Taylor Swift has endorsed Kamala Harris for president just moments after the end of her presidential debate against Donald Trump.

In an Instagram post on Tuesday night, the pop star said she had done her “research”.

“I will be casting my vote for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz in the 2024 Presidential Election,” she said. “I’m voting for @kamalaharris because she fights for the rights and causes I believe need a warrior to champion them.”

Swift went on to call Harris a “steady-handed, gifted leader”.

“I believe we can accomplish so much more in this country if we are led by calm and not chaos,” she wrote.

Swift announced the news alongside a photo of her with a cat and signed it “Childless Cat Lady”, a reference to comments made by Donald Trump’s vice-presidential candidate JD Vance.

The Ohio senator has faced a backlash from a 2021 clip in which he called several prominent Democrats – including Harris – “a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives”.

Swift went on to compliment Harris’s choice of vice-presidential candidate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, who she said had been “been standing up for LGBTQ+ rights, IVF, and a woman’s right to her own body for decades”.

The singer said she was in part motivated to share her voting decision with the public after an AI image of her falsely endorsing Trump was posted on his website.

“It really conjured up my fears around AI, and the dangers of spreading misinformation,” she said. “It brought me to the conclusion that I need to be very transparent about my actual plans for this election as a voter.”

Swift is one of several celebrities to endorse Harris, including singers John Legend and Olivia Rodrigo, actor George Clooney and director Spike Lee.

Former wrestler Hulk Hogan, TV star Amber Rose and billionaire Elon Musk have endorsed Trump.

Swift’s endorsement of Harris came after a fiery 90-minute presidential debate, during which the two candidates sparred over issues such as abortion rights, the economy and immigration.

It is not the first time the pop star has endorsed the Democratic nominee in a race against Trump. Swift announced her support for President Joe Biden and Harris as his vice-president a month before the 2020 election.

Swift was also a vocal critic of Trump during his presidency surrounding the nationwide protests over the police murder of George Floyd.

“After stoking the fires of white supremacy and racism your entire presidency, you have the nerve to feign moral superiority before threatening violence?” she posted on Twitter/X. “We will vote you out in November.”

The singer has 283 million followers on Instagram. Her endorsement had received more than two million likes on Instagram just half an hour after she posted it.

In her post, Swift urged first-time voters to register and said she would post a link with more voting information on her page.

“I’ve done my research, and I’ve made my choice,” she said. “Your research is all yours to do, and the choice is yours to make.”

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

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

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

She promises to ban price-gouging on groceries, help first-time home buyers and provide incentives to increase housing supply.

Trump has promised to “end inflation and make America affordable again”.

He has promised to deliver lower interest rates, something the president does not control, and he says deporting undocumented immigrants will ease pressure on housing.

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

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

Trump has struggled to find a consistent message in recent weeks.

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

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

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

Trump has vowed to seal the border by completing the construction of a wall and increasing enforcement. But he urged Republicans to ditch a hardline, cross-party border bill, backed by Harris.

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

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

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

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

Trump proposes a number of tax cuts worth trillions, including an extension of his 2017 cuts which mostly helped the wealthy. He says he will pay for them through higher growth and tariffs on imports.

Analysts say both tax plans will add to the ballooning deficit, but Trump’s by more.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Harris has criticised Trump’s sweeping plan to put tariffs on imports, calling it a national tax on working families which will cost each household $4,000 a year. She is expected to have a more targeted approach to taxing imports.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Trump has said he will not renew his attempts while president to dismantle the Affordable Care Act, which extended insurance to millions more people.

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

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

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

• Trump’s legal cases, explained

• SIMPLE GUIDE: Everything you need to know about the vote
• EXPLAINER: Seven swing states that could decide election
• FACT CHECK: Was US economy stronger under Biden or Trump?
• IMMIGRATION: Could Trump really deport a million migrants?
• POLLS: Who is winning the race for the White House?
• DEBATE: Trump and Harris to square off in presidential debate

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

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

The big question now is – will the result mean a second Donald Trump term or America’s first woman president?

As election day approaches, we’ll be keeping track of the polls and seeing what effect big events like Tuesday’s presidential debate have on the race for the White House.

In the months leading up to Biden’s decision to drop out of the race, polls consistently showed him trailing former president Trump. Although hypothetical at the time, several polls suggested Harris wouldn’t fare much better.

But the race tightened after she hit the campaign trail and she developed a small lead over her rival in an average of national polls that she has maintained since. The latest national polling averages for the two candidates are shown below, rounded to the nearest whole number.

In the poll tracker chart below, the trend lines show how those averages have changed since Harris entered the race and the dots show the spread of the individual poll results.

Harris hit 47% during her party’s four-day convention in Chicago, which she brought to a close on 22 August with a speech promising a “new way forward” for all Americans. Her numbers have moved very little since then.

Trump’s average has also remained relatively steady, hovering around 44%, and there was no significant boost from the endorsement of Robert F Kennedy, who ended his independent candidacy on 23 August.

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

That’s because the US uses an electoral college system to elect its president, so winning the most votes can be less important than where they are won.

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

• What is the electoral college?

Right now, the polls are very tight in the seven battleground states, which makes it hard to know who is really leading the race. There are fewer state polls than national polls so we have less data to work with and every poll has a margin of error that means the numbers could be higher or lower.

As is stands, recent polls suggest there is less than one percentage point separating the two candidates in several states. That includes Pennsylvania, which is key as it has the highest number of electoral votes on offer and therefore makes it easier for the winner to reach the 270 votes needed.

Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin had all been Democratic strongholds before Trump turned them red on his path to winning the presidency in 2016. Biden retook them in 2020 and if Harris can do the same this year then she will be on course to win the election.

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

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

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

You can read more about the 538 methodology here.

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

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

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

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

About 240 million people are eligible to vote in this year’s US election, but only a relatively small number of them are likely to settle the question of who becomes the next president.

Experts believe there are only a handful of states that could plausibly be won by Kamala Harris or Donald Trump, for the Democrats or Republicans respectively.

Seven of them – Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin – hold the keys to the White House.

Now, in the final months of the election, both campaigns are at full throttle to win over undecided voters in these states.

The Democrats gained the presidency in 2020 with the support of the Grand Canyon State, which narrowly voted to back their party’s candidate for the first time since the 1990s.

This state borders Mexico for hundreds of miles, and has become a focal point of the nation’s immigration debate.

Border crossings have fallen in recent months from record highs, which have made the issue near the top of voters’ concerns.

Trump has repeatedly attacked Ms Harris’s record on immigration, because she was given a role by President Joe Biden in trying to ease the border crisis.

He has also vowed to carry out “the largest deportation operation” in US history if he regains the presidency.

Arizona has also hosted a bitter row over abortion access, after state Republicans tried unsuccessfully to reinstate a 160-year-old near-total ban on terminating pregnancies.

The issue has become even more polarising since 2022 when the US Supreme Court overturned a landmark ruling that gave women a constitutional right to abortion.

Our list of swing states closely matches the list of places where Trump-backed Republican officials tried to thwart Mr Biden’s win in the 2020 election.

In Georgia’s Fulton County, alleged election interference has landed Mr Trump in one of his four criminal prosecutions (Trump has been convicted in one case, while the remaining are ongoing).

He and 18 others are accused of conspiring to overturn his narrow defeat to Mr Biden in the state. Trump denies any wrongdoing, and the case looks increasingly unlikely to be heard in court before the election.

A third of Georgia’s population is African-American, one of the country’s largest proportions of black residents, and it is believed that this demographic was instrumental in Mr Biden flipping the state in 2020.

Some disillusionment with Mr Biden had been reported among America’s black voters, but the Harris campaign hopes to animate this constituency.

The Great Lakes state has picked the winning presidential candidate in the last two elections. Despite backing Mr Biden in 2020, it has become symbolic of a nationwide backlash over the president’s support for Israel during that country’s war in Gaza.

During Michigan’s Democratic primary contest in February, more than 100,000 voters chose the “uncommitted” option on their ballots, part of a campaign mounted by activists who want the US government to halt its military aid to Israel.

Notably, Michigan has the country’s largest proportion of Arab-Americans – a demographic whose support for Mr Biden was in jeopardy. But Ms Harris has taken a harder tone on Israel, and some Gaza protesters have told the BBC they hope she will be more sympathetic to their cause.

Trump has highlighted the state’s significance in his potential path to victory. Commenting on events in the Middle East, he has called on Israel to finish its campaign over Hamas in Gaza, but “get it over with fast”.

The Silver State has voted Democrat for the last several elections, but there are signs of a possible turnaround by the Republicans.

Recent averages published by poll-tracking firm 538 indicate that polls once showed Trump enjoying a wide lead over Mr Biden, but that advantage has shrunk since Ms Harris became the top of the ticket. Democrats had hoped a candidate with greater appeal to younger and more diverse voters would close the gap.

Both candidates are vying to win the state’s sizeable Latino population.

Despite the fact that the US economy has shown strong growth and jobs creation since Mr Biden took the presidency, the post-Covid recovery has been slower in Nevada than elsewhere.

At 5.1%, the state has the highest unemployment rate in the country, after California and the District of Columbia, according to the latest US government statistics.

If Trump comes to power again, he has vowed a return to an agenda of lower taxes across the board, and fewer regulations.

Polls appear to have tightened in the Tar Heel State after Ms Harris assumed her place at the top of the Democratic ticket, and some analysts now call it a “toss-up”.

That has perhaps been reflected in Trump’s choice to go there for his first outdoor rally since an attempt was made on his life in July.

“This state is a very, very big state to win,” he told the crowd.

For their part, the Democrats decided to give a platform to the state’s governor, Roy Cooper, on the final night of their party convention.

North Carolina borders Georgia, and shares some of its top electoral concerns, as well as those in Arizona, another Sun Belt state.

Trump carried North Carolina in 2020 but did so by just over 70,000 votes, which has further buoyed Democrats’ hopes that this “purple” state (one that could vote red or blue) could be winnable in this election year.

Both sides have also been campaigning doggedly in the Keystone state, which is where Donald Trump survived the assassination attempt.

The state proved pivotal in the 2020 election, backing Mr Biden. He has often spoken of his connection to the working-class city of Scranton, where he grew up.

The economy is a a top issue here, as well as many other places. Inflation spiked across the country under the Biden administration, before gradually reducing.

Pennsylvanians are far from unique among Americans for feeling cost-of-living pressures as a result of inflation. But the price of groceries has risen faster in their state than in any other, according to market intelligence provider Datasembly.

The BBC has previously reported on how people were struggling to cope in Erie – a bellwether county for the rest of Pennsylvania, where as many as one in eight people are considered “food insecure”.

High inflation could hurt Ms Harris across the US as polling suggests it is giving voters an unfavourable view of the economy.

Trump has sought to attack her by pinning her to the Biden economy.

The Badger State also picked the winning presidential candidate in both 2016 and 2020, by a margin of little more than 20,000 votes each time.

Pundits have suggested it is in marginal states like this one where an impact could be made by third-party candidates who are campaigning against the policies of the big two candidates.

Polling has indicated that a sizeable show of support for independent candidate Robert F Kennedy Jr could harm the vote tallies for Ms Harris or Trump. Democrats have been fighting to have Green Party candidate Jill Stein removed from the ballot here, saying the party did not comply with state election laws, and has also filed an elections complaint against Cornel West, a left-leaning academic.

Trump has described that state as “really important… if we win Wisconsin, we win the whole thing”. The summer Republican National Convention was held in Milwaukee.

Ms Harris was rallying in that same city when her party’s own convention formally nominated her as the Democratic presidential candidate, appearing via a live feed.

• SIMPLE GUIDE: Everything you need to know about the vote
• ANALYSIS: Three ways Trump will try to end Harris honeymoon
• EXPLAINER: What is the electoral college?
• ALTERNATIVES: RFK Jr and others running for president
• VOTERS: US workers in debt to buy groceries

Midwife Siro Devi is clinging to Monica Thatte, sobbing. Monica, in her late 20s, has returned to her birthplace – the Indian town where Siro has delivered hundreds of babies.

But this is no straightforward reunion. There is a painful history behind Siro’s tears. Shortly before Monica was born, Siro and several Indian midwives like her were regularly pressured to murder newborn girls.

Monica, evidence suggests, is one they saved.

I have been following Siro’s story for 30 years, ever since I went to interview her and four other rural midwives in India’s Bihar state in 1996.

They had been identified by a non-governmental organisation as being behind the murder of baby girls in the district of Katihar where, under pressure from the newborns’ parents, they were killing them by feeding them chemicals or simply wringing their necks.

Hakiya Devi, the eldest of the midwives I interviewed, told me at the time she had killed 12 or 13 babies. Another midwife, Dharmi Devi, admitted to killing more – at least 15-20.

It is impossible to ascertain the exact number of babies they may have killed, given the way the data was gathered.

But they featured in a report published in 1995 by an NGO, based on interviews with them and 30 other midwives. If the report’s estimates are accurate, more than 1,000 baby girls were being murdered every year in one district, by just 35 midwives. According to the report, Bihar at the time had more than half a million midwives. And infanticide was not limited to Bihar.

Refusing orders, Hakiya said, was almost never an option for a midwife.

“The family would lock the room and stand behind us with sticks,” says Hakiya Devi. “They’d say: ‘We already have four-five daughters. This will wipe out our wealth. Once we give dowry for our girls, we will starve to death. Now, another girl has been born. Kill her.’

“Who could we complain to? We were scared. If we went to the police, we’d get into trouble. If we spoke up, people would threaten us.”

The role of a midwife in rural India is rooted in tradition, and burdened by the harsh realities of poverty and caste. The midwives I interviewed belonged to the lower castes in India’s caste hierarchy. Midwifery was a profession passed on to them by mothers and grandmothers. They lived in a world where refusing orders of powerful, upper-caste families was unthinkable.

The midwife could be promised a sari, a sack of grain or a small amount of money for killing a baby. Sometimes even that was not paid. The birth of a boy earned them about 1,000 rupees. The birth of a girl earned them half.

The reason for this imbalance was steeped in India’s custom of giving a dowry, they explained. Though the custom was outlawed in 1961, it still held strong in the 90s – and indeed continues into the present day.

A dowry can be anything – cash, jewellery, utensils. But for many families, rich or poor, it is the condition of a wedding. And this is what, for many, still makes the birth of a son a celebration and the birth of a daughter a financial burden.

Siro Devi, the only midwife of those I interviewed who is still alive, used a vivid physical image to explain this disparity in status.

“A boy is above the ground – higher. A daughter is below – lower. Whether a son feeds or takes care of his parents or not, they all want a boy.”

The preference for sons can be seen in India’s national-level data. Its most recent census, in 2011, recorded a ratio of 943 women to every 1,000 men. This is nevertheless an improvement on the 1990s – in the 1991 census, the ratio was 927/1,000.

By the time I finished filming the midwives’ testimonies in 1996, a small, silent change had begun. The midwives who once carried out these orders had started to resist.

This change was instigated by Anila Kumari, a social worker who supported women in the villages around Katihar, and was dedicated to addressing the root causes of these killings.

Anila’s approach was simple. She asked the midwives, “Would you do this to your own daughter?”

Her question apparently pierced years of rationalisation and denial. The midwives got some financial help via community groups and gradually the cycle of violence was interrupted.

Siro, speaking to me in 2007, explained the change.

“Now, whoever asks me to kill, I tell them: ‘Look, give me the child, and I’ll take her to Anila Madam.’”

The midwives rescued at least five newborn girls from families who wanted them killed or had already abandoned them.

One child died, but Anila arranged for the other four to be sent to Bihar’s capital, Patna, to an NGO which organised their adoption.

The story could have ended there. But I wanted to know what had become of those girls who were adopted, and where life had taken them.

The Midwife’s Confession

Thirty years ago, a journalist in the Indian state of Bihar filmed a series of shocking confessions: midwives admitting they routinely murdered new-born baby girls. BBC Eye explores the disturbing story.

Watch on iPlayer (UK only), or if you are outside the UK watch on YouTube

The Midwife’s Confession

BBC Eye finds a woman who was possibly one of the girls abandoned in Bihar. What will happen when she returns to meet the only surviving midwife?

Listen on BBC Sounds or outside the UK, listen here

Anila’s records were meticulous but they had few details about post-adoption.

Working with a BBC World Service team, I got in touch with a woman called Medha Shekar who, back in the 90s, was researching infanticide in Bihar when the babies rescued by Anila and the midwives began arriving at her NGO. Remarkably, Medha was still in touch with a young woman who, she believed, was one of these rescued babies.

Anila told me that she had given all the girls saved by the midwives the prefix “Kosi” before their name, a homage to the Kosi river in Bihar. Medha remembered that Monica had been named with this “Kosi” prefix before her adoption.

The adoption agency would not let us look at Monica’s records, so we can never be sure. But her origins in Patna, her approximate date of birth and the prefix “Kosi” all point to the same conclusion: Monica is, in all probability, one of the five babies rescued by Anila and the midwives.

When I went to meet her at her parents’ home some 2,000km (1,242 miles) away in Pune, she said she felt lucky to have been adopted by a loving family.

“This is my definition of a normal happy life and I am living it,” she said.

Monica knew that she had been adopted from Bihar. But we were able to give her more details about the circumstances of her adoption.

Earlier this year, Monica travelled to Bihar to meet Anila and Siro.

Monica saw herself as the culmination of years of hard work by Anila and the midwives.

“Someone prepares a lot to do well in an exam. I feel like that. They did the hard work and now they’re so curious to meet the result… So definitely, I would like to meet them.”

Anila wept tears of joy when she met Monica. But Siro’s response felt different.

She sobbed hard, holding Monica close and combing through her hair.

“I took you [to the orphanage] to save your life… My soul is at peace now,” she told her.

But when, a couple of days later, I attempted to press Siro about her reaction, she resisted further scrutiny.

“What happened in the past is in the past,” she said.

But what is not in the past is the prejudice some still hold against baby girls.

Reports of infanticide are now relatively rare, but sex-selective abortion remains common, despite being illegal since 1994.

If one listens to the traditional folk songs sung during childbirth, known as Sohar, in parts of north India, joy is reserved for the birth of a male child. Even in 2024, it is an effort to get local singers to change the lyrics so that the song celebrates the birth of a girl.

While we were filming our documentary, two baby girls were discovered abandoned in Katihar – one in bushes, another at the roadside, just a few hours old. One later died. The other was put up for adoption.

Before Monica left Bihar, she visited this baby in the Special Adoption Centre in Katihar.

