, Covid-19, and China’s video game industry policies.

The directive, which was sent out by co-publisher Hero Games, has stoked controversy outside China.

Multiple content creators refused to review the game, claiming its developers were trying to censor discussion and stifle freedom of speech.

Others chose to directly defy the warnings.

One creator with the username Moonmoon launched a Twitch stream of Black Myth titled “Covid-19 Isolation Taiwan (Is a Real Country) Feminism Propaganda”. Another streamer, Rui Zhong, discussed China’s one-child policy on camera while playing the game.

On Thursday, Chinese social media platform Weibo banned 138 users who were deemed to be violating its guidelines when discussing Black Myth.

According to an article on the state-run Global Times news site, a number of the banned Weibo users were “deviating from discussing the game itself but instead using it as a platform for spreading ‘gender opposition,’ ‘personal attacks’, and other irrational comments”.

While the controversy has attracted a lot of attention in international media and online, it has not really dented or detracted from Black Myth’s overwhelmingly positive reception.

The game made $53m in presales alone, with another 4.5 million copies sold within 24 hours of its release. Within the same timeframe it broke the record for the most-played single-player title ever released on Steam.

On platforms like Weibo, Reddit and YouTube, and elsewhere, reams of comments are celebrating the game’s success. Many suggest that the fallout from the controversies surrounding the game’s release has been overblown.

Ms Yu agreed, describing Black Myth as an “industry and overall market success”.

“When it comes to Chinese digital media and communication platforms, of course people cannot avoid talking about censorship,” she said. “Black Myth is… an example of how to tell the Chinese story well, and how to expand Chinese cultural influence globally. I don’t see any censorship there.”

She also pointed out that apparent attempts to steer or censor what reviewers said were unlikely to have come from Chinese officials themselves. More likely, Ms Yu suggested, is that the list of “Dos” and “Don’ts” came from a company that was trying to keep itself out of trouble.

“The company issues their notification so if anybody from the central government comes to have a chat with the company, the company can say, ‘look, I already told them. I can’t stop people from saying what they want to say.’

“They have basically, to use the colloquial term, covered their own ass,” she concluded. “I view it as a politically correct gesture to the Chinese censors, rather than a real directive coming from the top down.”

A 26-year-old man has given himself up and confessed to a mass knife attack at a street festival in Germany, police said on Sunday.

“The involvement of this person is currently under intensive investigation,” prosecutors and Düsseldorf police said.

He is under investigation for murder, attempted murder and membership of a foreign terrorist organisation, Germany’s federal prosecutor told the BBC.

Three people were killed and another eight injured in the city of Solingen during a festival to celebrate its 650-year history, in what Chancellor Olaf Scholz described as a “horrific act”.

The Islamic State group on Saturday claimed responsibility for the bloodshed, but did not immediately provide any evidence of a relationship with the attacker.

Those killed were two men aged 56 and 67, and a 56-year-old woman, officials said. Four of the injured are still in a serious condition. All of the victims were stabbed in the neck, police have said.

“The man we’ve really been looking for the whole day has just been taken into custody,” Herbert Reul, the interior minister of North Rhine-Westphalia state, told ARD public TV late on Saturday.

Germany’s Bild and Spiegel news websites reported that the suspect surrendered himself in dirty blood-stained clothes.

Police described him as Syrian, and German media reported that he arrived in Germany in December 2022, after leaving the war-torn country.

Bild reported that special task force (SEK) officers stormed a refugee centre that the suspect was associated with, detaining another person there.

Police also arrested a 15-year-old boy who is alleged to have known about the attack in advance.

The refugee centre is located about 300m (984ft) from Fronhof – Solingen’s central market square where people were stabbed on Friday night – according to Bild.

Solingen – a city famous for its steel industry – has about 160,000 inhabitants. It lies about 25km (15 miles) east of Düsseldorf.

The city’s authorities asked people to leave the Fronhof area after the attack at about 22:00 local time (21:00 BST) on Friday.

The planned three-day celebrations of the city anniversary – for which about 75,000 people had been expected – were cancelled after the attack.

Solingen Mayor Tim Kurzbach later said that “all of us in Solingen are in shock, horror and great sadness.

“It breaks my heart that an attack has happened in our city. I have tears in my eyes when I think of those we’ve lost.

“I pray for all those still fighting for their lives. Also my greatest sympathy for all those who had to experience this, these images must have been horrific.”

People have been bringing flowers and candles to the site of the attack that shocked the entire country.

Players from Germany’s top Bundesliga football league wore black armbands during Saturday’s matches.

The attack may fuel an already fraught debate about immigration and asylum in Germany.

It comes ahead of key regional elections in the country’s east next week, where the far right is eyeing gains.

Twenty years ago, your music collection consisted of whatever CDs or records you could cram into your bedroom.

Now, anyone with an internet connection has access to more music than they could listen to in one lifetime.

In October 2022, Apple Music boasted its catalogue had reached 100 million songs. Since then, an average of 120,000 new songs have been uploaded every day, making the current total around 176 million tracks.

But here’s the thing: There are still huge gaps.

You can’t stream Ray Charles’ 1977 album True To Life.

Charli XCX’s debut single, !Franchesckaar! has been swallowed by the digital void.

Most important of all, there’s no way to hear 1993’s Christmas number one: Mr Blobby by Mr Blobby.

In fact, one survey by the US Library of Congress suggested that less than 20% of all recorded music was available on the internet.

Sometimes, those recordings are tied up in complex contractual agreements. De La Soul spent two decades clearing the samples on their landmark debut album, 3 Feet High And Rising, before it finally arrived on streaming services last year.

But hundreds of other songs have simply been forgotten.

That’s where Rob Johnson comes in.

By day, he’s a 41-year-old working in business development for a London law firm. By night, he’s a music industry crusader – digging up obscure gems and persuading record labels to make them available online.

Over the last six years, he’s been responsible for 725 releases, including tracks by Sting, Cher and Annie Lennox, with a strong bias for late 90s pop acts such as Billie Piper, S Club and A*Teens.

“I’ll admit it’s a very strange thing to do, but it gives people a lot of happiness so why not?” he tells the BBC.

It all started in 2016, when he helped his friend Jan Johnston – a trance vocalist who’s worked with Paul Oakenfold – to get her catalogue online.

“A lot of her solo music wasn’t out there, simply because it was never a massive hit for the labels,” he recalls.

“So I said to her, ‘OK, this is a hare-brained scheme, but why don’t we contact them and ask them a) do you still own it and b) can you release it?’”

With no industry experience, Johnson simply called the switchboards of the UK’s biggest record companies.

“I hate talking to strangers on the phone, but eventually I got through to the right people and they were like, ‘Yes, we’ll happily put that out’.”

In passing, he suggested to Warner Records that they upload some of Louise Redknapp’s old albums, to capitalise on her appearance on Strictly Come Dancing.

“Good spot,” was the reply.

That’s when he realised this could become a full-time hobby.

“I had a little bit of momentum, so I got bullish and thought, ‘Why don’t I just ask them to release more?’”

To convince the labels, he had to prove there was a demand – so he set up a Twitter account where fans could make requests, calling it Pop Music Activism.

Almost immediately, he was flooded with messages about Victoria Beckham’s debut single, Out Of Your Mind.

“It was slated at the time, but a lot of pop fans looked back retrospectively and thought, ‘That was a bit of a fun bop’,” says Johnson.

After a few calls, he got it uploaded in June 2018, since when it’s amassed 1.8 million streams on Spotify alone.

“The reaction was quite fun,” he says. “You know how gays can be over the top? They were like ‘Oh my God, this has saved my life!’

“And it happened during Pride month, which was a nice little cherry on the cake.”

Rescuing songs takes a lot of work. Contracts have to be checked, original recordings have to be sourced, and streaming services require reams of metadata.

But when it works, artists are thrilled.

“Rob’s incredible. What he’s done for me, I would do anything for him,” says Maria Nayler.

Known for singing Robert Miles’ 1996 hit One And One, Nayler’s story is a classic tale of music industry misogyny.

After singing on dozens of trance anthems in the 1990s, she was signed to Kylie’s then-label, DeConstruction Records. But when the company found out she was pregnant, it scrapped her debut album.

“They went, ‘We’re not releasing any records while you’re pregnant. It’s gone on the shelf until the baby’s born.’

“Then, of course, nine months down the line, nothing happened.

“In this day and age, they would all be slaughtered, but in the 1990s I just accepted it.”

Johnson was a fan of Nayler’s single Naked and Sacred, and contacted her in 2018 to ask if she wanted help liberating her unreleased material.

“I was a bit like, ‘Who is this guy?’,” she laughs, “but he knew more about my music than I did.”

It was a tough project. DeConstruction had been bought by BMG, then acquired by Sony, and eventually closed down. No-one was sure who owned Nayler’s master tapes.

“It was a nightmare,” she says. “No-one wanted to talk to Rob.”

Out of options, she sent a blanket email to 75 people at Sony. Within two minutes, the archive team replied and agreed to track down the music.

Nayler’s album, She, was finally released in January 2023. Next month, she goes on tour with dance producer Robert Gillies, who has remixed Naked & Sacred for his next single.

“After all these years and all that hard work, I just feel really, really happy,” she says.

It’s a similar story for Alexis Strum, who was signed and dropped by two major record labels in the early 2000s.

She was left with two fully-completed albums, recorded at a cost of £500,000, that were never released.

“Emotionally, it was huge,” she says. “It’s like having a painting that no-one’s ever seen, or a book that no-one’s ever been allowed to read.”

Some of her unreleased songs were recorded by Kylie Minogue and Rachel Stevens, but a small group of dedicated fans clamoured for the originals.

“Rob told me people had been exchanging my demo CDs on eBay,” she says. “I didn’t even know anyone knew about me!”

With his help, Warner and Universal not only handed over Strum’s masters, but agreed to write off her debts.

Her most popular song Cocoon recently hit 500,000 streams (“half a million more than Universal thought it was going to have”) and, when we speak, she’s back in the studio.

“I’m a mum and I’ve been working in IT, so it’s really weird to be like, ‘I’m going to be a pop star’ again.

“It feels so ridiculous that it’s actually plausible.”

One person who’d rather forget their debut album, however, is Adam Rickitt.

The former Coronation Street actor signed a six-album deal with Polydor in 1999, hoping to become the UK’s next teen idol.

“Let’s be honest, I had very little control over the creative side of it,” he laughs.

“They knew what audience I was targeting, and it was the gay audience, the pink pound, and young teenage girls.”

His first single, I Breathe Again, was a massive hit, thanks mainly to a video where he appears completely in the buff, but when subsequent songs missed the top 10, both Polydor and Rickitt lost interest.

His album, Good Time, stalled at number 41 and was, for years, unavailable online.

“I totally understand why I would have slipped through the net,” he laughs. “It’s not exactly like Burt Bacharach disappearing off the face of the earth.”

Unaware of Johnson’s campaign to get the album resurrected, Rickitt was bemused when it sprung back to life in 2018.

“The album period wasn’t my favourite but if people still like it and find it fun, that’s cool. I’m happy with being the retro kitsch guy,” he says.

“But taking me out of the equation, I do think it’s a shame that the record labels can decide what songs people can or can’t listen to.”

Johnson says there’s nothing sinister about these decisions. Catalogue teams with limited resources are obviously going to gravitate towards proven hit songs.

Still, there are blind spots. For a long time, NSync’s single Girlfriend was “greyed out” on Spotify – with the label apparently unaware that the freely-available album version wasn’t the same as the hit remix with Nelly and the Neptunes.

“I picked that one up with Sony US and now that’s getting millions of streams,” says Johnson

It takes a fan to spot these things. And Johnson, who devotes “two to four hours a week” to his project, has just the right mix of passion and affability to nudge labels in the right direction.

“It makes fans happy and it gives artists a sense of closure,” he says, “but it’s also a way of cataloguing music for history.

“Whatever is on Spotify now will migrate onto the services we’ll be using in 10 years, whether that’s a chip in our head, or whatever.”

Until midnight last Sunday, Matteo Cannia was sitting out on a bench overlooking the sea in Porticello. It was too hot to sleep.

The 78-year-old, a fisherman since the age of 10, saw the first flashes of lightning. “I heard the thunder and the wind and decided to go home,” he told me.

“As the storm grew, everyone woke. Water was coming into my friend’s house.”

At about 04:15 local time, Fabio Cefalù – a fisherman who had been due to go out that wild Monday morning but, like others, decided against it – suddenly saw a flare go up.

He changed his mind and went out to sea to find out what was going on – and discovered only cushions and floating planks of wood.

A luxury super yacht called the Bayesian, moored only a few hundred metres away, had already sunk.

It all happened in a 16-minute window of disaster, chaos and torment, which catapulted a sleepy Sicilian fishing port to the centre of world news.

All but seven of the 22 people on board the Bayesian – 12 passengers and 10 crew – had scrambled into a life raft as the yacht began to capsize. The others never made it out.

Charlotte Golunski, a British woman, was thrown into the water with her one-year-old daughter, Sophie. She told of clutching her baby in the air with all her strength to keep her from drowning. “It was all black around me,” she said, “and the only thing I could hear were the screams of others.”

She, her baby, and her husband James were among those rescued by a nearby sailing boat captain. Trapped inside the sinking Bayesian was her colleague Mike Lynch – one of the UK’s top tech entrepreneurs, dubbed “Britain’s Bill Gates”.

Mr Lynch had brought together family, friends and colleagues for an idyllic holiday on his luxury boat: a sumptuous 56-metre (184ft) sailing yacht that won design awards and had the world’s tallest aluminium mast.

In June, he was acquitted after a lengthy trial in the US on charges that he had fraudulently inflated the value of his company, Autonomy, before selling it to Hewlett Packard in 2011. The trip was planned as a celebration of freedom to mark his rehabilitation in public opinion.

Three days after the yacht went down, his body was retrieved by divers from the wreckage.

A day later, the body of his 18-year-old daughter Hannah, who was due to begin studying at the University of Oxford next month, was recovered.

Among the others who died were the president of the investment bank Morgan Stanley, Jonathan Bloomer, and his wife Judy; Mr Lynch’s lawyer Chris Morvillo and his wife Neda; and the yacht’s chef, Recaldo Thomas. Mr Lynch’s wife, Angela Bacares, survived.

The family has released a statement talking of their “unspeakable grief”, adding they are “devastated and in shock”.

How the super yacht sank so quickly while other smaller vessels nearby survived the storm undamaged has dumbfounded experts.

In a press conference this weekend – the first public statement by officials since the disaster – local prosecutors said they had begun an investigation into potential crimes of manslaughter and negligent shipwreck.

The region’s state prosecutor Ambrogio Cartosio told reporters that while the probe was at a very early stage and nobody specific was being investigated, there were “many possibilities for culpability. It could be just the captain. It could be the whole crew… we are absolutely not ruling anything out”.

A small team of British marine investigators has also been sent to Sicily to work with their Italian counterparts.

