Left-leaning politician Anura Kumara Dissanayake has won Sri Lanka’s presidential election after a historic second round of counting.

No candidate won more than 50% of the total votes in the first round, where Dissanayake got 42.31% while his closest rival, opposition leader Sajith Premadasa, got 32.76%.

But Dissanayake, who promised voters good governance and tough anti-corruption measures, emerged as winner after the second count, which tallied voters’ second and third choice candidates.

The election on Saturday was the first to be held since mass protests unseated the country’s leader, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, in 2022 after Sri Lanka suffered its worst economic crisis.

Dissanayake, 55, told Sri Lankans “this victory belongs to us all”, in a message on the social media platform X.

Once preferences had been tallied, the Election Commission said he had won a total of 5,740,179 votes to Premadasa’s 4,530,902.

To revive the economy, Dissanayake has promised to develop the manufacturing, agriculture and IT sectors. He has also committed to continuing the deal struck with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to bail Sri Lanka out of the economic crisis while reducing the impact of its austerity measures on the country’s poorest.

Until this weekend’s vote, all of Sri Lanka’s eight presidential elections since 1982 have seen the winner emerge during the first round of counting. This poll has been described as one of the closest in the country’s history.

Seventeen million Sri Lankans were eligible to vote on Saturday and the country’s elections commission said it was the most peaceful in the country’s history.

Still, police announced a curfew late Saturday night citing “public safety”. It was lifted at noon local time (06:30 GMT).

Dissanayake promised voters tough anti-corruption measures and good governance – messages that resonated strongly with voters who have been clamouring for systematic change since the crisis.

This enabled him to overcome trepidation over the violent past of his political party, the Marxist Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP), which carried out two armed insurrections against the Sri Lankan state in the 1970s and 80s.

His alliance, the National People’s Party – of which the JVP is a part – rose to prominence during the 2022 protests, known as the Aragalaya – Sinhala for struggle.

He has also sought to moderate the hard left stance of his party, in more recent years.

Early results showed him rocketing to the lead, prompting several high-profile figures – including the country’s foreign minister – to congratulate him.

But he lost some ground to Premadasa as voting continued, prompting the need for the second round of counting.

Incumbent president Ranil Wickremesinghe won 17% of the vote, putting him in third place in the polling. He was eliminated from the second count, which was only between the two frontrunners.

Wickremesinghe congratulated his successor.

“With much love and respect for this beloved nation, I hand over its future to the new president,” Wickremesinghe said in a statement.

The country’s new president will be faced with the twin tasks of reviving the economy and lifting millions from crushing poverty.

An economic meltdown fuelled the Aragalaya (struggle) uprising that unseated Rajapaksa from the presidential palace in 2022.

At that time, Sri Lanka’s foreign currency reserves had dried up, leaving the country unable to import essentials such as fuel. Public debt had ballooned to $83bn while inflation zoomed to 70%.

This made basics such as food and medicine unaffordable to ordinary people.

The country’s economic misery has been blamed on major policy errors, weak exports and years of under-taxation. This was exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic, which choked tourism, a key economic driver.

But many people have also blamed corruption and mismanagement, stoking anger against Rajapaksa and his family, who collectively ruled Sri Lanka for more than 10 years.

“The most serious challenge is how to restore this economy,” Dr Athulasiri Samarakoon, a political scientist at the Open University of Sri Lanka, told the BBC Sinhala Service.

During his term, Wickremesinghe had secured a $2.9bn lifeline from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which is crucial to opening additional funding channels, but comes with strict economic and governance policy reforms.

Sri Lanka is restructuring the terms of its debt payments with foreign and domestic lenders, as mandated by the IMF. The main focus has been the country’s $36bn in foreign debt, of which $7bn is owed to China, its largest bilateral creditor.

Like Dissanayake, Premadasa has also pushed for IT, as well as the establishment of 25 new industrial zones. He said tourism should be supported so that it becomes the country’s top foreign currency earner.

Wickremesinghe said during the campaign he would double tourist arrivals and establish a national wealth fund, as well as new economic zones to increase growth.

Under normal circumstances, the victory of Anura Kumara Dissanayake in Sri Lanka’s presidential election would have been called a political earthquake.

