Ryan Wesley Routh has been identified by US media as a suspect following the apparent assassination attempt on US Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump in Florida.

Mr Routh, 58, is from North Carolina originally and spent most of his life there, according to property records, but has most recently lived in Hawaii.

His known activity paints a mixed picture of his politics, and he appears to have felt strongly about Ukraine’s war effort. He has also had a number of legal issues.

Here are some of the other things we know about him.

He is suspected of going to the Trump International Golf Course in Florida on Sunday, armed with an AK-47-style rifle. The FBI recovered the weapon and scope, two backpacks and a GoPro camera from the bush where the suspect hid.

Although Routh managed to escape in his car, he appears to have been spotted by a witness who took a photo of the black Nissan he was driving.

An urgent alert was put out for the car. Palm Beach County Sheriff Ric Bradshaw said two officers picked up Mr Routh’s vehicle 45 minutes after the gun was spotted at the golf course, and followed it.

He was eventually stopped on Interstate 95 and taken into custody.

BBC Verify has found social media profiles matching Mr Routh’s name. They indicate that he called for foreign fighters to go to Ukraine to battle against Russian forces.

“I am coming to Ukraine from Hawaii to fight for your kids and families and democracy.. I will come and die for you,” a post on X reads, according to the BBC’s US partner, CBS News.

There are also pro-Palestinian, pro-Taiwan and anti-China messages on his profile, including allegations about Chinese “biological warfare” and references to the Covid-19 virus as an “attack”.

CBS reported that Mr Routh supported President Trump at one point, writing in a post on X that the Republican was “my choice in 2016”, but that he was “getting worse and devolving” and continuing: “I will be glad when you [are] gone.”

Mr Routh has also been seen online urging President Joe Biden and Vice-President Harris to meet victims of a shooting in Butler, Pennsylvania, when another attempt was made on Trump’s life in July.

Mr Routh told the New York Times in 2023 that he wanted to assist the war effort in Ukraine, and was seeking to recruit Afghan soldiers who had fled the Taliban.

In a telephone interview with the paper, he said dozens of soldiers were interested and that he planned to move them from Pakistan and Iran to Ukraine, in some cases illegally.

“We can probably purchase some passports through Pakistan, since it’s such a corrupt country,” he said.

Routh also told the newspaper at the time that he was in Washington to meet with the US Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe to help push for more support for Ukraine.

Routh appears to have been engaged in recruitment efforts as recently as July.

One Facebook post from July read in part: “Soldiers, please do not call me. We are still trying to get Ukraine to accept Afghan soldiers and hope to have some answers in the coming months… please have patience.”

Ukraine’s International Legion of foreign volunteers has denied having any links, and other Ukrainian officials have distanced themselves from him. President Volodymyr Zelensky has condemned political violence.

“Playing with fire has its consequences,” said Russian government spokesman Dmitry Peskov, in comments quoted by the Reuters news agency.

• Follow live: Latest updates and analysis on apparent Trump assassination attempt
• Trump thanks Secret Service – but is he protected enough?
• Analysis: Political violence becomes America’s new norm – but is still shocking
• What we know about the attack

Records show Mr Routh’s legal issues go back to the 1990s, including lesser charges writing bad cheques, according to CBS.

Mr Routh was charged and convicted of numerous felony offences in Guilford County in North Carolina between 2002 and 2010, CBS reported.

In 2002, US media said he was charged for possession of a fully automatic machine gun, which was referred to in court filings as a “weapon on mass destruction”.

In another incident, records show him being charged with misdemeanours including a hit-and-run, resisting arrest, and a concealed weapons violation.

His alleged offences also include driving with a revoked licence, possession of stolen property, and hit-and-run with a motor vehicle.

Former neighbour Kim Mungo, who describes Mr Routh as a “sweetheart”, said federal agents once raided Mr Routh’s property.

She alleged that he used to keep “loads of stolen property and stuff” at his home. And she said she saw Routh and his family firing guns in the open.

CBS reported Mr Routh voted Democratic and in person during the party’s 2024 primary in North Carolina, according to the state’s Board of Elections.

He is reportedly registered as an unaffiliated voter, despite the social media post saying he had backed Trump in 2016.

Mr Routh’s son has described him as “a loving and caring father, and honest hardworking man”.

His eldest son, Oran, spoke to CNN via text message, saying: “I don’t know what’s happened in Florida, and I hope things have just been blown out of proportion, because from the little I’ve heard it doesn’t sound like the man I know to do anything crazy, much less violent.”

Mr Routh remains in custody and no official charges have yet been filed against him. He is expected to appear in front of a judge later on Monday at the Palm Beach County courthouse near Mar-a-Lago.

It is unclear if he actually fired his weapon during the incident.

“We are not sure right now if the individual was able to take a shot at our agents, but for sure our agents were able to engage with the suspect,” said Rafael Barros from the Secret Service Miami Field Office.

He said measures were taken after the previous assassination attempt on Trump in Pennsylvania and “the threat level is high”.

The FBI has announced an investigation, and says it is working with local law enforcement agencies.

Secret Service and Homeland Security agents have also searched Mr Routh’s former home of in Greensboro, North Carolina.

TikTok argued in court on Monday that a US law – which would see it banned unless it is sold by ByteDance – would have a “staggering” impact on the free speech of its US users.

The law was prompted by concerns that US users’ data is vulnerable to exploitation by China’s government.

TikTok and ByteDance have repeatedly denied links to the Chinese authorities.

The companies sued to block the legislation in early May, calling it unconstitutional and an effective ban on the speech of its 170 million US users.

A panel of three judges heard its arguments at an appeals court in Washington DC on Monday.

“This law imposes extraordinary speech prohibition based on indeterminate future risks,” TikTok and ByteDance’s lawyer Andrew Pincus told the court.

Concerns around China came up early, with Mr Pincus stating that the firm “is not owned” by the country.

“The owner of TikTok is ByteDance Limited, a Cayman Islands holding company,” he said.

But Judge Sri Srinivasan responded that the firm was “subject to Chinese control”.

Mr Pincus said the US government does not allege any malfeasance has taken place – and the firm was being punished over the suggestion that there might be issues in the future.

But he was challenged on his argument that the law would be an unprecedented ban.

Judge Ginsberg argued the law is “an absolute bar on the current arrangement of control” of the company, not the company itself.

He also said it targeted a group of companies controlled by a so-called foreign adversary, rather than TikTok alone.

Jeffrey Fisher, representing creators concerned by the law, said it would impede their constitutional right to work with the editor and publisher of their choice – such as TikTok under its current ownership.

Lawyers from the Department of Justice (DoJ) are also laying out their case.

In addition to data concerns, officials and lawmakers have expressed alarm at the prospect of TikTok being used by the Chinese government to spread propaganda to Americans.

However, advocates of America’s powerful free speech rights, enshrined in the First Amendment of the US Constitution, have said upholding the divest-or-ban law would be a gift to authoritarian regimes everywhere.

“We shouldn’t be surprised if repressive governments the world over cite this precedent to justify new restrictions on their own citizens’ right to access information, ideas, and media from abroad,” said Xiangnong Wang, a staff attorney at Columbia University’s Knight First Amendment Institute.

But according to James Lewis, of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, the law was drafted to withstand judicial scrutiny.

“The substance of the case against TikTok is very strong,” Mr Lewis said.

“The key point is whether the court accepts that requiring divestiture does not regulate speech.”

Mr Lewis added that the courts usually defer to the president on national security matters.

Regardless of how the appeals court rules, most experts agree the case could drag on for months, if not longer.

Mike Proulx, vice president and research director at analysis firm Forrester, added the “high stakes” case would likely progress to the US’ highest court, the Supreme Court.

Hundreds of thousands of people were evacuated as a powerful typhoon made landfall near China’s financial hub, Shanghai.

Typhoon Bebinca hit at about 07:30 local time (23:30 GMT) on Monday in the coastal area of Lingang New City in Shanghai’s east, the China Meteorological Administration said.

It is the strongest storm to hit Shanghai in 75 years, according to Chinese state media.

As a precaution, more than 400,000 people in the Shanghai Metropolitan area were relocated by Sunday evening, according to local officials.

A further 9,000 people were evacuated from the Chongming District, an island at the mouth of the Yangtze River that is also part of Shanghai.

Hundreds of flights were cancelled as the city’s two main airports grounded all flights. Train services were also cancelled and highways closed. A 40km/h (25mph) speed limit was imposed on roads inside the city.

Shanghai’s 25 million residents had been advised to stay home as the storm batters the city.

Authorities have issued a red alert for Bebinca, the highest level, as wind speeds of up to 151km/h (94 mph) were recorded at the typhoon’s eye. It is expected to weaken as it moves inland.

Videos posted online showed large trees toppled and people dragging their bicycles and motorcycles through flooded streets. A clip shared by Shanghai Daily showed a bus braking abruptly along Huaihai Road in a major shopping district as billboards blown by fierce winds collapsed onto the ground.

The storm was one of the most-discussed topics on Chinese social media platform Weibo on Monday, with some users sharing their fears that it would worsen.

“This is the kind of thing you’d only see on television,” wrote one Weibo user, who posted a video of trees swaying violently in a car park.

Another user advised others to make sure their doors and windows are properly locked and not to leave their homes unnecessarily.

It is rare for Shanghai to get a direct hit from strong typhoons, which tend to make landfall further south in China.

The city’s flood control headquarters said they received dozens of reports of incidents related to the typhoon – mostly fallen trees and billboards.

Resorts in Shanghai, including Shanghai Disney Resort, Jinjiang Amusement Park and Shanghai Wild Animal Park, have been temporarily closed and many ferries halted.

Another typhoon, Yagi, killed at least four people and injured 95 when it passed through China’s southern Hainan island this month, according to national weather authorities.

Yagi also caused severe flooding in Southeast Asia, killing hundreds of people in Vietnam and Myanmar.

Typhoon Bebinca also passed through Japan and the central and southern Philippines, where falling trees killed six people.

Chinese state media said Bebinca was expected to move north-west, causing heavy rain and high winds in Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Anhui provinces.

On a bright September afternoon, a caravan of colourful cars, festooned with flags, arrives at a village in Indian-administered Kashmir for an election rally.

Iltija Mufti, a politician from the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), slowly rises from the sunroof of one of the cars.

“Yeli ye Mufti (When Mufti will be in power),” she shouts at a crowd that has gathered to hear the third-generation leader of one of the most influential political dynasties of the region.

“Teli Tch’le Sakhti (Then the repression will end),” they respond in unison.

From a distance, army personnel in bulletproof jackets, armed with automatic rifles, stand watch, tracking every movement.

For the first time in a decade, elections are being held in 47 assembly seats of Kashmir, long marked by violence and unrest. The region, claimed by both India and Pakistan, has been the cause of three wars between the nuclear-armed neighbours. Since the 1990s, an armed insurgency against Indian rule has claimed thousands of lives, including civilians and security forces.

The three-phase polls will also extend to the 43 seats in the neighbouring Hindu-majority Jammu region.

The election is the first since 2019, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government revoked Jammu and Kashmir’s autonomy, stripped its statehood, and split it into two federally-administered territories. Since then, the region has been governed by a federal administrator.

• Article 370: What happened with Kashmir and why it matters

In the fray are 13 main parties vying for a majority in the 90-seat assembly.

The major players are the two main regional parties – the PDP led by Mehbooba Mufti and the National Conference (NC) which is headed by Omar Abdullah. Both Mufti and Abdullah are former chief ministers of the region.

The NC has formed an alliance with India’s main opposition party Congress.

Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is also contesting but not many are betting on the party, which has a stronghold in Jammu but a weak political base in the valley.

In the last elections in 2014, the BJP had formed a government in alliance with PDP after sweeping Jammu. The alliance fell apart in 2018 after years of disagreements.

Also in the picture, this time, is Engineer Rashid – a controversial politician who has spent five years in jail accused in a terror case and was released on bail this week. Rashid came to limelight earlier this year when he pulled off a stunning victory in the general election over Abdullah. He fought the election from jail, with his sons leading an emotional campaign on the ground.

Elections in Kashmir have long been contentious, with residents and separatist leaders often boycotting them, viewing the process as Delhi’s attempt to legitimise its control.

Since 1947, Kashmir has held 12 assembly elections, but voter turnout has often been low and marked by violence. Militants have attacked polling stations, and security forces have been accused of forcing voters to come out and vote. Since the 1990s, hundreds of political workers have been kidnapped or killed by militant groups.

But for the first time in decades, even separatist leaders are contesting in several seats.

The most keenly watched of these is the outlawed Jamaat-e-Islami (JEI) party, which has joined hands with Rashid’s Awami Ittehad Party (AIP).

Residents will vote to elect a local assembly, led by a chief minister and council of ministers. Though the assembly will have limited powers under Delhi’s rule, it has sparked hopes for a political change in the valley.

Almost all opposition parties have pledged to restore statehood and the region’s special status. The BJP has ruled out restoring autonomy but has promised to reinstate statehood to Jammu and Kashmir “at an appropriate time after the elections”.

Most residents appeared to be reconciled to the loss of their region’s autonomy.

“I don’t think Article 370 will come back unless any miracle happens,” said Suheel Mir, a research scholar, adding that parties were making promises about restoring autonomy in a “politically charged” atmosphere to get votes.

Several young men and women said they were more concerned about issues like political instability, corruption and most of all, unemployment – also a major concern in Jammu.

“We want to cast our vote to resolve our day-to-day issues. It has nothing to do with the Kashmir dispute,” said a man who did not wish to be named.

But others said they didn’t want to give the impression that they had accepted the events of 2019 and would participate in the election solely to vote against the BJP.

“We want to send a message to the government that the revocation is unacceptable to us no matter what,” said 38-year-old Zameer Ahmad.

Five years ago when Modi’s government abrogated Article 370, the 70-year-old constitutional provision that gave the region its autonomy, the government said it was necessary to restore normalcy in India’s only Muslim-majority region.

The move triggered a severe security clampdown, mass detentions, curfews and a months-long internet blackout, stripping residents of rights to jobs and land.

Since then, Modi and his ministers have extensively talked about a new era of peace and development in Kashmir, announcing projects worth hundreds of millions of dollars that they say are part of a plan to integrate the region’s economy with the rest of India. (Until Jammu and Kashmir’s special status was removed, outsiders could not buy land to do business there).

But locals say they have yet to see the benefits of such projects and continue to struggle with violence and high levels of unemployment.

Thousands of Indian army troops continue to be perpetually deployed there, with powers that have led to decades of allegations of human rights violations.

“There is an absence of democracy and freedoms in Kashmir and many political activists remain in jail,” said political scientist Noor Ahmad Baba.

“The election allows people to give their verdict for or against these changes.”

The change in mood is visible everywhere.

Across Jammu and Kashmir, streets are adorned with posters, party flags, and billboards and men at local bakeries freely discuss election outcomes over chai.

“There has been a complete overhaul of traditional political narratives,” said Tooba Punjabi, a researcher.

“Earlier, public boycotts defined elections. But now, it’s a means of putting the right party in place to undo damage.”

The shift in political attitudes was also evident earlier this year, when Kashmir registered a historic 58.46% voter turnout in the parliamentary election.

Many residents are now pinning their hopes on regional parties to raise their demands.

“These parties have acted as a shield between Delhi and Kashmir,” said businessman Tahir Hussain,” adding that “it didn’t matter who will form the government as long as it’s a local one”.

Analysts say the BJP’s performance could also receive a significant blow in Jammu this time, where internal discord and infighting has derailed its ambitions.

There’s also growing anger among the residents who are unhappy with the party’s policies.

Until now, the BJP’s push for development has resonated with people in Jammu who hope it would bring in more economic opportunities for them.

But many say they are yet to see any signs of change. “In fact, now that Article 370 has been scrapped, people from other states are coming to Jammu. Our rights on jobs and land are being taken away from us,” said Gulchain Singh Charak, a local politician.

Sunil Sethi, BJP’s chief spokesperson in the region, rejected the allegations.

“We have done massive infrastructure developments, build roads and brought foreign investors here,” he said.

On a cold winter’s day in June 2002, an intellectually disabled teenage girl disappeared from the New South Wales Riverina without a trace.

Since then, the mystery of what happened to Amber Haigh has captivated the vast Australian farming region, due to a stunning allegation: that the 19-year-old was killed by the father of her five-month-old baby and his wife, so that they could take her child.

Two decades on, Robert and Anne Geeves – both 64 – were charged with her murder, but on Monday were acquitted after a high-profile trial.

Justice Julia Lonergan found that prosecutors had failed to prove their alleged motive, saying: “Cases are not decided on rumour, speculation or suspicion.”