She says she was haunted by the realisation that though female infanticide may have been reduced, abandoning baby girls continues.

“This is a cycle… I can see myself there a few years ago, and now again there’s some girl similar to me.”

But there were to be happier similarities too.

The baby has now been adopted by a couple in the north-eastern state of Assam. They have named her Edha, which means happiness.

“We saw her photo, and we were clear – a baby once abandoned cannot be abandoned twice,” says her adoptive father Gaurav, an officer in the Indian air force.

Every few weeks Gaurav sends me a video of Edha’s latest antics. I sometimes share them with Monica.

Looking back, the 30 years spent on this story were never just about the past. It was about confronting uncomfortable truths. The past cannot be undone, but it can be transformed.

And in that transformation, there is hope.

President Joe Biden has hinted at Washington lifting restrictions on Ukraine using US long-range missiles against Russia.

If granted, it would fulfil repeated requests by Ukraine to loosen the limits on US-supplied weapons, which officials have said has left them fighting against Russia’s full-scale invasion with their hands tied.

Russia is yet to comment but President Vladimir Putin has previously said such action could lead to “very serious problems”.

Biden’s remarks come after US Secretary of State Antony Blinken accused Iran of supplying short-range ballistic missiles to Russia.

Asked by reporters if the US would lift restrictions on Ukraine’s use of long-range weapons on Tuesday, President Biden said his administration was “working that out now”.

Since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the US has been reluctant to supply or sanction the use of weapons that could strike targets deep inside Russia for fear it would escalate the conflict.

It has however loosened some of the restraints on such missile use, allowing Ukraine to use long-range missiles to strike areas along Russia’s border where troops are firing from.

Kyiv’s other allies have also been supplying some long-range weapons – with restrictions on how and when they can be used inside Russia, out of concern such strikes could prompt retaliation that draws Nato countries into the war or provokes a nuclear conflict.

In recent months Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has criticised the pace of weapons deliveries, and asked for authorisation to strike targets deep inside Russia with Western-supplied missiles – a move the US has thus far resisted.

Russia’s leader Putin also warned earlier this year that attacks by Ukraine on Russia with Western missiles risked triggering a wider war.

“Constant escalation can lead to serious consequences,” he said in May. “Do they want a global conflict?”

He added responsibility for any strikes inside Russia’s territory would lie with Western arms suppliers, even if Ukraine’s forces carried out the strikes.

• Ukraine in maps: Tracking the war with Russia
• What arms are the UK and other countries supplying?

Separately on Tuesday, the US, UK, France and Germany imposed fresh sanctions on Iran for supplying Russia with ballistic missiles for use in Ukraine.

Measures included restrictions on national carrier Iran Air’s ability to fly to the UK and Europe – as well as travel bans and asset freezes on a number of Iranians accused of facilitating military support for Russia.

Visiting London, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Russians had been trained by Iranian forces to use short-range ballistic missiles and that they could be deployed against Ukrainians within weeks.

The missiles are likely to boost Russia’s arsenal, enabling it to hit Ukrainian cities close to Russia’s borders or areas it already controls at the same time as it deploys its longer-range missiles deeper into Ukrainian territory.

Iran has repeatedly denied supplying such self-guided weapons to Russia.

UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy described Iran’s move as “a significant and dangerous escalation”.

Blinken and Lammy are travelling to Kyiv together on Wednesday, where they will meet President Zelensky.

Blinken said one of their goals ahead of the visit was to “hear directly from the Ukrainian leadership” about their “objectives and what we can do to support those needs”.

At least 127 people have now died and 54 others are missing in northern Vietnam, according to officials, as a super typhoon which hit on Saturday continues to bring heavy rainfall, landslides and flooding.

Thousands of people were seen stranded on rooftops in some northern provinces, while others posted desperate pleas for help on social media on Tuesday.

Typhoon Yagi – Vietnam’s most powerful storm in 30 years – has wreaked havoc across the north of the country, leaving 1.5 million people without power.

On Monday, dashcam footage showed the moment the Phong Chau bridge in Phu Tho province gave way, plunging several vehicles into the water below.

Although it has now weakened into a tropical depression, authorities have warned Yagi will create more disruption as it moves westwards.

Phan Thi Tuyet, 50, who lives close to the river, told the AFP news agency that she had never experienced such high water.

“I have lost everything, all gone,” she said, clutching her two dogs.

“I had to come to higher ground to save our lives. We could not bring any of the furniture with us. Everything is under water now.”

The storm – which brought winds of nearly 150km/h (92mph) – has damaged bridges, torn roofs off buildings, damaged factories and triggered widespread flooding and landslides, leaving 64 people still missing.

Authorities have now issued flood and landslide warnings for 401 communes across 18 northern provinces.

One-storey homes in parts of Thai Nguyen and Yen Bai provinces were almost completely submerged in the early hours of Tuesday, with residents waiting on the roofs for help.

As well as the dead and missing, flooding and landslides have also injured at least 752 people, officials at the ministry of agriculture said on Tuesday.

Before hitting Vietnam, Yagi left 24 people dead across southern China and the Philippines.

Meteorologists say that as the world warms typhoons can bring higher wind speeds and more intense rainfall, although the influence of climate change on individual storms is complicated.

Rachael Gunn remains the number one female breakdancer in the world, despite a controversial Olympic performance for Team Australia that divided the internet and left her with a score of zero.

Responding to questions about its rankings, the sport’s governing body has issued a statement explaining its methodology to “address concerns” and “provide clarity”.

It said each athlete was assessed based on their top four performances in the last 12 months and that Olympic events, including qualifiers, were excluded.

Gunn, who performs as Raygun, has continued to defend her record as Australia’s best B-girl amid questions over her qualifications.

The 37-year-old university lecturer failed to score any points in all three of her competition rounds in Paris, with a routine that included unorthodox moves, such as the sprinkler and the kangaroo hop.

“The record is there. But anything can happen in a battle,” she said in her first sitdown interview last week, when asked about her polarising performance.

The World DanceSport Federation (WDSF) has also come under intense public scrutiny not just for its rankings, but its “credibility” as a voice for the sport.

In Tuesday’s statement the WDSF tried to address criticisms that had been swirling online over the transparency of its rankings head on.

It explained that “ranking events” had intentionally not been held between the end of 2023 and the start of the Olympics, to allow athletes to “focus solely” on the Games.

That had created a set of “unique circumstances” which meant that some athletes had been ranked based only on a single event.

“The world rankings as they currently stand should be interpreted in conjunction with results from recent global breaking competitions for a more accurate reflection of the global competitive landscape,” the statement added.

The weeks-long saga over Raygun’s performance has split opinion within the breakdancing community, with some throwing their support behind the embattled athlete, while others have publicly accused her of making a mockery of the sport.

It has also sparked questions over whether breaking – which debuted in Paris but is not on the programme for the 2028 Games in Los Angeles – should have ever been included in the Olympics, due to the organic nature of the genre, which doesn’t necessarily suit organised competition.

In an interview with the Associated Press, vice-president of Breaking for Gold USA Zack Slusser argued the WDSF didn’t have “any real merit” with the breaking community, and that it had failed to organise events that would “contribute to creating an accurate world ranking”.

Breakers were only performing at WDSF organised events to secure points to qualify for the Olympics, he claimed, adding that they had “no incentive” or “desire” to continue participating in WDSF events post-Paris.

The daily English lessons that Shabana attends are the highlight of her day. Taking the bus in Kabul to the private course with her friends, chatting and laughing with them, learning something new for one hour each day – it’s a brief respite from the emptiness that has engulfed her life since the Taliban took over Afghanistan.

In another country, Shabana* would have been graduating from high school next year, pursuing her dream to get a business degree. In Afghanistan, she and all teenage girls have been barred from formal education for three years.

Now even the small joys that were making life bearable are fraught with fear after a new law was announced saying if a woman is outside her home, even her voice must not be heard.

“When we got out, we’re scared. When we’re on the bus, we’re scared. We don’t dare to take down our masks. We even avoid speaking among ourselves, thinking that if someone from the Taliban hears us they could stop and question us,” she says.

The BBC has been in Afghanistan, allowing rare access to the country’s women and girls – as well as Taliban spokespeople – reacting to the new law, which was imposed by the Taliban’s supreme leader Haibatullah Akhundzada.

The law gives the Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice Ministry – the Taliban’s morality police – sweeping powers to enforce a stringent code of conduct for Afghan citizens.

For women who have already had their freedoms crushed bit by bit by a relentless series of decrees, it delivers another blow.

“If we can’t speak, why even live? We’re like dead bodies moving around,” Shabana says.

“When I learnt about the new law, I decided not to attend the course any more. Because if I go out, I’ll end up speaking and then something bad might happen. Maybe I won’t return home safely. But then my mother encouraged me to continue.”

In the three years since the Taliban takeover, it’s become clear that even if edicts aren’t strictly imposed, people start self-regulating out of fear. Women continue to be visible in small numbers on the streets of cities like Kabul, but nearly all of them now are covered from head to toe in loose black clothes or dark blue burqas, and most of them cover their faces with only their eyes visible, the impact of a decree announced last year.

“Every moment you feel like you’re in a prison. Even breathing has become difficult here,” said Nausheen, an activist.

Until last year, whenever new restrictions were announced, she was among small groups of women who marched on the streets of Kabul and other cities, demanding their rights.

The protests were violently cracked down on by the Taliban’s forces on multiple occasions, until they stopped altogether.

Nausheen was detained last year. “The Taliban dragged me into a vehicle saying ‘Why are you acting against us? This is an Islamic system.’ They took me to a dark, frightening place and held me there, using terrible language against me. They also beat me,” she says, breaking down into tears.

“When we were released from detention we were not the same people as before and that’s why we stopped protesting,” she adds. “I don’t want to be humiliated any more because I’m a woman. It is better to die than to live like this.”

Now Afghan women are showing their dissent by posting videos of themselves online, their faces covered, singing songs about freedom. “Let’s become one voice, let’s walk together holding hands and become free of this cruelty” are the lines of one such song.

Taliban government deputy spokesman Hamdullah Fitrat, who didn’t want to be pictured with a woman or sit directly opposite me, justified the new edict, which came accompanied with copious footnotes – references to religious texts.

“The law approved by the supreme leader is in accordance with Islamic Sharia law. Any religious scholar can check its references,” he says.

Shireen, a teacher, does not agree.

“This is their own interpretation of Sharia. Islam has given the right to both men and women to choose if they want to study and progress.

“If they say that women’s voices should not be heard, let’s go back to history. There are so many women in Islamic history who have spoken out.”

Shireen is part of a network of Afghan women running secret schools quietly rebelling against the restrictions. Already operating under a great deal of risk, often having to move the location of the school for safety, the new law has compounded her fears.

The danger of discovery is so great, she cannot speak to us at home, instead choosing a discreet location.

“Every morning I wake up asking God to make the day pass safely. When the new law came, I explained all its rules to my students and told them things would be more difficult. But I am so tired of all this, sometimes I just want to scream,” she says. “They don’t see women as human beings, just as tools whose only place is inside the home.”

Karina, a psychologist who consults with a network of secret schools, has previously told us that Afghan women are suffering from a ‘pandemic of suicidal thoughts’ because of the restrictions against them.

After the new law was announced she says she had a surge in calls asking for help. “A friend of mine messaged me to say this was her last message. She was thinking of ending her life. They feel all hope is gone and there is no point in continuing living,” she said. “And it’s becoming more and more difficult to counsel them.”

I asked Hamdullah Fitrat about the Taliban government’s responsibility towards women and girls in their country who are being driven into depression and suicidal thoughts because they’re banned from education.

“Our sisters’ education is an important issue. We’re trying to resolve this issue which is the demand of a lot of our sisters,” the spokesman said.

But three years on, do they really expect people to believe them?

“We are awaiting a decision from our leadership. When it is made, we will all be told about it,” he replied.

From earlier meetings with Taliban officials, it has been evident for a while that there are divisions within the Taliban government on the issue of women’s education, with some wanting it to be restarted. But the Kandahar-based leadership has remained intransigent, and there has been no public breaking of ranks with the supreme leader’s diktats.

We have seen some evidence of the difference in views. Not far from Kabul, we were unexpectedly given access to a midwife training course regularly run by the Taliban’s public health ministry. It was under way when we visited, and because ours was a last-minute visit, we know it was not put on for us to see.

More than a dozen women in their 20s were attending the course being conducted by a senior female doctor. The course is a mix of theory and practical sessions.

The students couldn’t speak freely but many said they were happy to be able to do this work.

“My family feels so proud of me. I have left my children at home to come here, but they know I’m serving the country. This works gives me so much positive energy,” said Safia.

Many acknowledged their privilege, and some expressed fear about whether even this might be stopped eventually. The Taliban’s health ministry didn’t answer questions about how they would find students to do this course in the future, if girls were not receiving formal education after grade six.

Public health, security, arts and craft are among a handful of sectors where women have been able to continue working in parts of the country. But it isn’t a formal decree that gives them permission. It’s happening through a quiet understanding between ground-level Taliban officials, NGOs and other stakeholders involved.

The new law leaves even this informal system vulnerable to the scrutiny of the Taliban’s morality police.

Sources in humanitarian agencies have told us they are grappling to understand how the law should be interpreted but they believe it will make operations more difficult.

The law was announced less than two months after the Taliban attended UN-led talks on engagement with Afghanistan for the first time – a meeting that Afghan civil society representatives and women’s rights activists had been kept out of, at the insistence of the Taliban.

It’s led many in the international community to question whether it was worth accepting the Taliban’s conditions for a meeting, and what the future of engagement with them might look like.

Reacting to the new law, the EU put out a sharply worded statement describing the restrictions as ‘systematic and systemic abuses… which may amount to gender persecution which is a crime against humanity’. It also said the decree creates ‘another self-imposed obstacle to normalised relations and recognition by the international community’.

“The values laid out in the law are accepted in Afghan society. There are no problems. We want the international community, especially the UN and others to respect Islamic laws, traditions and the values of Muslim societies,” Taliban deputy spokesman Hamdullah Fitrat said.

Less than two weeks ago the Taliban’s Vice and Virtue Ministry said it would no longer co-operate with the UN mission in Afghanistan because of its criticism of the law.

It’s evidence that relations which seemed to be progressing just two months ago, appear to have now hit a significant roadblock.

“I believe that when it comes to aid, the world should continue helping Afghanistan. But when it comes to talking to the Taliban, there should be a rule that in each discussion women must be present. And if that can’t happen, they [the international community] should stop talking to them,” psychologist Karina said.

“The world must care about what’s happening with Afghan women, because if it doesn’t this mentality could easily spread to them, to their homes.”

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk has denounced as “unacceptable” Germany’s decision to extend temporary controls to all its land borders as part of its response to irregular migration.

He is one of several figures from neighbouring countries to criticise the move. Restrictions already in place at some of Germany’s land borders will apply from next Monday with France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg and Denmark.

The head of a Dutch-German alliance of border communities said it was a “panic reaction”, while Austria’s interior minister stressed it would not be take in anyone turned away by Germany.

However, Germany’s opposition conservatives said Berlin had not gone far enough.

The three-parties in Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s government have come under increasing pressure to respond to poor results in state elections in eastern Germany where immigration was the biggest issue.

In Thuringia, the far-right Alternative for Germany came first, and another election is on the horizon in less than two weeks in Brandenburg.

The migration debate has been ignited by the killing of three people at a festival in Solingen in western Germany where a Syrian failed asylum seeker who should have been deported was arrested.

The conservative CDU/CSU parties said initially they would take part in a migration summit of the government and state leaders on Tuesday, aimed at reaching an agreement on the next steps.

But they pulled out, accusing the government of not taking seriously conservative proposals to reject asylum seekers at the border.

“Clearly the federal government is hopelessly divided internally and cannot agree on effective measures,” said CDU leader Friedrich Merz.

Germany and all its neighbours are part of the Schengen border-free zone and under European Union rules temporary controls are allowed “as a last resort measure, in exceptional situations” for up to six months.

German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser explained the expanded controls would protect against the “acute dangers posed by Islamist terrorism and serious crime”.

Under her plan put to the 16 German states, police would check whether an asylum seeker had already sought protection in another EU country and swiftly start proceedings to send them back if they had.

However, Poland’s prime minister was in no doubt that the measures were triggered by “the internal German political situation… and not our policy towards illegal migration at our borders”.

Poland has faced a surge in illegal migrant crossings over its border with Belarus since 2021 which it considers part of a “hybrid war” waged by both Belarus and Russia. Many of the migrants head for Germany.

Donald Tusk told a meeting of Polish diplomats in Warsaw he would ask for urgent consultations with all the countries affected.

European Commission spokeswoman Anitta Hipper said any reintroduction of border checks had to be done in line with the Schengen code, so while Germany’s measures were possible, “these controls must be necessary and proportionate”.

In Austria, where the far right is leading the opinion polls ahead of 29 September elections, Interior Minister Gerhard Karner said that he had instructed the head of police not to take anyone back who had been rejected by Germany.

“There is no leeway,” he told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.

The mayor of a Dutch border town, Joris Bengevoord, said the border region with Germany had already experienced delays during the Euro 2024 football championship over the summer, when Germany imposed temporary border checks.

“At some border crossings, waiting times were up to half an hour,” said Bengevoord, who is chairman of the Euregio alliance of German and Dutch border towns.

Dutch transport group TLN accused Germany of undermining the Schengen agreement.

Some political leaders on the right in the Netherlands have taken a different view.

“If Germany can do it, why can’t we?” asked Geert Wilders, whose anti-immigration, far-right Freedom Party came first in last year’s Dutch elections and is now part of the government. “As far as I’m concerned, the sooner the better.”

Dilan Yesilgöz of the centre-right liberal VVD was also keen on the “super-interesting” German plan. It sent a message that the government wanted control, she said, even if political symbolism by itself was of little help.

Foo Fighters frontman Dave Grohl has announced he has become the father to a baby girl born “outside of my marriage”.

In an Instagram post on Tuesday, the 55-year-old said he planned to be a “loving and supportive parent” to his new daughter.

Grohl has three daughters with his wife Jordyn Blum whom he married in 2003.

In his social media post, Grohl said he loved his family and was doing “everything I can to regain their trust and earn their forgiveness”.

“We’re grateful for your consideration toward all the children involved, as we move forward together. Dave.”

The post contains no details about who the mother of his new child is.

Grohl has turned off the comments on his Instagram post.