Prosecutors said that they now believed a downburst was the weather phenomenon that hit the ship: a localised, powerful wind that descends from a thunderstorm and spreads unpredictably.

That contradicted previous reports that had identified the cause as a waterspout, or mini tornado at sea.

Either way, it’s clear extreme weather played a major role.

Much of the focus for the investigation team is of course on the conduct of the captain, 51-year-old James Cutfield from New Zealand. He survived, along with eight of his crew, and is being questioned.

“We didn’t see it coming,” he told Italian media, alluding to the storm, in his only public comment so far.

The problem is: plenty of others did. Violent winds and rain were forecast, following days of searing heat. The head of the company that built the Bayesian, Giovanni Costantino, told me he was convinced there had been a litany of errors on board.

“At the back of the boat, a hatch must have been left open,” he said, “but also perhaps a side entrance for water to have poured inside.

“Before the storm, the captain should have closed every opening, lifted anchor, turned on the engine, pointed into the wind and lowered the keel.”

A keel is a large, fin-like part of the boat that protrudes from its base.

“That would have stabilised the vessel, they would have been able to traverse the storm and continue their cruise in comfort,” he said.

Rescuers instead found the wreckage of the Bayesian 50 metres underwater with its almost 10-metre-long keel raised.

Had it been deployed, it could have helped counter the wind buffeting the Bayesian’s 75-metre high aluminium mast and kept the ship stable. But without it, experts told the newspaper La Repubblica that gusts of 100 kilometres an hour (62mph) would have been enough to capsize the ship – and Monday’s storm far exceeded that.

“The Bayesian was a model for many other vessels because of its stability and exceptionally high performance,” Mr Costantino said. “There was absolutely no problem with it. If water hadn’t surged in, it was unsinkable.”

He told me there were 16 minutes between the power going out on the ship at 03:56 – showing that water was flooding areas with electrical circuits – and the GPS signal being lost, indicating the moment it sank.

That period, along with any measures taken to mitigate the extreme weather, will be pored over by investigators, particularly once they locate the vessel’s black box recorder.

Rino Casilli, one of Sicily’s top ship surveyors, similarly believes that errors may have made the yacht vulnerable to the extreme weather.

“There should have been two members of the crew taking turns to be on watch overnight, given the storm warning,” he told me as he took me out on his boat – around a third of the size of the Bayesian. “And it should have been moored in the harbour, not out at sea.”

Prosecutors say they believe one person was on watch in the cockpit that night.

From Casilli’s sailing boat, we gained rare access to the spot where the Bayesian went down.

Around us, an Italian police vessel circulated, warning us back. Suddenly, there was a flurry of activity among divers, as other rescue vessels arrived.

We didn’t know at the time – but they had just located more bodies.

It was an intensely challenging operation for the teams to recover those trapped in the wreckage. Given its depth, at 50 metres underwater, each diver was allowed 10 minutes down before resurfacing for their safety – 120 dives in total. They were assisted by remote control vehicles that could operate on the seabed for far longer.

In this weekend’s press conference, rescuers said the passengers trapped inside during the sinking took refuge in cabins on the ship’s left side, where the last air bubbles formed.

Five of the bodies were found in the first cabin on the left, they said, while the last body – confirmed as Hannah Lynch – was in the third cabin on the left side.

Access for the emergency teams was extremely difficult since the yacht remained largely intact with its furniture obstructing entry.

The coastguard compared it to an “18-storey building full of water”. When Ms Lynch’s body was brought ashore emergency workers on the port applauded their colleagues.

All seven of the dead have been transported to a mortuary for post-mortems.

Rescuers will now need to decide whether – and how – to salvage the wreckage, which would undoubtedly offer vital clues as to what happened. But bringing the Bayesian to the surface could take six to eight weeks and cost 15 million euros (£12.7m) by some estimates.

While the divers’ painstaking work to recover the dead has ended, the investigators’ painful hunt for answers has only begun.

They and the survivors are hunkered down in a hotel close to Porticello, which is strictly off-limits to journalists. Security guards promptly asked us to leave.

Solving the enigma of what happened to the Bayesian will be crucial not only to help loved ones of the victims reach some sort of closure, but also for the maritime industry to draw conclusions.

The brother of James Cutfield, the captain, said he was a “well-respected” sailor who had worked on boats his whole life. Did the experienced sailor somehow make a series of catastrophic errors? The trade union Nautilus, which represents seafarers and captains, called for restraint in passing judgement on the Bayesian’s crew.

“Any attempt to question their conduct without the full facts is not only unfair but also harmful to the process of uncovering the truth and learning any lessons from this tragedy,” it said.

The world’s media has begun to leave Porticello, which is gradually returning to the tranquillity of its pre-Bayesian era. Stray cats roam among the old fishing boats, and children play as their families eat out at the few seaside restaurants.

But what has happened over the past week has stunned and scarred many here.

“Last Sunday night, we saw the end of the world in Porticello,” said resident Maria Vizzo. “We’ve never seen something like this. Everyone here is shocked – and everyone is crying.”

A landmark report into problems faced by women in the Malayalam-language film industry has revealed the deep rot in one of India’s most popular film hubs.

The findings of the three-member panel are pretty damning.

The 290-page report – parts of which have been redacted to hide identities of survivors and those accused of wrongdoing – says the industry is dominated by “a mafia of powerful men” and that “sexual harassment of women is rampant”.

Headed by a former judge of the Kerala High Court and set up by the state government in 2017, the Hema committee details the abysmal working conditions on sets – including a lack of toilets and changing rooms for junior artists, no food and water for them, poor pay and no accommodation or transport facilities.

“There are no toilets, so women have to go in the bushes or behind thick trees. During their periods, not being able to change their sanitary napkins for long hours and holding urine for long causes physical discomfort and makes them sick, in some cases needing hospitalisation,” it says.

The report, which was submitted to the government in December 2019, was made public only this week after nearly five years of delay and multiple legal challenges by members of the film industry.

The panel was set up in the aftermath of the horrific sexual assault on a leading actress in the film industry. Bhavana Menon, who has worked in more than 80 films in southern Indian languages and won a number of prestigious awards, was assaulted by a group of men while travelling from Thrissur to Kochi in February 2017.

Her assault made headlines, especially after Dileep, one of the Malayalam-language film industry’s biggest actors and Menon’s co-star in half a dozen films, was named as an accused and charged with criminal conspiracy. He denied the charges, but was arrested and held in custody for three months before being released on bail. The case continues to be heard in court.

Indian law bars identification of survivors of sexual assault, but it was known from the start that it was Ms Menon who had been assaulted. In 2022, she waived her anonymity in a post on Instagram and in an interview to the BBC.

A few months after the attack on Ms Menon, Women in Cinema Collective (WCC) – a group formed by some of her colleagues in a film industry known for its variety of successful mainstream and critically acclaimed films – petitioned the government, seeking swift action in the case and also to address the problems faced by women in cinema.

In the report, retired Justice K Hema says the WCC told her that “women are being silenced as the prestige of the film industry needs to be upheld”.

The panel interviewed several dozen men and women, including artists, producers, directors, scriptwriters, cinematographers, hairstylists, makeup artists and costume designers, and “gathered evidence including video and audio clips and WhatsApp messages”.

Describing sexual harassment as the “worst evil” women in cinema face, the report said the panellists saw evidence that “sexual harassment remains shockingly rampant” and that “it goes on unchecked and uncontrolled”.

The industry “is controlled by a group of male actors, producers, distributors, exhibitors and directors who have gained enormous fame and wealth” and they were among the perpetrators, it added.

“Men in industry make open demands for sex without any qualms as if it’s their birthright. Women are left with very little options but to oblige – or reject at the cost of their long awaited dream of pursuing cinema as their profession.

“The experiences of many women are really shocking and of such gravity that they have not disclosed the details even to their close family members.”

Many of the people the panel approached were initially reluctant to speak because “they were afraid they would lose their jobs”.

“In the beginning, we found their fear strange but as our study progressed we realised it was well-founded. We are concerned about their and their close relatives’ safety.”

The report, the WCC says, has vindicated its stand. “For years, we have been saying that there is a systemic problem in the industry. Sexual harassment is just one of them. This report proves it,” Beena Paul, an award-winning editor and one of the founding members of the WCC, told the BBC.

“We were always told that we were troublemakers [for raising such issues]. This report proves that it [the condition] is far worse than what even we thought,” she said.

Members of the WCC say they have faced difficulty in getting work since they began demanding better working conditions on film sets. “People don’t like the fact that we are asking questions. So, quite a few members have faced difficult situations,” Ms Paul says.

The Association of Malayalam Movie Artists (AMMA), a top industry body which counts superstars like Mohanlal and Mamooty among its members, denied the accusations. Its general secretary Siddique disagreed that there was a small, powerful group that controlled the industry.

He also denied that sexual harassment was rampant in the industry and said that most of the complaints they received were about the delay or a lack of payment for workers. He said conditions for women had improved on film sets in the past five years and all facilities were now available to them.

In the week since its release, the report has created ripples in the state, with activists and prominent opposition leaders demanding action against those accused of wrongdoing.

Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan said if any woman who testified before the committee came forward to file a complaint, the government would take action. “No matter how big they are, they will be brought before the law,” he said.

On Thursday, a public interest petition was filed in the Kerala High Court, seeking initiation of criminal proceedings against those accused in the report.

The court ordered the government to submit a copy of the report and the judges said they would decide if criminal action needed to be taken once they had read it.

Allegations of harassment and abuse in films are not new in India – in 2018, the #MeToo movement hit the country’s most popular film industry Bollywood after actress Tanushree Dutta accused veteran actor Nana Patekar of behaving inappropriately towards her on a film set in 2008. Patekar denied the allegations.

Ms Dutta, who has since claimed that she has been denied work, described the Hema committee report as “useless”, adding that earlier reports about making workplaces safer for women had not helped.

Parvathy Thiruvothu, an award-winning actress and a key member of the WCC, however, told Asianet news channel that she considered the release of the report “a victory”.

“It’s opened up a door for big changes within the industry,” she said.

Jeo Baby, director of The Great Indian Kitchen, a critically-acclaimed film that examines the patriarchal structure within the family, told the BBC that while gender issues remain a concern, change is under way in the industry. “This is the right time to correct this. The film industry has to fight this together.”

The report, which has made several recommendations to make the industry a safe place for women, says their inquiry and recommendations are not to find fault with any individual, but “an earnest attempt to ennoble a profession so that it becomes a viable career option for aspiring artists and technicians, both male and female”.

“Hopefully filmmaking will become so safe that parents can send their daughters and sons to the profession with the same confidence and sense of security as they send their children to an engineering firm or a college,” it adds.

Read more:

• India arrests after actress says she was abducted and raped
• Bhavana Menon breaks silence on sexual assault
• #MeToo: Why sexual harassment is a reality in Bollywood
• Sex harassment claims shake top India dance academy

The Reuters news agency has said that one of its journalists covering the war in Ukraine is missing after a strike on an hotel in the east of the country.

In a statement, Reuters said its six-person team was staying in Hotel Sapphire in Kramatorsk – a city under Ukrainian control but not far from the eastern front line – on Saturday night when it was hit “by an apparent missile strike”.

It said two members of the team had been taken to hospital, with a further three accounted for – but was “urgently seeking more information” on the whereabouts of a sixth person.

Ukrainian authorities said it was a Russian missile, but Russia has yet to comment on the strike.

The news agency released footage showing parts of the hotel completely destroyed by the strike, with firefighters attempting to pick through the rubble.

Vadym Filashkin, governor of the Donetsk region where Kramatorsk is located, said in a Telegram post on Sunday morning that emergency responders were on site, adding: “Debris clearance and rescue operations are ongoing.”

He said that several other nearby buildings and homes had been damaged in the strike.

The Ukrainian General Prosecutor’s Office wrote in a statement that the hotel had likely been hit with a short-range Iskander-M missile.

It added that those who had been hospitalised had suffered a number of different injuries from the blast.

Kramatorsk is only about 20km (12 miles) from Russian-occupied parts of Ukraine, and has come under regular attacks, with civilians killed, including celebrated Ukrainian writer Victoria Amelina.

The Russian military has been making slow but steady advances in the east in recent months, with Ukraine’s recent offensive into Russia seen as an attempt to draw troops away from the eastern front line.

French police say they have arrested a man suspected of setting fires and causing an explosion outside a synagogue in a southern resort.

Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin said “the alleged perpetrator” was detained on Saturday. He added that the police had shown “great professionalism”.

French media reported that the suspect was shot and injured by police after he opened fire on the officers who came to arrest him in the city of Nîmes.

Earlier on Saturday, a police officer was injured in the blast outside the Beth Yaacov synagogue in the nearby seaside resort of La Grande-Motte.

The police officer’s injuries are not said to be life-threatening, following the blast between 08:00 and 08:30 local time (07:00-07:30 BST) on Saturday.

Five people, including the rabbi, were inside the synagogue at the time, authorities said.

The explosion was caused by two cars which were set alight outside

Police sources told French media that one of the vehicles contained a hidden gas canister.

The suspect – who was reportedly carrying a Palestinian flag – also set fire to several entrance doors of the synagogue.

Jewish community leader Yonathan Arfi said the incident was “an attempt to kill Jews” and seemed to have been timed to target Saturday morning worshippers.

President Emmanuel Macron said the incident was “a terrorist act”.

One eyewitness, who asked to remain anonymous, told the BBC: “Just as we were coming round the last corner, there was a huge explosion – a fireball into the air.

“It was surreal, like a film. We didn’t go any further.”

Prime Minister Gabriel Attal and Mr Darmanin visited the site on Saturday evening. Both had earlier condemned the attack, with Mr Attal calling it “an antisemitic act”.

“What happened here shocks and scandalises all Republicans in our country,” Mr Attat said during the visit.

“Because the reality is that once again, French Jews have been targeted, attacked because of their beliefs.”

Mr Attal said an “absolute tragedy” had been “narrowly avoided” as “there would have been victims” if the synagogue had been full of worshippers.

Both Mr Attal and Mr Darmanin said security would be strengthened outside synagogues.

“I want to assure our Jewish fellow citizens and the municipality of my full support,” Mr Darmanin said earlier in the day.

The French Jewish community already live under high security, with many synagogues and Jewish schools under police protection.

A January 2024 report by the Council of Jewish Institutions in France (CRIF) said there had been a nearly threefold increase of antisemitic acts in France between 2022 and 2023.

In May, police shot dead a man after a synagogue in the north-western city of Rouen was set on fire.

In 2015, two days after the attacks on the Charlie Hebdo magazine, four people were murdered in a hostage attack on a kosher supermarket.

The explosion comes amid heightened concerns for Europe’s Jewish community, after the latest survey from the EU’s Fundamental Rights Agency (FRA) published last month found that Jewish people in the bloc continue to face high levels of antisemitism.

More than 8,000 Jews in 13 EU countries, including Germany and France, were interviewed. Some 96% said they had encountered antisemitism in their daily lives.