The Geeveses are the last known people to have seen Amber alive. They have long said they dropped her at a train station 300km (186 miles) from their home in Kingsvale – where the three had been living at the time – so that she could visit her dying father on 5 June.

Despite extensive police investigations, a coronial inquiry, and a million-dollar reward for information, her body has never been found.

Prosecutors relied on witness testimony and hundreds of documents to support their theory – that the Geeveses had “manipulated” Amber into having Robert’s baby, and then “removed” her “from the equation” when she wouldn’t relinquish custody.

The court heard the couple had an adult son – who had previously dated Amber – but in the early 2000s still “desperately” wanted another child, having endured several miscarriages and a stillbirth.

However, the defence said the allegation they killed Amber to steal her baby was baseless, and that the investigation into the pair – who have spent two years in prison awaiting trial – was flawed from the start.

They told the court a “haze of mistrust” had clouded the local community’s view of the Geeveses due to Robert’s history – which included acquittals for the murder of an ex-partner who was found shot in the face on his property, and sexual assault charges involving two schoolgirls.

That past, the Geeveses’ lawyers said, had created a “presumption of guilt” that persisted for decades, and ultimately “blinded” police as they looked for Amber.

Over nine weeks, dozens of witnesses gave evidence about the final months of the teen’s life – describing a “kind hearted” yet “vulnerable” young woman who struggled to discern between “love and exploitation”.

Two recalled how Amber had shared stories of abuse with them – including instances where Robert Geeves had allegedly plied her with alcohol, tied her up, and had sex with her.

And the couple’s son Robbie told the court that his mother had referred to his ex-girlfriend as a “surrogate” and that both parents had turned up at his home in the dead of night asking him to accept Amber’s child as his “little brother”.

The prosecution also tendered an agreement Amber made Robert sign, promising not to take her child, as well as a will she’d created stipulating her aunt be given custody of the baby in the event of her death.

“There was little sign, in the sea of evidence in this case, that Amber was ever shown the love she needed or deserved,” Justice Lonergan said, adding that it is clear “beyond a reasonable doubt” that she is dead.

But the judge ultimately found a critical “problem” with the prosecution’s case – there was “no satisfactory evidence” that Anne and Robert still held a desire for more children when Amber became pregnant.

She criticised the accounts of prosecution witnesses and said the investigation had focussed on “disproving the Geeveses version of events” rather than investigating the cause of Amber’s disappearance.

Looking at the couple as they sat in the dock, Justice Lonergan ordered that they be released from custody immediately.

One member of the public gallery stormed out of the courtroom to scream. Amber’s relatives, too, were visibly shaken, with some later quietly breaking down in tears outside court.

The prosecution and defence agreed on little throughout the trial – other than that Amber’s life had been exceptionally difficult, and that her death came prematurely.

“Amber went back and forth between places and people looking for love and solace. She never found it.

“She was still looking for it when she disappeared,” Justice Lonergan concluded.

The court heard that Amber had come to Kingsvale – an isolated suburb near the regional town of Young – in the 1990s to live with her great aunt Stella Nealon, after fleeing a “dysfunctional” childhood in Sydney marred by epilepsy, learning difficulties, and a violent alcoholic father.

Ms Nealon had lived next door to the Geeveses, who were both in their 40s at the time and were introduced to Amber by their 19-year-old son Robbie.

The court heard that Amber’s life at her great aunt’s house was volatile, and at times physically violent. Much of the tension stemmed from Amber’s relationship with one of her cousins, which had resulted in an abortion at age 14.

In police interviews played to the court, the Geeveses said they had offered Amber refuge and that she had entered a sexual relationship with Robert shortly after.

The Geeveses said that although their relationship with the teen may have seemed “weird” or confronting to outsiders, the three of them “got along very well”, with Anne telling police that Amber saw her as a maternal figure.

When it became clear in 2001 that Amber had fallen pregnant with Robert’s child, it caused a rupture within the local community, and ultimately severed Robbie’s relationship with his parents – an estrangement still apparent in court on Monday.

By all accounts, Amber “adored” her son, but social workers and friends testified that she’d also struggled to keep up with the ceaseless demands of motherhood.

The Geeveses have maintained that they did their best to help Amber navigate those challenges, and that they did so without vested interest.

And in her ruling, Justice Lonergan found “nothing sinister” in their “provision of assistance” for Amber and her child – whose privacy is still subject to strict legal protections.

Further, she said the “consistent” account given by the Geeveses – that they last saw Amber as she walked towards the station after kissing her son goodbye – was not “inherently implausible”.

Listing the details of the case, she noted that while it was clear Amber was “attacked, abused and made to feel unsafe” since childhood, the prosecution had failed to establish how she met her end.

She conceded it is an outcome which leaves some of the “factual matters” in the case – which has tortured so many close to it for decades – unresolved.

A series of shootouts between rival tribes over a disputed gold mine has left at least 30 people dead in Papua New Guinea, police said on Monday.

Security forces have been given emergency powers to stop the fighting – including the use of “lethal force” – according to the country’s police commissioner.

Alcohol sales have been banned and an overnight curfew is in place, he added.

Unrest had been brewing near the Porgera gold mine in the country’s central highlands ever since members of the Sakar clan settled on land owned by their rivals, the Piande, sometime in August.

Police say that on Sunday alone, more than 300 shots were fired by tribesmen, after peace talks between the clans had failed.

“This deteriorating situation has been caused by illegal miners and settlers who are using violence to terrorise local communities and victimise traditional landowners,” said Papua New Guinea’s police commissioner David Manning.

“Put simply, if you raise a weapon in a public place or to threaten another person, you will be shot,” he added.

There were reports in local media that the Canadian-owned mine – the second largest in Papua New Guinea – was briefly forced to cease operations as the fighting intensified.

Buildings were set on fire and schools, hospitals and government offices in the region have been closed, according to the Papua New Guinea Post-Courier.

Tribal conflicts are a frequent occurrence in Papua New Guinea’s highlands, but an influx of automatic weapons has “turbocharged” the most recent bout of violence, according to police.

The Porgera gold mine once accounted for around 10 percent of Papua New Guinea’s yearly export earnings, but tribal violence and a slow government takeover have stalled production in recent years.

A witness, speaking to Radio New Zealand, described the recent levels of violence as “unprecedented”.

At least 26 people were killed, including 16 children, when three villages in East Sepik province were attacked earlier this year.

In 2022, gunfights between rival clans living near the mine killed at least 17 people.

Security teams have been posted along the highway leading to the mine, using loudhailers to broadcast messages of peace.

Pope Francis urged Papua New Guinea to “stop the spiral” of violence during a visit earlier this month.

“It is my particular hope that tribal violence will come to an end,” he said.

“It causes many victims, prevents people from living in peace and hinders development.”

The BBC has reached out to PNG Police for comment.

A shy yellow-eyed penguin has come out on top of one of New Zealand’s most contested competitions to win Bird of the Year.

More than 50,000 people voted in the competition – which has in the past seen its fair share of scandal – including claims of foreign interference and allegations of cheating.

Last year, the pūteketeke won the competition after comedian John Oliver threw his weight behind it, launching a campaign that involved him dressing up as the bird, complete with a striking burnt-orange mullet.

Thought to be one of the world’s rarest penguin species, the hoiho can be found only in New Zealand.

According to Forest & Bird, the organisation that runs the competition, the hoiho secured a victory with 6,328 votes – ahead of the Karure Chatham Island black robin with more than 5,000 votes.

This is the second time the hoiho has swooped in to win the competition, having also come in first in 2019 – the same year where allegations arose that the hoiho had only won after Russian interference.

Hundreds of votes for the bird were found to have come from Russia, though Forest & Bird said these were likely not fradulent votes, but those from Russian ornithologists.

In 2018, there were also claims that Australians tried to rig the contest in favour of the shag – a species of cormorant.

The hoiho, whose Maori name means “noise shouter”, is notoriously shy despite its loud, shrill call, says the organisation, who said the win would raise conservation efforts for the species.

It is an endangered species or three steps away from extinction and its numbers are decreasing, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources.

“This spotlight couldn’t have come at a better time,” said Forest & Bird’s chief executive Nicola Toki. “This iconic penguin is disappearing from mainland Aotearoa (New Zealand) before our eyes.”

Conservation efforts are taking place on land but Ms Toki says they are also needed at sea.

“They’re drowning in set nets and can’t find enough food,” she said. “Our hoiho urgently need marine protected areas to give them a shot at survival.”

Disgraced BBC News presenter Huw Edwards has been given a six-month prison sentence, suspended for two years, after he admitted charges of making indecent images of children.

The court heard that Edwards replied “yes xxx” when asked in a WhatsApp chat whether he wanted sexual images of a person whose “age could be discerned as being between 14 and 16”.

He will be placed on the sex offenders’ register for seven years.

In July, the former newsreader admitted having 41 images, which were sent to him on WhatsApp – including some showing a victim aged between seven and nine.

During his sentencing at Westminster Magistrates’ Court he was also told to attend a sex offender treatment programme.

Edwards was sent images by a 25-year-old convicted sex offender called Alex Williams. The court heard that when Williams asked Edwards if he wanted more images of young people, Edwards replied: “Go on.” Another time he said: “Amazing.”

The judge remarked that the former broadcaster’s “long-earned reputation” was “in tatters”.

A BBC spokesperson said the corporation was “appalled” by Edwards’ crimes.

“He has betrayed not just the BBC, but audiences who put their trust in him.”

Edwards pleaded guilty to three counts of making indecent images of children. Under the law, images can mean photos or clips.

The court previously heard that Edwards sent hundreds of pounds to a convicted sex offender after they sent him pornographic images.

While most of the images were of adult men, a significant proportion of the images were of children.

Of the 377 images, 41 were indecent images, which means they were underage.

The court heard that the Category A images Edwards was in possession of were mostly children aged 13-15.

One child was aged between seven and nine.

The offences were committed between December 2020 and August 2021.

Williams first contacted Edwards in 2018 via Instagram, and has since been convicted and sentenced for distribution and possession of indecent images of children – and it was during that investigation that Edwards’ involvement was revealed, the court heard.

Summing up the case, the chief magistrate, District Judge Paul Goldspring, accepted Edwards’ submission that he did not make or create the images in the conventional sense, and instead met the legal definition of doing so by opening them on WhatsApp.

There was no evidence that Edwards did anything further with the images, the magistrate said.

The court heard Edwards had not directly paid for the images, but that there was a clear inference that Williams would request gifts and presents after sending them, and that Edwards had sent money, described by the prosecution as amounting to around £1,000 to £1,500.

Edwards had told Williams not to send images of people who were underage, but only at a later stage, the magistrate said, adding “this is not a case where, despite protestation not to, nonetheless the images were still sent”.

But the magistrate found Edwards’ remorse was genuine, and he said the former broadcaster’s decision-making at the time of the offences may have been impaired by his mental health.

He said Edwards did not pose a risk to the public or children and an immediate custodial sentence was not necessary because the evidence showed he could be rehabilitated.

The appropriate sentence would be 12 months for the most severe abuse images, the magistrate said, but, taking into account the mitigation and early guilty plea, he said the sentence would be six months suspended for two years.

It means Edwards will not go to jail unless he commits another offence within the sentence period.

The magistrate also read from a pre-sentence report to highlight the impact such offences have on the victims.

It described how distributing child abuse images “perpetuates a cycle of abuse” and can lead to ongoing traumatisation of victims, impacting them throughout their lives and potentially making them vulnerable to further sexual abuse.

Edwards was found to have seven category A images – the most serious classification, which show serious abuse including penetrative sexual activity.

He also had 12 category B pictures, which involve non-penetrative sexual activity, and 22 photographs in category C, which covers other indecent images. The category B and C pictures showed children aged between 12 to 15.

Until last year, Edwards was one of the main presenters on BBC One’s News at Ten and often fronted coverage of major national events.

He was the BBC’s highest-paid journalist, receiving between £475,000-£479,999 between April 2023 and April 2024.

The BBC has asked him to return the £200,000 he earned between his arrest last November and his resignation this April.

The BBC’s director general said last week that “discussions are under way” about the possibility of clawing back the money.

“Making” indecent images can have a wide legal definition, and covers more than simply taking or filming the original picture or clip.

The Crown Prosecution Service says it can include:

• opening an email attachment containing an image
• downloading an image from a website to a screen
• storing an image on a computer
• accessing a pornographic website in which an image appears in an automatic “pop-up” window
• receiving an image via social media, even if unsolicited and even if part of a group
• or live-streaming images of children

A court must also decide whether an offence falls into the category of possession, distribution or production.

According to the Sentencing Council, which issues guidelines on sentencing that the courts must follow unless it is in the interests of justice not to do so, creating the original image counts as production – the more serious of the three categories. It adds that “making an image by simple downloading should be treated as possession for the purposes of sentencing”.

In a statement, Derek Ray-Hill, interim CEO at the Internet Watch Foundation, said: “It is shocking that an app most people have on the phone in their pocket allows child sexual abuse imagery to proliferate.

“As the regulator, Ofcom needs to utilise the full strength of the Online Safety Act, and compel companies to use their best endeavours to prevent images from circulating in end to end encrypted environments.”

The death toll from the floods that hit central Europe over the weekend has risen, with more casualties recorded in the Czech Republic, Poland and Austria.

In the Czech Republic, one person drowned in a stream close to the town of Bruntal in the north-east of the country, while seven people are still missing.

Four people are known to have died in Poland, although a spokesman for the interior ministry said the precise cause of death was still to be determined in at least one case.

And in Austria, two people aged 70 and 80 died in the north-east of the country. One of them, a resident of the town of Höbersdorf, was apparently trying to pump water out of his apartment when he drowned, Austrian media reported.

Eight deaths were recorded over the weekend in Poland, Romania and Austria, where a firefighter was killed during a flood rescue operation.

Although conditions have stabilised in some parts of central Europe, others are bracing themselves for more disruption and danger.

In Slovakia, the overflowing of the Danube River caused flooding in the Old Town area of the capital, Bratislava, with local media reporting that water levels exceeded 9m (30ft) and were expected to rise further.

Hungary is bracing itself for floods in the coming days. Warnings are in force along 500km (310 miles) of the Danube.

The river is rising by about a metre every 24 hours, with Budapest’s mayor offering residents a million sandbags to protect against floodwaters.

Some tram lines will not operate, while roads along the river will be closed in the Hungarian capital from Monday evening. Trains between Budapest and Vienna have also been cancelled.

Prime Minister Viktor Orban said on X that he had postponed all his international obligations “due to the extreme weather conditions and the ongoing floods in Hungary”.

The highest rainfall totals have been in the Czech Republic. In the north-eastern town of Jesenik, 473mm (19in) of rain has fallen since Thursday morning – five times the average monthly rainfall.

In the Austrian town of St Polten, more rain has fallen in four days than in the whole of the wettest autumn on record, in 1950.

Chancellor Karl Nehammer said the armed forces had been deployed to offer assistance to storm-hit regions. Austria’s Climate Ministry said €300m (£253m) in recovery funds would be made available.

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said one billion zloty (£197m) would be allocated for flood victims. He added Poland would also apply for EU relief funds.

On Monday, Poland declared a state of natural disaster, making the emergency response easier and freeing up EU funds.

Villages and town were submerged in eastern Romania. Emil Dragomir, mayor of Slobozia Conachi, told media that the flooding had had a devastating impact.

“If you were here, you would cry instantly, because people are desperate, their whole lives’ work is gone, there were people who were left with just the clothes they had on,” he said.

Thousands of people have been evacuted in Poland, including the personnel and patients of a hospital in the town of Nysa. Roads have been badly disrupted and train traffic was suspended in many parts of the country.

On Monday morning, the mayor of Paczków in south-west Poland appealed to residents to evacuate after water began overflowing in a nearby reservoir, endangering the town.

In other parts of Poland, however, water levels are now falling, according to local officials.

The mayor of Klodzko city, Michal Piszko, told Polish media the water had receded and the indications were the worst was now over.

Video footage from Monday morning showed that city centre streets which were inundated on Sunday were now water-free, although the footage also revealed the extent of damage done to the buildings.

More rain is expected throughout Monday and Tuesday in Austria, the Czech Republic and south-east Germany, where another 100mm could fall.

While it may still take days for the flood waters to subside, the weather will improve in central Europe from mid-week with much drier conditions.

Storm Boris will, however, now move further south into Italy, where it will reintensify and bring heavy rain. The Emilia-Romagna region is set to be worst hit, with 100-150mm of rain falling.

The record rainfall seen in central Europe has been caused by a number of factors, including climate change.

Different weather elements came together to create a “perfect storm” in which very cold air from the Arctic met warm air from the Mediterranean.

A pattern of atmospheric pressure also meant that Storm Boris was stuck in one place for a long time.