His wife Blum worked as a TV producer and model and the two are parents to daughters Violet Maye, 18, Harper Willow, 15, and Ophelia Saint, 10.

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He was previously married to photographer Jennifer Leigh Youngblood from 1994 until 1997.

They divorced after he admitted to being unfaithful during the marriage.

Grohl played drums in the pioneering grunge band Nirvana from 1990 until 1994 when lead singer Kurt Cobain died aged 27.

He went on to form Foo Fighters and has scored a number of chart-topping albums including their most recent effort, 2023’s But Here We Are.

British luxury retailer Harrods has begun selling peaches from Japan’s Fukushima region as part of efforts to restore trust in produce grown there following 2011’s nuclear disaster.

The sale of the fruit at Harrods for £80 ($104) per box of three marks the first time peaches from Fukushima have been available in a European store.

The meltdown of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant’s reactors after a devastating tsunami caused a radiation leak that is still being dealt with to this day.

Since 2011, farms in the region – which is the second-largest producer of peaches in Japan – have struggled to sell their produce because of contamination fears.

The peaches’ sale at Harrods is part of efforts by the power plant’s operator, the Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco), to restore the region’s reputation internationally.

It comes two years after the UK lifted its last import restrictions on Fukushima food products and following trial sales at cultural events.

Harrods is due to also begin selling a variety of grape called the Shine Muscat from the region in October.

Tepco has also staged similar campaigns in countries including the US and Thailand.

All farm and fishery produce exported from the area now has to undergo radiation testing.

However, anxiety about the lasting effects of radiation in Fukushima remains.

The Japanese government’s announcement last year that it would release treated waste water from the nuclear plant into the Pacific Ocean proved highly controversial, despite having the backing of a United Nations nuclear watchdog.

China, which was the biggest buyer of seafood from Japan, responded by blocking imports. Russia also suspended imports, accusing Tokyo of not being transparent in its plans to release the treated water.

The US military in Japan later began bulk buying the seafood.

Meanwhile, efforts to clean up the Fukushima Daiichi power plant are continuing.

An operation to remove a small amount of radioactive debris was restarted on Tuesday. It will be used to try to assess the conditions inside the nuclear reactors.

The first trial to remove debris was suspended last month because problems arose with the equipment.

It is the first time that efforts to remove material have been made in the 13 years since the disaster.

The levels of radiation inside the reactors are so high that specialised robots have had to be built to withstand the conditions.

The Brazilian state has been ordered to pay former President Jair Bolsonaro some $2,600 (£2,025) in damages over accusations he took furniture from the presidential residence.

Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva had publicly accused Bolsonaro of taking more than 260 objects as he cleared out of Alvorada Palace – including even “the bed.”

Bolsonaro and his wife Michelle Bolsonaro later said they had put publicly-owned furniture in storage during the far-right politician’s three-year term between 2019 and 2022, saying they preferred to decorate the residence to their own taste.

On Tuesday a federal judge ordered the Bolsonaros to be compensated for “moral damage” suffered as a result of the claims that they had stripped the palace of numerous objects.

The court also ordered the presidency to publish a retraction, according to a judgment seen by AFP news agency, in a case brought by the Bolsonaros.

The state legal office told AFP news agency it would appeal Tuesday’s ruling.

Separately, Jair Bolsonaro is still facing other legal challenges, including an investigation into whether he incited rioters who stormed key government buildings after he narrowly lost the 2022 presidential election to his left-wing rival.

He has voiced “regret” for the unrest, but denies he caused it.

However, Brazil’s Supreme Court has agreed to include him in its investigation into the storming of government buildings on 8 January 2023.

Bolsonaro was in the US when the attack on Congress happened, but he returned to Brazil in March 2023 saying he had nothing to fear.

He remains the most influential figurehead for the right in Brazilian politics.

An audible sigh of frustration drifted across the packed seats of courtroom “Voltaire” in Avignon’s Palace of Justice, as the lead judge, dressed in a scarlet robe, announced an unexpected but unavoidable delay to a trial that has gripped France.

“He is ill,” said Presiding Judge Roger Arata, indicating that this extraordinary case of 51 alleged rapists would be delayed for “one, two, three days” or possibly even longer, after it was revealed that Dominique Pelicot was too sick to attend.

His lawyer said later he had been taken to hospital.

On the right edge of the courtroom, her head leaning gently against a wood-panelled wall, Gisèle Pelicot showed no visible emotion at the news that she would not, after all, be seeing her husband give evidence that day.

Last week, Gisèle Pelicot, 72, told the court that her calm demeanour masked a “field of devastation”, triggered by the instance, four years ago, when a French policeman had informed her that her apparently loving husband had, in fact, been drugging her for a decade and inviting strangers – more than 80 local men – to enter the family home, and the couple’s bedroom, to rape her while he filmed them.

She has waived her right to anonymity to highlight the danger to women of being drugged and sexually attacked – known as “chemical submission”.

It is little more than half an hour’s drive – through the gentle hills and vineyards that surround the looming, almost lunar landscape of Mont Ventoux – from Avignon’s courthouse to the quaint, medieval village of Mazan. The village was once briefly known for hosting British actress Keira Knightley’s wedding.

This is where the Pelicots lived, and where Dominique Pelicot filmed the local men that he had contacted online.

The mood in any place, at any one moment, is always hard to sum up.

“Honestly, no-one here gives a damn,” said a local caterer, Evan Tuvignon, leaning on his shop counter and suggesting that people were fed up with the whole case.

But several women told us the village was not only in shock, but that the unfolding revelations in court were causing new tensions in Mazan and the surrounding villages.

The names of the accused were recently shared widely on social media, and some of those men have since complained to the court that they, their families and children are now facing harassment on the streets and at school.

Two local women, loading their car on a narrow street in Mazan, said they’d seen the names and had recognised at least three of them.

“It creates tensions, you can imagine. You don’t know who to trust on the street. I’m relieved that I’ll be moving away from this village soon,” said Océane Martin, 25.

But beside her, Océane’s mother, Isabelle Liversain, 50, raised another, deeper concern.

It has been revealed that, while the police have already identified and detained 50 of the men whose images appeared on Dominique Pelicot’s hard drive, another 30 suspects – as yet unnamed and untraced – remain at large.

“So, we know 30 out of 80 still haven’t been caught. There are tensions here because people don’t know if they can trust their neighbours. You ask yourself – is he one of the 30? What is your neighbour getting up to behind closed doors?” said Isabelle Liversain in a voice sharp with frustration.

But Mazan’s 74-year-old mayor, Louis Bonnet, sought to play down those tensions, arguing that most of the alleged rapists came from other villages and seeking to frame the Pelicots as outsiders who hadn’t lived there long.

He went further, saying the threats against the accused and their families were to be expected.

“If they participated in these rapes, then it’s normal that they’re considered targets. There has to be transparency about everything that happened,” he said, while also condemning the accused and their actions.

In his interview with us, Bonnet talked about the case itself, and in doing so veered towards the sort of attitudes that have already sparked fury in France as well as deep admiration for Gisèle Pelicot’s courage in confronting them.

“People here say ‘no one was killed’. It would have been much worse if [Pelicot] had killed his wife. But that didn’t happen in this case,” Bonnet said.

Then he went on to address Gisèle Pelicot’s experiences.

“She’ll have trouble getting back on her feet again for sure,” he agreed, but suggested her rapes were less troubling than those of another victim in the nearby town of Carpentras who “was conscious when she was raped… and will carry the physical and mental trauma for a long time, which is even more serious”.

“When there are kids involved, or women killed, then that’s very serious because there’s no way back. In this case, the family will have to rebuild itself. It will be hard. But they’re not dead, so they can still do it.”

When I suggested that he was seeking to play down the gravity of the Pelicot case, he agreed.

“Yes, I am. What happened was very serious. But I’m not going to say the village has to bear the memory of a crime which goes beyond the limits of what can be considered acceptable,” he said.

His phrasing seemed clumsy. He was condemning the case. He didn’t want his village to be branded by it forever.

But he also appeared to belittle Gisèle Pelicot’s trauma.

I pushed back once again. Many women believed this case had exposed particular types of male behaviour that needed to change, I said.

“We can always wish to change attitudes, and we should. But in reality, there’s no magic formula. The people who acted in this way are impossible to understand and shouldn’t be excused or understood. But it still exists,” replied Bonnet.

Inside the courtroom in Avignon, some of the accused – the 18 now in custody – sat inside a special glass-walled section watching the proceedings. A white man with grey, straggly hair stroked his bearded chin. Nearby, a younger black man seemed to be dozing.

Earlier, dozens of their fellow accused – those not in custody – jostled beside journalists in a large queue outside the courtroom.

Most of the men sought to hide their faces with masks, but a few did not. A larger man shuffled forward on crutches. Someone pulled a green hood down over their face.

French law offers the accused some protection from being identified in the media, but Gisèle Pelicot has declined her own legal right to privacy, preferring instead to become a symbol of defiance for many French women.

“She has shown such dignity and courage and humanity. It was a huge gift to [French women] that she chose to speak to the whole world in front of her rapist. They said she was broken. But she was so inspiring,” said Blandine Deverlanges, a local activist attending the court today.

She and her colleagues have recently painted slogans on walls around Avignon. One reads: “Ordinary men. Horrific crimes.”

Seated beside her mother, the couple’s daughter, Caroline, 45, did not hide her emotions.

She was recently shown evidence that her father had taken pictures of her, without her knowledge or permission. She believes she was drugged by him too and has become a campaigner on the issue of rape and drugs – a problem many experts believe is woefully under-reported and under-investigated in France.

At times, in court, Caroline frowned or raised a hand to her face in apparent frustration or disgust, as various defence lawyers raised objections or debated procedural issues. A police officer began giving evidence, speaking in the strong accent of southern France. Bright sunshine flooded through a skylight above the judges’ heads.

The atmosphere in the elegantly decorated court was calm, but it felt shocking, nonetheless, to see the family – mother, daughter and at least two sons – seated just metres from so many alleged rapists, now all with their masks removed.

At least 26 people have died after a boat carrying migrants capsized off Senegal’s coast.

Authorities say more than 100 people were on board the wooden fishing vessel when it sank just 4km (2.5 miles) into its journey.

Distraught relatives and friends have gathered along the beach, anxiously waiting for news of their loved ones.

So far, four people have been rescued and search efforts are still under way.

The boat had departed from Mbour, about 80km south of the capital city Dakar, bound for Spain’s Canary Islands, which are off the coast of West Africa.

In recent years, the number of migrants leaving West Africa through Senegal has surged.

Mostly young men – fleeing conflict, poverty, and unemployment – are attempting the dangerous Atlantic route to the Spanish Islands, with nearly 30,000 arrivals recorded this year.

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Spain is one of the European countries that takes in the most migrants, and the Mediterranean Sea route remains the most popular.

But a growing number of West African migrants are choosing to travel via the Atlantic Ocean to the Canary Islands instead.

Despite the dangers, it involves just one step, rather than needing to cross both the Sahara Desert and the Mediterranean.

The surge in migrants attempting the crossing prompted Spain’s prime minister to visit three West African countries last month – Senegal, Mauritania and The Gambia – for crisis talks with leaders.

Earlier this year, a $227m deal was made between the EU and Mauritania to bolster border security. Spain was a key partner in the talks in Mauritania that had led to it.

The former boyfriend of Ugandan Olympic athlete Rebecca Cheptegei, who killed her by setting her on fire, has himself died from burns sustained in the attack, a Kenyan hospital official has said.

Dickson Ndiema ambushed the marathon runner as she returned home from church more than a week ago. He then doused her with petrol and set her ablaze.

Local administrators said the two had been in conflict over a small piece of land in north-west Kenya, where Cheptegei lived and trained.

Ndiema died on Monday night at the intensive care unit, where according to the hospital, he had been admitted with burns on more than 40% of his body.

“He developed respiratory failure as a result of the severe airway burns and sepsis that led to his eventual death on Monday evening at 18:30 hours [15:30 GMT] despite life-saving measures,” a press release from Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital said.

Cheptegei died last Thursday – four days after she was attacked. She suffered burns to more than 80% of her body.

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Neighbours said that on the day of the attack, they heard screams before Cheptegei came running towards them shouting for help.

Local media reported that Ndiema had sneaked into Cheptegei’s home in western Kenya’s Trans Nzoia county with a five-litre jerrycan full of petrol.

Some of the fuel he poured on Cheptegei splashed onto his own body, according to reports. As a result, Ndiema got caught in the fire after he set his former partner alight.

Ndiema was to face charges as police said they were treating Cheptegei’s death as murder, with the former boyfriend named as the main suspect.

But now that Ndiema has died, the criminal case has been dropped and an inquest into the two deaths will be opened instead.

Both Ndiema and Cheptegei were admitted to Moi Hospital before their deaths.

Cheptegei’s death shocked people across the world, with fellow Ugandans saying she was an inspiration to them.

The 33-year-old Olympian was the third female athlete to be killed in Kenya over the last three years. In each case, current or former romantic partners were named as the main suspects by police.

In 2021, world-record holder Agnes Tirop was stabbed to death and six months later Damaris Mutua was strangled.

“I don’t wish bad things on anyone, but of course I would have loved for him to face the law as an example for others so that these attacks on women can stop,” Beatrice Ayikoru, secretary-general of the Uganda Olympic Committee, told the Reuters news agency.

Some observers are saying that female athletes are becoming increasingly vulnerable.

“[This is] because they go against traditional gender norms where the woman is just in the kitchen and just cooking and taking care of kids. But now female athletes are becoming more independent, financially independent,” Joan Chelimo, who co-founded Tirop’s Angels to help highlight the issue of violence against women.

Cheptegei was born on the Kenyan side of the Kenya-Uganda border, but chose to cross over and represent Uganda to chase her athletics dream when she did not get a breakthrough in Kenya.

When she first got into running, she joined the Uganda People’s Defence Forces in 2008 and rose to sergeant rank.

Her career included competing in this year’s Paris Olympics. Although she came 44th in the marathon, people in her home area called her “champion”.

She also won gold at the World Mountain and Trail Running Championships in Chiang Mai, Thailand, in 2022.

Cheptegei is set to be buried on Saturday at her ancestral home in Bukwo, Uganda.

Attacks on women have become a major concern in Kenya. In 2022 at least 34% of women said they had experienced physical violence, according to a national survey.

“We don’t want this to happen to any other woman, whether an athlete or from the village, or a young girl,” Rachel Kamweru, a spokesperson the the government’s department for gender and affirmative action, told the BBC.

There’s nothing new about genetic engineering. By cross-breeding plants and animals, our Stone Age ancestors realised they could boost the amount of food they produced.

Modern genetics has enabled scientists to do much more: to make precise, targeted changes to the DNA of organisms in a lab. And that, they claim, will lead to new, more productive, disease-resistant crops and animals.

The science is still in its infancy, but gene-edited foods are already on the shelves in Japan: tomatoes rich in a chemical that supposedly promotes calmness; red sea bream with extra edible flesh; and puffer fish that grow more quickly.

In the US, too, firms are developing heat-resistant cattle, pit-less cherries and seedless blackberries.

Supporters of the technology say it could reduce animal diseases and suffering and lead to the use of fewer antibiotics. They also believe it could tackle climate change by lowering emissions of the greenhouse gas methane – produced by livestock such as cows, goats and deer when their stomachs are breaking down hard fibres like grass for digestion.

But opponents say gene editing is still not proven to be safe and that they remain concerned about the implications for animal welfare.

Now a law permitting gene-edited food to be sold in the UK has been paused and some British scientists warn they could be overtaken by other countries.

The new Labour government has pledged closer alignment with the European Union, particularly on regulations that might affect trade. And currently, the EU has much stricter rules around the commercial sale of gene-edited and genetically modified crops.

The EU set stringent regulations on genetically modified (GM) crops decades ago because of safety concerns and public opposition to the technology. Gene-edited crops are covered by the same regulations.

But to scientists, the terms “gene editing” and “GM” refer to different things.

GM, a much older technology, involves adding new genes to plants and animals to make them more productive or disease-resistant. Sometimes these new genes were from entirely different species – for example, a cotton plant with a scorpion gene to make it taste unpleasant to insects.

By contrast, gene editing involves making more precise changes to the plant or the animal’s DNA. These changes are often quite small ones, which involve editing sections of the DNA into a form that, its advocates say, could be produced through natural means like traditional cross-breeding, only much faster.

Along with the US and China, the UK is among the countries that lead the world in gene editing. Last year the previous government passed the Precision Breeding Act, which paved the way for the commercial sale of gene-edited food in England.

At the time, many scientists working in the field were overjoyed.

“I thought: ‘Great, this is going to uncork a whole area of activity in the public and private sector’ and we could build an entrepreneurial community for gene editing in the UK,” says Prof Jonathan Napier of Rothamsted Research, a government agricultural research institute in Harpenden.

But he says his hopes were soon dashed.

For the law to come into effect, secondary legislation was required, and this was due to be passed by Parliament this July. But the earlier-than-expected election meant that it was not voted on by MPs and the Act is currently in limbo.

Prof Napier was among 50 leading scientists to write to the newly appointed ministers at the Department for Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) at the end of July asking them to act “quickly and decisively” to pass the secondary legislation.

The Defra minister responsible, Daniel Zeichner, responded to the scientists’ plea last week by stating that the government was “now considering how to take forward the regulatory framework outlined in the Act and will share our plans with key interested parties soon”.

One of the prime movers behind the scientists’ letter, leading expert Prof Tina Barsby, described the minister’s response as a “encouraging” but said that his promise of clarity “soon” had to mean soon.

Other countries, she said, were pressing ahead with their plans for gene edited-crops at great speed. Thailand recently joined Canada, Australia, Japan, Brazil, Argentina and the USA in adopting regulations around gene editing.

Even New Zealand, which according to Prof Barsby “has historically taken a more cautious regulatory approach to genetic technologies”, has announced that it will also introduce new legislation.

Prof Barsby added: “With our world-leading science base in genetic research, we cannot afford to be left behind.”

But Defra ministers also have to consider the views of environmental campaigners, such as Dr Helen Wallace of Genewatch UK, who have concerns about the “unwanted consequences” of the Precision Breeding Act.

“If you remove these plants and animals from GM regulations then you don’t have the same degree of risk assessment, you don’t have labelling and you risk markets because many of them regulate them as GMOs,” she says.

Dr Peter Stevenson, who is the chief policy advisor to UK-based Compassion in World Farming (CIWF), also fears that the technology will further add to the intensification of animal farming – with negative consequences.