There has been widespread condemnation of the attempted arson attack across France’s political spectrum.

Left-wing politician Jean-Luc Mélenchon called it an “intolerable crime”, while the far-right National Rally’s Jordan Bardella said it was “a criminal and antisemitic act”.

At least 14 people have died after a bus carrying passengers from India fell into a river in Nepal, officials have said.

There were around 40 people on the bus, which was travelling to Nepal’s capital Kathmandu from Pokhara, according to reports.

Rescue operations are underway at the accident site on the bank of the Marsyangdi river in Tanahun district.

The cause of the accident and the identities of the victims have not been confirmed yet.

“The bus bearing number plate UP FT 7623 plunged into the river and is lying on the bank of the river,” news agency ANI quoted Deepkumar Raya, a senior police official from Tanahun, as saying. The vehicle is registered in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh.

Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis of the western state of Maharashtra said that some of the victims were from the state.

“We are in touch with the Uttar Pradesh government to bring the bodies of the deceased to Maharashtra in coordination with the Nepal government,” he posted on X (formerly Twitter).

Videos from the accident site show the mangled remains of the bus lying at the bottom of a hilly slope, next to a gushing river. Rescue personnel can be seen looking for survivors among the wreckage.

A Nepal army helicopter carrying a medical team has been despatched to the accident site.

The bus route from Pokhara to Kathmandu is very popular among Indian tourists and pilgrims.

Accidents are often reported in Nepal, due to factors including poor maintenance of roads and vehicles and narrow paths in mountainous areas.

In July, dozens of people went missing after a landslide swept two passenger buses into the Trishuli river.

Twenty years ago, your music collection consisted of whatever CDs or records you could cram into your bedroom.

Now, anyone with an internet connection has access to more music than they could listen to in one lifetime.

In October 2022, Apple Music boasted its catalogue had reached 100 million songs. Since then, an average of 120,000 new songs have been uploaded every day, making the current total around 176 million tracks.

But here’s the thing: There are still huge gaps.

You can’t stream Ray Charles’ 1977 album True To Life.

Charli XCX’s debut single, !Franchesckaar! has been swallowed by the digital void.

Most important of all, there’s no way to hear 1993’s Christmas number one: Mr Blobby by Mr Blobby.

In fact, one survey by the US Library of Congress suggested that less than 20% of all recorded music was available on the internet.

Sometimes, those recordings are tied up in complex contractual agreements. De La Soul spent two decades clearing the samples on their landmark debut album, 3 Feet High And Rising, before it finally arrived on streaming services last year.

But hundreds of other songs have simply been forgotten.

That’s where Rob Johnson comes in.

By day, he’s a 41-year-old working in business development for a London law firm. By night, he’s a music industry crusader – digging up obscure gems and persuading record labels to make them available online.

Over the last six years, he’s been responsible for 725 releases, including tracks by Sting, Cher and Annie Lennox, with a strong bias for late 90s pop acts such as Billie Piper, S Club and A*Teens.

“I’ll admit it’s a very strange thing to do, but it gives people a lot of happiness so why not?” he tells the BBC.

It all started in 2016, when he helped his friend Jan Johnston – a trance vocalist who’s worked with Paul Oakenfold – to get her catalogue online.

“A lot of her solo music wasn’t out there, simply because it was never a massive hit for the labels,” he recalls.

“So I said to her, ‘OK, this is a hare-brained scheme, but why don’t we contact them and ask them a) do you still own it and b) can you release it?’”

With no industry experience, Johnson simply called the switchboards of the UK’s biggest record companies.

“I hate talking to strangers on the phone, but eventually I got through to the right people and they were like, ‘Yes, we’ll happily put that out’.”

In passing, he suggested to Warner Records that they upload some of Louise Redknapp’s old albums, to capitalise on her appearance on Strictly Come Dancing.

“Good spot,” was the reply.

That’s when he realised this could become a full-time hobby.

“I had a little bit of momentum, so I got bullish and thought, ‘Why don’t I just ask them to release more?’”

To convince the labels, he had to prove there was a demand – so he set up a Twitter account where fans could make requests, calling it Pop Music Activism.

Almost immediately, he was flooded with messages about Victoria Beckham’s debut single, Out Of Your Mind.

“It was slated at the time, but a lot of pop fans looked back retrospectively and thought, ‘That was a bit of a fun bop’,” says Johnson.

After a few calls, he got it uploaded in June 2018, since when it’s amassed 1.8 million streams on Spotify alone.

“The reaction was quite fun,” he says. “You know how gays can be over the top? They were like ‘Oh my God, this has saved my life!’

“And it happened during Pride month, which was a nice little cherry on the cake.”

Rescuing songs takes a lot of work. Contracts have to be checked, original recordings have to be sourced, and streaming services require reams of metadata.

But when it works, artists are thrilled.

“Rob’s incredible. What he’s done for me, I would do anything for him,” says Maria Nayler.

Known for singing Robert Miles’ 1996 hit One And One, Nayler’s story is a classic tale of music industry misogyny.

After singing on dozens of trance anthems in the 1990s, she was signed to Kylie’s then-label, DeConstruction Records. But when the company found out she was pregnant, it scrapped her debut album.

“They went, ‘We’re not releasing any records while you’re pregnant. It’s gone on the shelf until the baby’s born.’

“Then, of course, nine months down the line, nothing happened.

“In this day and age, they would all be slaughtered, but in the 1990s I just accepted it.”

Johnson was a fan of Nayler’s single Naked and Sacred, and contacted her in 2018 to ask if she wanted help liberating her unreleased material.

“I was a bit like, ‘Who is this guy?’,” she laughs, “but he knew more about my music than I did.”

It was a tough project. DeConstruction had been bought by BMG, then acquired by Sony, and eventually closed down. No-one was sure who owned Nayler’s master tapes.

“It was a nightmare,” she says. “No-one wanted to talk to Rob.”

Out of options, she sent a blanket email to 75 people at Sony. Within two minutes, the archive team replied and agreed to track down the music.

Nayler’s album, She, was finally released in January 2023. Next month, she goes on tour with dance producer Robert Gillies, who has remixed Naked & Sacred for his next single.

“After all these years and all that hard work, I just feel really, really happy,” she says.

It’s a similar story for Alexis Strum, who was signed and dropped by two major record labels in the early 2000s.

She was left with two fully-completed albums, recorded at a cost of £500,000, that were never released.

“Emotionally, it was huge,” she says. “It’s like having a painting that no-one’s ever seen, or a book that no-one’s ever been allowed to read.”

Some of her unreleased songs were recorded by Kylie Minogue and Rachel Stevens, but a small group of dedicated fans clamoured for the originals.

“Rob told me people had been exchanging my demo CDs on eBay,” she says. “I didn’t even know anyone knew about me!”

With his help, Warner and Universal not only handed over Strum’s masters, but agreed to write off her debts.

Her most popular song Cocoon recently hit 500,000 streams (“half a million more than Universal thought it was going to have”) and, when we speak, she’s back in the studio.

“I’m a mum and I’ve been working in IT, so it’s really weird to be like, ‘I’m going to be a pop star’ again.

“It feels so ridiculous that it’s actually plausible.”

One person who’d rather forget their debut album, however, is Adam Rickitt.

The former Coronation Street actor signed a six-album deal with Polydor in 1999, hoping to become the UK’s next teen idol.

“Let’s be honest, I had very little control over the creative side of it,” he laughs.

“They knew what audience I was targeting, and it was the gay audience, the pink pound, and young teenage girls.”

His first single, I Breathe Again, was a massive hit, thanks mainly to a video where he appears completely in the buff, but when subsequent songs missed the top 10, both Polydor and Rickitt lost interest.

His album, Good Time, stalled at number 41 and was, for years, unavailable online.

“I totally understand why I would have slipped through the net,” he laughs. “It’s not exactly like Burt Bacharach disappearing off the face of the earth.”

Unaware of Johnson’s campaign to get the album resurrected, Rickitt was bemused when it sprung back to life in 2018.

“The album period wasn’t my favourite but if people still like it and find it fun, that’s cool. I’m happy with being the retro kitsch guy,” he says.

“But taking me out of the equation, I do think it’s a shame that the record labels can decide what songs people can or can’t listen to.”

Johnson says there’s nothing sinister about these decisions. Catalogue teams with limited resources are obviously going to gravitate towards proven hit songs.

Still, there are blind spots. For a long time, NSync’s single Girlfriend was “greyed out” on Spotify – with the label apparently unaware that the freely-available album version wasn’t the same as the hit remix with Nelly and the Neptunes.

“I picked that one up with Sony US and now that’s getting millions of streams,” says Johnson

It takes a fan to spot these things. And Johnson, who devotes “two to four hours a week” to his project, has just the right mix of passion and affability to nudge labels in the right direction.

“It makes fans happy and it gives artists a sense of closure,” he says, “but it’s also a way of cataloguing music for history.

“Whatever is on Spotify now will migrate onto the services we’ll be using in 10 years, whether that’s a chip in our head, or whatever.”

An anthropomorphic monkey and a campaign against “feminist propaganda” set the video gaming community alight this week, following the release of the most successful Chinese title of all time.

Many players were furious after the company behind Black Myth: Wukong sent them a list of topics to avoid while livestreaming the game, including “feminist propaganda, fetishisation, and other content that instigates negative discourse”.

Still, within 24 hours of its release on Tuesday, it became the second most-played game ever on streaming platform Steam, garnering more than 2.1 million concurrent players and selling more than 4.5 million copies.

The game, based on the classic 16th-century Chinese novel Journey to the West, is being seen as a rare example of popular media broadcasting Chinese stories on an international stage.

Black Myth: Wukong is a single-player action game where players take on the role of “the Destined One”- an anthropomorphic monkey with supernatural powers.

The Destined One is based on the character of Sun Wukong, or the Monkey King, a key character in Journey to the West.

That novel, considered one of the greats of Chinese literature, draws heavily from Chinese mythology as well as Confucianism, Taoist and Buddhist folklore.

It has inspired hundreds of international films, TV shows and cartoons, including the popular Japanese anime series Dragon Ball Z and the 2008 Chinese-American fantasy film The Forbidden Kingdom.

First announced via a hugely popular teaser trailer in August 2020, Black Myth launched on Tuesday after four years of anticipation.

It is the Chinese video game industry’s first AAA release – a title typically given to big-budget games from major companies.

High-end graphics, sophisticated game design and hot-blooded hype have all contributed to its success – as well as the size of China’s gaming community, which is the largest in the world.

“It’s not just a Chinese game targeting the Chinese market or the Chinese-speaking world,” Haiqing Yu, a professor at Australia’s RMIT University, whose research specialises in the sociopolitical and economic impact of China’s digital media, told the BBC.

“Players all over the world [are playing] a game that has a Chinese cultural factor.”

This has become a huge source of national pride in the country.

The Department of Culture and Tourism in Shanxi Province, an area that includes many locations and set pieces featured in the game, released a video on Tuesday that showcased the real-world attractions, triggering a surge in tourism dubbed “Wukong Travel”.

Videos posted on TikTok in the wake of Black Myth’s release show tourists flooding temples and shrines featured in the game, in what one X user characterised as a “successful example of cultural rediscovery”.

Niko Partners, a company that researches and analyses video games markets and consumers in Asia, similarly pointed out that Black Myth “helps showcase Chinese mythology, traditions, culture and real-life locations in China to the world”.

Ahead of Black Myth’s release, some content creators and streamers revealed that a company affiliated with its developer had sent them a list of topics to avoid talking about while livestreaming the game: including “feminist propaganda, fetishisation, and other content that instigates negative discourse”.

While it is not clear what was precisely meant by “feminist propaganda”, a widely circulated report by video game publication IGN in November alleged a history of sexist and inappropriate behaviour from employees of Game Science, the studio behind Black Myth.

Other topics designated as “Don’ts” in the document, which has been widely shared on social media and YouTube, included politics, Covid-19, and China’s video game industry policies.

The directive, which was sent out by co-publisher Hero Games, has stoked controversy outside China.

Multiple content creators refused to review the game, claiming its developers were trying to censor discussion and stifle freedom of speech.

Others chose to directly defy the warnings.

One creator with the username Moonmoon launched a Twitch stream of Black Myth titled “Covid-19 Isolation Taiwan (Is a Real Country) Feminism Propaganda”. Another streamer, Rui Zhong, discussed China’s one-child policy on camera while playing the game.

On Thursday, Chinese social media platform Weibo banned 138 users who were deemed to be violating its guidelines when discussing Black Myth.

According to an article on the state-run Global Times news site, a number of the banned Weibo users were “deviating from discussing the game itself but instead using it as a platform for spreading ‘gender opposition,’ ‘personal attacks’, and other irrational comments”.

While the controversy has attracted a lot of attention in international media and online, it has not really dented or detracted from Black Myth’s overwhelmingly positive reception.

The game made $53m in presales alone, with another 4.5 million copies sold within 24 hours of its release. Within the same timeframe it broke the record for the most-played single-player title ever released on Steam.

On platforms like Weibo, Reddit and YouTube, and elsewhere, reams of comments are celebrating the game’s success. Many suggest that the fallout from the controversies surrounding the game’s release has been overblown.

Ms Yu agreed, describing Black Myth as an “industry and overall market success”.

“When it comes to Chinese digital media and communication platforms, of course people cannot avoid talking about censorship,” she said. “Black Myth is… an example of how to tell the Chinese story well, and how to expand Chinese cultural influence globally. I don’t see any censorship there.”

She also pointed out that apparent attempts to steer or censor what reviewers said were unlikely to have come from Chinese officials themselves. More likely, Ms Yu suggested, is that the list of “Dos” and “Don’ts” came from a company that was trying to keep itself out of trouble.

“The company issues their notification so if anybody from the central government comes to have a chat with the company, the company can say, ‘look, I already told them. I can’t stop people from saying what they want to say.’

“They have basically, to use the colloquial term, covered their own ass,” she concluded. “I view it as a politically correct gesture to the Chinese censors, rather than a real directive coming from the top down.”

“This message is for Blake Lively. Hi Blake. I’m a domestic violence survivor and my heart honestly just broke for the domestic violence community because in this movie, you represented us.”

In a TikTok video that’s been viewed four million times, US woman Ashley Paige launched a blistering attack on the Hollywood actor for how she’s promoted her latest film, It Ends With Us, an adaptation of a novel about a woman experiencing domestic abuse.

Critics say it’s been promoted like a romance film, that its one-minute trailer doesn’t adequately disclose the abuse storyline, and that instead of advocacy on the red carpet, Lively has highlighted fashion and florals.

Ms Paige accuses Lively of promoting it like it’s “the sequel to Barbie”.

Lively’s comments during sometimes clumsy promotional interviews have also led to discussion about how to properly talk about victims – and about how survivors of domestic abuse relate to what they’ve been through.

The film is an adaptation of Colleen Hoover’s best-selling novel. Lively plays a florist named Lily Bloom who falls head over heels for a surgeon; their romance is exciting and intense, before it turns abusive. The story features several graphically violent scenes, including one of attempted rape.