Scientists say that a warmer atmosphere holds more moisture, leading to more intense rainfall. Warmer oceans also lead to more evaporation, feeding storm systems.

For every 1C rise in the global average temperature, the atmosphere is able to hold about 7% more moisture.

A court battle to determine the future of Rupert Murdoch’s media empire and a £14.9bn family trust begins in the US on Monday.

The case will pit 93-year-old Mr Murdoch against three of his eldest children over who will gain the most voting shares and power to control News Corp and Fox News when the billionaire dies.

It has been reported that Mr Murdoch wanted to amend a family trust created in 1999 so that son Lachlan could take control without “interference” from his siblings Prudence, Elisabeth and James.

The famous family was one of the inspirations behind the hugely popular TV series Succession – something the Murdochs have always refused to comment on.

Mr Murdoch, who has been married five times, also has two younger children, Grace and Chloe, who do not have any voting rights under the trust agreement.

From the 1960s, Mr Murdoch built up his media empire into a globe-spanning media giant with major political and public influence.

His two companies are News Corporation, which owns newspapers including the Times and the Sun in the UK and the Wall Street Journal in the US, and Fox, which broadcasts Fox News.

• Listen on BBC Sounds: Good Bad Billionaire – Rupert Murdoch: The Succession Prequel

Mr Murdoch had been preparing his two sons to follow in his footsteps, beginning when they were teens, journalist Andrew Neil told the 2020 BBC documentary The Rise of the Murdoch Dynasty.

“Family has always been very important to Rupert Murdoch, particularly from the point of view of forming a dynasty,” the former Sunday Times editor said.

In 1999, the Murdoch Family Trust, which owns the media companies, was supposed to largely settle the succession plans.

It led to Mr Murdoch giving his eldest children various jobs within his companies.

The trust gives the family eight votes, which it can use to have a say on the board of News Corp and Fox News.

Mr Murdoch currently controls four of those votes, with his eldest children being in charge of one each.

The trust agreement said that once Mr Murdoch died, his votes would be passed on to his four eldest children equally.

However, differences in opinions and political views were said to lead to a family rift.

The media mogul stepped down as Fox and News Corp chairman in favour of Lachlan, who reportedly shares the same right-wing views as his father.

This has reportedly led to James, Elisabeth and Prudence uniting and “fighting back”.

The private court case is being held at Washoe County Courthouse in Reno, Nevada.

Media outlets have been barred from the proceedings, which are expected to unfold with testimony from the media titan and the four children named in the trust over the next week, according to the New York Times, which first brought the dispute to light after obtaining copies of sealed court documents.

These types of family battles often end in settlements. The case could also be prolonged, if it ends in a decision that one side chooses to appeal against.

Prudence is Mr Murdoch’s eldest child, from his marriage to his first wife Patricia Booker.

He had Elisabeth, Lachlan and James with second wife Anna Mann, whom he was married to from 1967 to 1999.

Grace and Chloe’s mother is Wendi Deng, who was married to the billionaire from 1999 to 2013.

Mr Murdoch’s fourth marriage was to model Jerry Hall in 2016, with the couple divorcing in 2022.

He recently married his fifth wife Elena Zhukova in June this year.

Tito Jackson, an original member of the Jackson 5 pop group and brother of the late Michael Jackson, has died aged 70, US media report.

An official cause of death is yet to be determined.

Tito performed in the famous ensemble with brothers Jackie, Jermaine, Marlon and Michael, who died in 2009.

He was recently in Munich ahead of a performance that the group were due to give.

Steve Manning, a long-time Jackson family friend and former Jackson family manager, told Entertainment Tonight that Jackson died on Monday.

The news was confirmed in an Instagram post by Jackson’s three sons, Taj, Taryll and TJ Jackson, who were themselves an R’n’B/pop trio, 3T, in the 1990s.

“We are shocked, saddened and heartbroken,” they wrote. “Our father was an incredible man who cared about everyone and their well-being.”

They continued: “He will be missed tremendously. It will forever be ‘Tito Time’ for us.

“Please remember to do what our father always preached and that is ‘Love One Another’. We love you Pops.”

The Jackson 5’s hits included ABC, The Love You Save and I Want You Back.

• The Jackson 5 score UK number one
• Joe Jackson: Patriarch of Jackson family dies aged 89
• Paris Jackson pays tribute to grandad Joe

The group was formed in 1964. Tito played the guitar and provided backing vocals.

Jackson 5 has sold more than 150 million records worldwide.

In 1980, the siblings were presented with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1997.

Days before his death, Tito posted a message on social media from Munich, Germany, where he visited a memorial to Michael with his brothers.

He wrote: “Before our show in Munich, my brothers Jackie, Marlon, and I, visited the beautiful memorial dedicated to our beloved brother, Michael Jackson.

“We’re deeply grateful for this special place that honours not only his memory but also our shared legacy. Thank you for keeping his spirit alive.”

The Jacksons performed in Germany on 10 September, days after their performance at Boogietown, a UK music festival celebrating funk, soul and disco in Surrey.

The siblings also performed at the Fool in Love Festival at Hollywood Park Grounds in Los Angeles on 31 August.

Former Jackson 5 drummer Jonathan Moffett led tributes on social media, writing on X: “There is great sadness in my heart tonight – I just found out that my brother in heart and spirit, Tito Jackson has passed.

“I’m stunned, devastated and speechless. I love you, Tito. My most sincere love & prayers for the entire Jackson family. I love you all VERY much”.

Tito was the third oldest Jackson and one of nine children. His other siblings include global stars Janet and La Toya Jackson.

All his siblings, other than Michael who died aged 50 in June 2009, are still alive.

The family’s patriarch, Joe Jackson, died at the age of 89 in 2018.

The group of performers and singers have produced a total of 27 US number one hits.

Alongside work in the band, Tito also had a solo career as a blues musician which started in 2003.

He was the final sibling to place a solo single on the Billboard charts with his 2016 hit, Get It Baby.

In 2019, Jackie, Tito, Jermaine and Marlon embarked on a World Tour as The Jacksons.

Two years prior they performed a slew of shows in the UK as part of A Celebration of 50 Years, also stopping to perform at Glastonbury Festival.

The Nigerian authorities say more than 270 inmates are now known to be missing after escaping from custody when severe flooding damaged a prison in the north-eastern city of Maiduguri.

So far, seven are back in detention.

The flooding was caused by the collapse of a dam following heavy rainfall.

Several hundred thousand people in Maiduguri, which is the Borno state capital, have been forced from their homes by the floodwaters and at least 30 have died.

Borno state Governor Babagana Zulum described the extent of the damage as “beyond human imagination”.

• ‘I thought I would die with my six children’ – dam collapse survivor

This is the first time that the Nigerian authorities have admitted to the numbers who fled custody.

The Nigerian Correctional Service (NCoS) said on Sunday that after the walls of the medium security prison had been damaged, inmates were in the process of being transferred and some managed to escape during the “evacuation to a safe and secure facility”.

Governor Zulum had earlier told the BBC that some members of the Islamist militant group Boko Haram were among those who had got out.

But it is not clear how many of the fugitives are linked to jihadist violence.

NCoS spokesperson Umar Abubakar has tried to assure the public that his organisation is working with security agencies to recapture those who fled.

It has published the photos of the missing men and has urged people to remain calm adding that the prison break does not affect public safety.

• Collapse after collapse – why Lagos buildings keep crashing down
• Should I stay or should I go? The dilemma for young Nigerians
• Celebrating 50 years of marriage in Nigeria’s ‘divorce capital’

In June two American astronauts left Earth expecting to spend eight days on the International Space Station (ISS).

But after fears that their Boeing Starliner spacecraft was unsafe to fly back on, Nasa delayed Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore’s return until 2025.

They are now sharing a space about the size of a six-bedroom house with nine other people.

Ms Williams calls it her “happy place” and Mr Wilmore says he is “grateful” to be there.

But how does it really feel to be 400km above Earth? How do you deal with tricky crewmates? How do you exercise and wash your clothes? What do you eat – and, importantly, what is the “space smell”?

Talking to BBC News, three former astronauts divulge the secrets to surviving in orbit.

Every five minutes of the astronauts’ day is divided up by mission control on Earth.

They wake early. At around 06:30 GMT, astronauts emerge from the phone-booth size sleeping quarter in the ISS module called Harmony.

“It has the best sleeping bag in the world,” says Nicole Stott, an American astronaut with Nasa who spent 104 days in space on two missions in 2009 and 2011.

The compartments have laptops so crew can stay in contact with family and a nook for personal belongings like photographs or books.

The astronauts might then use the bathroom, a small compartment with a suction system. Normally sweat and urine is recycled into drinking water but a fault on the ISS means the crew must currently store urine instead.

Then the astronauts get to work. Maintenance or scientific experiments take up most time on the ISS, which is about the size of Buckingham Palace – or an American football field.

“Inside it’s like many buses all bolted together. In half a day you might never see another person,” explains Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield, commander on the Expedition 35 mission in 2012-13.

“People just don’t go zipping through the station. It’s big and it’s peaceful,” he says.

The ISS has six dedicated labs for experiments, and astronauts wear heart, brain or blood monitors to measure their responses to the challenging physical environment.

“We’re guinea pigs,” says Ms Stott, adding that “space puts your bones and muscles into an accelerated ageing process, and scientists can learn from that”.

If the astronauts can, they work faster than mission control predicts.

Mr Hadfield explains: “Your game is to find five free minutes. I would float to the window to watch something go by. Or write music, take photographs or write something for my children.”

A lucky few are asked to do a spacewalk, leaving the ISS for the space vacuum outside. Mr Hadfield has done two. “Those 15 hours outside, with nothing between me and the universe but my plastic visor, was as stimulating and otherworldly as any other 15 hours of my life.”

But that spacewalk can introduce something novel to the space station – the metallic “space smell”.

“On Earth we have lots of different smells, like washing machine laundry or fresh air. But in space there’s just one smell, and we get used to it quickly,” explains Helen Sharman, the first British astronaut, who spent eight days on the Soviet space station Mir in 1991.

• WATCH: ‘Space is my happy place,’ says stranded astronaut

Objects that go outside, like a suit or scientific kit, are affected by the strong radiation of space. “Radiation forms free radicals on the surface, and they react with oxygen inside the space station, creating a metallic smell,” she says.

When she returned to Earth, she valued sensory experiences much more. “There’s no weather in space – no rain on your face and or wind in your hair. I appreciate those so much more to this day now,” she says, 33 years later.

In between working, astronauts on long stays must do two hours of exercise daily. Three different machines help to counter the effect of living in zero gravity, which reduces bone density.

The Advanced Resistive Exercise Device (ARED) is good for squats, deadlifts, and rows that work all the muscle groups, says Ms Stott.

Crew use two treadmills that they must strap into to stop themselves floating away, and a cycle ergometer for endurance training.

All that work creates a lot of sweat, Ms Stott says, leading to a very important issue – washing.

“We don’t have laundry – just water that forms into blobs and some soapy stuff,” she explains.

Without gravity pulling sweat off the body, the astronauts get covered in a coating of sweat – “way more than on Earth”, she says.

“I would feel the sweat growing on my scalp – I had to swab down my head. You wouldn’t want to shake it because it just would fly everywhere.”

Those clothes become so dirty that they are thrown out in a cargo vehicle that burns up in the atmosphere.

But their daily clothes stay clean, she says.

“In zero-gravity, clothes float on the body so oils and everything else don’t affect them. I had one pair of trousers for three months,” she explains.

Instead food was the biggest hazard. “Somebody would open up a can, for example, meats and gravy,” she says.

“Everybody was on alert because little balls of grease drifted out. People floated backwards, like in the Matrix film, to dodge the balls of meat juice.”

At some point another craft might arrive, bringing a new crew or supplies of food, clothes, and equipment. Nasa sends a few supply vehicles a year. Arriving at the space station from Earth is “amazing”, says Mr Hadfield.

“It’s a life-changing moment when you catch sight of the ISS there in the eternity of the universe – seeing this little bubble of life, a microcosm of human creativity in the blackness,” he says.

After a hard day’s work, it is time for dinner. Food is mostly reconstituted in packets, separated into different compartments by nation.

“It was like camping food or military rations. Good but it could be healthier,” Ms Stott says.

“My favourite was Japanese curries, or Russian cereal and soups,” she says.

Families send their loved ones bonus food packs. “My husband and son picked little treats, like chocolate-covered ginger,” she says.

The crew share their food most of the time.

Astronauts are pre-selected for personal attributes – tolerant, laid-back, calm – and trained to work as a team. That reduces the likelihood of conflict, explains Ms Sharman.

“It’s not just about putting up with somebody’s bad behaviour, but calling it out. And we always give each other metaphorical pats-on-the back to support each other,” she says.

And finally, bed again, and time to rest after a day in a noisy environment (fans run constantly to disperse pockets of carbon dioxide so the astronauts can breathe, making it about as loud as a very noisy office).

“We can have eight hours of sleep – but most people get stuck in the window looking at Earth,” Ms Stott says.

All three astronauts talked about the psychological impact of seeing their home planet from 400km in orbit.

“I felt very insignificant in that vastness of space,” Ms Sharman says. “Seeing Earth so clearly, the swirls of clouds and the oceans, made me think about the geopolitical boundaries that we construct and how actually we are completely interconnected.”

Ms Stott says she loved living with six people from different countries “doing this work on behalf of all life on Earth, working together, figuring out how to deal with problems”.

“Why can’t that be happening down on our planetary spaceship?” she asks.

Eventually all astronauts must leave the ISS – but these three say they would return in a heartbeat.

They don’t understand why people think the Nasa astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore are “stranded”.

“We dreamed, worked and trained our entire lives hoping for an extended stay in space,” says Mr Hadfield. “The greatest gift you can give a professional astronaut is to let them stay longer.”

And Ms Stott says that as she left the ISS she thought: “You’re gonna have to pull my clawing hands off the hatch. I don’t know if I’m going to get to come back.”

For 40-year-old farmer Ali Ibrahim, the nightmare began in the late afternoon on 5 June, with the sound of heavy weapons.

“We had never seen such shelling since we were young,” he recalls. “The bombardment lasted for four hours, with houses destroyed, screaming children – women and the elderly were helpless to escape.”

At least 100 civilians were killed that day in the attack on the Sudanese village of Wad al-Nourah, according to estimates by volunteers of the local resistance committee.

Mr Ibrahim says the villagers were unarmed: ”We are simple farmers. We’ve never carried weapons. We have no enemies. We are just citizens trying to protect our lives.”

The BBC has heard testimonies from several survivors who accuse armed men from the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) – the paramilitary group fighting the Sudanese army – of opening fire and storming the village in two successive attacks, using heavy weaponry. Dozens of residents were killed or injured.

The alleged number of deaths in this incident would make it one of the deadliest incidents involving civilians since the war between the army and the RSF began in April 2023.

The BBC managed to speak to several survivors of the Wad al-Nourah attack, who are currently receiving treatment at the Al Managil government hospital where they were transferred for treatment.

Reporters were also able to analyse the videos they shared.

The hospital is located about 80km (50 miles) from the village, and many survivors arrived there hours after the attack. According to their testimonies, the RSF forces also tried to prevent them leaving the village, and looted most of their vehicles.

After enduring “hours of terror” during the bombardment, followed by frantic attempts to find a way to transport the wounded and bury those killed by the shelling, the residents were “shocked” by a second massive RSF attack on their village early the next morning, one of the survivors at the hospital told the BBC.

“They entered our house, beat me and my siblings, and asked, ‘where is the gold?’. My little sister was scared and told my mother to give them the gold.”

This account is consistent with those of other survivors, all of whom confirmed RSF forces had “attacked the village from three directions, entered homes, killed civilians, and looted valuables, including gold, cars, and stored agricultural products”.

Hamad Suleiman, a 42-year-old retail trader, said armed RSF fighters entered his brother’s house and began shooting without warning.

“I went to my brother’s house and found them there… They shot my brother and nephew dead, and another nephew was injured and is here with me in the hospital.”

He says he tried to reason with the RSF fighters and asked why they had killed his family.

“I tried to talk to them, and they told me to recite the Shahada [The Islamic profession of faith that is recited when the feeling of death is near]. They shot me in the hand and fled… they looted all the cars.

“I was wounded and couldn’t find a way out for hours.”

The BBC contacted the RSF for their response to the survivors’ testimonies, and the accusations of attacks, killings, looting and intimidation. We had received no reply by the time of this report’s publication.

RSF spokesperson Al-Fateh Qurashi issued a video statement on X, formerly known as Twitter, a day after the incident – denying their forces had targeted civilians.

He stated that the forces had engaged with elements of the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and Intelligence – also known as ‘Al Mustanfaron’ – a militia carrying small weapons and aligned with the SAF, who were in the village at the time of the attack.