“The use of selective breeding over the past 50 years has brought a huge number of animal welfare problems,” he says.

“Chickens have been bred to grow so quickly that their legs and hearts can’t properly support the rapidly developing body and as a result millions of animals are suffering from painful leg disorders, while others succumb to heart disease.

“Do we really want to accelerate this process with gene editing?”

CIWF’s biggest fear is that gene-editing animals to make them more resistant to diseases will mean that the industry will not be motivated to deal with the conditions that lead to the animals getting ill in the first place – such as crowded, unsanitary conditions.

The intensity of the production of milk, meat, and eggs currently leaves many animals “exhausted and broken”, Mr Stevenson told BBC News.

Any genetic alteration to an animal has the potential to have negative effects. But advocates say that for any commercial application, firms have to demonstrate to the regulator that their changes do not harm the animal and back this up with data.

Indeed, many of those who argue for the use of gene-editing technology do so partly on animal welfare grounds – because it could make farm animals more resistant to disease and, since fewer would die as a result, fewer would be needed in the first place.

Another of the letter’s signatories is Prof Helen Sang, who has laid the foundations for using gene editing to develop bird flu resistance in chickens.

“With a virulent strain of (the pig disease) PRRS wiping out pig herds in Spain, African Swine Fever on the march north through Europe, and bird flu virus detected in both dairy cattle and their milk in the US, the importance of enabling all possible solutions, including precision breeding, cannot be overstated,” she said in response to Mr Zeichner.

Some of the solutions to the problems Prof Sang mentions are already waiting in the wings. She works at the Roslin Institute, where Dolly the Sheep was cloned nearly 30 years ago. It now leads the world in developing gene-edited animals.

Prof Sang’s colleagues at Roslin developed a strain of pig that is resistant to the PRRS pig disease six years ago.

They can’t yet be commercially sold to UK pig farmers – but Genus, a British company that has commercialised the PRRS-resistant pigs, has received regulatory approval for their use in Colombia.

The firm also has an application for permission to introduce the pigs to the US market which, if given the green light, could be approved as early as next spring. Genus is also planning to seek approval for the commercial use of their gene-edited pigs in Canada, Mexico and Japan.

Despite the strong opinions on both sides, there appears to be scope for consensus around some applications of the technology.

For instance, Mr Stevenson of CIWF does think it’s at least possible that gene editing could be applied in an ethical way.

To do so, he says, it would need to meet three criteria: that any change it brings about is unlikely to cause animal welfare problems; that its objectives cannot be met by any less intensive means; and that it will not have the effect of entrenching industrialised livestock production.

The PRRS-resistant pigs may tick all three boxes in specific circumstances, according to Mr Stevenson, as do efforts to use gene editing to enable the egg-production industry to produce female-only chicks to avoid the need for billions of male chicks being killed each year when they are just a day old.

Likewise, Prof Mizeck Chagunda, who is the director of the Centre for Tropical Genetics and Health, which is also based at the Roslin Institute, believes both in the positive potential of gene editing and that it needs to be carefully overseen.

He says the technology could improve the lives of the poorest farmers in the world: “70% to 80% of farmers are smallholding farms with two to three animals.” A devastating disease can leave a farmer and their family with nothing.

“So, giving them animals that have been prepared with these technologies would help to protect them from this huge risk to their livelihoods,” says Prof Chagunda.

However, Prof Chagunda warns that there needs to be good, strong regulations in place if this technology is to be accepted by the public.

“Some changes can be too experimental, and we should not be doing them,” he says.

“Scientists should be working with the regulatory authorities to achieve the good products that the farmers and consumers are looking for. We should be doing science that is ethical and at the same time helping humanity.”

The gene editing work at Roslin is led by its director, Prof Bruce Whitelaw, who was a scientist at the institute when Dolly the sheep was cloned. In the past he has been through the process of explaining the potential benefits of seemingly alarming technological developments and he believes there is an urgent need to do so again now.

“We are world leaders in the technology and sitting at top table in terms of developing it,” he says. “If we don’t have the legislation to do that, then our credentials to sit there will slowly wither away and we will lose investment, scientific talent and the boost to our economy to other countries.”

There are lessons here from the past. Genetic modification was rejected by many consumers in the UK, the European Union and other countries 30 years ago because of its perceived unnaturalness. GM crops were publicly trampled by protestors who saw this as a technology that they didn’t need, want or consider safe.

At the same time, scientists were angry and upset that what they believed to be their world-saving technology was being destroyed by, in their view, a wave of anti-scientific hysteria fuelled by the media.

Gene editing seems to be a more palatable version of GM to some, arriving at a time when the debate is less polarised, the need for environmental solutions is even more urgent and there seems to be a greater readiness for some scientists and campaigners to see each other’s perspectives.

Mr Stevenson of CWIF believes that in the long run, there has to be “huge reductions” in global livestock production to deal with climate change, but pragmatically, the fact that climate change is already destroying so many lives, the use of gene editing could be “legitimate”. But he is wary.

“It is hard for me to trust that part of the scientific world who say: ‘Hey now, we have a new way to alter animals.’

“The danger is of animals being thought of as things, units of production, more so than they are now, because we can modify them to make them more amenable to our uses and taking us away from this notion of animals as sentient beings.”

What happens next, not just in the UK, but the rest of the world, depends on whether the advocates of gene editing can convince the open-minded, but wary, such as Mr Stevenson, that they can act safely, ethically and in a way that makes lives better, not worse – for people and animals alike.

Medical staff on the front line of the battle against mpox in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo have told the BBC they are desperate for vaccines to arrive so they can stem the rate of new infections.

At a treatment centre in South Kivu province that the BBC visited in the epicentre of the outbreak, they say more patients are arriving every day – especially babies – and there is a shortage of essential equipment.

Mpox – formerly known as monkeypox – is a highly contagious disease and has killed at least 635 people in DR Congo this year.

Even though 200,000 vaccines, donated by the European Commission, were flown into the capital, Kinshasa, last week, they are yet to be transported across this vast country – and it could be several weeks before they reach South Kivu.

“We’ve learned from social media that the vaccine is already available,” Emmanuel Fikiri, a nurse working at the clinic that has been turned into a specialist centre to tackle the virus, told the BBC.

He said this was the first time he had treated patients with mpox and every day he feared catching it and passing it on to his own children – aged seven, five and one.

“You saw how I touched the patients because that’s my job as a nurse. So, we’re asking the government to help us by first giving us the vaccines.”

The reason it will take time to transport the vaccines is that they need to be stored at a precise temperature – below freezing – to maintain their potency, plus they need to be sent to rural areas of South Kivu, like Kamituga, Kavumu and Lwiro, where the outbreak is rife.

The lack of infrastructure and bad roads mean that helicopters could possibly be used to drop some of the vaccines, which will further drive up costs in a country that is already struggling financially.

At the community clinic, Dr Pacifique Karanzo appeared fatigued and downbeat having been rushed off his feet all morning.

Although he wore a face shield, I could see the sweat running down his face. He said he was saddened to see patients sharing beds.

“You will even see that the patients are sleeping on the floor,” he told me, clearly exasperated.

“The only support we have already had is a little medicine for the patients and water. As far as other challenges are concerned, there’s still no staff motivation.”

Another problem, he said, was that there was not enough personal protective equipment [PPE] for the medics.

“We try to do what we can to look after the sick and not put ourselves at risk either. We’re not spared from disease.”

As you enter Lwiro community hospital, which is about an hour’s drive north of South Kivu’s main city of Bukavu, two main things hit you.

First the resounding and loud cries of babies. The second is the stench – a mix of urine and stagnant water.

The clinic is running out of clean water, meaning they have to ration what they have in the small jerrycans underneath their beds.

Within the last three weeks, the clinic, which usually treats about 80 patients a month, has been inundated with nearly 200 patients – who are getting younger.

“It’s sad to see my firstborn suffering from this strange disease. I have a lot of pain in my heart,” 18-year-old Faraja Rukara said.

Her son, Murhula, is currently the youngest mpox case at the clinic – at only four weeks old. This is the first time she, like many others here, have encountered mpox, which is caused by a virus in the same family as smallpox.

The disease causes a loss of appetite, leaving many of the children malnourished.

In an adjacent room, several women and children – nearly 20 – were crammed inside, sharing only seven beds and two mattresses that were laid on the floor.

The hospital’s first mpox case did recover – 10-month-old Amenipa Kabuya. But not long after being discharged, her mother, Yvette Kabuya, returned as she too has fallen ill with mpox.

Witnessing what the disease does to the body – the painful puss-filled lesions, the fever and the weight loss – means people are keen for the vaccines – unusual in an area that has witnessed vaccine hesitancy in the past.

Beatrice Kachera, 50, gently caressed the cheek of her three-year-old granddaughter who she had rushed here in a panic: “I just saw the child get sick, I didn’t even know the name of the disease.

“We can’t wait for children and even adults to die. Bring on the vaccines,” she told the BBC.

But some fear the ongoing armed conflict in eastern DR Congo between the army and several armed groups, most notably the M23 rebels, is not going to make this easy.

“The conflict is having a profound effect on the vaccination programme in general,” Dr Gaston Bulambo, head of North Kivu Provincial Health Division, told the BBC.

“It’s not just vaccination against mpox, but all vaccination programmes are suffering because of difficulties in getting vaccines to health zones. This is due to the insecurity.”

South Kivu’s governor, who hails from Lwiro himself, told the BBC the intense fighting was driving many from their homes to his province, which was exacerbating the spread of the disease.

“We are accommodating thousands of IDPs [internally displaced people], and still struggling with many issues,” Jean-Jacques Purusi Sadiki said.

“Most of the money is being injected in tackling the war which is going on, to buy military equipment, to feed the military,” he said.

“The country is losing a lot of money in trying to address this war, rather than injecting [this money] into social development including the health sector.”

However, the governor believed that the rebel groups would not disrupt vaccine deliveries as mpox was also affecting people in the areas they controlled.

He said the government was doing its best to get medics what they need: “In the next two days, I am going to Lwiro myself. I will deliver definitely what is available in terms of urgent assistance for the population, until the government in Kinshasa can offer more support.”

The authorities say vaccinations will begin in October, with children under the age of 17 as well as those who have been in close contact with infected patients first in line.

Governor Purusi Sadiki is convinced the outbreak in his province will be contained: “It’s a matter of political will. I am confident that we will succeed.”

It is a sentiment not yet shared by exhausted medics, like Dr Karanzo, at Lwiro hospital – but they are at least heartened that mpox awareness appears to be growing in their region.

People appear to be coming to the clinic as soon as they get symptoms rather than first going to traditional healers, which means the hospital is yet to experience an mpox fatality.

Yet with 5,049 confirmed cases since the start of the year in DR Congo, the clinic’s staff say speed is of the essence – only with a combination of vaccines, medicine and other supplies to allow for better hygiene, will the outbreak be curbed.

• The children bearing the brunt of the mpox outbreak
• ‘Mpox made my throat so painful I couldn’t sleep’
• How worried should we be about mpox?
• What is mpox and how is it spread?

An investor in the disastrous Fyre Festival has issued a warning to anyone interested in going to its planned reboot: “Proceed with caution.”

Andy King’s comment comes after Billy McFarland announced Fyre II, after only recently being released from prison for scamming millions from the original.

Mr King, who lost $1m in the original debacle, told the BBC that McFarland was “known for the biggest failure in pop culture and wants to flip the script. But I’m not sure he’s going about it the right way.”

McFarland, 32, spent four years in prison over the 2017 event in the Bahamas, which provided none of the promised “luxury” for tickets costing up to $250,000. Tickets for Fyre II next April will cost up to $1.1m (£840,000), he says.

McFarland told US media last week that “Fyre II has to work”. He claimed he had spent a year planning it, and had already sold 100 tickets at an ‘early bird’ rate of $499.

Mr King, 63, said he had met McFarland several months ago to discuss Fyre II but he feared his former business partner hadn’t “learned a lot in prison… he’s shooting from the hip again”.

“Billy has a gift. He’s got a lot of charisma. He knows how to pull people in,” the South Carolina-based event planner told BBC News.

“Think about it: when he was 24, he walked in to investment banking firms in New York and got them to invest $29m.”

He said Fyre II could be a “huge success” – but if McFarland was “running the show again, it won’t work”.

Mr King, who said none of his $1m investment in the original festival had been returned, was contacted by McFarland to meet investors in the new venture.

“I’m just seeing a lot of red flags, and a lot of red lights”, he said. “And I feel bad. It saddens me.

“We were going to rent one of the biggest estates in the Hamptons and have a big, swanky party,” said Mr King, referencing a famed playground of America’s rich and famous.

“We ended up having 30 people at a pizza place along the Montauk highway.”

He said subsequent calls were cancelled and he hadn’t heard from McFarland in seven or eight months.

The original Fyre was promoted by supermodels and celebrities as an exclusive getaway for the very rich, and the location was hyped as a private island once owned by drug lord Pablo Escobar.

Festival-goers arrived to find all the talent cancelled, bare mattresses to sleep on in storm-ravaged tents and cheese sandwiches in takeaway containers to eat.

McFarland was sentenced in 2018 to six years in jail for wire fraud, and was also ordered to return $29m to investors.

He was freed in 2022 under an early release programme but remains on probation until next August.

According to McFarland, tickets for next year will start at $1,400 but will go as high as $1.1m.

The most expensive package will include scuba diving, island hopping and luxury yachts.

He said the event was “not going to be just music” and could include sideshows like a live karate combat pit.

He admitted, however, that he has yet to book any talent.

Mr King said he would still want to talk to his old business partner about his new venture, despite still facing a backlash for his involvement in the original festival – everywhere he goes, he says, people still give him “the scam guy” treatment.

He emerged a sympathetic figure in the 2019 Netflix documentary Fyre: The Greatest Party That Never Happened for his efforts to turn the disaster around.

In arguably the most viral moment from the entire saga, he describes how McFarland urged him to offer sexual favours to Bahamian customs officials to secure enough bottled water for the event.

That “funny fame”, however, has come at a steep price for Mr King.

He added that he had stayed in touch with McFarland through his prison term and briefly advised him on reputation management last year.

At the very least, he said, “the Fyre brand is so well known around the world that there is going to be a lot of people that will be curious”.

“And they’re all watching.”

India had a lone shining moment at the 2012 London Paralympics when Girisha Hosanagara Nagarajegowda won a silver medal in the men’s high jump.

The country hadn’t won any medal at the 2008 edition in Beijing, so it felt special to millions of Indians.

But Nagarajegowda’s win also sparked discussions on whether a lone medal was enough for a country that has millions of people with disabilities.

It also raised questions around India’s attitudes to para sport and disability in general. But something seems to have clicked for the country since 2012.

India won four medals in Rio in 2016 and 20 at the 2020 Tokyo Paralympics.

And it closed the Paris Paralympics with an impressive tally of 29 medals. There have been so many moments to savour for India in Paris – from Sheetal Devi, who competes without arms, winning a bronze with Rakesh Kumar in a mixed compound archery event to Navdeep Singh registering a record throw of 47.32m in javelin to win a gold in the F41 category (athletes with short stature compete in this class).

These achievements are special given the leap of growth Indian para athletes have shown in just over a decade.

India still has a long way to go to take on countries like China (220 medals), Great Britain (124) and the US (105) but supporters of para sports in the country say the tide may be turning.

So what changed in this relatively short period of time?

Plenty.

Several government agencies, coaches and corporate firms came together to invest in para athletics.

And as they helped more heroes emerge, more children and their parents felt confident to take up para sport as a profession.

Gaurav Khanna, the head coach of the Indian para badminton team, says having people to look up to has changed mindsets:

“This has increased the number of athletes who are participating and who are having confidence that they can do better. When I joined the para badminton team in 2015, there were only 50 athletes in the national camp. Now that figure has gone up to 1,000.”

This is a stark change from the time he began training para athletes. Earlier, Khanna used to spot young talent in strange places like shopping malls, corner shops and even on roads while driving in the country’s rural areas.

“It used to be tough to convince parents to send their children for something they knew little about. Just imagine convincing the parents of a young girl to send her to a faraway camp and trust somebody they didn’t know. But that’s how earlier champions came to the fore,” he adds.

Technology has also played a crucial part. With India’s growing economic prowess, Indian para athletes now have access to world-class equipment.

Khanna says each category in different disability sports requires specific equipment, which is often designed to meet the needs of an individual athlete.

“We didn’t have access to good equipment earlier and we used whatever we could get. But now it’s a different world for our athletes,” he says.

Disability rights activist Nipun Malhotra also acknowledges the change in mindset. He says the biggest change he has noticed is that parents now believe that children with disabilities can also become heroes:

“I think families have started playing a much more important role, and people with disabilities have got integrated much more into families today than they were 20 years ago. This also affects how society looks at disability as well. The fact that there are people with disabilities who are excelling in sports also gives hope to the future generations.”

Khanna and Malhotra both give credit to government schemes like TOPS (Target Olympic Podium Scheme) for identifying and supporting young talent.

Private organisations like the Olympic Gold Quest, which is funded by corporate houses, have also helped para athletes realise their full potential.

And then there are people like Khanna who started talent scouting and coaching using their own money, and continue to do so.

Sheetal Devi’s journey wouldn’t be possible without the support she got from a private organisation. Born in a small village in Jammu district, she didn’t know much about archery until two years ago.

She visited the Shri Mata Vaishno Devi Shrine Board sports complex in Jammu’s Katra on a friend’s advice and met her coach Kuldeep Vedwan there.

• The Indian archer without arms shooting for a gold

Now she is as popular in India as Manu Bhaker, who won two bronze medals in shooting at the Paris Olympics.

Brands are already lining up to sign Devi, and a jewellery advert featuring her has gone viral.

Social media has helped para athletes connect with people directly and tell them their stories. Experts hope that this will help them build a brand and eventually take them to commercial success as well. Stars like Devi are already there and there is hope that many more will follow.

But there is plenty of work left to do.

India has a long way to go to become disability-friendly, with most public places still lacking basic facilities to help people navigate everyday life.

Malhotra, who was born with arthrogryposis – a rare congenital disorder that meant that the muscles in his arms and legs didn’t fully develop – found that many didn’t want to hire him despite his degree in economics from a prestigious college in India.

He hopes the triumph of India’s para athletes will slowly help in opening those shut doors.

“The upside of this [India’s medal tally in Paris] is pretty high. Disabled people, including those with degrees from Oxford, struggle to get jobs in India. What our Paralympics triumph will do is that it will open the minds of employers about employing disabled people without any fear,” he says.