Lively – the Gossip Girl soap icon turned screen star – is perhaps one of the most marketable actors of the past decade. A Met Gala fixture, besties with Taylor Swift, she and husband Ryan Reynolds are one of Hollywood’s power couples; moguls with their own production company and several off-screen businesses selling their All-American appeal.

Ms Paige, who lives in Colorado with her young daughter, is a survivor of abuse herself who now campaigns on the issue.

“My life story is very reminiscent of [Lively’s character] Lily Bloom’s,” she told the BBC. “I had a daughter with my abuser and we ran.”

But she bristles at how Lively has spoken about the character.

Lively has described Lily as both a “survivor” and a “victim”, and has said “while they are huge labels, these are not her identity”.

“She defines herself and I think it’s deeply empowering that no one else can define you,” she told the BBC at the London premiere in August.

At the New York premiere, when asked about what she would say to survivors, she said: “You are so much more than just a survivor or just a victim. While that is a huge thing, you are a person of multitudes, and what someone has done to you doesn’t define you. You define you.”

But Ms Paige is offended by the idea that she is “more” than a victim. Her trauma isn’t just something she can neatly lock away, she says.

“It has shaped my identity. It shapes the way I communicate. It shapes the way I perceive the world… It shapes everything,” she said.

“And so although it’s not our identity, it permeates every aspect of who we are, because we’re never the same after that.”

On TikTok, US trauma therapist Maddie Spear also shared a video explaining why Lively’s rhetoric was troubling to some.

“While I love the positivity in promoting light and life, oftentimes trauma survivors are told to just make light of their story… and I feel like [Lively’s] actions are doing just that. Her actions are continuing to make victims feel like their story is too heavy to even talk about,” she said in the clip.

In an opinion piece in US magazine Glamour, titled “The Problem with the More Than A Victim Discourse”, writer Kathleen Wash says: “I’m sure it wasn’t her intention, but… saying someone is ‘more than just a survivor’ or ‘more than just a victim’ implies that there’s something bad about identifying as a victim in the first place”.

And a spokesperson for the charity Solace Women’s Aid told the BBC: “While likely not [Lively’s] intention, this sentiment could reinforce some of the shame victims feel about the continuing impact of abuse or make them feel they must just move on from this experience.”

But there is no uniform view on this among those who’ve experienced abuse, say domestic abuse organisations.

Many survivors do relate to Lively’s optimistic message that they are not defined by their trauma, they say.

What might have amplified the anger around Lively’s comments, however, is the view that she has minimised the topic through the film’s wider branding.

Online, video edits have proliferated of Lively’s more blithe responses to questions about her character. In one red carpet video she answers a question about victimhood by joking about her neoprene floral outfit: “You can go deep sea diving in it.”

Another clip that’s gone viral – a promotional video put out on the film’s Instagram page – has Lively encouraging people to watch the film, by saying: “Grab your girls and wear your florals!”

During the press tour, the actor has also promoted her multiple off-screen businesses: a new hair care line and her brand of alcoholic drinks.

Studies show significant links between alcohol and domestic violence. But her drinks business Betty Booze has promoted cocktail recipes inspired by the film’s characters – including the abuser, Ryle.

Ms Paige calls this “wildly inappropriate”.

She says the worst failing of the film is its marketing, which she characterises as misleading.

It’s a view backed by the charity Women’s Aid, which says that “despite domestic abuse being a key theme of the film, much of the marketing has ignored this and viewers have not been warned about the potentially distressing content”.

The US-based National Domestic Violence Hotline says more than one in three (35.6%) of women and one in four men (28.5%) have experienced rape, physical violence, and/or stalking by an intimate partner in their lifetime.

In the UK, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) estimates one in five adults have experienced domestic abuse – one in four women and one in seven men.

Ms Paige says that immediately after the film’s US premiere, her TikTok feed was full of videos of shell-shocked survivors.

“You watched It Ends With Us and it all came back. The guilt, the shame, the anger, the love-bombing, the fear,” one person wrote.

Another said: “Yeah I went and saw this today, left with a PTSD attack. Was not prepared to see my life play out in front of me.”

“I’m still trying to recover from the movie. Took me right back,” was another comment.

Domestic abuse organisations say that, on the whole, representing abusive situations in popular culture should be done sensitively.

“When making any kind of media about violence against women and girls, the potential impact on survivors should be front and centre in every aspect of its development,” Andrea Simon from the UK-based End Violence against Women Coalition told the BBC earlier this week.

Lively stressed in an earlier interview with BBC News that she and all others on the film felt the “responsibility of servicing the people that care so much about the source material”.

And last week, seemingly in response to the growing criticism, Lively posted her first message of the press tour on social media, linking to domestic abuse phone hotlines and charities.

She also shared the BBC news article about her comments at the UK premiere, and BBC News has approached her for further comment.

Her co-star Brandon Sklenar this week also spoke out about what he saw as the vilification of Lively.

He said: “There isn’t a single person involved in the making of this film that was not aware of the responsibility we had in making this.”

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is in Ukraine to hold talks with President Volodymyr Zelensky. The trip comes just weeks after he met Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow.

The visit is significant because Kyiv and some Western capitals had reacted sharply to Mr Modi’s visit to the Russian capital in July.

Mr Zelensky was particularly critical, saying he was “disappointed to see the leader of the world’s largest democracy hug the world’s most bloody criminal in Moscow”.

So, is Mr Modi visiting Kyiv to placate Mr Zelensky and other Western leaders?

Not entirely.

It’s not surprising to see India balance its relations between two competing nations or blocs. The country’s famed non-alignment approach to geopolitics has served it well for decades.

Friday’s visit – the first by an Indian prime minister to Ukraine – is more about signalling that while India will continue to have strong relations with Russia, it will still work closely with the West.

Michael Kugelman, director of the South Asia Institute at the Wilson Centre think-tank in Washington, says the trip will further reassert India’s strategic autonomy.

“India isn’t in the business of placating Western powers, or anyone for that matter. It’s a trip meant to advance Indian interests, by reasserting friendship with Kyiv and conveying its concerns about the continuing war,” he says.

However, the timing of the visit does reflect that Indian diplomats have taken onboard the sharp reactions from the US to Mr Modi’s Moscow visit.

India has refrained from directly criticising Russia over the war, much to the annoyance of Western powers.

• Modi’s balancing act as he meets Putin in Moscow

Delhi, however, has often spoken about the importance of respecting territorial integrity and sovereignty of nations. It has continuously pushed for diplomacy and dialogue to end the war.

Mr Modi’s Moscow visit in July came hours after Russian bombing killed at least 41 people in Ukraine, including at a children’s hospital in Kyiv, sparking a global outcry.

The Indian PM said the death of children was painful and terrifying but stopped short of blaming Russia.

Mr Modi is not likely to deviate from this stance during his visit to Kyiv. The US and other Western nations have grown to accept Delhi’s stand, given India’s time-tested relationship with Moscow and its reliance on Russian military equipment.

India, the world’s largest importer of arms, has diversified its defence import portfolio and also grown domestic manufacturing in recent years but it still buys more than 50% of its defence equipment from Russia.

India has also increased its oil imports from Russia, taking advantage of cheaper prices offered by Moscow – Russia was the top oil supplier to India last year.

The US and its allies have often implored India to take a clearer stand on the war but they have also refrained from applying harsh sanctions or pressure.

The West also sees India as a counterbalance to China and doesn’t want to upset that dynamic. India, now the fifth largest economy in the world, is also a growing market for business.

Mr Kugelman says the West will welcome the visit and see it as Delhi’s willingness to engage with all sides.

“Mr Modi has a strong incentive to signal that it’s not leaning so close to Moscow that there’s nothing to salvage with Kyiv,” he says.

This is important because India wants to keep growing its relations with the West, particularly with the US, and wouldn’t want to upset the momentum. Eric Garcetti, the US ambassador to India, recently said the relationship should not be “taken for granted”.

India also needs the West as China, its Asian rival, and Russia have forged close ties in recent years.

While Delhi has long viewed Moscow as a power that can put pressure on an assertive China when needed, it can’t be taken for granted.

Meanwhile, many media commentators have spoken about the possibility of Mr Modi positioning himself as a peacemaker, given India’s close relations with both Moscow and the West.

But it’s unlikely that he will turn up with a peace plan.

“Is India really up to it, and are the conditions right? India doesn’t like other countries trying to mediate in its own issues, chief among them Kashmir. And I don’t think Mr Modi would formally offer mediation unless both Russia and Ukraine want it. And at this point, I don’t think they do,” Mr Kugelman adds.

Ukraine, however, will still welcome Mr Modi’s visit and see it as an opportunity to engage with a close ally of Moscow, something it hasn’t done much since the war began.

Mr Zelensky, though, is unlikely to hold back his criticism of Mr Putin in front of the Indian PM. Mr Modi can live with that as he has faced such situations many times in other Western capitals.

Moscow is not likely to react to the visit as it has also been making concessions for Delhi’s multilateral approach to geopolitics.

But beyond reasserting its non-alignment policy, Delhi also has bigger goals from this visit.

India has been ramping up engagement with Europe in the past decade, particularly with the underserved regions in Central and Eastern Europe.

Delhi wants to keep consolidating its relations with the big four – the UK, Italy, Germany and France – but also wants to boost engagement with other countries in Europe.

Mr Modi is also visiting Poland on this trip – the first Indian PM to visit the country in 45 years. He also became the first Indian prime minister to visit Austria in 41 years in July.

Analysts say that this signals India’s growing understanding that Central European nations will play a bigger role in geopolitics in the future and strong relations with them will serve Delhi well.

The Indian government has also revived trade deal negotiations with Europe. It has signed a trade and investment deal with the European Free Trade Association, which is the intergovernmental organisation of Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland.

So, while there will be a lot of focus on the war during his visit, Indian diplomats are likely to stay focused on the bigger goal.

“Central and Eastern Europe now have greater agency in writing their own destiny and reshaping regional geopolitics. Mr Modi’s visit to Warsaw and Kyiv is about recognising that momentous change at the heart of Europe and deepening bilateral political, economic and security ties with the Central European states,” foreign policy analyst C Raja Mohan wrote in the Indian Express newspaper, summing up Mr Modi’s wider goal.

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

The next theme is “still life” and the deadline for entries is 3 September 2024.

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

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

Terms and conditions apply.

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

All photographs subject to copyright.

Investigators examining the sinking of a luxury yacht off the coast of Sicily have outlined what they know six days on.

Seven people died when the Bayesian, a 56-metre sailing boat, sank to the bottom of the sea during bad weather early on 19 August.

There were 22 passengers and crew on board, 15 of whom managed to escape onto a lifeboat.

In their first press conference about the tragedy, at a court in Termini Imerese, Sicily, on Saturday, Italian prosecutors confirmed that a manslaughter and negligent shipwreck investigation has begun over the disaster’s seven deaths.

Officials were unable to answer a number of queries from the media, saying they needed time to establish the facts, but they did shine a light on some previously unknown details.

A manslaughter investigation has been opened into the deaths of seven people in the sinking.

British tech businessman Mike Lynch and his 18-year-old daughter Hannah lost their lives, alongside Morgan Stanley International bank chairman Jonathan Bloomer, his wife Judy Bloomer, Clifford Chance lawyer Chris Morvillo and his wife Neda Morvillo, and Canadian-Antiguan national Recaldo Thomas, who was working as a chef on the yacht.

All of their bodies have now been recovered.

• The 16 minutes that plunged the Bayesian yacht into a deadly spiral

Chief prosecutor of Termini Imerese, Ambrogio Cartosio, said his office has opened an initial investigation into manslaughter and negligent shipwreck.

He told reporters they would ascertain whether the captain, crew, individuals in charge of supervision, the ship-builder, or others could bear responsibility.

He added: “We will establish each element’s responsibility – that will be done by the inquiry, so we can’t do that prematurely.

“For me, it is probable that offences were committed – that it could be a case of manslaughter – but we can only establish that if you give us the time to investigate.

“Media timing is completely different from that of a prosecutor. We need a minimum amount of time to come to a proper scientific conclusion.”

The inquiry is currently an Italian investigation with local involvement, but Mr Cartosio said: “I cannot tell you with any certainty that the inquiry will be exclusively Italian.

“There will be developments, I’m sure, on that score.”

Witnesses described seeing a waterspout form during the storm before the sinking of the Bayesian yacht, which is similar to a tornado over a body of water.

However, deputy prosecutor Raffaele Cammarano told the press conference that “from the information we have, it is a downburst we are talking about”.

BBC Weather forecaster Ben Rich said a downburst occurs when air races downward from the base of a cloud. It produces a powerful gust of wind that blows unpredictably outwards in different directions.

He said it can be confused with tornadoes or waterspouts because the damage caused can be similar.

Maritime director of western Sicily, Rear Admiral Raffaele Macauda, said the weather at the time of the yacht’s sinking was abnormal and there was nothing to suggest such an extreme situation would arise.

He told the press conference there was no tornado alert.

Officials said they would be looking at how a downburst could have affected the Bayesian and not other vessels nearby.

The body of Recaldo Thomas, who was working as a chef on the yacht, was found outside of the vessel and was the first to be discovered.

The bodies of the remaining six people were recovered from cabins on the left side of the yacht after it had sunk, the chief of the Palermo fire service said.

Girolamo Bentivoglio said that specialised divers attempting to retrieve the bodies had to deal with “very little visibility due to the weather conditions” and were called in from across the country as part of a search-and-rescue operation which involved “some 70 people” each day.

He added: “The yacht obviously pinned to the right and obviously the [people] tried to go on the other side and then took refuge in their cabins.

“We found four or five bodies in the cabin on the left and there was another one in the third cabin on the left too, and they were in the higher part of the wreck.”

Mr Cammarano suggested that passengers may not have been able to escape from the yacht because they were asleep.

Asked why they were not woken up or alerted, he said: “That is precisely what we are trying to ascertain from the statements made during the interrogation of the survivors – an essential point in the inquiry, obviously.”

He said several of the bodies were found in a single cabin.

He said: “The bodies were found in a cabin which was not theirs, but this doesn’t give us any kind of certainty about what happened.

“We have no idea of the reasons for their all being found in the same cabin.”

Prosecutors were questioned about the captain of the Bayesian and its crew.

Asked whether the crew will remain in Sicily, Mr Cartosio said: “There’s no obligation, but they should be available for the investigation.”

The press conference heard authorities still have questions to ask the captain but that they cannot keep people in the country under Italian law.

Mr Cammarano was asked about the crew undergoing alcohol and drug testing, and he said officials were trying to conduct those tests.

When asked how it was possible that most of the crew managed to survive, he said the incident happened suddenly and the inquiry will look into it.

No information has yet been gleaned from an examination of the seven people who died, prosecutors said.

In response to a question about whether post-mortem examinations have been carried out, Mr Cammarano said: “There are a whole number of preliminary stages to go through before the autopsies.”