The BBC’s fact-finding team analysed videos provided by the RSF, which they claimed depicted locations and trenches used by Al Mustanfaron in Wad al-Nourah. The analysis revealed these locations were all situated outside the village, not within it.

The analysis also showed that members of the RSF opened fire towards the village, using heavy weapons from about a mile away.

Wad al-Nourah is similar to hundreds of villages scattered across Gezira state. Most of its residents work in agriculture and trade, and it has a small weekly market where traders from neighbouring villages come to buy and sell livestock and crops.

The RSF took control of Gezira state, to the south of the capital, Khartoum, in December 2023, and has been accused of carrying out numerous abuses against civilians there – which it repeatedly denies.

Gezira state is one of the regions most affected by the war, with the fighting spreading there early on in the conflict. It also became a refuge for thousands of displaced people fleeing Khartoum and Darfur.

Since the RSF took control of the area at the end of last year, one village after another has suffered acts of violence.

The RSF continue to deny accusations of war crimes such as killing, looting, rape and burning villages – instead pointing the finger at what they call “unruly” people.

Thousands of people have died and 10 million have been forced to flee their homes since April last year, when Sudan was thrown into disarray after its army and a powerful paramilitary group began a vicious struggle for power.

The UN Resident and Humanitarian Co-ordinator for Sudan, Clementine Nkweta-Salami, has called for a comprehensive and transparent investigation to uncover the circumstances of the Wad al-Nourah attack.

The villagers, who lost dozens of loved ones, hope an investigation committee will be established, and that the perpetrators will be held accountable – rather than escaping punishment as has happened in the past in Sudan.

The number of people taking ADHD medication is at a record high – and the NHS is feeling the strain as it tries to diagnose and treat the condition.

Since 2015, the number of patients in England prescribed drugs to treat ADHD has nearly trebled, and BBC research suggests that it would take eight years to assess all the adults on waiting lists.

Last year, ADHD was the second-most viewed condition on the NHS website. Concern about this rising demand has prompted the NHS in England to set up a taskforce.

So what’s going on and where will it end? Is ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder) becoming more common? Are we just getting better at recognising it? Or is it being over-diagnosed?

It turns out it’s not just you and I who have been taken by surprise – so have the experts.

Dr Ulrich Müller-Sedgwick, the ADHD champion for the UK’s Royal College of Psychiatrists, says: “Nobody predicted that the demand would go up so massively over the last 15 years, and especially the last three years.” He’s been running adult ADHD clinics since 2007. At the time, he says, there were just a few of them.

ADHD is a fairly novel condition – it’s only 16 years since the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) officially recognised it in adults. When considering whether it might keep increasing, Dr Müller-Sedgwick argues that there are two different concepts to consider: prevalence and incidence.

Prevalence is the percentage of people who have ADHD – Dr Müller-Sedgwick predicts that will stay pretty steady at 3 to 4% of adults in the UK.

Incidence is the number of new cases – people getting a diagnosis. That’s where we’re seeing an increase. He explains: “What has changed is the number of patients we are diagnosing. It’s almost like the more we diagnose, the more word spreads.”

Prof Emily Simonoff echoes this. She is a child and adolescent psychiatrist at the King’s Maudsley Partnership for Children and Young People. She thinks about 5 to 7% of children have ADHD in the UK – and says: “It’s pretty similar across the world, that’s been consistent and it hasn’t actually risen.”

Prof Simonoff agrees that there’s been a “steep incline” in people coming forward for assessment since the pandemic – but says this comes after years of “long-term under-recognition”.

She points to statistics on ADHD drugs. She would expect about 3 to 4% of children in the UK to need ADHD medication, but in reality, only 1 to 2% are actually using it. She thinks this shows that we are still underestimating the scale of the issue.

Prof Simonoff explains: “I think that’s an important starting point for when we say, ‘My goodness, why are we seeing all these children now – are we over-identifying ADHD?’ We have under-diagnosed or under-recognised ADHD in the UK for many, many years.”

In other words, we can expect more people to be diagnosed with ADHD now because services are playing catch-up.

Thea Stein is chief executive of health think tank the Nuffield Trust. She’s got her own description for the recent increase in demand: “the Hump”. She says: “Diagnosis or desire to be diagnosed has risen because of knowledge and visibility – [it’s as] simple as that.”

According to Stein, the most immediate task is getting through the Hump, assessing the huge backlog of people on ADHD waiting lists. Then, in the longer-term, she thinks society will get better at spotting ADHD sooner in children. She hopes this will mean that they get better support from an early age, and take some of the pressure off adult services.

She says: “I have real optimism that we will come through this period of time to a much better place as a society. What I don’t have optimism about is that this is a quick fix.”

ADHD might be a new concept, but people struggling to concentrate is an old problem.

In 1798, Scottish doctor Sir Alexander Crichton wrote about a “disease of attention” with “an unnatural degree of mental restlessness.”

He explained: “When people are affected in this manner… they say they have the fidgets.”

ADHD goes beyond problems concentrating or being hyperactive, though. People with it can struggle regulating their emotions and impulses. It’s been linked to substance abuse and financial difficulties as well as higher rates of crime and even car crashes.

All the experts I speak to firmly agree on one point: it is much better for someone with ADHD to be diagnosed and treated as early as possible.

Dr Müller-Sedgwick says there’s a “risk of really bad outcomes”. But he lights up when he describes how diagnosis and treatment can transform lives.

He says: “I have seen so many patients getting better, getting back into work or back into education. I have seen parents who were going through family court proceedings who were able to be better parents.

“That’s why we work in this field, it’s a really rewarding part of mental health to work in.”

Currently, ADHD treatment revolves around medication and therapy, but there are other options on the horizon.

A patch worn by children with ADHD on their foreheads during sleep – connected to a device that sends stimulating pulses into the brain – is on sale in the United States. It’s not prescribed in the UK, but academics here and in the US are working on clinical trials looking into it.

Prof Katya Rubia is a professor of cognitive neuroscience at King’s College London – as she puts it, “My work over the last 30 years or so is basically imaging ADHD, understanding what is different in the brains [of people with ADHD].”

She explains that certain parts of ADHD brains, including the frontal lobe, are slightly smaller and also less active. Prof Rubia is trying to kickstart those areas of the brain, and is working on a study looking at the trigeminal nerve – it goes directly to the brain stem and can increase activity in the frontal lobe.

She says: “This is all very new. If we find an effect, we have a new treatment.” While that is yet to be proven, she does add: “If everything goes well, it could be on the market in two years.”

So, the hope is that, in the not-too-distant future, there will be more ways to treat ADHD without medication. In the meantime, though, the challenge is getting through that “hump” of people waiting to be assessed – with the belief that, over time, the increase in diagnoses should lessen.

See BBC Action Line for support on issues around ADHD

Read ADHD advice from the NHS

Isata, a single mother in her early twenties, epitomises the horrors of the lives of sex workers in Sierra Leone.

She has been beaten, robbed, kidnapped, trafficked to another country, rescued, trafficked and rescued again.

Amidst all of this, she became hooked on a dangerous street drug, kush, that is wreaking havoc in the West African nation.

BBC Africa Eye spent four years following the lives of a group of sex workers in Makeni, about 200km (124 miles) from the capital Freetown.

The city lies in an area rich in diamonds, which fuelled Sierra Leone’s civil war – a conflict that has had devastating consequences still being felt to this day.

Isata is one of hundreds of sex workers in Makeni. Like all of the women we spoke to, she has opted to only use her first name.

“All the sacrifices I’m making, I do it for my daughter. I have been through so much pain on the streets,” she said.

“I met a man in the club. He tore my clothes. He took money from my bra. I was trying to fight my way out. He hit me on the back of the head with his gun. He wanted to kill me.”

It is a dangerous life – some of the women we meet have also contracted HIV.

Others have been killed.

But many feel there is little choice.

In a dark patch of swampland in the city, two sex workers pointed out an area with empty grain sacks spread out across the ground.

One of the young women, Mabinty, told us this was where they worked side by side – seeing up to 10 men a night.

The men pay them a dollar a time.

She is trying to make enough money to support her children. She had six, but three died.

The other three are in school.

“One child has just sat his exams. I don’t have money to pay for him to go to school, unless I sell sex. These are my sufferings,” she said.

Thousands of women are estimated to have turned to sex work across Sierra Leone.

Many of them are young women orphaned by the war, which claimed the lives of more than 50,000 people and displaced almost half the country’s population by the time it ended in 2002.

Charity groups say the number of young girls working in the sex trade has further increased as the country grapples with the economic fallout of the Ebola outbreak and the coronavirus pandemic.

Like many crises, these have disproportionately impacted women.

Prostitution is not illegal in the country, but the women are seen as outcasts and receive little support from the government or society.

Not long after we met Isata in 2020, she was kidnapped by a criminal gang and forced into sex slavery in The Gambia, Senegal and finally Mali.

She managed to get hold of a phone and described her life there.

“The way they approach us, it is like they want to kill us unless we accept,” she said.

“I am suffering so much.”

BBC Africa Eye was then able to track her down and a UN body, the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), helped Isata return to Sierra Leone.

She gave up sex work but, when we saw her in 2021, she was struggling to make enough money to take care of her daughter, by cooking in a local kitchen.

The next time we got an update on Isata, in 2023, she had returned to prostitution after becoming hooked on kush – a psychoactive blend of addictive substances sold cheaply, that can contain human bones.

The drug has become such a problem in Sierra Leone, the president has declared it a national emergency.

In the grip of addiction, Isata left behind her youngest child – a son just four months old.

He was being looked after by Isata’s mother, Poseh.

“The stress of the street life led her to smoking kush. It’s the stress,” Poseh said.

Nata is also a single mother in her twenties.

She has three daughters.

We met her at home, where she was getting ready to go out and work.

“I want my children to do well in life. I hope my prayers will be answered by God,” she said.

Her daughter watched her mum apply her make-up. She told us she wanted to become a lawyer when she is older.

“To help my mum,” she said.

Across town, we met another young girl, Rugiatu, aged around 10.

Her mother Gina was also a sex worker. She was murdered in 2020 at just 19 years old.

Rugiatu now lives with her elderly grandmother.

“My mum and dad are dead now. I am only left with my grandma. If my gran dies, all I can do is go and beg in the street,” Rugiatu said.

“I don’t want them to kill me on the street too.”

When we next saw Nata, she was unrecognisable. She, too, has become hooked on kush.

“I am not happy to be like this, but I don’t want to think much,” she tells us.

“Sometimes I cry when I remember. That why I am smoking, to forget.”

Her three daughters have had to go and live with relatives.

Then, in early 2024, there was more bad news from Isata.

She had been trafficked again, as part of a group of women who were promised nanny work in Ghana but were instead taken to Mali and forced to sell sex in a gold-mining area.

“I want to be taken home. I’m begging, I regret everything,” Isata tells us over the phone.

She said she became worried when the man who promised the nannying work dodged police checkpoints and border posts at every stage of the journey.

“He handed us over to a Nigerian woman called Joy,” she said.

“We asked: ‘You told us we are going to Ghana for nanny work, is this Ghana?’”

“Joy asked us: ‘Were we not told we are coming to do sex work?’ Then I said: ‘No’.”

“She said: ‘Go and get some money’ and give it her.”

Like many trafficked women, Isata was told she must work to pay her traffickers a large sum of money to buy back her freedom.

They told her she had to pay $1,700 (£1,300).

She would have to have sex with hundreds of men to make that much money.

Her traffickers told her she had three months to pay them.

The IOM – the UN body which helps trafficked people – says thousands of Sierra Leoneans, including children, are trafficked every year.

They are either abducted or tricked into travelling out of the country with the promise of a better job.

Instead, they are sold to foreigners in countries around the continent and end up in forced labour or sexual exploitation.

Many may never see home again.

Fortunately for Isata, she has finally made it back to Makeni, and is living with her mother and two children.

• Kush: Sierra Leone’s new illegal drug
• What difference did national emergency on sexual violence make?
• World’s police in technological arms race with Nigerian mafia
• How a Malawi WhatsApp group helped save women trafficked to Oman
• How a sex abuse ring targeted Gabon’s child footballers

The UN’s most senior official overseeing aid and reconstruction in Gaza has told the BBC that the international community is collectively failing innocent civilians in the territory.

Sigrid Kaag, who was appointed nine months ago to improve the delivery of urgently needed aid, said a report she is due to make to the UN Security Council today would be “very sombre and perhaps dark”.

She described the situation in the territory as a “significant catastrophe”.

“We’re not meeting the needs, let alone creating prospects and hope for the civilians in Gaza.”

In a rare interview, the senior UN Coordinator for Humanitarian Action and Reconstruction in Gaza said the systems to deliver assistance – including through multiple land and sea routes into Gaza – were now in place.

And “the UN is working around the clock and people are risking their lives day in, day out”.

But she called Gaza “the most unsafe place in the world to work”.

She said she regretted that “not much else can be improved” until there was a ceasefire and the release of Israeli hostages still being held there.

Ms Kaag said that what is known as “deconfliction” – to ensure aid missions can proceed safely – was failing: “It’s not working, or working insufficiently, to render the operations feasible.”

Last week the UN said another of its aid convoys heading into northern Gaza was blocked by Israeli forces, and Gaza’s Hamas-run Civil Defence agency said a UN school operating as a shelter was targeted by an Israeli air strike, killing 18 people. The UN said six of its staff died.

Israel accused Hamas of using the facility as “a command and control centre” and said Hamas fighters were among the dead.

The UN says nearly 300 aid workers, more than two-thirds of them UN staff, have been killed so far in the grievous Gaza war, which is now approaching the one-year mark.

Ms Kaag, one of the few UN officials to meet senior Israeli officials including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, described her discussions as “constructive”.

“We put asks on the table. Some are met. We also obtain commitments.”

But she pointed out that “between the commitment and the time that it takes to see visible and tangible implementation, too much time passes”.

“There is not a day, not a second to lose,” she told the BBC in an interview from New York.

Israeli officials have repeatedly insisted enough aid is reaching Gaza, and deny reports of widespread and severe hunger.

Ms Kaag said that “we do know from our surveys and studies that the majority of the population is food insecure” and the UN’s health centres know “how many malnourished or acutely malnourished children or babies come in”.

Asked about Israeli accusations that the main problem with food delivery was Hamas’s diversion of aid, Ms Kaag replied: “We hear that a lot. I find that very difficult to confirm.”

She said that in a war zone “I can’t say everything goes right all the time,” but emphasised: “I can vouch for the integrity of the operations of our colleagues.”

She described Unrwa – the UN’s largest aid agency working in Gaza – as “the backbone of the totality of UN delivery.”

Netanyahu has accused the agency of being “totally infiltrated” by Hamas and has called for it to be “terminated”.

Ms Kaag said investigations have taken place into Israeli allegations that Unrwa staff were involved in Hamas’s unprecedented attacks of 7 October across southern Israel, and that whenever evidence was provided investigations would continue.

Last month the agency fired nine UNRWA workers – it had previously sacked 12 employees, and put seven others on administrative leave, out of its Gaza workforce of 13,000.

Ms Kaag, a former Dutch deputy prime minister who first worked on Israeli-Palestinian issues 30 years ago, says she is often asked by Gazans during her visits there: “When will our suffering end?”

She spoke of the deep trauma of this conflict, including for Israeli hostages, and expressed hope that all those working to resolve this crisis would be forgiven.

“If we’re too slow, too little, too late, and if they feel that we failed them, the only thing we can do is work even harder.”

But she underlined “there is no compensation for lives lost and trauma incurred; nothing will make that right”.

It was the submersible that promised passengers the trip of a lifetime. A chance to descend 3,800m (12,500ft) to the Atlantic depths to visit the wreck of the Titanic.

But last year, a dive by Oceangate’s Titan sub went tragically wrong. The vessel suffered a catastrophic failure as it neared the sea floor, killing all five people onboard.

The US Coast Guard is holding a public hearing on 16 September to examine why the disaster happened, from the sub’s unconventional design to ignored safety warnings and the lack of regulation in the deep.

Titan began its descent beneath the waves on the morning of 18 June 2023.

On board were Oceangate’s CEO Stockton Rush, British explorer Hamish Harding, veteran French diver Paul Henri Nargeolet, the British-Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood and his 19-year-old son Suleman.

Later that day, after the craft failed to resurface, the US Coast Guard was notified, sparking a vast search and rescue operation.

The world watched and waited for news of the missing sub. But on 22 June, wreckage was discovered about 500m (1,600ft) from Titanic’s bow. Titan had imploded just one hour and 45 minutes into the dive.

These are five key questions that still need to be answered.