But with many having labelled the left-leaning politician as a strong frontrunner in the run-up to the poll, his win was not a massive surprise for Sri Lankans.

The 55-year-old Dissanayake heads the National People’s Power (NPP) alliance, which includes his Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP), or People’s Liberation Front – a party that has traditionally backed strong state intervention and lower taxes, and campaigned for leftist economic policies.

With his win, the island will see for the first time a government headed by a leader with a strong left-wing ideology.

“It’s a vote for a change,” Harini Amarasuriya, a senior NPP leader and MP, told the BBC.

“The result is a confirmation of what we have been campaigning for – like a drastic change from the existing political culture and the anti-corruption drive.”

Dissanayake is expected to dissolve parliament and call parliamentary elections soon.

It will be a challenge, however, for him to implement his coalition policies in a country that has adopted liberalisation and free-market principles from the late 1970s.

The resounding victory of the NPP came following a wave of public anger over the devastating economic crisis in 2022, when Sri Lanka ground to a halt as inflation surged and its foreign reserves emptied.

The country was unable to pay for imports of food, fuel and medicines and declared bankruptcy.

An unprecedented public uprising against the government’s handling of the economy forced then president Gotabaya Rajapaksa to flee the country in July 2022.

Two months earlier, his elder brother and veteran leader Mahinda had been forced to resign as prime minister during the initial phase of the protest, known as “aragalaya” (struggle) in Sinhala.

Ranil Wickremesinghe took over as president with the backing of the Rajapaksas’ party. He stabilised the economy and negotiated a $2.9bn bailout package with the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

For the millions of Sri Lankans who took to the streets, the political change was nothing but a transfer of power between established parties and political dynasties.

The NPP and Dissanayake capitalised on this sentiment, as many in the country saw him as someone outside the old order.

Though he was a minister briefly when the JVP became part of a coalition government during the presidency of Chandrika Kumaratunga in the early 2000s, Dissanayake’s supporters say he is not tainted by corruption or cronyism charges.

The question is how his presidency will tackle Sri Lanka’s massive economic challenges.

During his campaign he promised to lower taxes and utility bills. That means lower revenue for the government, and will go against some of the conditions set by the IMF loan.

“We will work within the broad agreement that the IMF has reached within the current government,” said Amarasuriya from the NPP. “But we will negotiate certain details, particularly regarding the austerity measures.”

The election win is a remarkable turnaround for Dissanayake, who received just over 3% of votes in the 2019 presidential poll.

But while he may have convinced a large section of voters this time, there are concerns over the political ideology of Dissanayake and his JVP, which is remembered for insurrections that led to the deaths of tens of thousands of people in the late 1980s.

From 1987, the JVP spearheaded an armed revolt against the Sri Lankan government in what would come to be known as the “season of terror”.

The insurrectionist campaign, spurred by discontent among the youth of the rural lower and middle classes, precipitated a conflict marked by raids, assassinations and attacks against both political opponents and civilians.

Dissanayake, who was elected to the JVP’s central committee in 1997 and became its leader in 2008, has since apologised for the party’s violence. But his victory at the polls raises questions as to what role the JVP might play in Sri Lankan politics going forward.

“The JVP has a history of violence and there are concerns about the party’s position in a new government,” said Bhavani Fonseka, a senior researcher with the Centre for Policy Alternatives (CPA) in Colombo.

“I think Mr Dissanayake has softened the radical messaging during his public outreach. My question is, while he may have softened, what about the old guard of the JVP? Where do they situate themselves in a new government?”

Another challenge for Dissanayake will be to reach out to the country’s Tamil minority, who have been seeking devolution of powers to the north and east and reconciliation since the end of a civil war in May 2009.

That conflict, between the Tamil Tiger rebels and the Sri Lankan state, erupted in 1983. The Tigers eventually had vast areas under their control in their fight for an independent territory in the island’s north and east, but were defeated and all but wiped out in a 2009 military offensive.

Fifteen years later, the Sri Lankan government’s promises to share power and devolve their own political authority in Tamil-majority areas have largely failed to materialise.

Though the votes for the NPP have increased in the north and the east, Tamils did not vote for Dissanayake overwhelmingly, reflecting concerns over the NPP’s policy towards their political demands.