When a shell exploded near Oleksandr Budko, the 26-year-old found himself buried alive and in “terrible pain” from injuries that would lead to the amputation of both his legs.

The Ukrainian soldier was helping to defend the north-eastern Kharkiv region from invading Russian forces in August 2022, when his unit was attacked.

Two years on, he’s the star of a reality TV show in which multiple women battle for his affection.

One advert for the Ukrainian version of hit US series The Bachelor shows a smartly-dressed Oleksandr staring wistfully at a flower. In another, he answers questions in military fatigues before performing a series of pull-ups in a gym.

Speaking to me in a rose garden in Kyiv, the veteran-turned-celebrity is in good spirits despite being tired after a busy week.

Oleksandr says he’s hoping to find love on the show after breaking up with his girlfriend last January – but thinks it will be difficult to choose a partner with “millions of people watching”.

His motivations aren’t just romantic. He also wants to use his appearance on the show to raise awareness of the challenges facing disabled Ukrainians.

“This show is watched by millions of people, and it presents a huge opportunity to positively influence their outlook,” he says.

He wants to show that injured veterans are not “outsiders, but full members of society who are living a good life.

“In my case, my life is now even better than before the war, better than before I got injured.”

Oleksandr is always on the go, telling me he spent the previous night filming a music video.

His life wasn’t always like this. In the years before Russia’s full-scale invasion, he was working as a barista in a Kyiv restaurant while studying graphic design.

He says his dreams were “down to earth”: travelling, discovering the world, and growing professionally. He wanted to start a family.

But Oleksandr’s life was turned upside down two years ago, when he became one of hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian men to join the army.

In August 2022, he was stationed near Izyum, an occupied city on the front lines of the Russian advance. It was invaded in the early days of the war and used by Russia as a key military hub to supply its forces from the east.

The city was liberated by Kyiv just a month after Oleksandr was seriously injured while defending the nearby Ukrainian position.

“I felt the earth shift onto me. I felt a terrible pain in my legs and realised that it would mean the amputation of my legs,” he said.

“I screamed from horrific pain and shouted for people to hear me.”

He says he knew his comrades were alive, and they dug him out of the ground and provided first aid. But that’s when he knew his legs were badly hurt.

“I understood that I had lost my legs at the moment of injury, two or three seconds after I felt the pain.”

Oleksandr survived but much of Izyum was left in ruins. At the time, authorities said they had found more than 400 bodies in graves near the city.

Despite a challenging recovery, Oleksandr was able to walk with prosthetic legs within six months.

“When I didn’t have prostheses, I had to move around in a wheelchair. I discovered how inaccessible and unsuited Kyiv was for wheelchair users, even though it’s the capital city,” he says.

“In the historic old town you can’t go anywhere. You can’t cross the road on your own and you can’t go inside any building because there are stairs everywhere.”

War injuries mean Oleksandr’s experience is becoming increasingly common in Ukraine. While there’s no official data recording the number of people injured during the war, tens of thousands are estimated to have lost limbs.

This has resulted in the creation of a separate reality show, called Legs Off – which Oleksandr presented – capturing the difficulties faced by disabled people as they move around Ukrainian cities.

As well as presenting, the veteran has also written a book, won medals at the Invictus Games, and performed with a ballet troupe in the US – all while recovering from his injuries.

He’s so popular in Ukraine that The Bachelor’s application portal crashed shortly after it was announced Oleksandr would take on the main role in the upcoming season.

Producers of The Bachelor are casting the veteran as a symbol of hope.

“Despite his amputations, Oleksandr rides a bike, drives a car, and climbs mountains. He lives life to the fullest,” says Natalia Franchuk, from STB, the network on which the show will air later this year.

“If television is about filming reality, then who better could be the star of The Bachelor now? Who else would be better suited in a country at war?”

A TikTok star from a small city in Tennessee has made it his mission to show the world British food is not all that bad.

Food reviewer Kalani Smith, who goes by Kalani Ghost Hunter (KGH) online, racks up millions of views posting his reviews on social media – from Welsh cakes to Greggs.

After initially building up a following investigating the paranormal, a pivot to reviewing British culinary staples has seen Mr Smith’s follower count balloon to more than three million on TikTok alone.

Having recently toured south Wales, Mr Smith boldly declared Cardiff Market’s food beats London’s Camden Market’s “10 times out of 10”.

“The most interesting thing about this journey… is that the perception around the world, especially in the US, is that the food in the UK is bland, it’s bad,” said Mr Smith.

“I think my whole objective up until this point has been is to document that this is not the case.

“There’s obviously things that are not good in every country, but there’s also some things that are absolutely incredible.”

“A lot of people come to the UK and they visit London, and that’s their extent of visiting the UK,” said Mr Smith, who hails from Mount Juliet in Tennessee.

“Whereas I’ve been to so many cities in the UK that I’ve got a pretty good perception and understanding of the majority of food… I’ve had so many of the regional dishes.”

Mr Smith’s social media career as a ghost hunter took an unexpected turn when, on a trip to the UK earlier this year, he decided to review arguably the most British meal of them all – a roast dinner.

“Things really took a change for me after that point,” said Mr Smith, who has been a food reviewer ever since.

Throughout his travels in the UK, the almost-exclusive setting for his reviews, he found one cuisine particularly stood out.

“The UK’s curry scene is untouchable,” he said.

“You can go to so many different parts of the UK and get a really good curry.”

However, Mr Smith does not have such kind words for all of the UK’s traditional dishes, saying pie, mash and liquor was the worst thing he had.

“That’s a London thing… but that liquor sauce is just not something that I would ever want to eat again.”

On a recent whistle-stop tour of south Wales, Mr Smith visited Newport, Cardiff, Port Talbot and Swansea.

“One of the highlights of the trip definitely had to be the Welsh cake… absolutely incredible,” said Mr Smith, after visiting Cardiff Bakestones in the city’s market.

“My first trip here, I had a horrible Welsh cake from Morrisons out of a package, and everyone told me, you have to get a fresh one.

“We went to the Cardiff market and had some incredible food, Welsh cake being one of those.”

Another highlight of Welsh cuisine was our famed traditional Welsh… tacos?

“Some of the best tacos I’ve had in the UK can be found in Cardiff Market,” he said of the market’s The Bearded Taco.

In Swansea, he said he had a “really good experience” with cockles and laverbread and Welsh rarebit.

“I had to get laverbread from Wales. I had this cockles and laverbread concoction that actually was really good.

“Laverbread by itself, without cooking. It was not a good idea.”

He did, however, tempt the wrath of Swansea natives with a less than perfect, but still positive, review of Joe’s Ice Cream.

“Joe’s Ice Cream in Swansea is one that I’ve had commented hundreds and hundreds of times, and everyone from Swansea talks about Joe’s Ice Cream.

“Joe’s Ice Cream is good, but it doesn’t rank in the top 10 for best ice cream I’ve ever had.

“It’s not something that I would drive or stand in line for.”

Mr Smith said the skill of balancing locals’ passion for their signature dishes with giving an honest review was an important part of the job.

“The key is – you have to be respectful, right? – If you watch any video that I do, even if it is negative, most of the time, I try my best to be respectful.

“Each city in each region has a dish that they kind of cling to and and they’re proud of this dish.

“If I don’t think something tastes good, I’m not going to say [it does] to, you know, save someone’s feelings.

“Just because it’s not my taste and it’s not something I enjoy doesn’t mean that someone else out there doesn’t… I will always be honest with people.”

Malaysian authorities are trying to rescue a woman who fell into an eight-metre deep sinkhole that opened on a busy road in Kuala Lumpur.

The 48-year-old Indian national was sitting on a roadside bench in Jalan India Masjid when the ground beneath her suddenly caved in, according to local police.

Videos on social media show crowds of people watching rescue workers trying to make their way into the sinkhole. Some have ladders, while others are using hammers and diggers to try and clear the way.

There does not appear to be any sign of the woman.

The Kuala Lumpur Fire and Rescue Department said it received a distress call at 08:22 local time (00:22 GMT) and dispatched 15 firemen to the scene.

Operation commander Mohd Riduan Akhbar told local media that a search and rescue operation was being conducted.

“The Special Tactical Operation and Rescue Team of Malaysia (STORM) and the K9 unit are at the location,” he said.

Ninety personnel from various other agencies have also joined in the operation, according to local police chief Assistant Commissioner Sulizmie Affendy Sulaiman.

“We will look at CCTV footage and take statements from witnesses to get a clearer picture of what occurred,” he said.

The BBC has reached out to the Kuala Lumpur Fire and Rescue Department for comment.

Sinkholes generally form when underground water dissolves the rock on the surface, causing a hole to form.

Although there is no precise data globally, geologists say they are reasonably common. Human injuries, however, are very rare.

One of the worst recent sinkholes disasters in terms of casualties occurred in Canada in 2010, when a family of four died after their entire house was swallowed by a gaping sinkhole near Montreal.

The world’s largest sinkhole is Xiaoxhai Tiankeng in south-western China. With a depth measuring 660 metres, researchers believe it was formed more than 128,000 years ago.

A would-be burglar in Rome was caught after stopping to read a book on Greek mythology in the middle of a theft, Italian media reports.

The 38-year-old reportedly gained access to a flat in the Italian capital’s Prati district via the balcony but became distracted after picking up a book about Homer’s Iliad on a bedside table.

The 71-year-old homeowner is said to have awoken and confronted the alleged thief, who was engrossed in the book.

News of the failed burglary attracted the attention of the book’s author, who told local media he wanted to send the man a copy so he could “finish” his read.

After being caught off-guard, the alleged thief reportedly attempted to make a quick getaway by escaping via the same balcony, but was arrested shortly afterwards.

He is said to have told police he had climbed the building to visit a person he knew.

“I thought I had ended up in a B&B, saw the book and started to read it.”

Giovanni Nucci, the author of The Gods at Six O’Clock, which explains the Iliad from the perspective of the gods, told Il Messaggero: “It’s fantastic.”

“I’d like to find the person caught red-handed and give him the book, because he’ll have been arrested halfway through reading it. I’d like him to be able to finish it.

“It’s a surreal story, but also full of humanity.”

The thief was reportedly in possession of a bag containing expensive clothing allegedly stolen from another house earlier that evening.

Mr Nucci said his personal favourite deity was Hermes, the god of thieves.

“He is also the god of literature. It is clear: everything fits,” he joked.

When Jimmy Reid goes looking for incredible wildlife to photograph, he doesn’t have to stray very far from home.

He looks under drain covers, beneath rocks and even inside the dilapidated shed in his garden in Loanhead, Midlothian.

To some, the wasps, moths, ants and spiders that emerge may be considered mundane, or even a pest.

To Jimmy, a professional photographer, they are the subject of striking close-up shots revealing fascinating detail.

“I look in the strangest places and I usually get lucky,” he told BBC Scotland News.

“My shed seems to be a gold mine because it’s falling apart.

“It’s incredible that I’ve been doing this for 10 years but I still find creatures that I’ve never seen before.”

The 39-year-old father also travels to nearby woods and country parks to find new species that he hasn’t yet photographed.

“It’s so exciting that I’m tempted to go out most evenings in the summer hunting for new subjects whether it be birds or bugs,” he said.

“When I’m taking pictures of bees and wasps I try to do this at night when they are sleeping as they are less likely to move – but they are hard to find.”

Having a pet crocodile in the backyard sounds like a far-fetched Australian fable – like riding kangaroos to school or the existence of drop bears.

But in the Northern Territory (NT), it’s a reality.

And Trevor Sullivan has 11 of the reptiles sharing his tropical home in Batchelor, about an hour south of Darwin.

Among them is Big Jack, who is named after a Jack in the Box toy due to his alarming propensity for lunging. Despite his antics, the giant predator is adored, having joined Mr Sullivan’s household as a hatchling the same day his daughter was born 22 years ago.

“He’s been part of our family ever since… [my daughter] refers to him as brother.”

Also on the 80-acre property is Cricket, still a tiny critter, and Shah, who – at the complete other end of the scale – is more than a century old and has truly lived a life.

“He’s possibly seen two world wars and maybe federation in Australia [in 1901],” Mr Sullivan says of the 4.7m (15.4ft) beast.

He claims Shah once killed a man, has been used for scientific research, was almost poisoned to death at a bird park, and lost half his bottom jaw in a fight at a Queensland crocodile farm, all before joining Mr Sullivan a few years ago.

The 60-year-old lights up as he tells the BBC about his crocodiles: “There’s nothing like them… crocodiles are the Harley Davidson of pets.”

But as the famously quirky region heads to the polls on Saturday, the right to own a pet croc has turned into a somewhat unlikely – and very Territory – election issue.

The cost of living, housing and crime are the prime concerns for many voters, but Mr Sullivan is one of scores left heartbroken after the governing Labor Party moved to ban crocodiles as pets.

It is one of the last places in the country the practice is allowed, but the government says they’re concerned for the wellbeing of both humans and the reptiles. The Country Liberal Party opposition, however, has pledged its support for the practice and has promised a review of the “rushed” decision if elected.

About 250,000 people call the NT home, but relatively few of them own crocodiles. The environment minister’s office said they could not provide a figure because the government is in election caretaker mode, but previous estimates have put the number of permit holders at around 100.

Many of the captive crocs are raised from hatchlings, others rehomed from farms or after causing trouble in the wild.

Regulations have long dictated strict conditions about where, and under what conditions, the animals can be kept. For example, hatchlings can only live in urban areas until they are 60cm long – usually about a year old – at which point they must be handed over to authorities or moved to a property outside the town limits.

Under those rules, however, owners were not required to have any special training or knowledge to keep the beasts.

Tom Hayes says owning – or “saving” – a crocodile is part of the Territory’s appeal, and one of the factors which drew his young family to the Darwin region, from Queensland, earlier this year.

The 40-year-old grew up taking trips to the NT with his dad, fishing in the Mary River alongside giant crocodiles, instilling a love of predators and, eventually, a dream to have his own one day.

“I’m not just some dude that wants a crocodile [for] when I’m having a barbecue with my mates on the weekend,” the tattooist and self-styled conservationist told the BBC.

“I wanted to have somewhere I could bring these poor old buggers and they could just live their lives out – happy, fed… not having to worry about people shooting them.”

He was in process of adopting a mega croc when the NT government announced it would not be issuing any new permits to keep the reptiles as pets.

It has left Mr Hayes reeling and the crocodile he’d hoped to rescue at risk of being put down.

NT Environment Minister Kate Worden said the decision was made “after public consultation” and “taking into account personal safety and animal welfare concerns”.

Existing permits will remain valid, but transfers of permits will not be allowed.

“Let’s remember they are an apex predator and probably not one that’s best kept for captivity,” Ms Worden told reporters, adding that there were instances of crocodiles attacking their owners in the region.

The new rules bring the NT in in line with every other state and territory in Australia – except, oddly, Victoria, which is well outside of the comfortable climate of a saltwater crocodile.