Those on Titan could stay in contact with the support ship, the Polar Prince, with text messages sent through its onboard communications system. The log of these exchanges could reveal if there were any indications that the sub was failing.

The vessel also had an acoustic monitoring device – essentially mics fixed to the sub listening for signs it was buckling or breaking.

“Stockton Rush was convinced that if there was an imminent failure of the submersible, they would get an audio warning on that system,” explains Victor Vescovo, a leading deep sea explorer.

But he said he was highly sceptical that this would have provided enough time for the sub to return to the surface. “The issue is how quickly would that warning happen?”

If there were no apparent problems during the descent and alarms failed to sound, those on board could have been unaware of their imminent fate.

The implosion itself was instantaneous, there would have been no time for the passengers to even register what was happening.

Forensic experts have been examining Titan’s wreckage to find the root of the failure.

There were several issues with its design.

The viewport window was only rated to a depth of 1,300m (4,300ft) by its manufacturer, but Titan was diving almost three times deeper.

Titan’s hull was also an unusual shape – cylindrical, rather than spherical. Most deep-sea subs have a spherical hull, so the effect of the crushing pressure of the deep is distributed equally.

The sub’s hull was also made out of carbon fibre, an unconventional material for a deep-sea vessel.

Metals such as titanium are most commonly used as they are reliable under immense pressures.

“Carbon fibre is considered to be a material that is unpredictable [in the deep ocean],” explains Patrick Lahey, CEO of Triton Submarines, a leading manufacturer.

Every time Titan went down to the Titanic – and it had made multiple dives – the carbon fibre was compressed and damaged.

“It was getting progressively weaker because the fibres were breaking,” he said.

The junctions between different materials also gave cause for concern. The carbon fibre was attached to two rings of titanium, creating weak points.

Patrick Lahey said the commercial sub industry had a longstanding, unblemished safety record.

“The Oceangate contraption was an aberration,” he told BBC News.

Ships, aircraft and remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) were scrambled to the Atlantic to try to find Titan.

A couple of days into the search, there were reports of underwater noises picked up by a search plane’s sonar, raising the possibility they were coming from the sub.

ROVs were sent to locate the source but found nothing.

It is still not clear what the sounds were – the ocean is noisy and even more so during an operation like this.

A more pertinent subsea sound was detected by the US Navy’s sonar system at the time the sub went missing – an acoustic signal consistent with an implosion. The information was only made public on the day the remains of Titan were found.

It is not known when the US Coast Guard was told of the noise – or whether the families and friends waiting on the sub’s support ship were informed.

Eventually the deep-sea robots returned to where Titan had gone missing and the wreckage was found.

Rory Golden, who was on the Oceangate expedition when contact was lost, recently told the BBC those on board the surface vessel experienced four days of fear and “false hope”.

Many were concerned about Oceangate’s sub.

Victor Vescovo says he was so worried, he had urged several passengers against diving on Titan – including his friend Hamish Harding, one of the five who died.

“I told him, in no uncertain terms, that he should not get in the submersible,” he said.

Fears about safety were also brought directly to Oceangate – including by the company’s former director of marine operations, David Lochridge, who assessed the sub while it was being developed.

US court documents from 2018 show that Lochridge had identified numerous “serious safety concerns” and the lack of testing could “subject passengers to potential extreme danger in an experimental submersible”.

Engineers from the Marine Technology Society also said that Oceangate’s experimental approach could result in “negative outcomes (from minor to catastrophic)” in a letter shared with Stockton Rush.

In an email exchange shown to BBC News last year, deep-sea specialist Rob McCallum told Rush that the sub should not be used for commercial deep dive operations and was placing passengers in a “dangerous dynamic”.

In response, Rush said he had “grown tired of industry players who try to use a safety argument to stop innovation” and dismissed warnings that he would kill someone as “baseless”.

With the death of Oceangate’s CEO, we will never be able to ask why he chose not to listen to these concerns. But the public hearings could reveal who else at the company knew about them – and why no action was taken.

Deep-sea submersibles can go through an extensive safety assessment carried out by independent, specialist, marine organisations such as the American Bureau of Shipping (ABS) or DNV (a global accreditation organisation based in Norway).

Oceangate chose not to put Titan through this process.

The assessment would have confirmed whether the vessel – from its design through to construction, testing and operations – met certain standards.

Most operators opt to have their deep-sea subs certified – but it is not mandatory.

Rush described his sub as “experimental” and, in a blog post in 2019, he argued that certification “slowed down innovation”.

In an email exchange with Rob McCallum, he said he didn’t need a piece of paper to show Titan was safe, and that his own protocols and the “informed consent” of passengers were enough.

The passengers on Titan paid up to $250,000 (£191,135) for a place. They all had to sign a liability waiver.

Irish businessman Oisin Fanning made two dives in Titan in 2022 – the last before the sub’s fatal disaster.

He said the Oceangate team took safety seriously, with extensive briefings before each descent. But it wasn’t made clear to him that Titan had not been certified.

“I would be lying if I said I didn’t think there had been something like that done already – that it conformed with certain norms,” he said.

“We all knew that the Titan was experimental. We were very confident, because obviously there’d been a few dives before that, and it seemed to be working well.”

The public hearings will last for two weeks. The hope is the answers it provides could prevent a disaster like this from happening again.

The Emmy Awards 2024 have taken place, with Baby Reindeer, The Bear and Shogun leading the winners.

Ahead of the ceremony in Los Angeles, nominees and other stars walked the red carpet. Here is a selection of photos.

Three West African countries run by military juntas will be launching a new biometric passports “in the coming days” as part of their withdrawal from the wider regional bloc Ecowas.

Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger, whose military leaders took over power in series of coups between 2020 and 2023, announced their plan to leave the bloc in January.

Following the coups, West African countries sanctioned the juntas, aiming to push them to quickly restore civilian rule.

But the three nations that now form the Alliance of Sahel States have so far resisted the calls, opting to cement their alliance.

“In the coming days, a new biometric passport of the [alliance] will be put into circulation with the aim of harmonising travel documents in our common area,” Malian junta leader Col Assimi Goïta said in a televised address on late on Sunday.

• Did coups in Mali and Burkina Faso halt jihadist attacks?
• Why young Africans are celebrating military takeovers

Col Goïta, who is the acting president of the Sahel alliance, spoke a day before the military governments were due to mark the first anniversary since they made a decision to create their own alliance.

He said they were also planning to launch a joint service that would promote a “harmonious dissemination of information in our three states”.

Burkina Faso had earlier revealed its decision to launch a new biometric passport without the Ecowas logo.

It remains unclear how the new passports will affect the travel of their nationals to other Ecowas states where they enjoyed visa-free movement as holders of a 15-nation regional passport.

In July, the junta chiefs said they were “irrevocably” turning their backs on Ecowas.

They said they wanted to build a community of sovereign peoples based on African values and “far from the control of foreign powers”.

The latest announcement comes as Ecowas is engaged in efforts to get the three Sahel nations to return to the bloc.

Ecowas recently warned that formalisation of the breakaway group posed a risk of regional disintegration and worsened insecurity.

The three countries created the Sahel alliance last year to boost military co-operation. In July they formed a confederation to broaden the nature of their work together beyond security.

The Sahel region has been battling jihadist violence for decades, which is estimated to have killed thousands and displaced millions across the region.

Tackling the insurgency is one of the reasons that the military leaders gave for the takeovers, although they have so far failed to quell the violence.

The three military-led countries have all expelled French soldiers who were there helping to fight jihadist groups and turned towards Russia for military assistance.

• West African bloc risks ‘disintegration’ if juntas quit
• ‘France takes us for idiots’ – Inside coup-hit Niger
• IS: A persistent danger, 10 years since its peak

Among the more than 67 million people who tuned in to the first US presidential debate between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris was Lila Rose.

The young and charismatic founder of the anti-abortion group Live Action had hoped for big things from the Republican candidate: a bold display of anti-abortion beliefs and a promise to turn those beliefs into law.

She was quickly disappointed. While Trump criticised Democrats’ “extreme” abortion policies, he refused to take a position on a national ban, saying instead that the issue should be left to the states.

And he called himself a “leader” on IVF, putting himself at odds with Ms Rose and many in her movement, who oppose the procedure because it often involves destroying embryos.

“It was painful to watch,” Ms Rose said of Trump’s performance.

Ms Rose, 36, had always had reservations about Trump’s anti-abortion bona fides, after years of shifting positions (including previously declaring himself pro-choice) and his openness to what she called “concerning compromises”. But she, like most in her movement, had been encouraged by his first term and the three Trump-appointed Supreme Court nominees who went on to overturn Roe v Wade and end the nationwide right to abortion.

Then Trump changed course, and her disillusionment with the former president swelled. Now on his third White House run, Trump seems to be working to appeal to all sides.

He hinted he would sign federal abortion legislation, before later walking it back. He called the state-wide restrictions that came into place after Roe v Wade fell “a beautiful thing”. But later, he said abortion bans early in pregnancy went too far, suggesting Republican candidates needed to be moderate enough on the issue to “win elections”.

This summer, during the Democratic National Convention, the former president posted a statement online saying his future administration would be “great for women and their reproductive rights” – language typically used by pro-choice activists.

By late August, Ms Rose had had enough, telling her more than one million followers that Trump was “making it impossible” to vote for him.

“It’s very clear that Trump is less pro-abortion than Kamala Harris,” she told the BBC on Thursday. “But our movement’s goal is not just to accept whatever the least worst candidate is and show up for them. Our goal is to help candidates who are going to be fighters for the pre-born.”

One of the most prominent leaders in the anti-abortion movement, Ms Rose’s defection signals a potential problem with Trump’s new strategy. As Trump attempts to moderate on abortion, he risks alienating some within his socially conservative base. And in an election that may be decided by a razor-thin margin, if those voters stay home in November it could cost Trump the White House.

“When a strategy like that works, you can kind of be anything to everyone,” said Mary Ziegler, a legal historian and expert on the US abortion debate. “And when it stops working you wind up being nothing to everyone.”

His campaign did not respond to a request for comment.

Trump in 2016, and again in 2020, had held social conservatives close. He embraced anti-abortion activists and championed their movement, becoming the first sitting president to attend the March for Life, the country’s largest annual anti-abortion demonstration.

He delivered for social conservatives in a way that few Republican presidents ever had, Ms Ziegler said.

“Trump, I think, always understood with his first two races that he would be politically dead in the water without the movement,” she said. “So there was much more catering to them.”

In return, these voters turned out overwhelmingly for Trump. In 2020, the former president claimed 84% of white evangelical Christians – some of the most socially conservative voters in the country – up from the already high 77% in 2016.

But Trump was reportedly spooked by his party’s underperformance in the 2022 midterm elections – which he and many analysts attributed to the fall of Roe v Wade – and aware of the broad public support for abortion access. So, this time around, Trump has seemed to soften on the issue.

By the time the Republican primary elections began at the start of the year, he had started to criticise six-week abortion bans, promising to find a national standard that would please everyone. “Both sides are going to like me,” he said last year.

And over the summer, confronted with more questions about what his White House would do on abortion, Trump could not settle on an answer.

He indicated he wanted a national “standard” for abortion but has since backed away from any commitment. He said he believed in states’ authority over abortion policy but intervened in several state battles over abortion, often in opposition to social conservatives.

He came out against Florida’s six-week abortion ban, saying you “need more than six weeks” and appeared to signal he would vote for a November referendum that would protect abortion in the state. A day later, after intense pressure from anti-abortion activists, he said he would vote against it.

These contortions have strained relationships with key anti-abortion allies.

“It’s disconcerting for our students and for our movement,” said Kristan Hawkins, head of Students for Life, one of the largest anti-abortion organisations in the country. “And what I’ve conveyed to the campaign personally is that this strategy is not a winning strategy.”

A growing number of voices within the social conservative movement have started to say the same: that by playing to the middle on abortion, Trump may lose must-win voters, without actually attracting anyone new.

“The frustration for pro-lifers is that Trump is saying things he thinks might ultimately reach more moderate voters, which frankly is not going to work,” said Matt Staver, founder and chairman of the Florida-based anti-abortion group Liberty Counsel. “And in doing that you’re causing consternation among other voters who are otherwise with you. There’s no point for him engaging in this.”

There is no indication that Trump is facing any wide-scale exodus of social conservatives from his party, and both Mr Staver and Ms Hawkins said they would still be casting their ballots for Trump.

But in an election that could hinge on a narrow slice of voters, in just a handful of states, some experts say Trump’s abortion wavering could still cost him the election.

John Feehery, a Republican strategist, estimated that some 80% of white evangelical Christians – who make up about 14% of the American electorate – need to turn out for Trump to deliver him a win.

“I don’t think there’s a danger of white evangelicals voting for Harris, I think there’s a real danger of them not voting,” Mr Feehery said, adding that “10,000 votes” could be enough to tip the scales.

That risk could explain the reticence of most anti-abortion leaders to talk publicly about abandoning the Republican candidate.

Indeed, some in the movement have expressed frustration with Ms Rose’s position, saying that while Trump is not the ideal candidate, he is still better for their cause than any Democratic opponent.

Ms Hawkins of Students for Life has begun to focus her messaging, increasingly, on Harris, telling followers that the harm her administration could do – in the number of abortions alone – would eclipse any missteps by Trump.

“I know we’ll be able to work with his administration,” she said. “When you believe, as pro-life activists do, that babies are dying that have a right to be born, I don’t feel I can morally take a position of sitting this out.”

But Ms Rose has shrugged off any criticism that her position may inadvertently assist Harris, and her decidedly pro-choice agenda. For her, good enough is not good enough when it comes to abortion, and to Donald Trump.

“I know it’s painful for a lot of you guys to hear this, people that want to go out and vote cheerfully for Trump because Kamala Harris is such a disaster… but we have to tell the truth,” she told followers the morning after the debate.

“Abortion is the intentional killing of an innocent child,” she said. “We need to oppose it loudly.”

Former US President Donald Trump has been found liable to pay damages to London singer and songwriter Eddy Grant for using his song Electric Avenue without permission.

It has taken Mr Grant, 76, more than four years to sue the Republican candidate in this year’s presidential election in the US courts, over his 2020 campaign video that used a 40-second clip of the song.

The video was viewed 13.7 million times before Twitter, now known as X, took it down.

A federal judge in Manhattan ruled Mr Trump breached Mr Grant’s copyright for his 1983 hit, and is now liable for damages as well as paying for the singer’s legal fees.

Mr Grant’s battle with the former President began in August 2020, when he was seeking re-election to the White House. The songwriter’s counsel, Wallace E.J. Collins, issued a cease and desist letter to Donald Trump’s campaign team.

On Friday, Judge John G. Koeltl rejected arguments from Mr Trump’s lawyers that the Twitter video was shielded under copyright’s fair use doctrine, which allows for the use of protected works in certain situations.

Brian D. Caplan, Mr Grant’s attorney, told Business Insider: “As a staunch believer of artist’s rights and the ability to control their creative output, Mr. Grant believes that the decision will help others in their fight against the unauthorized use of sound recordings and musical compositions.

“Politicians are not above the law and the court reaffirmed that.”

Earlier this month a US judge has ordered the Trump campaign to stop using the song Hold On, I’m Coming at his rallies, in response to a lawsuit from the family of the song’s co-writer, Isaac Hayes.

Dozens of other artists have objected to the use of their songs at Trump rallies in recent months including Abba, Foo Fighters, Celine Dion and Johnny Marr.

Electric Avenue takes its name from the south London road in Brixton, the first market street in the capital to be lit by electricity. It still forms part of Brixton Market today.

It inspired the title of Mr Grant’s song, written as a response to the 1981 Brixton riots, which reached number two in the charts in both the UK and the US.

Mr Trump’s team has been approached for comment about the Electric Avenue court case.

You’ve been walking the red carpet in London and LA and the show you’ve done with Nicole Kidman is in Netflix’s most-watched charts.

How does that feel?

“Overwhelming, in a good way,” says Indian actor Ishaan Khatter.

The past few weeks have been intense for the 28-year-old, who plays Shooter Dival in murder mystery The Perfect Couple.

Ishaan says taking the part “was a no-brainer”, even though it was different to what he’s previously done.

“The most exciting thing about it, the most reassuring thing about it, was the way the character was written and the fact that it didn’t feel like a token diversity character,” he says.

Ishaan, from Mumbai, has largely made his name in Bollywood with films like Pippa and Dhadak, also starring in BBC drama A Suitable Boy.

Speaking to BBC Asian Network’s Haroon Rashid, he says the casting process for The Perfect Couple was “ethnicity agnostic” and actors from various backgrounds auditioned.

He says his character Shooter is mysterious and “three-dimensional” and credits the writers and director Susanne Bier for this.

“The fun is to play into the red herrings,” he says.