The UN Human Rights Commissioner’s office in Geneva has urged the new government to pursue an inclusive national vision for Sri Lanka that addresses the root causes of the ethnic conflict.

The government “should undertake the fundamental constitutional and institutional reforms needed to strengthen democracy and the devolution of political authority and to advance accountability and reconciliation,” it said in its latest report.

It’s not just about domestic policies, either. The rise of the NPP and JVP is being keenly watched in India and China, which are vying for influence in Sri Lanka. Both have loaned billions of dollars to Colombo.

Dissanayake, with his Marxist leanings, is seen as ideologically closer to China. The JVP in the past had been critical of India’s policy towards Sri Lanka and opposed what it called Indian expansionism.

During his campaign speech Dissanayake also promised to scrap a wind power project in the north funded by the Indian business tycoon Gautam Adani, who is believed to be close to Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

“The Adani project’s costs should decrease, given its large scale, but it’s the opposite,” Dissanayake said last week. “This is clearly a corrupt deal, and we will definitely cancel it.”

In any case, expectations are high among many ordinary Sri Lankans who have voted for change.

“Whoever comes to power, they should reduce the prices of food, fuel and electricity. They also need to increase wages,” said Colombo resident Sisira Padmasiri. “The new president should give some immediate relief to the public.”

Experts point out that Sri Lanka will have to make further tough decisions on austerity measures to balance the books and meet its debt obligations.

Once he takes over, Dissanayake will find out how far he can realistically fulfil the expectations of the people.

Half a billion fans, a multi-million dollar personal fortune and a global business empire.

It would take a lot to dethrone YouTube’s biggest influencer Jimmy Donaldson, aka MrBeast.

But a 54-page court document could be his toughest test yet.

Five female contestants on upcoming Prime Video show Beast Games are launching legal action against his production company MrB2024 and Amazon in Los Angeles.

Billed as the largest ever reality competition series, 1,000 contestants are set to compete for a $5m (£3.7m) prize when the show airs – or if it airs. The lawsuit has plunged the show into crisis.

Among many redacted pages, the legal document includes allegations that they “particularly and collectively suffered” in an environment that “systematically fostered a culture of misogyny and sexism”.

It cuts to the core of MrBeast’s image as one of the nicest guys on the internet.

I flicked through the document, which includes suggestions that participants were “underfed and overtired”. Meals were provided “sporadically and sparsely” which “endangered the health and welfare” of the contestants, it is claimed.

In one section where almost all of the claims are redacted from public view, it says the defendants “created, permitted to exist, and fostered a culture and pattern and practice of sexual harassment including in the form of a hostile work environment”.

Back in August, the New York Times spoke to more than a dozen of the (yet unreleased) show’s participants, and reported there were “several hospitalisations” on the set, with one person telling the paper they had gone over 20 hours without being fed.

Contestants also alleged they had not received their medication on time.

The BBC has approached MrBeast and Amazon – he has not yet publicly commented.

So will these latest allegations hurt the king of YouTube’s popularity?

MrBeast is no stranger to controversy this year – and has managed to come out unscathed each time.

In July, the 26-year-old American said he had hired investigators after his former co-host Ava Kris Tyson was accused of grooming a teenager.

Ava denied the allegations, but has apologised for “past behaviour” which was “not acceptable”.

MrBeast said he was “disgusted” by the “serious allegations”.

Later, further allegations about business practices surfaced on an anonymous YouTube channel, claiming to be a former employee. The BBC has not been able to independently verify the claims or this person’s identity.

Some of his philanthropic efforts – such as building wells in Africa, and paying for surgery for people with reduced sight and hearing – have drawn criticisms around exploitation.

“Deaf people like me deserve better than MrBeast’s latest piece of inspiration porn,” one person told the Independent last year.

But his empire continues to grow. The day before the lawsuit emerged on Wednesday, he revealed a team-up with fellow famous faces KSI and Logan Paul – a new food line designed to challenge Lunchables.

And as I wrote in an article about his meteoric rise last year, he has made his millions through hard work.

His videos are big budget experiences, with his most popular – viewed 652 million times – recreating the Netflix hit Squid Game in real life with a $456,000 (£342,000) prize.