Animal activists, who had been pushing for the change, say it’s a big win.

While some of the people keeping crocodiles “may have good intentions”, no wild animal can have its needs fully met in captivity, argues Olivia Charlton, from World Animal Protection.

“There is no way to replicate the space and freedom these crocodiles would have in the wild, particularly given they live for up to 70 years,” she said in a statement.

Charles Giliam, from the RSPCA NT, said the dangerous nature of crocodiles also made it extremely hard for authorities to regulate the program and ensure the reptiles had an acceptable standard of living and medical care.

“I only know one vet who’s prepared to work with crocodiles,” he said, as an example.

But croc owners say they had no idea the change was coming and are distressed over what may now happen to their pets.

“I don’t think you spend many nights on the couch watching TV, snuggling with your four-and-a-half-meter crocodile… but there’s still that emotional attachment,” Mr Hayes says.

They accuse the government of hiding the change in a broader Crocodile Management Plan to avoid doing true consultation on the issue.

The opposition environment spokeswoman Jo Hersey said “the [Country Liberal Party] supports the rights of Territorians to own crocs as pets under a permit system” and has promised the party will look at the rules if elected.

Both Mr Hayes and Mr Sullivan said there is broad support for greater training and education requirements for permit holders.

But they say the reptiles are surprisingly easy to care for – and reject arguments that keeping them as pets is harmful.

“In the wild, they have a stretch of territory and they then have to fight to keep it. They’re forever hunting for food, forever chasing off their enemies or trying to keep their girlfriend sorted and life’s pretty tough going,” Mr Sullivan says.

“In captivity, if they got a good enclosure, plenty of water, sunlight, a bit of shade, and food on a regular basis, they just love it.

“I have a river running through my property and I actually have wild crocs always trying to get in and join my mob.”

The decision to end the practice is particularly bad timing for Mr Sullivan. He listed his home and his menagerie for sale last year, so he could join his partner in New Zealand.

“It is a bit like a Willy Wonka story – I want some young kids, of the right nature, to take on a property full of wildlife.”

But that’s left him with a quandary that belongs in a maths textbook: If you have 80 acres and 11 crocodiles on the market, but zero permits available to transfer, what’s the answer?

There is “not a chance” he’ll euthanise his crocs, he says. “I’ll have to stay on the property until I die, or until something else changes.”

His hope is resting on the election of a CLP government on Saturday, adding he thinks it is an issue which will galvanise voters.

But Mr Hayes, on the other hand, hopes it isn’t. There are greater issues at play which should decide votes, he explains, and he is optimistic that both parties will come to see sense anyway.

“Whoever’s in needs to really look at it… It’s an attack on the Territory way of life.”

The lawyer of Telegram chief Pavel Durov, who has been arrested in France, has said his detention is “absolutely ridiculous” and an attack on freedom of speech.

Mr Durov was arrested by French police after his private jet had landed at Le Bourget Airport in Paris on Saturday, French media reported.

According to officials, the 39-year-old billionaire was detained in relation to an investigation about a lack of moderators on Telegram – which it has previously denied.

Mr Durov is accused of failing to take steps to curb criminal uses of Telegram. The app is accused of not cooperating with law enforcement over drug trafficking, child sexual content and fraud.

His lawyer, Dmitry Agranovsky, told Russian news outlet RIA Novosti that the accusations were similar to blaming a car manufacturer for an accident, or for its cars being used for crimes.

Pavel Durov was born in Russia and lives in Dubai. He holds dual citizenship of the United Arab Emirates and France.

Telegram is particularly popular in Russia, Ukraine and former Soviet Union states.

The app was banned in Russia in 2018, after a previous refusal by him to hand over user data. The ban was reversed in 2021.

Telegram is ranked as one of the major social media platforms after Facebook, YouTube, WhatsApp, Instagram, TikTok and Wechat.

Pavel Durov founded Telegram in 2013. He left Russia in 2014 after refusing to comply with government demands to shut down opposition communities on his VKontakte social media platform, which he sold.

On Sunday, the Russian Embassy in France wrote on Facebook that it was seeking to “clarify the reasons for the detention and to provide for the protection of Mr Durov’s rights and facilitate consular access”.

The post added that French authorities had not been cooperating with Russian officials.

Russian Foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova posted on Telegram asking whether Western human rights NGOs would be silent on Mr Durov’s arrest, after they criticised Russia’s decision to “create obstacles” to the work of Telegram in Russia in 2018.

Several Russian officials condemned the businessman’s arrest, saying it showed the West has double standards when it comes to free speech and democracy.

American whistleblower Edward Snowden, who has been living in exile in Russia since 2013, said on X that Mr Durov’s arrest “was an assault on the basic human rights of speech and association”.

X owner Elon Musk, who has faced extensive criticism over moderation and material hosted by his own social media site, posted repeatedly about the situation.

He hashtagged one post #freepavel, and in another wrote: “[Point of view: It’s 2030 in Europe and you’re being executed for liking a meme.”

Telegram allows groups of up to 200,000 members, which critics have argued makes it easier for misinformation to spread, and for users to share conspiracist, neo-Nazi, paedophilic, or terror-related content.

In the UK, the app was scrutinised for hosting far-right channels that were instrumental in organising the violent disorder in English cities earlier this month.

Telegram did remove some groups, but overall its system of moderating extremist and illegal content is significantly weaker than that of other social media companies and messenger apps, say cybersecurity experts.

If brat described our wild and unapologetically messy summers, then exemplary manners, politeness and being a stickler for rules is what’s taking us into autumn.

In recent weeks, thousands of videos showing us how to refine our etiquette have popped up on TikTok, all off the back of the “very demure, very mindful” trend.

The satirical idea started out as poking fun at the stereotypical ideas of femininity, but it has since taken on a life of its own.

While half of the internet are using the phrase ironically, others are concerned that the trend is just another way of setting unrealistic standards for women.

So, is anyone actually trying to be demure, or is this just a massive in-joke that’s been blown out of proportion?

The seemingly harmless catchphrase was coined by content creator Jools Lebron, who posted a TikTok earlier this month on her demure work outfit and mindful make-up.

“You see how I do my make-up for work? Very demure, very mindful,” she told her millions of followers.

“A lot of you girls go to the interview looking like Marge Simpson and go to the job looking like Patty and Selma. Not demure.”

She also reminds us that when dressing for the office, her shirt “only has a little chi-chi out, not my cho-cho”, adding: “You should never “come to work with a green cut crease”.

After achieving overnight fame with her videos, the internet sensation has quit her checkout job, appeared on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, and updated fans that she’s now able to finance her gender transition.

Not only have content creators and celebrities been jumping on the trend, but even companies like Nasa have joined the bandwagon.

“You see how Earth looks in space? It’s very demure, very mindful. Earth looks very cutesy in the solar system,” the space agency posted on X.

Lebron has explained that her motto is “obviously a joke” and while the definition of being demure means to be “reserved, modest, and shy”, she isn’t here to promote a Bridgerton-esque lifestyle for women.

Most content creators have been mocking the trend by subtly joking about how to be demure while being totally extravagant.

For example, RuPaul explains how he reads a book in a considerate way, while Penn Badgley, who plays Joe Goldberg in Netflix’s You, posted a TikTok saying: “playing a romantic icon for five seasons, I’m very modest, I’m very mindful.”

Demure has also made its way into our fashion – content creator Ambika Dhir says being “demure and mindful in outfits is about well-crafted quiet luxury, chic outfits and a strong personal style that grabs attention without being shouty”.

Similarly, Isa Lavahun, a social media strategist, says she interprets Lebron’s demure catchphrase as the “embodiment of subtle self-love – knowing that as long as you carry yourself with grace and empathy, no other opinion matters”.

But, not everyone sees it like that.

One Tik Toker, Sabrina Thulander, says she’s “always interpreted demure as a negative thing, like how a Victorian era man wants his wife to act. It all feels very trad wife to me”.

But some women have been leaning into the “trad wife” – traditional wife – trend, which has risen in popularity due to the artistic portrayal of women in shows like Bridgerton and Downton Abbey who are demure and mindful.

Author Gershom Mabaquiao explains that the trend started off being about “the unseriousness of self-presentation”, but since it has become bigger than social media and permeated society, it’s being interpreted in a “very literal way”.

The fact some people are posting about being demure, cutesty and mindful in a serious way shows “how nuances are lost when messages travel from the high-context in-groups to the low-context outgroups”, he says.

“The sarcasm and deliberate ‘double standards’ of the joke has gotten lost.”

Nöel Wolf, a cultural and linguistic expert, says the word demure dates back to the 1600s, and was used a lot in the 1800s to describe young women who were “modest and reserved”.

The recontextualisation of the word now shows “how old language can take on a new life in the hands of the younger generations”.

As TikTok trends come and go at an increasingly rapid pace, it’s hard to know which word or phrase will be the next big thing.

A former English teacher and now content creator who goes by the name of ExemplaryPotato, shares new words every week on the platform.

In response to demure, he has shared a video explaining the meaning of vituperative, an antonym to demure.

Wolf says the phrases that Gen Z have used this year are unexpected and obscure, like raw-dogging, rizz and bed rotting.

He added that demure isn’t the “only archaic word making a comeback this year” as Inside Out 2 brought “ennui” back into fashion, while Taylor Swift’s Tortured Poets Department re-popularised the word “tryst”.

“There’s a tendency for online trends to yo-yo: we moved from the clean girl aesthetic to brat summer as a rejection of that, and now to ‘demure’, so, there’s a good chance that whatever the next trend is, it’ll be far from demure.”

An anthropomorphic monkey and a campaign against “feminist propaganda” set the video gaming community alight this week, following the release of the most successful Chinese title of all time.

Many players were furious after the company behind Black Myth: Wukong sent them a list of topics to avoid while livestreaming the game, including “feminist propaganda, fetishisation, and other content that instigates negative discourse”.

Still, within 24 hours of its release on Tuesday, it became the second most-played game ever on streaming platform Steam, garnering more than 2.1 million concurrent players and selling more than 4.5 million copies.

The game, based on the classic 16th-century Chinese novel Journey to the West, is being seen as a rare example of popular media broadcasting Chinese stories on an international stage.

Black Myth: Wukong is a single-player action game where players take on the role of “the Destined One”- an anthropomorphic monkey with supernatural powers.

The Destined One is based on the character of Sun Wukong, or the Monkey King, a key character in Journey to the West.

That novel, considered one of the greats of Chinese literature, draws heavily from Chinese mythology as well as Confucianism, Taoist and Buddhist folklore.

It has inspired hundreds of international films, TV shows and cartoons, including the popular Japanese anime series Dragon Ball Z and the 2008 Chinese-American fantasy film The Forbidden Kingdom.

First announced via a hugely popular teaser trailer in August 2020, Black Myth launched on Tuesday after four years of anticipation.

It is the Chinese video game industry’s first AAA release – a title typically given to big-budget games from major companies.

High-end graphics, sophisticated game design and hot-blooded hype have all contributed to its success – as well as the size of China’s gaming community, which is the largest in the world.

“It’s not just a Chinese game targeting the Chinese market or the Chinese-speaking world,” Haiqing Yu, a professor at Australia’s RMIT University, whose research specialises in the sociopolitical and economic impact of China’s digital media, told the BBC.

“Players all over the world [are playing] a game that has a Chinese cultural factor.”

This has become a huge source of national pride in the country.

The Department of Culture and Tourism in Shanxi Province, an area that includes many locations and set pieces featured in the game, released a video on Tuesday that showcased the real-world attractions, triggering a surge in tourism dubbed “Wukong Travel”.

Videos posted on TikTok in the wake of Black Myth’s release show tourists flooding temples and shrines featured in the game, in what one X user characterised as a “successful example of cultural rediscovery”.

Niko Partners, a company that researches and analyses video games markets and consumers in Asia, similarly pointed out that Black Myth “helps showcase Chinese mythology, traditions, culture and real-life locations in China to the world”.

Ahead of Black Myth’s release, some content creators and streamers revealed that a company affiliated with its developer had sent them a list of topics to avoid talking about while livestreaming the game: including “feminist propaganda, fetishisation, and other content that instigates negative discourse”.

While it is not clear what was precisely meant by “feminist propaganda”, a widely circulated report by video game publication IGN in November alleged a history of sexist and inappropriate behaviour from employees of Game Science, the studio behind Black Myth.

Other topics designated as “Don’ts” in the document, which has been widely shared on social media and YouTube, included politics, Covid-19, and China’s video game industry policies.

The directive, which was sent out by co-publisher Hero Games, has stoked controversy outside China.

Multiple content creators refused to review the game, claiming its developers were trying to censor discussion and stifle freedom of speech.

Others chose to directly defy the warnings.

One creator with the username Moonmoon launched a Twitch stream of Black Myth titled “Covid-19 Isolation Taiwan (Is a Real Country) Feminism Propaganda”. Another streamer, Rui Zhong, discussed China’s one-child policy on camera while playing the game.

On Thursday, Chinese social media platform Weibo banned 138 users who were deemed to be violating its guidelines when discussing Black Myth.

According to an article on the state-run Global Times news site, a number of the banned Weibo users were “deviating from discussing the game itself but instead using it as a platform for spreading ‘gender opposition,’ ‘personal attacks’, and other irrational comments”.

While the controversy has attracted a lot of attention in international media and online, it has not really dented or detracted from Black Myth’s overwhelmingly positive reception.

The game made $53m in presales alone, with another 4.5 million copies sold within 24 hours of its release. Within the same timeframe it broke the record for the most-played single-player title ever released on Steam.

On platforms like Weibo, Reddit and YouTube, and elsewhere, reams of comments are celebrating the game’s success. Many suggest that the fallout from the controversies surrounding the game’s release has been overblown.

Ms Yu agreed, describing Black Myth as an “industry and overall market success”.

“When it comes to Chinese digital media and communication platforms, of course people cannot avoid talking about censorship,” she said. “Black Myth is… an example of how to tell the Chinese story well, and how to expand Chinese cultural influence globally. I don’t see any censorship there.”

She also pointed out that apparent attempts to steer or censor what reviewers said were unlikely to have come from Chinese officials themselves. More likely, Ms Yu suggested, is that the list of “Dos” and “Don’ts” came from a company that was trying to keep itself out of trouble.

“The company issues their notification so if anybody from the central government comes to have a chat with the company, the company can say, ‘look, I already told them. I can’t stop people from saying what they want to say.’

“They have basically, to use the colloquial term, covered their own ass,” she concluded. “I view it as a politically correct gesture to the Chinese censors, rather than a real directive coming from the top down.”

Until midnight last Sunday, Matteo Cannia was sitting out on a bench overlooking the sea in Porticello. It was too hot to sleep.

The 78-year-old, a fisherman since the age of 10, saw the first flashes of lightning. “I heard the thunder and the wind and decided to go home,” he told me.

“As the storm grew, everyone woke. Water was coming into my friend’s house.”