While India’s impressive showing in Paris has delighted many, coaches like Khanna believe grassroots facilities for para athletes are still poor even in big Indian cities.

He points out that classifications in para sports are very technical and trained coaches are essential to identify raw talent and guide them towards the right categories – all this even before a young person can start training.

Sports facilities have improved drastically even in small Indian cities in the past two decades but para sport still lags behind by quite a distance.

“You will not find well-trained para sport coaches even in most prominent schools in cities like Delhi and Mumbai and this has to change,” says Malhotra.

For Khanna, change has to start at entry level and he urges government and private players to train more coaches.

He argues that players can hope for stardom today only if they are spotted and then supported by organisations.

“But we won’t get to the top of the table like this. We have to ensure that a disabled child even in the remotest part of the country should have access to a good coach and facilities,” the para badminton coach adds.

One year on, the images of the catastrophic deluge that swept through Libya’s coastal city of Derna, killing thousands, linger in the memories of those who survived.

“Life stopped. It’s only the body that is still alive. I’m not the same person,” says Abdul Aziz Aldali, a young resident.

He lost his mother, father and nephews, who had come for a sleepover at their home, when Storm Daniel hit the city on the night of 10 September.

“I consider them martyrs. My neighbours, the Nasser family, lost 24 martyrs. The water reached them first,” Mr Aldali says.

Derna is built on the delta of the Wadi Derna river. The stream flows through two dams before crossing the city and emptying into the sea.

The unseasonably heavy rains – along with the failure to do maintenance work on ageing infrastructure – overwhelmed the dams, which eventually ruptured at around 02:00 local time on 11 September.

“A huge wave came through [the house]. Water filled up two floors in less than a second. The water was moving us around the house in the darkness,” Mr Aldali recalls.

“The water was taking me up and down. I swim very well, but it’s hard to control when the water keeps flipping you.”

Eventually, the waves propelled him outside.

“I spotted a network tower. A wave came and pushed me towards it, so I clung to it and tried to resist as much as I could.”

A deluge of water struck the city with an estimated force of 24 million tonnes, sparing no one.

“I looked at the people – small children who couldn’t save themselves. Those who were destined to live survived. Those who weren’t passed away,” Mr Aldali recalls.

Like many other residents, Mr Aldali has left the city. He has now relocated to Umm al-Rizam, a quaint village which is a 40-minute drive south of Derna.

More than 5,900 people died, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (Ocha), and 2,380 more are reported missing in a city with a population of about 90,000.

Locals believe the number of people killed in the flood is much higher.

“Almost all of my friends lost a family member. People in Derna believe more than 10,000 died in the flood,” says Dernawi journalist Johr Ali, who is now based in Turkey’s main city, Istanbul, and has been following developments in his home town.

For many Dernawis, the trauma of the loss is compounded by the agonising uncertainty of not knowing the fate of their missing relatives.

“I only found [the bodies] of my nephews,” says Mr Aldali says. “This world is worth nothing without my parents. I only ask Allah to reunite me with them in heaven”.

• PODCAST: How are survivors of the Derna flood coping?

The General Authority for Search and Identification of Missing Persons (Gasimp) has spent the past 12 months collecting DNA samples from human remains in the hope of finding matches with surviving family members.

“We collected the bodies, took samples from the teeth and other bones, issued reports with the cause of death, and buried the bodies,” Gasimp director Dr Kamal Sewi says.

But finding the remains of the victims has been difficult, with some body parts discovered as far as 60km (37 miles) out to sea or under collapsed buildings.

A special cemetery on the outskirts of Derna has been set up for the victims, but the graves are still nameless because most bodies have not been officially identified, leaving thousands of families without the closure they desperately yearn for.

Numeric codes are kept inside and outside each burial spot. These will eventually be assigned a name if the DNA of the deceased person is matched with that of a living relative.

However, the scale of displacement caused by the deluge has complicated this step of identification.

“It is easier to match DNA samples from direct relatives like parents or siblings,” Dr Sewi says, but finding those close family members has been a challenge.

“People moved from the city because they no longer have a home, but they did not come to report the missing,” Dr Sewi says.

This has further delayed the identification process because the teams have to search for second- or third-generation relatives, which makes DNA matching more complicated.

“[Identification] is not a process that will take one or two months to complete,” Dr Sewi says.

But while the lives of many Dernawis remain in limbo as they await news of their loved ones, the city’s reconstruction is well under way.

Roads have been cleared, schools and mosques are being repaired, and new homes have sprung up.

The so-called Korean buildings, a complex of towering apartment blocks painted in white have become the pride of local authorities, who have also organised press tours to display the finished work.

It has been completed more than a decade after then-ruler Muammar Gaddafi’s government commissioned a South Korean company to build the complex.

Construction work was suspended after the outbreak of a civil war in 2011, but resumed after the flood.

Some displaced families have also returned to Derna, attracted by the opportunity to receive compensation of up to 100,000 Libyan dinars ($21,000; £16,000) and subsidised rent.

But financial help to some families – along with the reconstruction effort – has been delayed by bureaucratic bottlenecks, and allegations of financial mismanagement.

A source with the investigative news organisation The Sentry told the BBC that the process appeared to be “opaque”, and lacked clear rules.

“Some families who thought they were eligible are still waiting,” he added.

There are also mounting concerns that the victims of the floods have become pawns in the power struggle between Libya’s rival governments – headquartered in the capital, Tripoli, and in the eastern city, Bengazi.

Belqasem Haftar – a son of military strongman Gen Khalifa Haftar, who governs the eastern part of Libya – is leading the recovery efforts through the Derna Reconstruction Fund.

With more than $2bn allocated to the fund, it gives the Haftars enormous influence to extend their power base.

“It is a blank cheque with zero oversight,” Libya analyst Anas El Gomati, who heads the Sadeq Institute think-tank, told the AFP news agency.

A spokesman for Gen Hatar’s Libyan National Army did not respond to a BBC request for comment.

The source at The Sentry, who preferred to remain anonymous because of the sensitivities around the issue, pointed out that the governor of Libya’s central bank had fled the country after a fall-out with the government there.

“Money allocated to the reconstruction of Derna contributed to making the central bank in Tripoli closer to the Haftar family, but the government in Tripoli was bitterly against this,” he added.

As the power struggles and chaos continue to rage, Dernawis like Mr Aldali are warily trying to rebuild their lives.

“We ask the people to pray for those who are behind the maintenance we’re witnessing now and to make the country look better than it was. May Allah have mercy upon them,” he says.

• Why damage to Derna was so catastrophic
• The bodies left unrecognisable by Derna disaster
• A barren wasteland with a lingering smell of death

The daily English lessons that Shabana attends are the highlight of her day. Taking the bus in Kabul to the private course with her friends, chatting and laughing with them, learning something new for one hour each day – it’s a brief respite from the emptiness that has engulfed her life since the Taliban took over Afghanistan.

In another country, Shabana* would have been graduating from high school next year, pursuing her dream to get a business degree. In Afghanistan, she and all teenage girls have been barred from formal education for three years.

Now even the small joys that were making life bearable are fraught with fear after a new law was announced saying if a woman is outside her home, even her voice must not be heard.

“When we got out, we’re scared. When we’re on the bus, we’re scared. We don’t dare to take down our masks. We even avoid speaking among ourselves, thinking that if someone from the Taliban hears us they could stop and question us,” she says.

The BBC has been in Afghanistan, allowing rare access to the country’s women and girls – as well as Taliban spokespeople – reacting to the new law, which was imposed by the Taliban’s supreme leader Haibatullah Akhundzada.

The law gives the Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice Ministry – the Taliban’s morality police – sweeping powers to enforce a stringent code of conduct for Afghan citizens.

For women who have already had their freedoms crushed bit by bit by a relentless series of decrees, it delivers another blow.

“If we can’t speak, why even live? We’re like dead bodies moving around,” Shabana says.

“When I learnt about the new law, I decided not to attend the course any more. Because if I go out, I’ll end up speaking and then something bad might happen. Maybe I won’t return home safely. But then my mother encouraged me to continue.”

In the three years since the Taliban takeover, it’s become clear that even if edicts aren’t strictly imposed, people start self-regulating out of fear. Women continue to be visible in small numbers on the streets of cities like Kabul, but nearly all of them now are covered from head to toe in loose black clothes or dark blue burqas, and most of them cover their faces with only their eyes visible, the impact of a decree announced last year.

“Every moment you feel like you’re in a prison. Even breathing has become difficult here,” said Nausheen, an activist.

Until last year, whenever new restrictions were announced, she was among small groups of women who marched on the streets of Kabul and other cities, demanding their rights.

The protests were violently cracked down on by the Taliban’s forces on multiple occasions, until they stopped altogether.

Nausheen was detained last year. “The Taliban dragged me into a vehicle saying ‘Why are you acting against us? This is an Islamic system.’ They took me to a dark, frightening place and held me there, using terrible language against me. They also beat me,” she says, breaking down into tears.

“When we were released from detention we were not the same people as before and that’s why we stopped protesting,” she adds. “I don’t want to be humiliated any more because I’m a woman. It is better to die than to live like this.”

Now Afghan women are showing their dissent by posting videos of themselves online, their faces covered, singing songs about freedom. “Let’s become one voice, let’s walk together holding hands and become free of this cruelty” are the lines of one such song.

Taliban government deputy spokesman Hamdullah Fitrat, who didn’t want to be pictured with a woman or sit directly opposite me, justified the new edict, which came accompanied with copious footnotes – references to religious texts.

“The law approved by the supreme leader is in accordance with Islamic Sharia law. Any religious scholar can check its references,” he says.

Shireen, a teacher, does not agree.

“This is their own interpretation of Sharia. Islam has given the right to both men and women to choose if they want to study and progress.

“If they say that women’s voices should not be heard, let’s go back to history. There are so many women in Islamic history who have spoken out.”

Shireen is part of a network of Afghan women running secret schools quietly rebelling against the restrictions. Already operating under a great deal of risk, often having to move the location of the school for safety, the new law has compounded her fears.

The danger of discovery is so great, she cannot speak to us at home, instead choosing a discreet location.

“Every morning I wake up asking God to make the day pass safely. When the new law came, I explained all its rules to my students and told them things would be more difficult. But I am so tired of all this, sometimes I just want to scream,” she says. “They don’t see women as human beings, just as tools whose only place is inside the home.”

Karina, a psychologist who consults with a network of secret schools, has previously told us that Afghan women are suffering from a ‘pandemic of suicidal thoughts’ because of the restrictions against them.

After the new law was announced she says she had a surge in calls asking for help. “A friend of mine messaged me to say this was her last message. She was thinking of ending her life. They feel all hope is gone and there is no point in continuing living,” she said. “And it’s becoming more and more difficult to counsel them.”

I asked Hamdullah Fitrat about the Taliban government’s responsibility towards women and girls in their country who are being driven into depression and suicidal thoughts because they’re banned from education.

“Our sisters’ education is an important issue. We’re trying to resolve this issue which is the demand of a lot of our sisters,” the spokesman said.

But three years on, do they really expect people to believe them?

“We are awaiting a decision from our leadership. When it is made, we will all be told about it,” he replied.

From earlier meetings with Taliban officials, it has been evident for a while that there are divisions within the Taliban government on the issue of women’s education, with some wanting it to be restarted. But the Kandahar-based leadership has remained intransigent, and there has been no public breaking of ranks with the supreme leader’s diktats.

We have seen some evidence of the difference in views. Not far from Kabul, we were unexpectedly given access to a midwife training course regularly run by the Taliban’s public health ministry. It was under way when we visited, and because ours was a last-minute visit, we know it was not put on for us to see.

More than a dozen women in their 20s were attending the course being conducted by a senior female doctor. The course is a mix of theory and practical sessions.

The students couldn’t speak freely but many said they were happy to be able to do this work.

“My family feels so proud of me. I have left my children at home to come here, but they know I’m serving the country. This works gives me so much positive energy,” said Safia.

Many acknowledged their privilege, and some expressed fear about whether even this might be stopped eventually. The Taliban’s health ministry didn’t answer questions about how they would find students to do this course in the future, if girls were not receiving formal education after grade six.

Public health, security, arts and craft are among a handful of sectors where women have been able to continue working in parts of the country. But it isn’t a formal decree that gives them permission. It’s happening through a quiet understanding between ground-level Taliban officials, NGOs and other stakeholders involved.

The new law leaves even this informal system vulnerable to the scrutiny of the Taliban’s morality police.

Sources in humanitarian agencies have told us they are grappling to understand how the law should be interpreted but they believe it will make operations more difficult.

The law was announced less than two months after the Taliban attended UN-led talks on engagement with Afghanistan for the first time – a meeting that Afghan civil society representatives and women’s rights activists had been kept out of, at the insistence of the Taliban.

It’s led many in the international community to question whether it was worth accepting the Taliban’s conditions for a meeting, and what the future of engagement with them might look like.

Reacting to the new law, the EU put out a sharply worded statement describing the restrictions as ‘systematic and systemic abuses… which may amount to gender persecution which is a crime against humanity’. It also said the decree creates ‘another self-imposed obstacle to normalised relations and recognition by the international community’.

“The values laid out in the law are accepted in Afghan society. There are no problems. We want the international community, especially the UN and others to respect Islamic laws, traditions and the values of Muslim societies,” Taliban deputy spokesman Hamdullah Fitrat said.

Less than two weeks ago the Taliban’s Vice and Virtue Ministry said it would no longer co-operate with the UN mission in Afghanistan because of its criticism of the law.

It’s evidence that relations which seemed to be progressing just two months ago, appear to have now hit a significant roadblock.

“I believe that when it comes to aid, the world should continue helping Afghanistan. But when it comes to talking to the Taliban, there should be a rule that in each discussion women must be present. And if that can’t happen, they [the international community] should stop talking to them,” psychologist Karina said.

“The world must care about what’s happening with Afghan women, because if it doesn’t this mentality could easily spread to them, to their homes.”

Announcing one of the world’s hottest rap artists as the Super Bowl’s half-time headliner might seem like an obvious move.

But the choice of Kendrick Lamar has prompted comments from hip-hop royalty – and some aren’t feeling euphoric.

This year’s Super Bowl – where the American Football championship is decided – is being held in New Orleans.

The Louisiana city is also the birthplace of Lil Wayne, who’s widely considered one of the most influential rappers ever.

Nicki Minaj, Birdman, Master P and Cam’ron have all said the hometown hero should have been part of the event.

And many of them think that Jay-Z – who has been co-producing the NFL event since 2019, might have something to do with the decision.

Lil Wayne and Jay-Z are both huge figures in hip-hop, and there’s a lot of history between them.

When Jay-Z released album Kingdom Come in 2006, Lil Wayne reportedly took issue with the rapper claiming he’d stage a comeback because “hip-hop was dead”.

He’s quoted as saying: “Now he comes back and still thinks it’s his house. It’s not your house anymore, and I’m better than you.”

Speaking on his YouTube series It Is What It Is after the Super Bowl announcement, rapper Cam’ron, appearing to refer to Jay-Z, said the feud was no secret.

“Lil Wayne had a problem with somebody before who’s kind of part of the organisation running it,” he said.

“This is payback.”

Nicki Minaj also made a series of posts on X, appearing to take aim at Jay-Z.

“Denying a young black man what he rightfully put into this game for no other reason but your ego,” she wrote.

This might have surprised some people, because it looked like the beef had been squashed by 2015 when Lil Wayne got involved with Jay-Z’s music platform Tidal and called him his “idol”.

He also described Jay-Z as “a real friend” in 2018.

In 2019, Roc Nation – the entertainment company Jay-Z owns – announced it would work with the NFL to “enhance live game experiences and amplify the league’s social justice efforts”.

He also oversees the artists booked for the Super Bowl and produces a half-time show that, with an audience of more than 100 million, is America’s most-watched musical performance.

In another post, Nicki referred to Jay-Z’s partnership with the NFL at a time when former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick was under attack for kneeling during the national anthem – a show of support for Black Lives Matter.

She said one “took a knee” while the other “took the bag”.

Nicki also appeared to accuse Jay-Z of speaking up when it suited him, in a post that seemed to reference his wife Beyoncé.

At the 2024 Grammys, Jay-Z spoke up for Beyoncé never having won album of the year.

This week, she was not nominated for any Country Music Awards, despite the popular hit Texas Hold ‘Em and country album Cowboy Carter

“Y’all know his next move is going to be to tell y’all a ‘certain someone’ is being treated soooooo unfairly so that y’all can go back into that trance,” she wrote.

Support for Lil Wayne didn’t mean that other acts weren’t backing Kendrick.

“You can love & respect Kendrick and still love & respect Wayne,” wrote Nicki.

“Even Kendrick loves & respects Wayne. Every real rapper loves & respects Wayne,” Nicki wrote.

In a post to his nearly four million Instagram followers, legendary rapper Master P said he saluted Kendrick and described him as “one of the hottest music artists in the world”.

But he said Lil Wayne “should be a part of this celebration as well”, considering his roots and history.

“He’s one of the greatest [Hip Hop] artists alive, still relevant and he’s a New Orleans native.

“Let’s not miss this cultural moment in the South… We have to give our legends their flowers while they are here.”

Nicki also praised Lil Wayne, who’s known for helping artists to get a foothold in the industry.

“This man has literally changed the FACE of hip hop. The hair too… He inspired so many to tat their faces & get locks.

“He never was in this for the money. It’s always been for the love of music,” Nicki says.

But looking at current streams, Kendrick Lamar dwarfs Lil Wayne, with 68.1 million monthly listeners on Spotify, compared to 36.5 million.

Kendrick is also known for being one of the most inventive lyricists hip-hop today.

In 2018, he became the first hip-hop artist to win the Pulitzer Prize for music and has so far won 17 Grammy awards.

BBC Newsbeat has requested comment from Jay-Z, Roc Nation and Lil Wayne – but not yet heard back.

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

A new statue designed to commemorate Elizabeth II – the UK’s longest-serving monarch – has received a mixed reception.

The bronze sculpture, created by north Belfast artist Anto Brennan, was unveiled in Antrim Castle Gardens on Saturday.

Since then, the statue of the late queen, Prince Philip and two corgis has attracted some criticism on social media and commentary from visitors to the County Antrim gardens.

Antrim and Newtownabbey Councillor Vera McWilliam told BBC News NI: “We have to be honest, it does not resemble the queen in any shape or form.”