“It’s all you want, for audiences to really be taken for a ride. And it’s a testament to good craft,” he says.

A shower scene featuring Shooter was used in the show’s trailers and Ishaan says it was a rare example of a Hollywood production portraying a South Asian man as “desirable”.

“Yes, I was objectified,” he says, with a smile.

“It was one of the things that made the character unique and appealing to me.

“It makes it kind of a moment in history in that sense.

“I just thought it was a cool character in general and it was fun to play into that,” he says.

And he’s aware of how significant this shift could be going forward in giving more opportunities for South Asian actors in Western productions.

Ishaan says viewers will see young male Indian actors in “a new light”.

“As an audience I would be saying: ‘Hell yeah, this is what we should be doing more of.’

“I understand the sacredness of being put in a position where you’re representing on a global scale.

“I’m so happy to be in this position and to be able to be a part of something that is a stepping stone,” he says.

Earning a place on a cast which already contained the likes of Nicole Kidman, Liev Schreiber and Dakota Fanning led Ishaan to ask director Susanne why she picked him.

He was taken aback at her answer: “She was like: ‘I feel like you could be happy. You have it in you to be a happy person.’

“She was looking for a similar string in the character,” he says.

But despite having “a young career so far”, he felt prepared enough “to have the self-confidence to hold my own and be myself”.

“So I’m just doing me. I’m not going to do anything different.”

He also credits those names and the wider team for helping him through difficult moments.

Ishaan says filming in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, was a “long, drawn-out process” over four months, and a place where where he experienced homesickness for the first time.

But he says the cast bonded and that proved to be the difference.

“We only had each other’s company,” he says.

“Being able to hang out, do activities like axe-throwing or whale-watching.

“It definitely helped with the homesickness.”

Despite the positive reviews for his performance, Ishaan is not getting carried away.

“There’s definitely a lot of self-checking going on,” he says.

“Ego is the death of the actor and it genuinely matters to me to keep growing.

“I’m more interested in finding my potential than showing off what I’ve already done, that’s not interesting to me.

“It means a lot to get the feedback from the audience.

“This is what we do it for.

“The love has been just beautiful and overwhelming in the nicest way.”

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For months, an unusual monument sat in an oak-lined square at the heart of Tasmania’s capital: a pair of severed bronze feet.

A statue of renowned surgeon-turned-premier William Crowther had loomed over the park in Hobart for more than a century. But one evening in May, it was chopped down at the ankles and the words “what goes around” graffitied on its sandstone base.

It was a throwback to another night more than 150 years ago, when Crowther allegedly broke into a morgue, sliced open an Aboriginal leader’s head and stole his skull – triggering a grim tussle over the remaining body parts.

Tasmania had become the centre of coloniser efforts to eradicate Aboriginal people in Australia. And the sailor on the slab – William Lanne – was touted as the last man on the island, making his remains a twisted trophy for white physicians.

Some see Crowther as an unfairly maligned man of his time, and his effigy as an important part of the state’s history, warts and all.

But for Lanne’s descendants, it represents colonial brutality, the dehumanising myth that Tasmanian Aboriginal people are extinct, and the whitewashing of the island’s past.

“You walk around the city anywhere and you’d never know Aborigines were here,” Aboriginal activist Nala Mansell says.

Now the dismembered statue has become a symbol of a city – and a nation – struggling to reckon with its darkest chapters.

Few places encapsulate the issue quite like Risdon Cove – called piyura kitina by the Palawa Aboriginal people.

Tucked beside a creek, a monument proudly marks it as the first British settlement on what was then called Van Diemen’s Land.

For Tasmanian Aboriginal people, though, this hillside on the outskirts of Hobart is “ground zero for invasion”.

“It’s the first landing and not coincidentally the first massacre [of our people],” Nunami Sculthorpe-Green tells the BBC one overcast afternoon.

Startled from their reverie, flurries of native hens – which piyura kitina is named after – scatter over the mossy grass as we arrive.

A wallaby hastily bounds towards sparse gum trees. It’s from that direction that Mumirimina men, women and children would have come down the slope on 3 May 1804, singing as they hunted kangaroos.

They were met with muskets and cannons.

The events of that day – and the death toll – are disputed. What is not contested is that this marked the start of a determined effort by British settlers to get rid of the original Tasmanians, nine nations of up to 15,000 people.

War broke out and Aboriginal people were hunted across the island, the survivors rounded up and sent to what have been described as death camps.

“If that happened anywhere in the world today, it would be referred to as ethnic cleansing,” says Greg Lehman, a Palawa professor of history.

Ripped from his homelands as a child, Lanne survived two of those camps before living out his final years as a shipmate and beloved advocate for his people.

Even before he died of disease in 1869, aged only 34, letters show that powerful men in Hobart had begun scheming.

“There’s no way that that young man was going to be allowed to lie in a grave. No way,” historian Cassandra Pybus tells the BBC.

The theft of Aboriginal remains had long been normalised, she says, but reached a fever pitch in Tasmania as the number of its original inhabitants dwindled.

Lanne’s skull was sought to prove since-discredited theories about Tasmanian Aboriginal people – that they were the missing link between humans and Neanderthals, a distinct race so primitive they didn’t even know how to make fire.

Before he was buried, his hands and feet would also be cut off and pocketed by physicians. Some historians say his grave was robbed as well, and every bone in his body taken.

Crowther always denied any involvement in stealing Lanne’s remains – his backers called the allegations a witch hunt – but the town was horrified, and he was suspended from his honorary position at the hospital.

For First Nations people, who believe their spirits can only rest once returned to their land, what happened was especially distressing.

But within two weeks, Crowther was elected to state parliament, and he’d soon rise to be Tasmania’s premier for an unremarkable six months.

By contrast, Lanne’s skull appears to have wound up on the other side of the globe at a UK university, and his people were soon declared extinct.

Except they were not.

Today’s Palawa people trace their ancestry to a dozen women who survived, while other groups – which some do not recognise as Aboriginal – also say they descend from a handful of people who managed to evade capture in the 1800s.

Yet, for the past 150 years, Tasmanian Aboriginal people say they have been fighting to be visible, in the history pages and in everyday life.

The lie that they were extinct is largely blamed on outdated views about ethnic identity. But others say it was also a strategic decision – to deny Tasmanian Aboriginal people rights, and to snuff out their culture.

The impact has been devastating. Many Palawa people speak of being persecuted for their Indigenous blood in one breath and denied their identity because of their white ancestry in the next.

Even now, many feel there are huge swathes of their history missing – or wilfully ignored.

Nala points out all she was taught about Tasmanian Aboriginal culture and history at her Hobart school was a brief lesson on boomerangs and didgeridoos – although her people used neither.

And aside from a walking track named after Truganini – Lanne’s wife and a leader in her own right – there are no sites celebrating Aboriginal people around the city.

“The way they tell stories about Aboriginal people… they want you to think that it’s somewhere really far away from where you are, and that it’s something that happened a really long time ago,” Nunami says.

Unimpressed, the 30-year-old history graduate started Black Led Tours to fill the gap.

“I realised that I was walking to work the exact same way Truganini used to walk her dogs. And I realised that my parents met at the pub where William Lanne died. I also realised that the Crowther statue was right next to my bus stop.

“And I thought: does everybody know that this is right here, where we live and where we work?”

When unveiling the effigy in 1889, the then-premier said Crowther was not “a perfect man”, but one who spent his time doing good.

His scandal overlooked, until recently he was remembered for offering free health care to the poor.

That rankles Tasmanian Aboriginal people like Nala: “It’s just a kick in the guts.”

As spokeswoman for the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre, she led a renewed campaign to take down the memorial.

“To us, it would be no different to having a statue of Martin Bryant,” she says, referring to the gunman who massacred 35 people at nearby Port Arthur in 1996.

But some, like Jeff Briscoe – who lost the legal case to prevent the statue’s removal – believe the sculpture has priceless heritage value as the only memorial in the state “funded totally by the public”.

“At the time, it was a significant memorial and everyone was proud of it. In 2024, should the perceptions of a few people override all that?

“It’s not as if he was going around shooting people… he maybe had been involved in the mutilation of a body, but they all were.

“They’re bringing the bar down so low that no memorial from colonial times will be safe in Australia.”

Cassandra Pybus says there is no doubt that Crowther did mutilate Lanne, citing letters he wrote. However, she had argued, like Mr Briscoe, that taking down the statue would set a dangerous precedent, because “everybody was racist”.

She had wanted it to remain so the site could be used to educate people about how the first Tasmanians were treated.

The statue’s fate divided even Crowther’s living descendants, with some publicly supporting the calls for removal, and others distressed by them.

Hobart Lord Mayor Anna Reynolds says the council voted to remove the statue in 2022 “as a commitment to telling the truth of our city’s history, and as an act of reconciliation with the Aboriginal community” – the first decision of its kind in Australia.

They did it after a rigorous consultation and with the support of the “silent majority”, she adds.

Ultimately, she says, the statue is a sign of how desperate Crowther was to repair his reputation, not his significance to the state: “[He’s] not that important.”

But while the council worked through red tape, some grew impatient and took it down themselves.

For Lanne’s descendants, their relief at the long-awaited fall of the statue is tinged with pain. They feel Lanne has been reduced to his death.

“He had a whole life… and just as he advocated for our people’s rights, we will advocate for his story to be remembered and him to be respected for who he was,” Nunami says.

The Crowther statue is not unique. Countless similar landmarks or monuments – which joke about massacres, include racial slurs or celebrate alleged killers – are still standing across Australia.

Many, like Greg, believe removing or renaming them could be a natural starting point for the “truth-telling” the country needs, to reconcile with its First Peoples, the oldest living culture on the planet.

“You’d think that it was just a bunch of happy free settlers and not-so-happy convicts who jumped off the First Fleet… and bingo, there you’ve got modern Australia,” he says.

“For Australia to have an honest and powerful relationship with itself, it must have an honest relationship with the past.”

But after a proposal for an Indigenous political advisory body was defeated at a referendum last year, any movement towards a national truth-telling inquiry has stalled – though many states are setting up their own.

There are still many, like Jeff Briscoe, who believe a “truth-telling” process would be a divisive and unnecessary rehashing of the past – views echoed by a bloc of conservative politicians who also oppose a treaty.

“Nowadays people want Aborigines to stand in front of them and say welcome to our country. They want us to dance for them. They want us to teach them our language. They don’t mind if we put some of our paintings in the mall,” Nala says.

“But if you talk about… any type of benefit for the Aboriginal community, or taking back anything that was stolen from us, it’s a completely different ballgame.”

However she is among those who feel like the tide is slowly turning.

“The Crowther statue… is the first time I’ve ever thought, ‘Wow, white people – they’re starting to get it’,” Nala says.

The council was still deciding what should replace the sculpture when it met its unexpected end.

But many wanted the severed feet to remain in the square – as is – arguing they made a wryly “funny” and “profound” statement.

However earlier this week, the council plucked the ankles from their perch, to reunite them with the rest of the effigy, citing heritage law requirements.

But Nunami says even the now empty plinth illustrates the story of Crowther and Lanne far better than the statue ever did.

“We get to say we, as the public, learnt, we grew, and we changed the narrative of this place… Look here, we cut that down.”

TikTok argued in court on Monday that a US law – which would see it banned unless it is sold by ByteDance – would have a “staggering” impact on the free speech of its US users.

The law was prompted by concerns that US users’ data is vulnerable to exploitation by China’s government.

TikTok and ByteDance have repeatedly denied links to the Chinese authorities.

The companies sued to block the legislation in early May, calling it unconstitutional and an effective ban on the speech of its 170 million US users.

A panel of three judges heard its arguments at an appeals court in Washington DC on Monday.

“This law imposes extraordinary speech prohibition based on indeterminate future risks,” TikTok and ByteDance’s lawyer Andrew Pincus told the court.

Concerns around China came up early, with Mr Pincus stating that the firm “is not owned” by the country.

“The owner of TikTok is ByteDance Limited, a Cayman Islands holding company,” he said.

But Judge Sri Srinivasan responded that the firm was “subject to Chinese control”.

Mr Pincus said the US government does not allege any malfeasance has taken place – and the firm was being punished over the suggestion that there might be issues in the future.

But he was challenged on his argument that the law would be an unprecedented ban.

Judge Ginsberg argued the law is “an absolute bar on the current arrangement of control” of the company, not the company itself.

He also said it targeted a group of companies controlled by a so-called foreign adversary, rather than TikTok alone.

Jeffrey Fisher, representing creators concerned by the law, said it would impede their constitutional right to work with the editor and publisher of their choice – such as TikTok under its current ownership.

Lawyers from the Department of Justice (DoJ) are also laying out their case.

In addition to data concerns, officials and lawmakers have expressed alarm at the prospect of TikTok being used by the Chinese government to spread propaganda to Americans.

However, advocates of America’s powerful free speech rights, enshrined in the First Amendment of the US Constitution, have said upholding the divest-or-ban law would be a gift to authoritarian regimes everywhere.

“We shouldn’t be surprised if repressive governments the world over cite this precedent to justify new restrictions on their own citizens’ right to access information, ideas, and media from abroad,” said Xiangnong Wang, a staff attorney at Columbia University’s Knight First Amendment Institute.

But according to James Lewis, of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, the law was drafted to withstand judicial scrutiny.

“The substance of the case against TikTok is very strong,” Mr Lewis said.

“The key point is whether the court accepts that requiring divestiture does not regulate speech.”

Mr Lewis added that the courts usually defer to the president on national security matters.

Regardless of how the appeals court rules, most experts agree the case could drag on for months, if not longer.

Mike Proulx, vice president and research director at analysis firm Forrester, added the “high stakes” case would likely progress to the US’ highest court, the Supreme Court.

Ryan Wesley Routh has been identified by US media as a suspect following the apparent assassination attempt on US Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump in Florida.

Mr Routh, 58, is from North Carolina originally and spent most of his life there, according to property records, but has most recently lived in Hawaii.

His known activity paints a mixed picture of his politics, and he appears to have felt strongly about Ukraine’s war effort. He has also had a number of legal issues.

Here are some of the other things we know about him.

He is suspected of going to the Trump International Golf Course in Florida on Sunday, armed with an AK-47-style rifle. The FBI recovered the weapon and scope, two backpacks and a GoPro camera from the bush where the suspect hid.

Although Routh managed to escape in his car, he appears to have been spotted by a witness who took a photo of the black Nissan he was driving.

An urgent alert was put out for the car. Palm Beach County Sheriff Ric Bradshaw said two officers picked up Mr Routh’s vehicle 45 minutes after the gun was spotted at the golf course, and followed it.

He was eventually stopped on Interstate 95 and taken into custody.

BBC Verify has found social media profiles matching Mr Routh’s name. They indicate that he called for foreign fighters to go to Ukraine to battle against Russian forces.

“I am coming to Ukraine from Hawaii to fight for your kids and families and democracy.. I will come and die for you,” a post on X reads, according to the BBC’s US partner, CBS News.

There are also pro-Palestinian, pro-Taiwan and anti-China messages on his profile, including allegations about Chinese “biological warfare” and references to the Covid-19 virus as an “attack”.

CBS reported that Mr Routh supported President Trump at one point, writing in a post on X that the Republican was “my choice in 2016”, but that he was “getting worse and devolving” and continuing: “I will be glad when you [are] gone.”

Mr Routh has also been seen online urging President Joe Biden and Vice-President Harris to meet victims of a shooting in Butler, Pennsylvania, when another attempt was made on Trump’s life in July.

Mr Routh told the New York Times in 2023 that he wanted to assist the war effort in Ukraine, and was seeking to recruit Afghan soldiers who had fled the Taliban.

In a telephone interview with the paper, he said dozens of soldiers were interested and that he planned to move them from Pakistan and Iran to Ukraine, in some cases illegally.

“We can probably purchase some passports through Pakistan, since it’s such a corrupt country,” he said.

Routh also told the newspaper at the time that he was in Washington to meet with the US Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe to help push for more support for Ukraine.

Routh appears to have been engaged in recruitment efforts as recently as July.

One Facebook post from July read in part: “Soldiers, please do not call me. We are still trying to get Ukraine to accept Afghan soldiers and hope to have some answers in the coming months… please have patience.”

Ukraine’s International Legion of foreign volunteers has denied having any links, and other Ukrainian officials have distanced themselves from him. President Volodymyr Zelensky has condemned political violence.

“Playing with fire has its consequences,” said Russian government spokesman Dmitry Peskov, in comments quoted by the Reuters news agency.

• Follow live: Latest updates and analysis on apparent Trump assassination attempt
• Trump thanks Secret Service – but is he protected enough?
• Analysis: Political violence becomes America’s new norm – but is still shocking
• What we know about the attack

Records show Mr Routh’s legal issues go back to the 1990s, including lesser charges writing bad cheques, according to CBS.