At about 04:15 local time, Fabio Cefalù – a fisherman who had been due to go out that wild Monday morning but, like others, decided against it – suddenly saw a flare go up.

He changed his mind and went out to sea to find out what was going on – and discovered only cushions and floating planks of wood.

A luxury super yacht called the Bayesian, moored only a few hundred metres away, had already sunk.

It all happened in a 16-minute window of disaster, chaos and torment, which catapulted a sleepy Sicilian fishing port to the centre of world news.

All but seven of the 22 people on board the Bayesian – 12 passengers and 10 crew – had scrambled into a life raft as the yacht began to capsize. The others never made it out.

Charlotte Golunski, a British woman, was thrown into the water with her one-year-old daughter, Sophie. She told of clutching her baby in the air with all her strength to keep her from drowning. “It was all black around me,” she said, “and the only thing I could hear were the screams of others.”

She, her baby, and her husband James were among those rescued by a nearby sailing boat captain. Trapped inside the sinking Bayesian was her colleague Mike Lynch – one of the UK’s top tech entrepreneurs, dubbed “Britain’s Bill Gates”.

Mr Lynch had brought together family, friends and colleagues for an idyllic holiday on his luxury boat: a sumptuous 56-metre (184ft) sailing yacht that won design awards and had the world’s tallest aluminium mast.

In June, he was acquitted after a lengthy trial in the US on charges that he had fraudulently inflated the value of his company, Autonomy, before selling it to Hewlett Packard in 2011. The trip was planned as a celebration of freedom to mark his rehabilitation in public opinion.

Three days after the yacht went down, his body was retrieved by divers from the wreckage.

A day later, the body of his 18-year-old daughter Hannah, who was due to begin studying at the University of Oxford next month, was recovered.

Among the others who died were the president of the investment bank Morgan Stanley, Jonathan Bloomer, and his wife Judy; Mr Lynch’s lawyer Chris Morvillo and his wife Neda; and the yacht’s chef, Recaldo Thomas. Mr Lynch’s wife, Angela Bacares, survived.

The family has released a statement talking of their “unspeakable grief”, adding they are “devastated and in shock”.

How the super yacht sank so quickly while other smaller vessels nearby survived the storm undamaged has dumbfounded experts.

In a press conference this weekend – the first public statement by officials since the disaster – local prosecutors said they had begun an investigation into potential crimes of manslaughter and negligent shipwreck.

The region’s state prosecutor Ambrogio Cartosio told reporters that while the probe was at a very early stage and nobody specific was being investigated, there were “many possibilities for culpability. It could be just the captain. It could be the whole crew… we are absolutely not ruling anything out”.

A small team of British marine investigators has also been sent to Sicily to work with their Italian counterparts.

Prosecutors said that they now believed a downburst was the weather phenomenon that hit the ship: a localised, powerful wind that descends from a thunderstorm and spreads unpredictably.

That contradicted previous reports that had identified the cause as a waterspout, or mini tornado at sea.

Either way, it’s clear extreme weather played a major role.

Much of the focus for the investigation team is of course on the conduct of the captain, 51-year-old James Cutfield from New Zealand. He survived, along with eight of his crew, and is being questioned.

“We didn’t see it coming,” he told Italian media, alluding to the storm, in his only public comment so far.

The problem is: plenty of others did. Violent winds and rain were forecast, following days of searing heat. The head of the company that built the Bayesian, Giovanni Costantino, told me he was convinced there had been a litany of errors on board.

“At the back of the boat, a hatch must have been left open,” he said, “but also perhaps a side entrance for water to have poured inside.

“Before the storm, the captain should have closed every opening, lifted anchor, turned on the engine, pointed into the wind and lowered the keel.”

A keel is a large, fin-like part of the boat that protrudes from its base.

“That would have stabilised the vessel, they would have been able to traverse the storm and continue their cruise in comfort,” he said.

Rescuers instead found the wreckage of the Bayesian 50 metres underwater with its almost 10-metre-long keel raised.

Had it been deployed, it could have helped counter the wind buffeting the Bayesian’s 75-metre high aluminium mast and kept the ship stable. But without it, experts told the newspaper La Repubblica that gusts of 100 kilometres an hour (62mph) would have been enough to capsize the ship – and Monday’s storm far exceeded that.

“The Bayesian was a model for many other vessels because of its stability and exceptionally high performance,” Mr Costantino said. “There was absolutely no problem with it. If water hadn’t surged in, it was unsinkable.”

He told me there were 16 minutes between the power going out on the ship at 03:56 – showing that water was flooding areas with electrical circuits – and the GPS signal being lost, indicating the moment it sank.

That period, along with any measures taken to mitigate the extreme weather, will be pored over by investigators, particularly once they locate the vessel’s black box recorder.

Rino Casilli, one of Sicily’s top ship surveyors, similarly believes that errors may have made the yacht vulnerable to the extreme weather.

“There should have been two members of the crew taking turns to be on watch overnight, given the storm warning,” he told me as he took me out on his boat – around a third of the size of the Bayesian. “And it should have been moored in the harbour, not out at sea.”

Prosecutors say they believe one person was on watch in the cockpit that night.

From Casilli’s sailing boat, we gained rare access to the spot where the Bayesian went down.

Around us, an Italian police vessel circulated, warning us back. Suddenly, there was a flurry of activity among divers, as other rescue vessels arrived.

We didn’t know at the time – but they had just located more bodies.

It was an intensely challenging operation for the teams to recover those trapped in the wreckage. Given its depth, at 50 metres underwater, each diver was allowed 10 minutes down before resurfacing for their safety – 120 dives in total. They were assisted by remote control vehicles that could operate on the seabed for far longer.

In this weekend’s press conference, rescuers said the passengers trapped inside during the sinking took refuge in cabins on the ship’s left side, where the last air bubbles formed.

Five of the bodies were found in the first cabin on the left, they said, while the last body – confirmed as Hannah Lynch – was in the third cabin on the left side.

Access for the emergency teams was extremely difficult since the yacht remained largely intact with its furniture obstructing entry.

The coastguard compared it to an “18-storey building full of water”. When Ms Lynch’s body was brought ashore emergency workers on the port applauded their colleagues.

All seven of the dead have been transported to a mortuary for post-mortems.

Rescuers will now need to decide whether – and how – to salvage the wreckage, which would undoubtedly offer vital clues as to what happened. But bringing the Bayesian to the surface could take six to eight weeks and cost 15 million euros (£12.7m) by some estimates.

While the divers’ painstaking work to recover the dead has ended, the investigators’ painful hunt for answers has only begun.

They and the survivors are hunkered down in a hotel close to Porticello, which is strictly off-limits to journalists. Security guards promptly asked us to leave.

Solving the enigma of what happened to the Bayesian will be crucial not only to help loved ones of the victims reach some sort of closure, but also for the maritime industry to draw conclusions.

The brother of James Cutfield, the captain, said he was a “well-respected” sailor who had worked on boats his whole life. Did the experienced sailor somehow make a series of catastrophic errors? The trade union Nautilus, which represents seafarers and captains, called for restraint in passing judgement on the Bayesian’s crew.

“Any attempt to question their conduct without the full facts is not only unfair but also harmful to the process of uncovering the truth and learning any lessons from this tragedy,” it said.

The world’s media has begun to leave Porticello, which is gradually returning to the tranquillity of its pre-Bayesian era. Stray cats roam among the old fishing boats, and children play as their families eat out at the few seaside restaurants.

But what has happened over the past week has stunned and scarred many here.

“Last Sunday night, we saw the end of the world in Porticello,” said resident Maria Vizzo. “We’ve never seen something like this. Everyone here is shocked – and everyone is crying.”

A 26-year-old man has given himself up and confessed to a mass knife attack at a street festival in Germany, police said on Sunday.

“The involvement of this person is currently under intensive investigation,” prosecutors and Düsseldorf police said.

He is under investigation for murder, attempted murder and membership of a foreign terrorist organisation, Germany’s federal prosecutor told the BBC.

Three people were killed and another eight injured in the city of Solingen during a festival to celebrate its 650-year history, in what Chancellor Olaf Scholz described as a “horrific act”.

The Islamic State group on Saturday claimed responsibility for the bloodshed, but did not immediately provide any evidence of a relationship with the attacker.

Those killed were two men aged 56 and 67, and a 56-year-old woman, officials said. Four of the injured are still in a serious condition. All of the victims were stabbed in the neck, police have said.

“The man we’ve really been looking for the whole day has just been taken into custody,” Herbert Reul, the interior minister of North Rhine-Westphalia state, told ARD public TV late on Saturday.

Germany’s Bild and Spiegel news websites reported that the suspect surrendered himself in dirty blood-stained clothes.

Police described him as Syrian, and German media reported that he arrived in Germany in December 2022, after leaving the war-torn country.

Bild reported that special task force (SEK) officers stormed a refugee centre that the suspect was associated with, detaining another person there.

Police also arrested a 15-year-old boy who is alleged to have known about the attack in advance.

The refugee centre is located about 300m (984ft) from Fronhof – Solingen’s central market square where people were stabbed on Friday night – according to Bild.

Solingen – a city famous for its steel industry – has about 160,000 inhabitants. It lies about 25km (15 miles) east of Düsseldorf.

The city’s authorities asked people to leave the Fronhof area after the attack at about 22:00 local time (21:00 BST) on Friday.

The planned three-day celebrations of the city anniversary – for which about 75,000 people had been expected – were cancelled after the attack.

Solingen Mayor Tim Kurzbach later said that “all of us in Solingen are in shock, horror and great sadness.

“It breaks my heart that an attack has happened in our city. I have tears in my eyes when I think of those we’ve lost.

“I pray for all those still fighting for their lives. Also my greatest sympathy for all those who had to experience this, these images must have been horrific.”

People have been bringing flowers and candles to the site of the attack that shocked the entire country.

Players from Germany’s top Bundesliga football league wore black armbands during Saturday’s matches.

The attack may fuel an already fraught debate about immigration and asylum in Germany.

It comes ahead of key regional elections in the country’s east next week, where the far right is eyeing gains.

Two Nasa astronauts who have been stuck in space for over two months will return to Earth in February 2025 with SpaceX.

Nasa said the Boeing Starliner spacecraft the astronauts Sunita Williams and Barry Wilmore had travelled to International Space Station (ISS) on would return to Earth “un-crewed”.

The pair took off on what was planned to be an eight-day mission on 5 June but will now spend around eight months in orbit.

The Starliner experienced problems on its way to the ISS, including leaks of helium, which pushes fuel into the propulsion system. Several thrusters also did not work properly.

Boeing and SpaceX were both awarded billion-dollar contracts by Nasa to provide commercial space flights for its astronauts. Boeing’s was worth $4.2bn (£3.18bn) while SpaceX, which was founded by billionaire Elon Musk, got $2.6bn.

SpaceX has so far sent nine crewed flights to space for Nasa, as well as some commercial missions, but this was Boeing’s first attempt at a crewed mission.

Engineers at Boeing and Nasa have spent months trying to understand the technical issues with the Starliner craft.

They have been carrying out tests and gathering data, both in space and back on the Earth. Their hope was to pin down the root of the problems and find a way to return the astronauts home safely on Starliner.

Speaking at a press conference on Saturday, Nasa Administrator Bill Nelson said Boeing has been working closely with Nasa to understand what improvements need to be made to the spacecraft.

“Space flight is a risk, even at its safest and even at its most routine, and a test flight, by nature, is neither safe nor routine,” he said.

“Our core value is safety and it is our north star.”

The decision has been made to extend the pair’s stay on the ISS until February 2025 so they can return on a SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft.

The extra time allows SpaceX to launch its next vehicle, with lift-off scheduled for the end of September.

It was supposed to have four astronauts on board, but will instead travel to the space station with two. This leaves room for Mr Wilmore and Ms Williams to join them in the vehicle to return to Earth at the end of its planned mission next February.

Nasa has said both astronauts had previously completed two long-duration stays in space and understood the risks of the test flight, including being aboard the station longer than planned.

The organisation said Mr Wilmore, 61, and Ms Williams, 58, both “fully” supported the plans for their return and would spend the next few months carrying out scientific work, space maintenance and possibly doing some “spacewalks”.

Boeing’s Starliner had already been delayed for several years because of setbacks in the spacecraft’s development. Previous un-crewed flights also suffered technical problems.

In a statement, Boeing said it continued to focus “on the safety of the crew and spacecraft”.

“We are executing the mission as determined by Nasa, and we are preparing for a safe and successful un-crewed return,” it added.

This morning’s exchange of strikes between Israel and Hezbollah appears to be a significant escalation.

The Israeli military says around 100 fighter jets carried out what it described as pre-emptive strikes on Hezbollah targets across southern Lebanon on Sunday morning. Hezbollah later fired rockets and missiles into northern Israel.

If that 100 figure is correct, it would be the largest Israeli attack on Lebanon since the full-scale war between Israel and Hezbollah in 2006.

Israel’s strikes happened at around 04:30 local time (01:30 GMT), and it said that Hezbollah was planning a large-scale attack half an hour later, at 05:00 local time.

According to reporting by the New York Times, quoting an anonymous Israeli intelligence official, this included rocket strikes on Tel Aviv, the country’s biggest city, deep inside central Israel.

In the end Hezbollah said it had fired more than 300 rockets and missiles targeting military facilities in northern Israel, where air raid sirens have been sounding.

Across the region, the fear is this latest escalation could once again lead to all-out war.

• FOLLOW LIVE: Latest updates after strikes from Israel and Hezbollah

In a statement, Hezbollah said this was the first phase of its response to the Israeli assassination of a senior commander Fouad Shukr in a strike in Beirut on 30 July.

It is widely believed Israel was behind the assassination of the political leader of Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh, in a strike in the Iranian capital Tehran the following day.

Ever since, the region has been waiting for a response from both Hezbollah and Iran.

From Iran, it is yet to come.

But this appears to be Hezbollah’s first significant retaliation.

For weeks now diplomats have been working to try to avoid the crisis in Gaza escalating into a wider regional conflict.

The United States has warned the ongoing failure to agree a ceasefire and hostage release deal between Israel and Hamas could see those diplomatic efforts fail.

But despite intense US pressure, talks to establish a ceasefire deal for Gaza after more than 10 months of war have led to nothing.

Israel’s military says it is ready to fight a war on two fronts: in Gaza and on its northern border with Lebanon.

But Hezbollah is a far more formidable force than Hamas.

It’s estimated it has around 150,000 rockets, some capable of reaching targets across Israel.

Its fighters, some of whom have fought in the war in Syria, are well trained and better equipped than those of Hamas.

Almost a year into the conflict in Gaza, some question whether there is appetite in Israel for another war.

Hundreds of thousands of Israeli army reservists have been called up to fight in Gaza, often serving several tours.

But many Israelis, especially those from the north, say Hezbollah needs to be dealt with.

Tens of thousands of people living there have been evacuated from their homes since the start of the war in Gaza. Many have lost their businesses.

In southern Lebanon too, tens of thousands of people have been forced to leave their homes because of fears of Israeli strikes.