Richard from Antrim said that he was “really disappointed” after seeing the statue online and then coming to see it with his wife.

“Whoever signed that off needs their eyes tested. It’s not good,” he added.

“I would take it away. It doesn’t do anything in memory for her majesty so definitely I would remove it.”

Brenda from Lisburn thinks that the statue should have been “made to look older” but “on the whole it is really nice” and “you still get what it represents and what it is about.”

“It caught my eye right away.

“You can see who they are, but I think definitely it should have been her just before she died to capture the whole meaning of who she was and what she represented.”

Alejandro from London was visiting Antrim Castle Gardens with two friends from El Salvador.

He though the statue didn’t “seem like the queen.”

“As it is in her memory I guess it is a good thing but it doesn’t look like her.

“The dogs and Prince Philip look nice, but the queen, it doesn’t look like her,” he added.

Cheryl and Gordon from Saintfield said they liked the sculpture but had some ideas about how it could have been improved.

Cheryl said there is “something not right about her upper body posture and her right arm but it’s still lovely to see her”.

Gordon added: “I wouldn’t have noticed that it didn’t look like the queen but with seeing it on Facebook and now that I see it yes, it probably isn’t a true reflection of her.

“It’s just the face, the rest of the character of her looks correct but the face is maybe not a true reflection of her.

“It is what it is, we all know who she is and what it’s meant to be so I would just leave it the way it is.”

Francis and Marie from Magherafelt were very positive about the sculpture.

“It’s great, I think they have it down to the tee,” Francis told BBC News NI.

“They’ve got the queen as she’s young. I think the two would be very pleased with it. And they’ve got the corgis all round.

“That is the queen, she loved being outside and that’s why there’s a smile on her face.”

Marie added that the statue “looks like her when you see her out with the horses and dogs. It’s more of her private life, more down to earth”.

The debate over the sculpture began on the comments section of a social media post by Antrim and Newtownabbey Borough Council featuring the first photos of the sculpture.

Comments have since been turned off.

The proposal to commission a sculpture of the late queen and her two corgis came in January 2023.

There was already a bronze statue of Prince Philip in the Parterre Garden.

The Deputy Mayor of Antrim and Newtownabbey Paul Dunlop attended the unveiling of the new statue.

He told BBC News NI: “It’s down to personal taste, everyone has their own opinion but it is what the sculpture represents that is important.”

When the sculpture was unveiled, Mayor of Antrim and Newtownabbey, Councillor Neil Kelly, described it as a “beautiful statue”.

Its creator, Anthony ‘Anto’ Brennan, is best known for his chess sets of prominent Northern Irish political figures.

BBC News NI has approached Brennan for comment.

From the moment she blew bubblegum in Crazy In Love to the day she destroyed a fleet of cars with a baseball bat in Hold Up, Beyoncé has created some of pop’s most memorable music videos.

Her mastery of the medium matched that of Madonna and Michael Jackson in the 1980s – with the videos for her Lemonade album acting as a powerful celebration of black womanhood and female power.

Then, all of a sudden, she stopped. Her last two albums, Renaissance and Cowboy Carter, have been bereft of visuals, leaving fans perplexed.

Now, Beyoncé has explained her decision in a rare interview with GQ magazine, saying she didn’t want her videos to become a “distraction from the quality of the voice and the music”.

“I thought it was important that during a time where all we see is visuals, that the world can focus on the voice,” the star said.

She explained that her recent records – which seek to contextualise black musicians’ often overlooked contributions to genres like house, disco and country – needed to stand on their own.

“The music is so rich in history and instrumentation. It takes months to digest, research, and understand,” she said.

“The music needed space to breathe on its own.”

She added that, for Renaissance in particular, the live concert experience was more important than filming music videos.

The album, released in 2022, was written during the pandemic and was conceived as “a place to dream and to find escape during a scary time for the world”. The subsequent tour, and the tour film released in cinemas last year, was intended as a moment of community and catharsis for her followers.

“The fans from all over the world became the visual,” Beyoncé told GQ.

“We all got the visual on tour.”

The interview, which took place to promote the star’s new whiskey brand, is the first time Beyoncé has spoken at length about her career since a joint interview with her sister Solange in 2017.

She largely withdrew from interviews around 2013-2014, opting instead to write personal essays for publications like Vogue, or addressing fans directly on social media.

The GQ article did not reveal a great deal about the notoriously private star.

She revealed that she gave up meat (except turkey) over the summer, and briefly addressed the threat of artificial intelligence, saying she recently heard an AI-generated track “that sounded so much like me it scared me”.

The star also talked about her efforts to shield her family from the press.

“One thing I’ve worked extremely hard on is making sure my kids can have as much normalcy and privacy as possible, ensuring my personal life isn’t turned into a brand.

“It’s very easy for celebrities to turn our lives into performance art. I have made an extreme effort to stay true to my boundaries and protect myself and my family. No amount of money is worth my peace.”

The article was published a day after it was revealed that Beyoncé had been snubbed by the Country Music Awards, with Cowboy Carter failing to land a single nomination at the genre’s most prestigious ceremony.

Her music was overlooked despite it becoming the first album by a black woman to reach number one on the US country albums chart, and the song Texas Hold ‘Em spending two weeks at the top of the country singles chart.

With the interview taking place before the CMA nominations were announced, Beyoncé is simply quoted as saying she was “hyped” to see her country experiment “gain worldwide acceptance”.

However, the singer’s father and former manager, Matthew Knowles, criticised the award show organisers, saying the decision to overlook Cowboy Carter “speaks for itself”.

Talking to TMZ, he said: “There’s more white people in America and unfortunately they don’t vote based on ability and achievements, it’s still sometimes a white and black thing.”

1) Single Ladies (Put A Ring On It)

Sometimes the simplest ideas are the best. This black and white clip, directed by Jake Nava, simply features Beyoncé, a plain background and some Bob Fosse-inspired choreography.

2) Formation

Her most powerful and pointed video, summing up decades of black American history and culture. Set in New Orleans, it references slave plantations, segregation, Hurricane Katrina and police brutality, while simultaneously celebrating southern culture – from Mardi Gras and step-dancing to black cowboys and marching bands.

A document of resilience, it was the first chapter in the star’s ongoing attempts to preserve and re-contextualise black American history.

3) Countdown

A kaleidoscope of colour and pop culture references, Beyoncé co-directed this video while pregnant with her first daughter, Blue Ivy.

It references to Audrey Hepburn and British supermodel Twiggy, and the frenetic editing and jitterbug choreography make it a unique entry in her videography.

4) Crazy In Love

The video that launched her solo career, Crazy In Love ticks off all of the early 2000s music video clichés – fur coats, exploding cars, big hair and bullet time sequences.

But what it really does is inform the viewer that Beyoncé is a star. The camera loves her from the moment she struts towards the centre of the frame. As soon as this clip dropped, Destiny’s Child must have known their days were numbered.

5) Get Me Bodied (Extended Version)

We nearly put Hold Up in fifth place. The image of Beyoncé brandishing that baseball bat has been copied and parodied a million times, but never bettered.

In the end, though, we couldn’t resist the fun factor of Get Me Bodied – a big Hollywood production, with choreography inspired by Bob Fosse’s Sweet Charity, and cameos from Kelly Rowland, Michelle Williams and Solange Knowles.

Like Crazy In Love, it harks back to a time when Beyoncé’s only goal was pop domination – but it’s still a feast for the eyes.

The Prince of Wales has described the end of Catherine, the Princess of Wales’ chemotherapy treatment as “good news”, but added his wife still has “a long way to go”.

He made the comment during his first public appearance since his wife shared a personal video about her cancer treatment.

He travelled to Llanelli, Carmarthenshire on Tuesday, a day after Catherine released a message saying she had completed her chemotherapy treatment and was now focused on staying cancer free.

His solo visit – to celebrate Welsh sport and culture – began at Swiss Valley Community Primary School with pupils who took part in this year’s Urdd Eisteddfod.

Speaking to the media about Catherine completing her chemotherapy, Prince William said: “It’s good news but there is still a long way to go.”

Prince William was greeted by a crowd outside the school where several people offered their well wishes to the princess following her announcement she had completed chemotherapy.

He thanked everyone for their thoughts, with two people handing him cards.

Among those was 10-year-old Ruby, a second-language Welsh learner whose enthusiastic celebrations after winning a recital category at the cultural event went viral earlier this year.

“I’ve watched your video a few times,” Prince William said as he met Ruby.

“You did brilliantly, you don’t seem nervous about performing on stage at all.”

Ruby told him she was “a little bit” but also said she was “really excited”.

“It was very impressive, you’re going to have to teach me how to speak Welsh,” he added.

When asked how it felt to meet the Prince of Wales, Ruby said it was “amazing”.

“He’s a lovely man and it’s an honour to meet him, and it’s an experience that is going to be treasured and kept forever. We had a little chat about everything really and I gave him a hug.”

“I also presented him with a book and bracelets that I made for Kate and Charlotte,” she added.

Ruby’s mother Lynne spoke of her happiness at hearing the princess had completed chemotherapy, saying it was something that affected so many people.

The princess said in the video she was looking forward to being back at work and undertaking a few more official engagements in the coming months.

The school’s head teacher, Jo Davies, said: “The children have been so excited, and I think the staff were a bit shocked that the Prince of Wales would be coming, but everybody has really embraced the visit.”

Ex- pupil Kate Davies, 24, and her mother Elizabeth Davies, 57, said they could not believe that their village had a royal visit.

“We said ‘bore da’ to him and he answered us back in Welsh,” said Elizabeth.

Kate added: “It’s been so exciting. This is my ex-school.”

Cameron Churchill, 24, lives close to the school and said it was an “unbelievable” experience.

“To see the future king here, in my area, just incredible to see him so close up, just absolutely mindblown,” he said.

“I’d give him a five out of five for his Welsh. His pronunciation was very good.”

He was serenaded with a medley of Welsh songs and was greeted by laughter when a child told him he had a bug on him.

He asked the young boy, who was a sea cadet, if he wanted to keep it, and handed it to him.

He said: “Good spot, it must have followed me here.”

The prince also visited the headquarters of the Wales Air Ambulance in Llanelli, of which he is a patron.

Prince William also met a number of the Welsh women’s rugby team and presented caps for the WRU’s “missing caps” campaign to former players who were historically missed when they played for Wales.

Abi Tierney, the chief executive of the Welsh Rugby Union said meeting Prince William at Parc Y Scarlets was “amazing” for women’s rugby.

She said it was “such an uplifting day” to see Prince William appreciate the women players that were not recognised at the time.

“He was so passionate about it, and wanted to know all the detail about how we’re supporting the game, he was genuinely interested.”

Europe’s top court has ruled Google must pay a €2.4bn (£2bn) fine handed down for abusing the market dominance of its shopping comparison service.

The tech giant had appealed against the fine, which was originally levied by the European Commission in 2017.

It was at the time the largest penalty the Commission had ever imposed – though it has since been supplanted by a €4.3bn fine, also against Google.

Google said it was “disappointed” with the ruling.

It brings an end to a long-running case that was first brought by British firm Foundem in 2009, when the UK was still part of the EU.

Another of the complainants, shopping comparison site Kelkoo, called the ruling “a win for fair competition and consumer choice” in a post on X.

The European Court of Justice (ECJ), which made today’s judgement, said in its ruling the Commission was right to find Google’s conduct “discriminatory” and its appeal “must be dismissed in its entirety”.

It ordered Google and owner Alphabet to bear their own costs and pay the costs incurred by the European Commission.

In a statement, Google pointed out it had made changes in 2017 to comply with the European Commission’s decision.

“Our approach has worked successfully for more than seven years, generating billions of clicks for more than 800 comparison shopping services,” it said.

Anne Witt, professor of law at EDHEC Business School’s Augmented Law Institute, said it was “an important judgement”.

“This is bad news for Google, which has exhausted its legal remedies in this case,” she said – while pointing out there could be further problems ahead for the firm.

“Several follow-on actions by injured parties claiming compensation for losses suffered as a consequence of Google’s anticompetitive conduct are already pending in national courts.”

On Monday, Google was taken to court by the US government over its ad tech business – it has been accused of illegally operating a monopoly. That trial is ongoing.

Last week, UK regulators provisionally concluded Google used anti-competitive practices to dominate the market for online advertising technology.

The EU’s case against Google started with Foundem, which filed its complaint against the tech giant in 2009.

At its heart was the contention that Google made its own shopping recommendations appear more prominent than rivals in search results.

Google had tried to argue that the case had no legal or economic merit.

But seven years ago, the Commission agreed that the tech giant effectively monopolised online price comparison by preventing others from getting a foothold in the market.

That decision has now been upheld.

Industry insiders have been keeping a close eye on the EU case, with suggestions that its outcome may illuminate the direction of travel of the many other antitrust cases Google is currently facing from the European Commission.

The search giant has amassed fines of €8.2bn from the Commission, which has repeatedly alleged it abused its dominant market position. These are:

• 2017: €2.4bn fine over shopping results
• 2018: €4.3bn fine over claims it used Android software to unfairly promote its own apps
• 2019: €1.5bn fine for blocking adverts from rival search engines

The EU is also currently investigating the firm over whether it preferences its own goods and services over others in search results, as part of its Digital Markets Act.

If it finds Google guilty, the firm could face a fine of up to 10% of its annual turnover.

It is far from the only clash between the EU and big tech.

In a separate judgement today, the ECJ has told Apple it must pay back €13bn (£11bn; $14bn) in unpaid taxes to Ireland.

A row has erupted on Chinese social media over the use of air conditioners in classrooms as the country endures an unseasonal heatwave.

Parents in some of China’s hottest cities have called on schools to install air conditioners as temperatures exceed 35C.

The conversation heated up in the southern city of Changsha where the education department responded saying it will not install air cons so students can “cultivate the spirit of hard work and endurance”.

The comment drew outrage online, sparking a debate on who should pay for the air conditioners and whether they should be used at all.

“Hard work and endurance? Can we please then ask the education bureau to work in 40-degree heat, then discuss whether this is the way to cultivate such spirit in children,” wrote one Weibo user.

Another wrote: “Global warming has become so serious. What do you want the children to do?”

Most classrooms in China do not have air conditioners and rely on ceiling fans instead.

But calls to install them have intensified in recent months.

“Without air conditioning, it would be challenging to concentrate on studying,” Lin Yujun, the father of a junior high school student in Guangdong in southern China, told Shanghai-based news site Sixth Tone.

Not all parents are in favour of installing air conditioners. Some have voiced concern about the higher risk of catching a cold or other infections at school in air-conditioned classrooms. Others have suggested changes to the school calendar.

“It was never so hot in September in previous years. Perhaps the education board can extend school holidays, according to the weather,” a parent told CQ News in Chongqing.

Earlier this year, China’s weather bureau warned of hotter and longer heatwaves, adding that maximum temperatures across the country could rise by up to 2.8C within the next 30 years.

Schools, however, are reluctant to commit to the steep cost – of the aircons and the electricity bills that would follow.

A primary school in the southern city of Xiangtan drew criticism for asking parents to pay for the air conditioners – the school invited them to donate, reported Sixth Tone.

The local education bureau later ordered the school to reimburse the parents.

But comments online supported the school’s request as reasonable, saying that students’ comfort should be the priority.

“Now that [authorities] have stopped parents from contributing, when will school students be able to use air conditioners under such persistently high temperatures,” wrote Long Zhi Zhu, a commentator for local media outlet The Paper.

“[Everyone] has been going around in circles on this issue. Ultimately, the children are the ones who suffer,” wrote a Weibo user.

Some schools are trying to cope with the heat without the help of air conditioning – they have taken to placing buckets with large blocks of ice inside classrooms to cool the space down.

Some schools in eastern Jiangxi province and south-western Sichuan province postponed the start of the autumn semester, due to begin on 2 September, by a week.

Officials from a zoo in north-east Nigeria have confirmed that some wild animals had escaped from captivity after flooding hit Borno state.

Videos of some of the creatures on the streets of the state capital, Maiduguri, have been widely shared on social media.

Ali Donbest, who runs the Sanda Kyarimi Zoo, told the BBC that he does not know exactly how many animals are free but a hunt is on to locate them. One ostrich has been found but he advised residents to be careful.

Local media are reporting that Maiduguri is experiencing flooding on a scale that has not been seen for three decades with many forced to leave their homes.

Mr Donbest said that there had been some success in finding some of those that had escaped.

“We’ve been able to recapture the ostrich seen on the street and we also got a call that a crocodile had been found in another location but we cannot get there due to the floods,” he said.

He also said the cages where the lions and hyenas were kept had been submerged by floodwaters but cannot tell if they had escaped.

The zoo boss explained that the flood had damaged some of its walls enabling the animals to roam free.

However, not all the creatures spotted on the streets may be from the zoo.

“We got a report that a hippo was seen somewhere and we don’t have hippos in the zoo, so the waters might also disperse animals from other locations too,” he said.

Maiduguri resident Ishaq Sani told the BBC his biggest fear at the moment is to come across a wild animal.

He abandoned his home due to the floods and is now staying with a friend in another location.

Up to now. there have not been any reports of animals attacking humans.

This is the latest incident in a series of floods that have hit Nigeria recently. More than 170 people have died and tens of thousands have been forced from their homes across the country, Nigeria’s National Emergency Management Agency has said.

• Is Nigeria on the right track after a year of Tinubu?
• Should I stay or should I go? The dilemma for young Nigerians
• The Nigerian professor who makes more money welding

A man that sued American rapper Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs over an alleged sexual assault has won $100m (£76.6m) by default after Combs failed to respond.

Derrick Lee Cardello-Smith, 51, accused Combs of drugging him and sexually assaulting him at a party in Detroit, Michigan, in 1997. Lawyers for Combs have denied the allegations.

Cardello-Smith is a convicted felon currently serving a prison sentence and is known for his long history of filing civil lawsuits, according to a local newspaper.

Lawyers for Combs said Cardello-Smith was committing “fraud on the court” and told the BBC that the rapper will fight the ruling.

Courts issue default judgements against people when they do not respond to a lawsuit.

Combs and his lawyers told the BBC they had not been aware of the lawsuit because Combs was not properly served notice of it, and that they will be seeking to vacate Monday’s judgment.

The lawsuit is among a string of sexual assault allegations that have been recently made against Combs, one of the most successful moguls in the history of rap music.

The award to Cardello-Smith was issued on Monday by Judge Anna Marie Anzalone of the Lenawee County Circuit Court, after Combs failed to appear for a 9 September hearing over the lawsuit.