Mr Routh was charged and convicted of numerous felony offences in Guilford County in North Carolina between 2002 and 2010, CBS reported.

In 2002, US media said he was charged for possession of a fully automatic machine gun, which was referred to in court filings as a “weapon on mass destruction”.

In another incident, records show him being charged with misdemeanours including a hit-and-run, resisting arrest, and a concealed weapons violation.

His alleged offences also include driving with a revoked licence, possession of stolen property, and hit-and-run with a motor vehicle.

Former neighbour Kim Mungo, who describes Mr Routh as a “sweetheart”, said federal agents once raided Mr Routh’s property.

She alleged that he used to keep “loads of stolen property and stuff” at his home. And she said she saw Routh and his family firing guns in the open.

CBS reported Mr Routh voted Democratic and in person during the party’s 2024 primary in North Carolina, according to the state’s Board of Elections.

He is reportedly registered as an unaffiliated voter, despite the social media post saying he had backed Trump in 2016.

Mr Routh’s son has described him as “a loving and caring father, and honest hardworking man”.

His eldest son, Oran, spoke to CNN via text message, saying: “I don’t know what’s happened in Florida, and I hope things have just been blown out of proportion, because from the little I’ve heard it doesn’t sound like the man I know to do anything crazy, much less violent.”

Mr Routh remains in custody and no official charges have yet been filed against him. He is expected to appear in front of a judge later on Monday at the Palm Beach County courthouse near Mar-a-Lago.

It is unclear if he actually fired his weapon during the incident.

“We are not sure right now if the individual was able to take a shot at our agents, but for sure our agents were able to engage with the suspect,” said Rafael Barros from the Secret Service Miami Field Office.

He said measures were taken after the previous assassination attempt on Trump in Pennsylvania and “the threat level is high”.

The FBI has announced an investigation, and says it is working with local law enforcement agencies.

Secret Service and Homeland Security agents have also searched Mr Routh’s former home of in Greensboro, North Carolina.

A court battle to determine the future of Rupert Murdoch’s media empire and a £14.9bn family trust begins in the US on Monday.

The case will pit 93-year-old Mr Murdoch against three of his eldest children over who will gain the most voting shares and power to control News Corp and Fox News when the billionaire dies.

It has been reported that Mr Murdoch wanted to amend a family trust created in 1999 so that son Lachlan could take control without “interference” from his siblings Prudence, Elisabeth and James.

The famous family was one of the inspirations behind the hugely popular TV series Succession – something the Murdochs have always refused to comment on.

Mr Murdoch, who has been married five times, also has two younger children, Grace and Chloe, who do not have any voting rights under the trust agreement.

From the 1960s, Mr Murdoch built up his media empire into a globe-spanning media giant with major political and public influence.

His two companies are News Corporation, which owns newspapers including the Times and the Sun in the UK and the Wall Street Journal in the US, and Fox, which broadcasts Fox News.

• Listen on BBC Sounds: Good Bad Billionaire – Rupert Murdoch: The Succession Prequel

Mr Murdoch had been preparing his two sons to follow in his footsteps, beginning when they were teens, journalist Andrew Neil told the 2020 BBC documentary The Rise of the Murdoch Dynasty.

“Family has always been very important to Rupert Murdoch, particularly from the point of view of forming a dynasty,” the former Sunday Times editor said.

In 1999, the Murdoch Family Trust, which owns the media companies, was supposed to largely settle the succession plans.

It led to Mr Murdoch giving his eldest children various jobs within his companies.

The trust gives the family eight votes, which it can use to have a say on the board of News Corp and Fox News.

Mr Murdoch currently controls four of those votes, with his eldest children being in charge of one each.

The trust agreement said that once Mr Murdoch died, his votes would be passed on to his four eldest children equally.

However, differences in opinions and political views were said to lead to a family rift.

The media mogul stepped down as Fox and News Corp chairman in favour of Lachlan, who reportedly shares the same right-wing views as his father.

This has reportedly led to James, Elisabeth and Prudence uniting and “fighting back”.

The private court case is being held at Washoe County Courthouse in Reno, Nevada.

Media outlets have been barred from the proceedings, which are expected to unfold with testimony from the media titan and the four children named in the trust over the next week, according to the New York Times, which first brought the dispute to light after obtaining copies of sealed court documents.

These types of family battles often end in settlements. The case could also be prolonged, if it ends in a decision that one side chooses to appeal against.

Prudence is Mr Murdoch’s eldest child, from his marriage to his first wife Patricia Booker.

He had Elisabeth, Lachlan and James with second wife Anna Mann, whom he was married to from 1967 to 1999.

Grace and Chloe’s mother is Wendi Deng, who was married to the billionaire from 1999 to 2013.

Mr Murdoch’s fourth marriage was to model Jerry Hall in 2016, with the couple divorcing in 2022.

He recently married his fifth wife Elena Zhukova in June this year.

Women in Iran have told the BBC how their online activity has been spied on by the authorities, leading to arrests, threats and beatings.

Iran stepped up surveillance following nationwide women-led anti-establishment protests, after the death in police custody two years ago of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, who was arrested for allegedly not wearing her hijab properly.

Like many of the women inspired by the protests, Alef posted a photo on social media revealing her hair flowing freely in public. It was a simple act of solidarity with the movement against the forced wearing of the hijab.

“I didn’t really care enough to hide who I am or where the photo was taken,” she said. “I wanted to say, ‘we exist’.”

But the picture was seen by the authorities, which were trying to crush the protests, and Alef was arrested.

She says she was blindfolded, handcuffed and taken to an unknown location where she remained in solitary confinement for nearly two weeks. She was also interrogated multiple times.

In one interrogation, she says her inquisitors tried to force a confession out of her. She was made to hand over her phone to masked guards, who went through her social media posts and photos. Pictures showed she had participated in protests and that she had been shot at by security forces with pellet guns. Her interrogators also accused her of working for the US.

Alef was charged with, amongst other things, “appearing in public without a hijab” and “promotion of corruption and fornication”.

She was found guilty and although she was given a suspended sentence, she also received 50 lashes.

“A male officer told me to take off my coat and lie down,” she said. “He was holding a black leather whip and started hitting me all over my body. It was very painful but I didn’t want to show weakness.”

Her story was similar to that of two other women and one man we spoke to in Iran. Each told us they were detained and summoned to court for committing “propaganda against the state.” They all received suspended prison sentences. Alef received both a suspended prison sentence and lashes.

Two of the people we spoke to were held at Tehran’s notorious Evin Prison – known for housing many of Iran’s political prisoners – before being tried and convicted.

Both described poor living conditions in which prisoners were crammed into small, unsanitary and cold cells, with limited access to a shower and toilet, which often led to people falling ill.

A prominent male influencer who was detained for just under a month told us that in his block there was only one shower and one toilet for approximately 100 people.

A woman, Maral, who was jailed for more than two months, said that where she was held the women could only shower once or twice a week. It was particularly tough when they had periods.

“Sometimes they wouldn’t let us go to the toilet for hours,” she said. “If we complained they would say ‘if you co-operate you can leave sooner’. We couldn’t get our hands on period pads. We had to buy them but we had no money, nor would they take money from our family.”

Kosar Eftekhari also had her social media combed through. She was arrested and charged with offences including “propaganda against the state”, “insulting sacred beliefs”, “disturbing public opinion”, and “blasphemy”.

One month after Mahsa Amini’s death, Kosar was shot at in her genital area by a riot squad officer with a paintball gun. Moments later he shot her again, this time in the eye “with a smirk on his face”. She instantly heard her right eye “pop” and went blind.

The shocking incident was filmed and posted on Instagram. Despite her injuries and trauma, Kosar became more active online, making her a prime target for heightened surveillance.

She says that at her trial, hundreds of her social media posts, including pictures of her without her hijab, were used as evidence by the prosecutor.

Kosar was convicted and sentenced to four years and three months in prison. She was also prohibited from using social media and smartphones for five years.

But to avoid serving time Kosar fled to Germany, where she now advocates for Iranian women on a public level. Earlier this year she spoke to the UN’s Fact Finding Mission on Iran (FFMI) about her experience and what they have called “crimes against humanity”.

The FFMI told the BBC “no-one should be jailed for a peaceful post online”.

We put the claims made by the five people we spoke to to the Iranian government but they did not respond. The commander of Iran’s riot police has previously denied his forces intentionally shoot protesters in the face.

Iranian authorities have stifled protests and what they consider to be subversive activities for years, including by increasing state control over people’s lives online.

They have shut down the internet many times and reportedly used phishing techniques to hack phones and access people’s data.

Western social media apps like Instagram, X and Telegram are blocked, but many Iranians have bypassed this with tools such as Virtual Private Networks (VPN), which helps them to disguise their location.

The recent wave of protests mainly spread through – and were documented on – these platforms. But as a result of surveillance, tens of thousands of protesters were arrested within the first few months.

A senior researcher at human rights organisation Article 19, Mahsa Alimardani says the majority of protesters were Gen Z and have a large digital footprint, which made “tracking the activities of protesters on social media or through their devices before and during detention” easy.

Authorities have also developed tools to help them, such as an app called Nazer, which allows police and volunteers vetted by the government to report women for not wearing a hijab.

The country has also nationalised part of the internet and incentivised it by making it cheaper to access than the worldwide web. But using it means handing over personal data to the government.

Two years on Mahsa Amini’s death reverberates across the country – and Woman Life Freedom’s digital resistance shows no signs of stopping.

“Now we speak often in our family and friendship circles about our experience of the Woman Life Freedom movement. It’s like the seeds of a flower. Even if a flower withers or dries out, its seeds go on and flower elsewhere,” says Alef.

The death toll from the floods that hit central Europe over the weekend has risen, with more casualties recorded in the Czech Republic, Poland and Austria.

In the Czech Republic, one person drowned in a stream close to the town of Bruntal in the north-east of the country, while seven people are still missing.

Four people are known to have died in Poland, although a spokesman for the interior ministry said the precise cause of death was still to be determined in at least one case.

And in Austria, two people aged 70 and 80 died in the north-east of the country. One of them, a resident of the town of Höbersdorf, was apparently trying to pump water out of his apartment when he drowned, Austrian media reported.

Eight deaths were recorded over the weekend in Poland, Romania and Austria, where a firefighter was killed during a flood rescue operation.

Although conditions have stabilised in some parts of central Europe, others are bracing themselves for more disruption and danger.

In Slovakia, the overflowing of the Danube River caused flooding in the Old Town area of the capital, Bratislava, with local media reporting that water levels exceeded 9m (30ft) and were expected to rise further.

Hungary is bracing itself for floods in the coming days. Warnings are in force along 500km (310 miles) of the Danube.

The river is rising by about a metre every 24 hours, with Budapest’s mayor offering residents a million sandbags to protect against floodwaters.

Some tram lines will not operate, while roads along the river will be closed in the Hungarian capital from Monday evening. Trains between Budapest and Vienna have also been cancelled.

Prime Minister Viktor Orban said on X that he had postponed all his international obligations “due to the extreme weather conditions and the ongoing floods in Hungary”.

The highest rainfall totals have been in the Czech Republic. In the north-eastern town of Jesenik, 473mm (19in) of rain has fallen since Thursday morning – five times the average monthly rainfall.

In the Austrian town of St Polten, more rain has fallen in four days than in the whole of the wettest autumn on record, in 1950.

Chancellor Karl Nehammer said the armed forces had been deployed to offer assistance to storm-hit regions. Austria’s Climate Ministry said €300m (£253m) in recovery funds would be made available.

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said one billion zloty (£197m) would be allocated for flood victims. He added Poland would also apply for EU relief funds.

On Monday, Poland declared a state of natural disaster, making the emergency response easier and freeing up EU funds.

Villages and town were submerged in eastern Romania. Emil Dragomir, mayor of Slobozia Conachi, told media that the flooding had had a devastating impact.

“If you were here, you would cry instantly, because people are desperate, their whole lives’ work is gone, there were people who were left with just the clothes they had on,” he said.

Thousands of people have been evacuted in Poland, including the personnel and patients of a hospital in the town of Nysa. Roads have been badly disrupted and train traffic was suspended in many parts of the country.

On Monday morning, the mayor of Paczków in south-west Poland appealed to residents to evacuate after water began overflowing in a nearby reservoir, endangering the town.

In other parts of Poland, however, water levels are now falling, according to local officials.

The mayor of Klodzko city, Michal Piszko, told Polish media the water had receded and the indications were the worst was now over.

Video footage from Monday morning showed that city centre streets which were inundated on Sunday were now water-free, although the footage also revealed the extent of damage done to the buildings.

More rain is expected throughout Monday and Tuesday in Austria, the Czech Republic and south-east Germany, where another 100mm could fall.

While it may still take days for the flood waters to subside, the weather will improve in central Europe from mid-week with much drier conditions.

Storm Boris will, however, now move further south into Italy, where it will reintensify and bring heavy rain. The Emilia-Romagna region is set to be worst hit, with 100-150mm of rain falling.

The record rainfall seen in central Europe has been caused by a number of factors, including climate change.

Different weather elements came together to create a “perfect storm” in which very cold air from the Arctic met warm air from the Mediterranean.

A pattern of atmospheric pressure also meant that Storm Boris was stuck in one place for a long time.

Scientists say that a warmer atmosphere holds more moisture, leading to more intense rainfall. Warmer oceans also lead to more evaporation, feeding storm systems.

For every 1C rise in the global average temperature, the atmosphere is able to hold about 7% more moisture.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said Yemen’s Houthis will pay a “heavy price” after a missile fired by the group landed in central Israel.

The Israeli military said the missile landed in an uninhabited area early on Sunday, but that shrapnel indicated air defence systems had failed to destroy it before it entered Israeli airspace.

It added that it was investigating how the missile was able to reach so far into Israeli territory.

The strike marks the first time a missile fired by the group has reached central Israel, which is around 2,000km (1,240 miles) from Yemen.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said there had been repeated attempts to shoot the missile down on Sunday but that it most likely fragmented in mid-air.

The Houthis claimed the operation used a new type of hypersonic missile, which may help explain the failure of efforts to intercept it.

They are an armed group that seized much of Yemen in the country’s ongoing civil war and have declared themselves part of the Iran-led “axis of resistance” against Israel, the US, and the wider West.

The Houthis said in a statement that Sunday’s attack was carried out in solidarity with the Palestinians and that Israel should expect more ahead of the first anniversary of the 7 October attacks.

Missile fragments landed at a railway station in the city of Modiin, causing some damage, and in open ground near Israel’s main international airport on the outskirts of Tel Aviv.

The damage is believed to have been caused by Israel’s own interceptor missiles.

Netanyahu said the strike showed that Israel was in a “multi-front battle against Iran’s axis of evil that strives to destroy us”.

“[The Houthis] should have known by now that we exact a heavy price for any attempt to harm us,” he said.

“Anyone who attacks us will not escape from our arms.

“Hamas is already learning this in our determined action that will lead to its destruction and the release of all of our hostages.”

Israeli forces launched a campaign to destroy Hamas following the 7 October attacks, which saw around 1,200 people killed and another 251 taken to Gaza as hostages.

More than 41,206 people have been killed in Gaza since the campaign began, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.

This is not the first time the Houthis have attacked Israel.

In July, one man was killed and eight people were injured after a Houthi drone landed in Tel Aviv.

Previously, almost all Houthi missiles and drones fired towards Israel had been intercepted and none were known to have reached Tel Aviv.

In response, Israeli jets attacked the city of Hodeidah in Yemen, causing a huge fire which engulfed one of the country’s most important oil storage facilities.

Tito Jackson, an original member of the Jackson 5 pop group and brother of the late Michael Jackson, has died aged 70, US media report.

An official cause of death is yet to be determined.

Tito performed in the famous ensemble with brothers Jackie, Jermaine, Marlon and Michael, who died in 2009.

He was recently in Munich ahead of a performance that the group were due to give.

Steve Manning, a long-time Jackson family friend and former Jackson family manager, told Entertainment Tonight that Jackson died on Monday.

The news was confirmed in an Instagram post by Jackson’s three sons, Taj, Taryll and TJ Jackson, who were themselves an R’n’B/pop trio, 3T, in the 1990s.

“We are shocked, saddened and heartbroken,” they wrote. “Our father was an incredible man who cared about everyone and their well-being.”

They continued: “He will be missed tremendously. It will forever be ‘Tito Time’ for us.

“Please remember to do what our father always preached and that is ‘Love One Another’. We love you Pops.”

The Jackson 5’s hits included ABC, The Love You Save and I Want You Back.