Hezbollah, for now, has said it has concluded the first phase of its retaliation for the killing of Fouad Shukr.

Its strikes on Israel this morning appear to have caused relatively little damage and there have been few casualties on either side.

Israel believes it successfully thwarted a major Hezbollah attack.

The question becomes: will we now see a return to the more routine cross-border “tit for tat” that has been going on since the start of the war in Gaza last October?

Or could today’s violence escalate into something far more dangerous?

Israeli and Hezbollah leaders say they do not want another full-scale war. But both sides say they are ready for it.

Twenty years ago, your music collection consisted of whatever CDs or records you could cram into your bedroom.

Now, anyone with an internet connection has access to more music than they could listen to in one lifetime.

In October 2022, Apple Music boasted its catalogue had reached 100 million songs. Since then, an average of 120,000 new songs have been uploaded every day, making the current total around 176 million tracks.

But here’s the thing: There are still huge gaps.

You can’t stream Ray Charles’ 1977 album True To Life.

Charli XCX’s debut single, !Franchesckaar! has been swallowed by the digital void.

Most important of all, there’s no way to hear 1993’s Christmas number one: Mr Blobby by Mr Blobby.

In fact, one survey by the US Library of Congress suggested that less than 20% of all recorded music was available on the internet.

Sometimes, those recordings are tied up in complex contractual agreements. De La Soul spent two decades clearing the samples on their landmark debut album, 3 Feet High And Rising, before it finally arrived on streaming services last year.

But hundreds of other songs have simply been forgotten.

That’s where Rob Johnson comes in.

By day, he’s a 41-year-old working in business development for a London law firm. By night, he’s a music industry crusader – digging up obscure gems and persuading record labels to make them available online.

Over the last six years, he’s been responsible for 725 releases, including tracks by Sting, Cher and Annie Lennox, with a strong bias for late 90s pop acts such as Billie Piper, S Club and A*Teens.

“I’ll admit it’s a very strange thing to do, but it gives people a lot of happiness so why not?” he tells the BBC.

It all started in 2016, when he helped his friend Jan Johnston – a trance vocalist who’s worked with Paul Oakenfold – to get her catalogue online.

“A lot of her solo music wasn’t out there, simply because it was never a massive hit for the labels,” he recalls.

“So I said to her, ‘OK, this is a hare-brained scheme, but why don’t we contact them and ask them a) do you still own it and b) can you release it?’”

With no industry experience, Johnson simply called the switchboards of the UK’s biggest record companies.

“I hate talking to strangers on the phone, but eventually I got through to the right people and they were like, ‘Yes, we’ll happily put that out’.”

In passing, he suggested to Warner Records that they upload some of Louise Redknapp’s old albums, to capitalise on her appearance on Strictly Come Dancing.

“Good spot,” was the reply.

That’s when he realised this could become a full-time hobby.

“I had a little bit of momentum, so I got bullish and thought, ‘Why don’t I just ask them to release more?’”

To convince the labels, he had to prove there was a demand – so he set up a Twitter account where fans could make requests, calling it Pop Music Activism.

Almost immediately, he was flooded with messages about Victoria Beckham’s debut single, Out Of Your Mind.

“It was slated at the time, but a lot of pop fans looked back retrospectively and thought, ‘That was a bit of a fun bop’,” says Johnson.

After a few calls, he got it uploaded in June 2018, since when it’s amassed 1.8 million streams on Spotify alone.

“The reaction was quite fun,” he says. “You know how gays can be over the top? They were like ‘Oh my God, this has saved my life!’

“And it happened during Pride month, which was a nice little cherry on the cake.”

Rescuing songs takes a lot of work. Contracts have to be checked, original recordings have to be sourced, and streaming services require reams of metadata.

But when it works, artists are thrilled.

“Rob’s incredible. What he’s done for me, I would do anything for him,” says Maria Nayler.

Known for singing Robert Miles’ 1996 hit One And One, Nayler’s story is a classic tale of music industry misogyny.

After singing on dozens of trance anthems in the 1990s, she was signed to Kylie’s then-label, DeConstruction Records. But when the company found out she was pregnant, it scrapped her debut album.

“They went, ‘We’re not releasing any records while you’re pregnant. It’s gone on the shelf until the baby’s born.’

“Then, of course, nine months down the line, nothing happened.

“In this day and age, they would all be slaughtered, but in the 1990s I just accepted it.”

Johnson was a fan of Nayler’s single Naked and Sacred, and contacted her in 2018 to ask if she wanted help liberating her unreleased material.

“I was a bit like, ‘Who is this guy?’,” she laughs, “but he knew more about my music than I did.”

It was a tough project. DeConstruction had been bought by BMG, then acquired by Sony, and eventually closed down. No-one was sure who owned Nayler’s master tapes.

“It was a nightmare,” she says. “No-one wanted to talk to Rob.”

Out of options, she sent a blanket email to 75 people at Sony. Within two minutes, the archive team replied and agreed to track down the music.

Nayler’s album, She, was finally released in January 2023. Next month, she goes on tour with dance producer Robert Gillies, who has remixed Naked & Sacred for his next single.

“After all these years and all that hard work, I just feel really, really happy,” she says.

It’s a similar story for Alexis Strum, who was signed and dropped by two major record labels in the early 2000s.

She was left with two fully-completed albums, recorded at a cost of £500,000, that were never released.

“Emotionally, it was huge,” she says. “It’s like having a painting that no-one’s ever seen, or a book that no-one’s ever been allowed to read.”

Some of her unreleased songs were recorded by Kylie Minogue and Rachel Stevens, but a small group of dedicated fans clamoured for the originals.

“Rob told me people had been exchanging my demo CDs on eBay,” she says. “I didn’t even know anyone knew about me!”

With his help, Warner and Universal not only handed over Strum’s masters, but agreed to write off her debts.

Her most popular song Cocoon recently hit 500,000 streams (“half a million more than Universal thought it was going to have”) and, when we speak, she’s back in the studio.

“I’m a mum and I’ve been working in IT, so it’s really weird to be like, ‘I’m going to be a pop star’ again.

“It feels so ridiculous that it’s actually plausible.”

One person who’d rather forget their debut album, however, is Adam Rickitt.

The former Coronation Street actor signed a six-album deal with Polydor in 1999, hoping to become the UK’s next teen idol.

“Let’s be honest, I had very little control over the creative side of it,” he laughs.

“They knew what audience I was targeting, and it was the gay audience, the pink pound, and young teenage girls.”

His first single, I Breathe Again, was a massive hit, thanks mainly to a video where he appears completely in the buff, but when subsequent songs missed the top 10, both Polydor and Rickitt lost interest.

His album, Good Time, stalled at number 41 and was, for years, unavailable online.

“I totally understand why I would have slipped through the net,” he laughs. “It’s not exactly like Burt Bacharach disappearing off the face of the earth.”

Unaware of Johnson’s campaign to get the album resurrected, Rickitt was bemused when it sprung back to life in 2018.

“The album period wasn’t my favourite but if people still like it and find it fun, that’s cool. I’m happy with being the retro kitsch guy,” he says.

“But taking me out of the equation, I do think it’s a shame that the record labels can decide what songs people can or can’t listen to.”

Johnson says there’s nothing sinister about these decisions. Catalogue teams with limited resources are obviously going to gravitate towards proven hit songs.

Still, there are blind spots. For a long time, NSync’s single Girlfriend was “greyed out” on Spotify – with the label apparently unaware that the freely-available album version wasn’t the same as the hit remix with Nelly and the Neptunes.

“I picked that one up with Sony US and now that’s getting millions of streams,” says Johnson

It takes a fan to spot these things. And Johnson, who devotes “two to four hours a week” to his project, has just the right mix of passion and affability to nudge labels in the right direction.

“It makes fans happy and it gives artists a sense of closure,” he says, “but it’s also a way of cataloguing music for history.

“Whatever is on Spotify now will migrate onto the services we’ll be using in 10 years, whether that’s a chip in our head, or whatever.”

Derbyshire County Council is carrying out investigations underneath a road where a sinkhole developed.

The hole appeared on the A6015 Hayfield Road at Low Leighton, near the High Hill Road junction.

The council, which was alerted to the issue on 28 July, shared an update on Friday confirming United Utilities had repaired their damaged infrastructure last week.

The authority has now taken responsibility of the site and is investigating a collapsed historic culvert, about 16ft (5m) below the road surface.

A culvert is a tunnel that typically channels surface water underground.

According to the council, the culvert “appears to be a legacy from former mine workings in the area and is at least 150 years old”.

It said it needed to know the extent of the collapse beneath the A6015 to work out the best way to repair the culvert and reopen the road safely.

To do this, vegetation next to the sinkhole has been cleared to dig a hole and find the culvert entrance.

A specialist “confined space” team will then crawl through it, using remote cameras to see to check the length of the collapse and its condition.

The team is expected to be on site late next week, and will also check a larger and deeper culvert nearby while the specialist equipment is on site.

In a statement, the council apologised for delays and inconvenience, and said it was looking at options to reopen at least one lane of Hayfield Road, controlled by traffic signals. Another update is expected on Wednesday.

A landmark report into problems faced by women in the Malayalam-language film industry has revealed the deep rot in one of India’s most popular film hubs.

The findings of the three-member panel are pretty damning.

The 290-page report – parts of which have been redacted to hide identities of survivors and those accused of wrongdoing – says the industry is dominated by “a mafia of powerful men” and that “sexual harassment of women is rampant”.

Headed by a former judge of the Kerala High Court and set up by the state government in 2017, the Hema committee details the abysmal working conditions on sets – including a lack of toilets and changing rooms for junior artists, no food and water for them, poor pay and no accommodation or transport facilities.

“There are no toilets, so women have to go in the bushes or behind thick trees. During their periods, not being able to change their sanitary napkins for long hours and holding urine for long causes physical discomfort and makes them sick, in some cases needing hospitalisation,” it says.

The report, which was submitted to the government in December 2019, was made public only this week after nearly five years of delay and multiple legal challenges by members of the film industry.

The panel was set up in the aftermath of the horrific sexual assault on a leading actress in the film industry. Bhavana Menon, who has worked in more than 80 films in southern Indian languages and won a number of prestigious awards, was assaulted by a group of men while travelling from Thrissur to Kochi in February 2017.

Her assault made headlines, especially after Dileep, one of the Malayalam-language film industry’s biggest actors and Menon’s co-star in half a dozen films, was named as an accused and charged with criminal conspiracy. He denied the charges, but was arrested and held in custody for three months before being released on bail. The case continues to be heard in court.

Indian law bars identification of survivors of sexual assault, but it was known from the start that it was Ms Menon who had been assaulted. In 2022, she waived her anonymity in a post on Instagram and in an interview to the BBC.

A few months after the attack on Ms Menon, Women in Cinema Collective (WCC) – a group formed by some of her colleagues in a film industry known for its variety of successful mainstream and critically acclaimed films – petitioned the government, seeking swift action in the case and also to address the problems faced by women in cinema.

In the report, retired Justice K Hema says the WCC told her that “women are being silenced as the prestige of the film industry needs to be upheld”.

The panel interviewed several dozen men and women, including artists, producers, directors, scriptwriters, cinematographers, hairstylists, makeup artists and costume designers, and “gathered evidence including video and audio clips and WhatsApp messages”.

Describing sexual harassment as the “worst evil” women in cinema face, the report said the panellists saw evidence that “sexual harassment remains shockingly rampant” and that “it goes on unchecked and uncontrolled”.

The industry “is controlled by a group of male actors, producers, distributors, exhibitors and directors who have gained enormous fame and wealth” and they were among the perpetrators, it added.

“Men in industry make open demands for sex without any qualms as if it’s their birthright. Women are left with very little options but to oblige – or reject at the cost of their long awaited dream of pursuing cinema as their profession.

“The experiences of many women are really shocking and of such gravity that they have not disclosed the details even to their close family members.”

Many of the people the panel approached were initially reluctant to speak because “they were afraid they would lose their jobs”.

“In the beginning, we found their fear strange but as our study progressed we realised it was well-founded. We are concerned about their and their close relatives’ safety.”

The report, the WCC says, has vindicated its stand. “For years, we have been saying that there is a systemic problem in the industry. Sexual harassment is just one of them. This report proves it,” Beena Paul, an award-winning editor and one of the founding members of the WCC, told the BBC.

“We were always told that we were troublemakers [for raising such issues]. This report proves that it [the condition] is far worse than what even we thought,” she said.

Members of the WCC say they have faced difficulty in getting work since they began demanding better working conditions on film sets. “People don’t like the fact that we are asking questions. So, quite a few members have faced difficult situations,” Ms Paul says.

The Association of Malayalam Movie Artists (AMMA), a top industry body which counts superstars like Mohanlal and Mamooty among its members, denied the accusations. Its general secretary Siddique disagreed that there was a small, powerful group that controlled the industry.

He also denied that sexual harassment was rampant in the industry and said that most of the complaints they received were about the delay or a lack of payment for workers. He said conditions for women had improved on film sets in the past five years and all facilities were now available to them.

In the week since its release, the report has created ripples in the state, with activists and prominent opposition leaders demanding action against those accused of wrongdoing.

Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan said if any woman who testified before the committee came forward to file a complaint, the government would take action. “No matter how big they are, they will be brought before the law,” he said.

On Thursday, a public interest petition was filed in the Kerala High Court, seeking initiation of criminal proceedings against those accused in the report.

The court ordered the government to submit a copy of the report and the judges said they would decide if criminal action needed to be taken once they had read it.

Allegations of harassment and abuse in films are not new in India – in 2018, the #MeToo movement hit the country’s most popular film industry Bollywood after actress Tanushree Dutta accused veteran actor Nana Patekar of behaving inappropriately towards her on a film set in 2008. Patekar denied the allegations.

Ms Dutta, who has since claimed that she has been denied work, described the Hema committee report as “useless”, adding that earlier reports about making workplaces safer for women had not helped.

Parvathy Thiruvothu, an award-winning actress and a key member of the WCC, however, told Asianet news channel that she considered the release of the report “a victory”.

“It’s opened up a door for big changes within the industry,” she said.

Jeo Baby, director of The Great Indian Kitchen, a critically-acclaimed film that examines the patriarchal structure within the family, told the BBC that while gender issues remain a concern, change is under way in the industry. “This is the right time to correct this. The film industry has to fight this together.”

The report, which has made several recommendations to make the industry a safe place for women, says their inquiry and recommendations are not to find fault with any individual, but “an earnest attempt to ennoble a profession so that it becomes a viable career option for aspiring artists and technicians, both male and female”.

“Hopefully filmmaking will become so safe that parents can send their daughters and sons to the profession with the same confidence and sense of security as they send their children to an engineering firm or a college,” it adds.

Read more:

• India arrests after actress says she was abducted and raped
• Bhavana Menon breaks silence on sexual assault
• #MeToo: Why sexual harassment is a reality in Bollywood
• Sex harassment claims shake top India dance academy