According to the local newspaper, the Detroit Metro Times, Cardello-Smith crossed paths with Combs in the 1990s while he was working in the restaurant and hospitality industry in Detroit.

He told the court that Combs recently offered him $2.3m to drop the lawsuit, but he rejected that offer. He also said that he continues to know Combs, and had produced documents showing Combs’s name in a prison visitation log.

Combs’s lawyer, Marc Agnifilo, denied that the rapper ever knew Cardello-Smith in a statement to the BBC.

Cardello-Smith is serving time for unrelated convictions of sexual misconduct and kidnapping, according to court documents.

The Detroit Metro Times reported that he taught himself criminal and civil law during his time in prison, and had since developed “a long history of challenging the judicial system” by filing multiple lawsuits.

Others have sued Combs for sexual and physical abuse, including his long-time partner Casandra “Cassie” Ventura.

Combs paid Ventura an undisclosed sum of money, which settled the matter outside of court.

The rapper had repeatedly denied the allegations, but later apologised after CCTV footage from 2016 was released in May appearing to show Combs throwing and kicking Ventura in a hotel hallway.

In March, federal agents raided two houses owned by the star “as part of an ongoing investigation” into sex trafficking.

At the time, Combs’ lawyer had called the raid an “unprecedented ambush” and said his client was innocent.

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

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

The big question now is – will the result mean a second Donald Trump term or America’s first woman president?

As election day approaches, we’ll be keeping track of the polls and seeing what effect big events like Tuesday’s presidential debate have on the race for the White House.

In the months leading up to Biden’s decision to drop out of the race, polls consistently showed him trailing former president Trump. Although hypothetical at the time, several polls suggested Harris wouldn’t fare much better.

But the race tightened after she hit the campaign trail and she developed a small lead over her rival in an average of national polls that she has maintained since. The latest national polling averages for the two candidates are shown below, rounded to the nearest whole number.

In the poll tracker chart below, the trend lines show how those averages have changed since Harris entered the race and the dots show the spread of the individual poll results.

Harris hit 47% during her party’s four-day convention in Chicago, which she brought to a close on 22 August with a speech promising a “new way forward” for all Americans. Her numbers have moved very little since then.

Trump’s average has also remained relatively steady, hovering around 44%, and there was no significant boost from the endorsement of Robert F Kennedy, who ended his independent candidacy on 23 August.

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

That’s because the US uses an electoral college system to elect its president, so winning the most votes can be less important than where they are won.

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

• What is the electoral college?

Right now, the polls are very tight in the seven battleground states, which makes it hard to know who is really leading the race. There are fewer state polls than national polls so we have less data to work with and every poll has a margin of error that means the numbers could be higher or lower.

As is stands, recent polls suggest there is less than one percentage point separating the two candidates in several states. That includes Pennsylvania, which is key as it has the highest number of electoral votes on offer and therefore makes it easier for the winner to reach the 270 votes needed.

Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin had all been Democratic strongholds before Trump turned them red on his path to winning the presidency in 2016. Biden retook them in 2020 and if Harris can do the same this year then she will be on course to win the election.

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

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

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

You can read more about the 538 methodology here.

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

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

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

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

Taylor Swift has endorsed Kamala Harris for president just moments after the end of her presidential debate against Donald Trump.

In an Instagram post on Tuesday night, the pop star said she had done her “research”.

“I will be casting my vote for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz in the 2024 Presidential Election,” she said. “I’m voting for @kamalaharris because she fights for the rights and causes I believe need a warrior to champion them.”

Swift went on to call Harris a “steady-handed, gifted leader”.

“I believe we can accomplish so much more in this country if we are led by calm and not chaos,” she wrote.

Swift announced the news alongside a photo of her with a cat and signed it “Childless Cat Lady”, a reference to comments made by Donald Trump’s vice-presidential candidate JD Vance.

The Ohio senator has faced a backlash from a 2021 clip in which he called several prominent Democrats – including Harris – “a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives”.

Swift went on to compliment Harris’s choice of vice-presidential candidate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, who she said had been “been standing up for LGBTQ+ rights, IVF, and a woman’s right to her own body for decades”.

The singer said she was in part motivated to share her voting decision with the public after an AI image of her falsely endorsing Trump was posted on his website.

“It really conjured up my fears around AI, and the dangers of spreading misinformation,” she said. “It brought me to the conclusion that I need to be very transparent about my actual plans for this election as a voter.”

Swift is one of several celebrities to endorse Harris, including singers John Legend and Olivia Rodrigo, actor George Clooney and director Spike Lee.

Former wrestler Hulk Hogan, TV star Amber Rose and billionaire Elon Musk have endorsed Trump.

Swift’s endorsement of Harris came after a fiery 90-minute presidential debate, during which the two candidates sparred over issues such as abortion rights, the economy and immigration.

It is not the first time the pop star has endorsed the Democratic nominee in a race against Trump. Swift announced her support for President Joe Biden and Harris as his vice-president a month before the 2020 election.

Swift was also a vocal critic of Trump during his presidency surrounding the nationwide protests over the police murder of George Floyd.

“After stoking the fires of white supremacy and racism your entire presidency, you have the nerve to feign moral superiority before threatening violence?” she posted on Twitter/X. “We will vote you out in November.”

The singer has 283 million followers on Instagram. Her endorsement had received more than two million likes on Instagram just half an hour after she posted it.

In her post, Swift urged first-time voters to register and said she would post a link with more voting information on her page.

“I’ve done my research, and I’ve made my choice,” she said. “Your research is all yours to do, and the choice is yours to make.”

Rachael Gunn remains the number one female breakdancer in the world, despite a controversial Olympic performance for Team Australia that divided the internet and left her with a score of zero.

Responding to questions about its rankings, the sport’s governing body has issued a statement explaining its methodology to “address concerns” and “provide clarity”.

It said each athlete was assessed based on their top four performances in the last 12 months and that Olympic events, including qualifiers, were excluded.

Gunn, who performs as Raygun, has continued to defend her record as Australia’s best B-girl amid questions over her qualifications.

The 37-year-old university lecturer failed to score any points in all three of her competition rounds in Paris, with a routine that included unorthodox moves, such as the sprinkler and the kangaroo hop.

“The record is there. But anything can happen in a battle,” she said in her first sitdown interview last week, when asked about her polarising performance.

The World DanceSport Federation (WDSF) has also come under intense public scrutiny not just for its rankings, but its “credibility” as a voice for the sport.

In Tuesday’s statement the WDSF tried to address criticisms that had been swirling online over the transparency of its rankings head on.

It explained that “ranking events” had intentionally not been held between the end of 2023 and the start of the Olympics, to allow athletes to “focus solely” on the Games.

That had created a set of “unique circumstances” which meant that some athletes had been ranked based only on a single event.

“The world rankings as they currently stand should be interpreted in conjunction with results from recent global breaking competitions for a more accurate reflection of the global competitive landscape,” the statement added.

The weeks-long saga over Raygun’s performance has split opinion within the breakdancing community, with some throwing their support behind the embattled athlete, while others have publicly accused her of making a mockery of the sport.

It has also sparked questions over whether breaking – which debuted in Paris but is not on the programme for the 2028 Games in Los Angeles – should have ever been included in the Olympics, due to the organic nature of the genre, which doesn’t necessarily suit organised competition.

In an interview with the Associated Press, vice-president of Breaking for Gold USA Zack Slusser argued the WDSF didn’t have “any real merit” with the breaking community, and that it had failed to organise events that would “contribute to creating an accurate world ranking”.

Breakers were only performing at WDSF organised events to secure points to qualify for the Olympics, he claimed, adding that they had “no incentive” or “desire” to continue participating in WDSF events post-Paris.

An audible sigh of frustration drifted across the packed seats of courtroom “Voltaire” in Avignon’s Palace of Justice, as the lead judge, dressed in a scarlet robe, announced an unexpected but unavoidable delay to a trial that has gripped France.

“He is ill,” said Presiding Judge Roger Arata, indicating that this extraordinary case of 51 alleged rapists would be delayed for “one, two, three days” or possibly even longer, after it was revealed that Dominique Pelicot was too sick to attend.

His lawyer said later he had been taken to hospital.

On the right edge of the courtroom, her head leaning gently against a wood-panelled wall, Gisèle Pelicot showed no visible emotion at the news that she would not, after all, be seeing her husband give evidence that day.

Last week, Gisèle Pelicot, 72, told the court that her calm demeanour masked a “field of devastation”, triggered by the instance, four years ago, when a French policeman had informed her that her apparently loving husband had, in fact, been drugging her for a decade and inviting strangers – more than 80 local men – to enter the family home, and the couple’s bedroom, to rape her while he filmed them.

She has waived her right to anonymity to highlight the danger to women of being drugged and sexually attacked – known as “chemical submission”.

It is little more than half an hour’s drive – through the gentle hills and vineyards that surround the looming, almost lunar landscape of Mont Ventoux – from Avignon’s courthouse to the quaint, medieval village of Mazan. The village was once briefly known for hosting British actress Keira Knightley’s wedding.

This is where the Pelicots lived, and where Dominique Pelicot filmed the local men that he had contacted online.

The mood in any place, at any one moment, is always hard to sum up.

“Honestly, no-one here gives a damn,” said a local caterer, Evan Tuvignon, leaning on his shop counter and suggesting that people were fed up with the whole case.

But several women told us the village was not only in shock, but that the unfolding revelations in court were causing new tensions in Mazan and the surrounding villages.

The names of the accused were recently shared widely on social media, and some of those men have since complained to the court that they, their families and children are now facing harassment on the streets and at school.

Two local women, loading their car on a narrow street in Mazan, said they’d seen the names and had recognised at least three of them.

“It creates tensions, you can imagine. You don’t know who to trust on the street. I’m relieved that I’ll be moving away from this village soon,” said Océane Martin, 25.

But beside her, Océane’s mother, Isabelle Liversain, 50, raised another, deeper concern.

It has been revealed that, while the police have already identified and detained 50 of the men whose images appeared on Dominique Pelicot’s hard drive, another 30 suspects – as yet unnamed and untraced – remain at large.

“So, we know 30 out of 80 still haven’t been caught. There are tensions here because people don’t know if they can trust their neighbours. You ask yourself – is he one of the 30? What is your neighbour getting up to behind closed doors?” said Isabelle Liversain in a voice sharp with frustration.

But Mazan’s 74-year-old mayor, Louis Bonnet, sought to play down those tensions, arguing that most of the alleged rapists came from other villages and seeking to frame the Pelicots as outsiders who hadn’t lived there long.

He went further, saying the threats against the accused and their families were to be expected.

“If they participated in these rapes, then it’s normal that they’re considered targets. There has to be transparency about everything that happened,” he said, while also condemning the accused and their actions.

In his interview with us, Bonnet talked about the case itself, and in doing so veered towards the sort of attitudes that have already sparked fury in France as well as deep admiration for Gisèle Pelicot’s courage in confronting them.

“People here say ‘no one was killed’. It would have been much worse if [Pelicot] had killed his wife. But that didn’t happen in this case,” Bonnet said.

Then he went on to address Gisèle Pelicot’s experiences.

“She’ll have trouble getting back on her feet again for sure,” he agreed, but suggested her rapes were less troubling than those of another victim in the nearby town of Carpentras who “was conscious when she was raped… and will carry the physical and mental trauma for a long time, which is even more serious”.

“When there are kids involved, or women killed, then that’s very serious because there’s no way back. In this case, the family will have to rebuild itself. It will be hard. But they’re not dead, so they can still do it.”

When I suggested that he was seeking to play down the gravity of the Pelicot case, he agreed.

“Yes, I am. What happened was very serious. But I’m not going to say the village has to bear the memory of a crime which goes beyond the limits of what can be considered acceptable,” he said.

His phrasing seemed clumsy. He was condemning the case. He didn’t want his village to be branded by it forever.

But he also appeared to belittle Gisèle Pelicot’s trauma.

I pushed back once again. Many women believed this case had exposed particular types of male behaviour that needed to change, I said.

“We can always wish to change attitudes, and we should. But in reality, there’s no magic formula. The people who acted in this way are impossible to understand and shouldn’t be excused or understood. But it still exists,” replied Bonnet.

Inside the courtroom in Avignon, some of the accused – the 18 now in custody – sat inside a special glass-walled section watching the proceedings. A white man with grey, straggly hair stroked his bearded chin. Nearby, a younger black man seemed to be dozing.

Earlier, dozens of their fellow accused – those not in custody – jostled beside journalists in a large queue outside the courtroom.

Most of the men sought to hide their faces with masks, but a few did not. A larger man shuffled forward on crutches. Someone pulled a green hood down over their face.

French law offers the accused some protection from being identified in the media, but Gisèle Pelicot has declined her own legal right to privacy, preferring instead to become a symbol of defiance for many French women.

“She has shown such dignity and courage and humanity. It was a huge gift to [French women] that she chose to speak to the whole world in front of her rapist. They said she was broken. But she was so inspiring,” said Blandine Deverlanges, a local activist attending the court today.

She and her colleagues have recently painted slogans on walls around Avignon. One reads: “Ordinary men. Horrific crimes.”

Seated beside her mother, the couple’s daughter, Caroline, 45, did not hide her emotions.

She was recently shown evidence that her father had taken pictures of her, without her knowledge or permission. She believes she was drugged by him too and has become a campaigner on the issue of rape and drugs – a problem many experts believe is woefully under-reported and under-investigated in France.

At times, in court, Caroline frowned or raised a hand to her face in apparent frustration or disgust, as various defence lawyers raised objections or debated procedural issues. A police officer began giving evidence, speaking in the strong accent of southern France. Bright sunshine flooded through a skylight above the judges’ heads.

The atmosphere in the elegantly decorated court was calm, but it felt shocking, nonetheless, to see the family – mother, daughter and at least two sons – seated just metres from so many alleged rapists, now all with their masks removed.

Midwife Siro Devi is clinging to Monica Thatte, sobbing. Monica, in her late 20s, has returned to her birthplace – the Indian town where Siro has delivered hundreds of babies.

But this is no straightforward reunion. There is a painful history behind Siro’s tears. Shortly before Monica was born, Siro and several Indian midwives like her were regularly pressured to murder newborn girls.

Monica, evidence suggests, is one they saved.

I have been following Siro’s story for 30 years, ever since I went to interview her and four other rural midwives in India’s Bihar state in 1996.

They had been identified by a non-governmental organisation as being behind the murder of baby girls in the district of Katihar where, under pressure from the newborns’ parents, they were killing them by feeding them chemicals or simply wringing their necks.

Hakiya Devi, the eldest of the midwives I interviewed, told me at the time she had killed 12 or 13 babies. Another midwife, Dharmi Devi, admitted to killing more – at least 15-20.

It is impossible to ascertain the exact number of babies they may have killed, given the way the data was gathered.

But they featured in a report published in 1995 by an NGO, based on interviews with them and 30 other midwives. If the report’s estimates are accurate, more than 1,000 baby girls were being murdered every year in one district, by just 35 midwives. According to the report, Bihar at the time had more than half a million midwives. And infanticide was not limited to Bihar.

Refusing orders, Hakiya said, was almost never an option for a midwife.

“The family would lock the room and stand behind us with sticks,” says Hakiya Devi. “They’d say: ‘We already have four-five daughters. This will wipe out our wealth. Once we give dowry for our girls, we will starve to death. Now, another girl has been born. Kill her.’

“Who could we complain to? We were scared. If we went to the police, we’d get into trouble. If we spoke up, people would threaten us.”

The role of a midwife in rural India is rooted in tradition, and burdened by the harsh realities of poverty and caste. The midwives I interviewed belonged to the lower castes in India’s caste hierarchy. Midwifery was a profession passed on to them by mothers and grandmothers. They lived in a world where refusing orders of powerful, upper-caste families was unthinkable.

The midwife could be promised a sari, a sack of grain or a small amount of money for killing a baby. Sometimes even that was not paid. The birth of a boy earned them about 1,000 rupees. The birth of a girl earned them half.

The reason for this imbalance was steeped in India’s custom of giving a dowry, they explained. Though the custom was outlawed in 1961, it still held strong in the 90s – and indeed continues into the present day.

A dowry can be anything – cash, jewellery, utensils. But for many families, rich or poor, it is the condition of a wedding. And this is what, for many, still makes the birth of a son a celebration and the birth of a daughter a financial burden.

Siro Devi, the only midwife of those I interviewed who is still alive, used a vivid physical image to explain this disparity in status.

“A boy is above the ground – higher. A daughter is below – lower. Whether a son feeds or takes care of his parents or not, they all want a boy.”

The preference for sons can be seen in India’s national-level data. Its most recent census, in 2011, recorded a ratio of 943 women to every 1,000 men. This is nevertheless an improvement on the 1990s – in the 1991 census, the ratio was 927/1,000.

By the time I finished filming the midwives’ testimonies in 1996, a small, silent change had begun. The midwives who once carried out these orders had started to resist.

This change was instigated by Anila Kumari, a social worker who supported women in the villages around Katihar, and was dedicated to addressing the root causes of these killings.

Anila’s approach was simple. She asked the midwives, “Would you do this to your own daughter?”

Her question apparently pierced years of rationalisation and denial. The midwives got some financial help via community groups and gradually the cycle of violence was interrupted.

Siro, speaking to me in 2007, explained the change.

“Now, whoever asks me to kill, I tell them: ‘Look, give me the child, and I’ll take her to Anila Madam.’”

The midwives rescued at least five newborn girls from families who wanted them killed or had already abandoned them.

One child died, but Anila arranged for the other four to be sent to Bihar’s capital, Patna, to an NGO which organised their adoption.

The story could have ended there. But I wanted to know what had become of those girls who were adopted, and where life had taken them.

The Midwife’s Confession

Thirty years ago, a journalist in the Indian state of Bihar filmed a series of shocking confessions: midwives admitting they routinely murdered new-born baby girls. BBC Eye explores the disturbing story.

Watch on iPlayer (UK only), or if you are outside the UK watch on YouTube

The Midwife’s Confession

BBC Eye finds a woman who was possibly one of the girls abandoned in Bihar. What will happen when she returns to meet the only surviving midwife?

Listen on BBC Sounds or outside the UK, listen here

Anila’s records were meticulous but they had few details about post-adoption.