• The Jackson 5 score UK number one
• Joe Jackson: Patriarch of Jackson family dies aged 89
• Paris Jackson pays tribute to grandad Joe

The group was formed in 1964. Tito played the guitar and provided backing vocals.

Jackson 5 has sold more than 150 million records worldwide.

In 1980, the siblings were presented with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1997.

Days before his death, Tito posted a message on social media from Munich, Germany, where he visited a memorial to Michael with his brothers.

He wrote: “Before our show in Munich, my brothers Jackie, Marlon, and I, visited the beautiful memorial dedicated to our beloved brother, Michael Jackson.

“We’re deeply grateful for this special place that honours not only his memory but also our shared legacy. Thank you for keeping his spirit alive.”

The Jacksons performed in Germany on 10 September, days after their performance at Boogietown, a UK music festival celebrating funk, soul and disco in Surrey.

The siblings also performed at the Fool in Love Festival at Hollywood Park Grounds in Los Angeles on 31 August.

Former Jackson 5 drummer Jonathan Moffett led tributes on social media, writing on X: “There is great sadness in my heart tonight – I just found out that my brother in heart and spirit, Tito Jackson has passed.

“I’m stunned, devastated and speechless. I love you, Tito. My most sincere love & prayers for the entire Jackson family. I love you all VERY much”.

Tito was the third oldest Jackson and one of nine children. His other siblings include global stars Janet and La Toya Jackson.

All his siblings, other than Michael who died aged 50 in June 2009, are still alive.

The family’s patriarch, Joe Jackson, died at the age of 89 in 2018.

The group of performers and singers have produced a total of 27 US number one hits.

Alongside work in the band, Tito also had a solo career as a blues musician which started in 2003.

He was the final sibling to place a solo single on the Billboard charts with his 2016 hit, Get It Baby.

In 2019, Jackie, Tito, Jermaine and Marlon embarked on a World Tour as The Jacksons.

Two years prior they performed a slew of shows in the UK as part of A Celebration of 50 Years, also stopping to perform at Glastonbury Festival.

Hundreds of thousands of people were evacuated as a powerful typhoon made landfall near China’s financial hub, Shanghai.

Typhoon Bebinca hit at about 07:30 local time (23:30 GMT) on Monday in the coastal area of Lingang New City in Shanghai’s east, the China Meteorological Administration said.

It is the strongest storm to hit Shanghai in 75 years, according to Chinese state media.

As a precaution, more than 400,000 people in the Shanghai Metropolitan area were relocated by Sunday evening, according to local officials.

A further 9,000 people were evacuated from the Chongming District, an island at the mouth of the Yangtze River that is also part of Shanghai.

Hundreds of flights were cancelled as the city’s two main airports grounded all flights. Train services were also cancelled and highways closed. A 40km/h (25mph) speed limit was imposed on roads inside the city.

Shanghai’s 25 million residents had been advised to stay home as the storm batters the city.

Authorities have issued a red alert for Bebinca, the highest level, as wind speeds of up to 151km/h (94 mph) were recorded at the typhoon’s eye. It is expected to weaken as it moves inland.

Videos posted online showed large trees toppled and people dragging their bicycles and motorcycles through flooded streets. A clip shared by Shanghai Daily showed a bus braking abruptly along Huaihai Road in a major shopping district as billboards blown by fierce winds collapsed onto the ground.

The storm was one of the most-discussed topics on Chinese social media platform Weibo on Monday, with some users sharing their fears that it would worsen.

“This is the kind of thing you’d only see on television,” wrote one Weibo user, who posted a video of trees swaying violently in a car park.

Another user advised others to make sure their doors and windows are properly locked and not to leave their homes unnecessarily.

It is rare for Shanghai to get a direct hit from strong typhoons, which tend to make landfall further south in China.

The city’s flood control headquarters said they received dozens of reports of incidents related to the typhoon – mostly fallen trees and billboards.

Resorts in Shanghai, including Shanghai Disney Resort, Jinjiang Amusement Park and Shanghai Wild Animal Park, have been temporarily closed and many ferries halted.

Another typhoon, Yagi, killed at least four people and injured 95 when it passed through China’s southern Hainan island this month, according to national weather authorities.

Yagi also caused severe flooding in Southeast Asia, killing hundreds of people in Vietnam and Myanmar.

Typhoon Bebinca also passed through Japan and the central and southern Philippines, where falling trees killed six people.

Chinese state media said Bebinca was expected to move north-west, causing heavy rain and high winds in Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Anhui provinces.

On a cold winter’s day in June 2002, an intellectually disabled teenage girl disappeared from the New South Wales Riverina without a trace.

Since then, the mystery of what happened to Amber Haigh has captivated the vast Australian farming region, due to a stunning allegation: that the 19-year-old was killed by the father of her five-month-old baby and his wife, so that they could take her child.

Two decades on, Robert and Anne Geeves – both 64 – were charged with her murder, but on Monday were acquitted after a high-profile trial.

Justice Julia Lonergan found that prosecutors had failed to prove their alleged motive, saying: “Cases are not decided on rumour, speculation or suspicion.”

The Geeveses are the last known people to have seen Amber alive. They have long said they dropped her at a train station 300km (186 miles) from their home in Kingsvale – where the three had been living at the time – so that she could visit her dying father on 5 June.

Despite extensive police investigations, a coronial inquiry, and a million-dollar reward for information, her body has never been found.

Prosecutors relied on witness testimony and hundreds of documents to support their theory – that the Geeveses had “manipulated” Amber into having Robert’s baby, and then “removed” her “from the equation” when she wouldn’t relinquish custody.

The court heard the couple had an adult son – who had previously dated Amber – but in the early 2000s still “desperately” wanted another child, having endured several miscarriages and a stillbirth.

However, the defence said the allegation they killed Amber to steal her baby was baseless, and that the investigation into the pair – who have spent two years in prison awaiting trial – was flawed from the start.

They told the court a “haze of mistrust” had clouded the local community’s view of the Geeveses due to Robert’s history – which included acquittals for the murder of an ex-partner who was found shot in the face on his property, and sexual assault charges involving two schoolgirls.

That past, the Geeveses’ lawyers said, had created a “presumption of guilt” that persisted for decades, and ultimately “blinded” police as they looked for Amber.

Over nine weeks, dozens of witnesses gave evidence about the final months of the teen’s life – describing a “kind hearted” yet “vulnerable” young woman who struggled to discern between “love and exploitation”.

Two recalled how Amber had shared stories of abuse with them – including instances where Robert Geeves had allegedly plied her with alcohol, tied her up, and had sex with her.

And the couple’s son Robbie told the court that his mother had referred to his ex-girlfriend as a “surrogate” and that both parents had turned up at his home in the dead of night asking him to accept Amber’s child as his “little brother”.

The prosecution also tendered an agreement Amber made Robert sign, promising not to take her child, as well as a will she’d created stipulating her aunt be given custody of the baby in the event of her death.

“There was little sign, in the sea of evidence in this case, that Amber was ever shown the love she needed or deserved,” Justice Lonergan said, adding that it is clear “beyond a reasonable doubt” that she is dead.

But the judge ultimately found a critical “problem” with the prosecution’s case – there was “no satisfactory evidence” that Anne and Robert still held a desire for more children when Amber became pregnant.

She criticised the accounts of prosecution witnesses and said the investigation had focussed on “disproving the Geeveses version of events” rather than investigating the cause of Amber’s disappearance.

Looking at the couple as they sat in the dock, Justice Lonergan ordered that they be released from custody immediately.

One member of the public gallery stormed out of the courtroom to scream. Amber’s relatives, too, were visibly shaken, with some later quietly breaking down in tears outside court.

The prosecution and defence agreed on little throughout the trial – other than that Amber’s life had been exceptionally difficult, and that her death came prematurely.

“Amber went back and forth between places and people looking for love and solace. She never found it.

“She was still looking for it when she disappeared,” Justice Lonergan concluded.

The court heard that Amber had come to Kingsvale – an isolated suburb near the regional town of Young – in the 1990s to live with her great aunt Stella Nealon, after fleeing a “dysfunctional” childhood in Sydney marred by epilepsy, learning difficulties, and a violent alcoholic father.

Ms Nealon had lived next door to the Geeveses, who were both in their 40s at the time and were introduced to Amber by their 19-year-old son Robbie.

The court heard that Amber’s life at her great aunt’s house was volatile, and at times physically violent. Much of the tension stemmed from Amber’s relationship with one of her cousins, which had resulted in an abortion at age 14.

In police interviews played to the court, the Geeveses said they had offered Amber refuge and that she had entered a sexual relationship with Robert shortly after.

The Geeveses said that although their relationship with the teen may have seemed “weird” or confronting to outsiders, the three of them “got along very well”, with Anne telling police that Amber saw her as a maternal figure.

When it became clear in 2001 that Amber had fallen pregnant with Robert’s child, it caused a rupture within the local community, and ultimately severed Robbie’s relationship with his parents – an estrangement still apparent in court on Monday.

By all accounts, Amber “adored” her son, but social workers and friends testified that she’d also struggled to keep up with the ceaseless demands of motherhood.

The Geeveses have maintained that they did their best to help Amber navigate those challenges, and that they did so without vested interest.

And in her ruling, Justice Lonergan found “nothing sinister” in their “provision of assistance” for Amber and her child – whose privacy is still subject to strict legal protections.

Further, she said the “consistent” account given by the Geeveses – that they last saw Amber as she walked towards the station after kissing her son goodbye – was not “inherently implausible”.

Listing the details of the case, she noted that while it was clear Amber was “attacked, abused and made to feel unsafe” since childhood, the prosecution had failed to establish how she met her end.

She conceded it is an outcome which leaves some of the “factual matters” in the case – which has tortured so many close to it for decades – unresolved.

A “fabulous moment” has been captured as tiger cubs explored a new area of their safari park for the first time.

Along with mum Yana, the four rare Amur tigers ventured into the drive-through Tiger Territory section at Longleat Safari Park in Wiltshire.

Amy Waller, from Longleat, said: “The four of them cautiously followed mum into the drive-through and then grew in confidence to explore the area.”

The four female cubs were born in May, making Longleat home to the largest number of tigers in the UK, as they joined Yana, their dad, Red, and their older sister, Yuki.

“We have always said it will be a gradual process led by Yana and the guidance of the keepers as it is really important we make sure Yana, and the cubs, are confident about where they are and what they are experiencing,” Ms Waller added.

“Yana decided when she’d had enough and led them back indoors.”

Amur tigers, also known as Siberian tigers, are native to the far east of Russia.

They are one of the most endangered species in the world and it is estimated that only 450 of them are left in the wild.

The species was on the brink of extinction in the 1940s, due to hunting and logging.

At one stage, it is believed the population fell to only 20 to 30 animals.

Visitors to the safari park will have the chance to see them in their paddock everyday.

On a bright September afternoon, a caravan of colourful cars, festooned with flags, arrives at a village in Indian-administered Kashmir for an election rally.

Iltija Mufti, a politician from the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), slowly rises from the sunroof of one of the cars.

“Yeli ye Mufti (When Mufti will be in power),” she shouts at a crowd that has gathered to hear the third-generation leader of one of the most influential political dynasties of the region.

“Teli Tch’le Sakhti (Then the repression will end),” they respond in unison.

From a distance, army personnel in bulletproof jackets, armed with automatic rifles, stand watch, tracking every movement.

For the first time in a decade, elections are being held in 47 assembly seats of Kashmir, long marked by violence and unrest. The region, claimed by both India and Pakistan, has been the cause of three wars between the nuclear-armed neighbours. Since the 1990s, an armed insurgency against Indian rule has claimed thousands of lives, including civilians and security forces.

The three-phase polls will also extend to the 43 seats in the neighbouring Hindu-majority Jammu region.

The election is the first since 2019, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government revoked Jammu and Kashmir’s autonomy, stripped its statehood, and split it into two federally-administered territories. Since then, the region has been governed by a federal administrator.

• Article 370: What happened with Kashmir and why it matters

In the fray are 13 main parties vying for a majority in the 90-seat assembly.

The major players are the two main regional parties – the PDP led by Mehbooba Mufti and the National Conference (NC) which is headed by Omar Abdullah. Both Mufti and Abdullah are former chief ministers of the region.

The NC has formed an alliance with India’s main opposition party Congress.

Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is also contesting but not many are betting on the party, which has a stronghold in Jammu but a weak political base in the valley.

In the last elections in 2014, the BJP had formed a government in alliance with PDP after sweeping Jammu. The alliance fell apart in 2018 after years of disagreements.

Also in the picture, this time, is Engineer Rashid – a controversial politician who has spent five years in jail accused in a terror case and was released on bail this week. Rashid came to limelight earlier this year when he pulled off a stunning victory in the general election over Abdullah. He fought the election from jail, with his sons leading an emotional campaign on the ground.

Elections in Kashmir have long been contentious, with residents and separatist leaders often boycotting them, viewing the process as Delhi’s attempt to legitimise its control.

Since 1947, Kashmir has held 12 assembly elections, but voter turnout has often been low and marked by violence. Militants have attacked polling stations, and security forces have been accused of forcing voters to come out and vote. Since the 1990s, hundreds of political workers have been kidnapped or killed by militant groups.

But for the first time in decades, even separatist leaders are contesting in several seats.

The most keenly watched of these is the outlawed Jamaat-e-Islami (JEI) party, which has joined hands with Rashid’s Awami Ittehad Party (AIP).

Residents will vote to elect a local assembly, led by a chief minister and council of ministers. Though the assembly will have limited powers under Delhi’s rule, it has sparked hopes for a political change in the valley.

Almost all opposition parties have pledged to restore statehood and the region’s special status. The BJP has ruled out restoring autonomy but has promised to reinstate statehood to Jammu and Kashmir “at an appropriate time after the elections”.

Most residents appeared to be reconciled to the loss of their region’s autonomy.

“I don’t think Article 370 will come back unless any miracle happens,” said Suheel Mir, a research scholar, adding that parties were making promises about restoring autonomy in a “politically charged” atmosphere to get votes.

Several young men and women said they were more concerned about issues like political instability, corruption and most of all, unemployment – also a major concern in Jammu.

“We want to cast our vote to resolve our day-to-day issues. It has nothing to do with the Kashmir dispute,” said a man who did not wish to be named.

But others said they didn’t want to give the impression that they had accepted the events of 2019 and would participate in the election solely to vote against the BJP.

“We want to send a message to the government that the revocation is unacceptable to us no matter what,” said 38-year-old Zameer Ahmad.

Five years ago when Modi’s government abrogated Article 370, the 70-year-old constitutional provision that gave the region its autonomy, the government said it was necessary to restore normalcy in India’s only Muslim-majority region.

The move triggered a severe security clampdown, mass detentions, curfews and a months-long internet blackout, stripping residents of rights to jobs and land.

Since then, Modi and his ministers have extensively talked about a new era of peace and development in Kashmir, announcing projects worth hundreds of millions of dollars that they say are part of a plan to integrate the region’s economy with the rest of India. (Until Jammu and Kashmir’s special status was removed, outsiders could not buy land to do business there).

But locals say they have yet to see the benefits of such projects and continue to struggle with violence and high levels of unemployment.

Thousands of Indian army troops continue to be perpetually deployed there, with powers that have led to decades of allegations of human rights violations.

“There is an absence of democracy and freedoms in Kashmir and many political activists remain in jail,” said political scientist Noor Ahmad Baba.

“The election allows people to give their verdict for or against these changes.”

The change in mood is visible everywhere.

Across Jammu and Kashmir, streets are adorned with posters, party flags, and billboards and men at local bakeries freely discuss election outcomes over chai.

“There has been a complete overhaul of traditional political narratives,” said Tooba Punjabi, a researcher.

“Earlier, public boycotts defined elections. But now, it’s a means of putting the right party in place to undo damage.”

The shift in political attitudes was also evident earlier this year, when Kashmir registered a historic 58.46% voter turnout in the parliamentary election.

Many residents are now pinning their hopes on regional parties to raise their demands.

“These parties have acted as a shield between Delhi and Kashmir,” said businessman Tahir Hussain,” adding that “it didn’t matter who will form the government as long as it’s a local one”.

Analysts say the BJP’s performance could also receive a significant blow in Jammu this time, where internal discord and infighting has derailed its ambitions.

There’s also growing anger among the residents who are unhappy with the party’s policies.

Until now, the BJP’s push for development has resonated with people in Jammu who hope it would bring in more economic opportunities for them.

But many say they are yet to see any signs of change. “In fact, now that Article 370 has been scrapped, people from other states are coming to Jammu. Our rights on jobs and land are being taken away from us,” said Gulchain Singh Charak, a local politician.

Sunil Sethi, BJP’s chief spokesperson in the region, rejected the allegations.

“We have done massive infrastructure developments, build roads and brought foreign investors here,” he said.