Working with a BBC World Service team, I got in touch with a woman called Medha Shekar who, back in the 90s, was researching infanticide in Bihar when the babies rescued by Anila and the midwives began arriving at her NGO. Remarkably, Medha was still in touch with a young woman who, she believed, was one of these rescued babies.

Anila told me that she had given all the girls saved by the midwives the prefix “Kosi” before their name, a homage to the Kosi river in Bihar. Medha remembered that Monica had been named with this “Kosi” prefix before her adoption.

The adoption agency would not let us look at Monica’s records, so we can never be sure. But her origins in Patna, her approximate date of birth and the prefix “Kosi” all point to the same conclusion: Monica is, in all probability, one of the five babies rescued by Anila and the midwives.

When I went to meet her at her parents’ home some 2,000km (1,242 miles) away in Pune, she said she felt lucky to have been adopted by a loving family.

“This is my definition of a normal happy life and I am living it,” she said.

Monica knew that she had been adopted from Bihar. But we were able to give her more details about the circumstances of her adoption.

Earlier this year, Monica travelled to Bihar to meet Anila and Siro.

Monica saw herself as the culmination of years of hard work by Anila and the midwives.

“Someone prepares a lot to do well in an exam. I feel like that. They did the hard work and now they’re so curious to meet the result… So definitely, I would like to meet them.”

Anila wept tears of joy when she met Monica. But Siro’s response felt different.

She sobbed hard, holding Monica close and combing through her hair.

“I took you [to the orphanage] to save your life… My soul is at peace now,” she told her.

But when, a couple of days later, I attempted to press Siro about her reaction, she resisted further scrutiny.

“What happened in the past is in the past,” she said.

But what is not in the past is the prejudice some still hold against baby girls.

Reports of infanticide are now relatively rare, but sex-selective abortion remains common, despite being illegal since 1994.

If one listens to the traditional folk songs sung during childbirth, known as Sohar, in parts of north India, joy is reserved for the birth of a male child. Even in 2024, it is an effort to get local singers to change the lyrics so that the song celebrates the birth of a girl.

While we were filming our documentary, two baby girls were discovered abandoned in Katihar – one in bushes, another at the roadside, just a few hours old. One later died. The other was put up for adoption.

Before Monica left Bihar, she visited this baby in the Special Adoption Centre in Katihar.

She says she was haunted by the realisation that though female infanticide may have been reduced, abandoning baby girls continues.

“This is a cycle… I can see myself there a few years ago, and now again there’s some girl similar to me.”

But there were to be happier similarities too.

The baby has now been adopted by a couple in the north-eastern state of Assam. They have named her Edha, which means happiness.

“We saw her photo, and we were clear – a baby once abandoned cannot be abandoned twice,” says her adoptive father Gaurav, an officer in the Indian air force.

Every few weeks Gaurav sends me a video of Edha’s latest antics. I sometimes share them with Monica.

Looking back, the 30 years spent on this story were never just about the past. It was about confronting uncomfortable truths. The past cannot be undone, but it can be transformed.

And in that transformation, there is hope.

President Joe Biden has hinted at Washington lifting restrictions on Ukraine using US long-range missiles against Russia.

If granted, it would fulfil repeated requests by Ukraine to loosen the limits on US-supplied weapons, which officials have said has left them fighting against Russia’s full-scale invasion with their hands tied.

Russia is yet to comment but President Vladimir Putin has previously said such action could lead to “very serious problems”.

Biden’s remarks come after US Secretary of State Antony Blinken accused Iran of supplying short-range ballistic missiles to Russia.

Asked by reporters if the US would lift restrictions on Ukraine’s use of long-range weapons on Tuesday, President Biden said his administration was “working that out now”.

Since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the US has been reluctant to supply or sanction the use of weapons that could strike targets deep inside Russia for fear it would escalate the conflict.

It has however loosened some of the restraints on such missile use, allowing Ukraine to use long-range missiles to strike areas along Russia’s border where troops are firing from.

Kyiv’s other allies have also been supplying some long-range weapons – with restrictions on how and when they can be used inside Russia, out of concern such strikes could prompt retaliation that draws Nato countries into the war or provokes a nuclear conflict.

In recent months Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has criticised the pace of weapons deliveries, and asked for authorisation to strike targets deep inside Russia with Western-supplied missiles – a move the US has thus far resisted.

Russia’s leader Putin also warned earlier this year that attacks by Ukraine on Russia with Western missiles risked triggering a wider war.

“Constant escalation can lead to serious consequences,” he said in May. “Do they want a global conflict?”

He added responsibility for any strikes inside Russia’s territory would lie with Western arms suppliers, even if Ukraine’s forces carried out the strikes.

• Ukraine in maps: Tracking the war with Russia
• What arms are the UK and other countries supplying?

Separately on Tuesday, the US, UK, France and Germany imposed fresh sanctions on Iran for supplying Russia with ballistic missiles for use in Ukraine.

Measures included restrictions on national carrier Iran Air’s ability to fly to the UK and Europe – as well as travel bans and asset freezes on a number of Iranians accused of facilitating military support for Russia.

Visiting London, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Russians had been trained by Iranian forces to use short-range ballistic missiles and that they could be deployed against Ukrainians within weeks.

The missiles are likely to boost Russia’s arsenal, enabling it to hit Ukrainian cities close to Russia’s borders or areas it already controls at the same time as it deploys its longer-range missiles deeper into Ukrainian territory.

Iran has repeatedly denied supplying such self-guided weapons to Russia.

UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy described Iran’s move as “a significant and dangerous escalation”.

Blinken and Lammy are travelling to Kyiv together on Wednesday, where they will meet President Zelensky.

Blinken said one of their goals ahead of the visit was to “hear directly from the Ukrainian leadership” about their “objectives and what we can do to support those needs”.

Foo Fighters frontman Dave Grohl has announced he has become the father to a baby girl born “outside of my marriage”.

In an Instagram post on Tuesday, the 55-year-old said he planned to be a “loving and supportive parent” to his new daughter.

Grohl has three daughters with his wife Jordyn Blum whom he married in 2003.

In his social media post, Grohl said he loved his family and was doing “everything I can to regain their trust and earn their forgiveness”.

“We’re grateful for your consideration toward all the children involved, as we move forward together. Dave.”

The post contains no details about who the mother of his new child is.

Grohl has turned off the comments on his Instagram post.

His wife Blum worked as a TV producer and model and the two are parents to daughters Violet Maye, 18, Harper Willow, 15, and Ophelia Saint, 10.

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He was previously married to photographer Jennifer Leigh Youngblood from 1994 until 1997.

They divorced after he admitted to being unfaithful during the marriage.

Grohl played drums in the pioneering grunge band Nirvana from 1990 until 1994 when lead singer Kurt Cobain died aged 27.

He went on to form Foo Fighters and has scored a number of chart-topping albums including their most recent effort, 2023’s But Here We Are.

The daily English lessons that Shabana attends are the highlight of her day. Taking the bus in Kabul to the private course with her friends, chatting and laughing with them, learning something new for one hour each day – it’s a brief respite from the emptiness that has engulfed her life since the Taliban took over Afghanistan.

In another country, Shabana* would have been graduating from high school next year, pursuing her dream to get a business degree. In Afghanistan, she and all teenage girls have been barred from formal education for three years.

Now even the small joys that were making life bearable are fraught with fear after a new law was announced saying if a woman is outside her home, even her voice must not be heard.

“When we got out, we’re scared. When we’re on the bus, we’re scared. We don’t dare to take down our masks. We even avoid speaking among ourselves, thinking that if someone from the Taliban hears us they could stop and question us,” she says.

The BBC has been in Afghanistan, allowing rare access to the country’s women and girls – as well as Taliban spokespeople – reacting to the new law, which was imposed by the Taliban’s supreme leader Haibatullah Akhundzada.

The law gives the Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice Ministry – the Taliban’s morality police – sweeping powers to enforce a stringent code of conduct for Afghan citizens.

For women who have already had their freedoms crushed bit by bit by a relentless series of decrees, it delivers another blow.

“If we can’t speak, why even live? We’re like dead bodies moving around,” Shabana says.

“When I learnt about the new law, I decided not to attend the course any more. Because if I go out, I’ll end up speaking and then something bad might happen. Maybe I won’t return home safely. But then my mother encouraged me to continue.”

In the three years since the Taliban takeover, it’s become clear that even if edicts aren’t strictly imposed, people start self-regulating out of fear. Women continue to be visible in small numbers on the streets of cities like Kabul, but nearly all of them now are covered from head to toe in loose black clothes or dark blue burqas, and most of them cover their faces with only their eyes visible, the impact of a decree announced last year.

“Every moment you feel like you’re in a prison. Even breathing has become difficult here,” said Nausheen, an activist.

Until last year, whenever new restrictions were announced, she was among small groups of women who marched on the streets of Kabul and other cities, demanding their rights.

The protests were violently cracked down on by the Taliban’s forces on multiple occasions, until they stopped altogether.

Nausheen was detained last year. “The Taliban dragged me into a vehicle saying ‘Why are you acting against us? This is an Islamic system.’ They took me to a dark, frightening place and held me there, using terrible language against me. They also beat me,” she says, breaking down into tears.

“When we were released from detention we were not the same people as before and that’s why we stopped protesting,” she adds. “I don’t want to be humiliated any more because I’m a woman. It is better to die than to live like this.”

Now Afghan women are showing their dissent by posting videos of themselves online, their faces covered, singing songs about freedom. “Let’s become one voice, let’s walk together holding hands and become free of this cruelty” are the lines of one such song.

Taliban government deputy spokesman Hamdullah Fitrat, who didn’t want to be pictured with a woman or sit directly opposite me, justified the new edict, which came accompanied with copious footnotes – references to religious texts.

“The law approved by the supreme leader is in accordance with Islamic Sharia law. Any religious scholar can check its references,” he says.

Shireen, a teacher, does not agree.

“This is their own interpretation of Sharia. Islam has given the right to both men and women to choose if they want to study and progress.

“If they say that women’s voices should not be heard, let’s go back to history. There are so many women in Islamic history who have spoken out.”

Shireen is part of a network of Afghan women running secret schools quietly rebelling against the restrictions. Already operating under a great deal of risk, often having to move the location of the school for safety, the new law has compounded her fears.

The danger of discovery is so great, she cannot speak to us at home, instead choosing a discreet location.

“Every morning I wake up asking God to make the day pass safely. When the new law came, I explained all its rules to my students and told them things would be more difficult. But I am so tired of all this, sometimes I just want to scream,” she says. “They don’t see women as human beings, just as tools whose only place is inside the home.”

Karina, a psychologist who consults with a network of secret schools, has previously told us that Afghan women are suffering from a ‘pandemic of suicidal thoughts’ because of the restrictions against them.

After the new law was announced she says she had a surge in calls asking for help. “A friend of mine messaged me to say this was her last message. She was thinking of ending her life. They feel all hope is gone and there is no point in continuing living,” she said. “And it’s becoming more and more difficult to counsel them.”

I asked Hamdullah Fitrat about the Taliban government’s responsibility towards women and girls in their country who are being driven into depression and suicidal thoughts because they’re banned from education.

“Our sisters’ education is an important issue. We’re trying to resolve this issue which is the demand of a lot of our sisters,” the spokesman said.

But three years on, do they really expect people to believe them?

“We are awaiting a decision from our leadership. When it is made, we will all be told about it,” he replied.

From earlier meetings with Taliban officials, it has been evident for a while that there are divisions within the Taliban government on the issue of women’s education, with some wanting it to be restarted. But the Kandahar-based leadership has remained intransigent, and there has been no public breaking of ranks with the supreme leader’s diktats.

We have seen some evidence of the difference in views. Not far from Kabul, we were unexpectedly given access to a midwife training course regularly run by the Taliban’s public health ministry. It was under way when we visited, and because ours was a last-minute visit, we know it was not put on for us to see.

More than a dozen women in their 20s were attending the course being conducted by a senior female doctor. The course is a mix of theory and practical sessions.

The students couldn’t speak freely but many said they were happy to be able to do this work.

“My family feels so proud of me. I have left my children at home to come here, but they know I’m serving the country. This works gives me so much positive energy,” said Safia.

Many acknowledged their privilege, and some expressed fear about whether even this might be stopped eventually. The Taliban’s health ministry didn’t answer questions about how they would find students to do this course in the future, if girls were not receiving formal education after grade six.

Public health, security, arts and craft are among a handful of sectors where women have been able to continue working in parts of the country. But it isn’t a formal decree that gives them permission. It’s happening through a quiet understanding between ground-level Taliban officials, NGOs and other stakeholders involved.

The new law leaves even this informal system vulnerable to the scrutiny of the Taliban’s morality police.

Sources in humanitarian agencies have told us they are grappling to understand how the law should be interpreted but they believe it will make operations more difficult.

The law was announced less than two months after the Taliban attended UN-led talks on engagement with Afghanistan for the first time – a meeting that Afghan civil society representatives and women’s rights activists had been kept out of, at the insistence of the Taliban.

It’s led many in the international community to question whether it was worth accepting the Taliban’s conditions for a meeting, and what the future of engagement with them might look like.

Reacting to the new law, the EU put out a sharply worded statement describing the restrictions as ‘systematic and systemic abuses… which may amount to gender persecution which is a crime against humanity’. It also said the decree creates ‘another self-imposed obstacle to normalised relations and recognition by the international community’.

“The values laid out in the law are accepted in Afghan society. There are no problems. We want the international community, especially the UN and others to respect Islamic laws, traditions and the values of Muslim societies,” Taliban deputy spokesman Hamdullah Fitrat said.

Less than two weeks ago the Taliban’s Vice and Virtue Ministry said it would no longer co-operate with the UN mission in Afghanistan because of its criticism of the law.

It’s evidence that relations which seemed to be progressing just two months ago, appear to have now hit a significant roadblock.

“I believe that when it comes to aid, the world should continue helping Afghanistan. But when it comes to talking to the Taliban, there should be a rule that in each discussion women must be present. And if that can’t happen, they [the international community] should stop talking to them,” psychologist Karina said.

“The world must care about what’s happening with Afghan women, because if it doesn’t this mentality could easily spread to them, to their homes.”

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

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

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

She promises to ban price-gouging on groceries, help first-time home buyers and provide incentives to increase housing supply.

Trump has promised to “end inflation and make America affordable again”.

He has promised to deliver lower interest rates, something the president does not control, and he says deporting undocumented immigrants will ease pressure on housing.

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

Trump has struggled to find a consistent message in recent weeks.

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

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

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

Trump has vowed to seal the border by completing the construction of a wall and increasing enforcement. But he urged Republicans to ditch a hardline, cross-party border bill, backed by Harris.

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

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

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

Trump proposes a number of tax cuts worth trillions, including an extension of his 2017 cuts which mostly helped the wealthy. He says he will pay for them through higher growth and tariffs on imports.

Analysts say both tax plans will add to the ballooning deficit, but Trump’s by more.

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

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

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

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

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

Harris has criticised Trump’s sweeping plan to put tariffs on imports, calling it a national tax on working families which will cost each household $4,000 a year. She is expected to have a more targeted approach to taxing imports.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Trump has said he will not renew his attempts while president to dismantle the Affordable Care Act, which extended insurance to millions more people.

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

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

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

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After years of rumour, speculation and hype, Sony has confirmed it is launching a more powerful – and much more expensive – version of its hugely popular PlayStation 5 console.

The PS5 Pro will be able to show more advanced graphics and display the most demanding games at higher, more consistent frame rates.

But that added power will come at a cost: the PS5 Pro will be the most expensive console from Sony to date.

It will cost £699.99 when it launches on 7 November this year – hundreds of pounds more than the PS5.

“The price point of the PS5 Pro will inevitably cause a lot of commentary,” analyst Piers Harding-Rolls from research firm Ampere said.

He said the firm appeared to be betting that the console’s improved performance would encourage users to upgrade their existing hardware and spend more on software.

Mark Cerny, lead architect of the PS5, said it was “the most powerful console we’ve ever built”.

He said it sought to resolve a problem gamers had faced for years – whether to play a console game in so-called “fidelity mode”, which favours visuals, or “performance mode”, which makes a game smoother, though at the cost to how it looks.

He said the PS5 Pro was about “removing that decision, or at least narrowing that divide”.

GamesIndustry.biz head Christopher Dring told the BBC it was “a very targeted console” for PlayStation’s “most enthusiastic audience”.

“The console industry has had a tough time this year, with falling sales of PS5, Xbox Series S and X, and the ageing Nintendo Switch,” he said.

“PS5 Pro isn’t going to change that situation.”

But he said Sony might have one eye on the most anticipated game in the world – Grand Theft Auto VI – which is due to release next year.

“When GTA 6 does launch, PlayStation will be able to say to players that the game will look best on PS5 Pro,” he said.

Companies have released updated versions of their own consoles with minor revisions for decades, but this release indicates the comparatively new trend of “pro” hardware is here to stay.

Generally, this means hardware changes to current-generation consoles that lets games look better – but critically these tweaked consoles don’t have exclusive games.

In other words, games will still be released for PS5, and gamers can choose whether to play them on a regular console or a pro model with differences in graphics and performance.

Paul Tamburro, from news website PlayStation LifeStyle, said fans had been hoping the console could “bridge the gap” between performance and fidelity modes, and the upgrade would help.

“However, it also feels that the console doesn’t do enough to justify that steep price point,” he said.

“It launching without a disc drive and still only targeting 60 FPS is disappointing.

“This isn’t an easy sell to current PS5 owners.”

It’s Sony’s second major foray into this space after 2016’s PS4 Pro, which brought 4k graphics to the original PlayStation 4.

And it comes three years after Nintendo released its own take on a pro model – a Nintendo Switch with a larger, better screen.

Today’s announcement from Sony is not as significant as the PS4’s jump to 4k graphics, but it still represents a step forward in home consoles.

It comes at a time when PCs have been getting increasingly powerful, with the release of Nvidia’s Geforce 40 series of graphics cards in 2022, which have put PCs firmly ahead of home consoles in the race for the best visuals.

But it’s worth remembering just one of these graphics cards can cost as much as a whole PS5, so consoles tend to strike a balance between the best visuals and the best price.

Like with the last console generation, this release means Sony will now have multiple versions of its PS5 available to consumers, with different price points and specs.

Rumours spread widely ahead of the announcement, with fans speculating on the features an upgraded console might have.

Chief among them were unsourced claims that the PS5 Pro would be backwards compatible with games from previous Sony consoles – with some reports suggesting this would go as far back as the original PlayStation.

There was nothing in the announcement to confirm the rumours.