Most of his philanthropy is less controversial – including giving away houses, cash and cars – which has worked to create an image of him being one of the internet’s good guys.

According to his website, he has delivered more than 25 million meals to the needy around the world.

People continue to flock to his social channels. In June, he gained enough subscribers to make his YouTube channel the largest in the world.

According to stats-checker Socialblade, MrBeast picked up an extra five million subscribers in the last 30 days alone.

That’s just one metric – we can’t tell how many people unsubscribed from his channel, for example.

What is certain is that the number of people who’ve actively decided to stop watching his videos has been eclipsed by those who’ve decided to subscribe.

He wouldn’t be the only YouTuber whose popularity holds through controversy – others have faced far more significant storms than MrBeast, with few facing many consequences outside of a public apology.

Logan Paul faced a massive backlash in 2018 after he uploaded a video to his 15 million subscribers which showed the body of a person who had apparently taken their own life.

After removing the original video, he shared a less than two-minute apology titled simply: “So sorry.”

Now, he has 23 million subscribers, owns an incredibly popular sports drink, and up until August was the WWE United States champion. He’s had quite a few pay-per-view boxing bouts, too.

Other high-profile YouTubers, including Pewdiepie, James Charles, and Jeffree Star have all had their own controversies, and got on with their careers after uploading apology videos.

A more modern example is Herschel “Guy” Beahm, known online as Dr Disrespect, who admitted he sent messages to “an individual minor” in 2017.

He stressed that “nothing illegal happened, no pictures were shared, no crimes were committed” and went offline for two months after posting the statement.

His comeback livestream earlier this month attracted more than three million views, despite criticism from other high-profile streamers.

Dr Disrespect remains the second-most watched streamer in the US this year, according to Streams Charts.

The point is: YouTubers tend to be forgiven quickly.

While MrBeast’s fanbase has continued growing, controversy is swirling once again – and his next move could determine his long-term success.

James Lunn, chief strategy officer at Savvy Marketing, says the star is “in an incredibly unique position” with a “multi-faceted” brand spanning many industries.

“We are indeed in uncharted waters,” he says, and “a proactive approach, addressing the issues transparently and ensuring accountability, could protect his brand”.

Brand expert Catherine Shuttleworth says the “sheer scale” of MrBeast’s fame may act as a buffer against backlash, but the latest lawsuit could be difficult.

“When it comes to his business ventures, particularly those targeting families and children – like Feastables chocolate bars or Lunchly – it’s a different story,” she says.

“Parents, who often hold the purchasing power, tend to be less tolerant of controversies involving safety, fairness, and ethics.”

Back in August 2023, when writing about MrBeast, I predicted he would soon take the YouTube crown despite him having half as many subscribers then.

He is now facing extra challenges as his fame rises, and a lot of the internet is eagerly awaiting his reply to what is, so far, one side of a complex story.

An explosion caused by a gas leak at a coal mine in eastern Iran has killed at least 51 people, state media said on Sunday.

More than 20 others were injured after the blast in South Khorasan province.

It is reported to have been caused by a methane gas explosion in two blocks of the mine in Tabas, 540 km (335 miles) southeast of the capital Tehran.

The explosion occurred at 21:00 local time (17:30 GMT) on Saturday, state media said.

South Khorasan’s governor Javad Ghenaatzadeh said there were 69 workers in the blocks at the time of the explosion.

According to the AP news agency, he said: “There was an explosion and unfortunately 69 people were working in the B and C blocks of Madanjoo mine.

“In block C there were 22 people and in block B there were 47 people.”

It remains unclear how many people are still alive and trapped inside the mine.

State media has now revised its earlier toll of 30 dead.

“The number of dead workers increased to 51 and the number of injured increased to 20,” the official IRNA news agency reported.

Citing the head of Iran’s Red Crescent, state TV said earlier on Sunday that 24 people were missing.

According to Reuters news agency, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian expressed condolences to the victims’ families.

“I spoke with ministers and we will do our best to follow up,” Pezeshkian said in televised comments.

The Tabas mine covers an area of more than 30,000 square kilometres (nearly 11,600 square miles) and holds mass reserves of coking and thermal coal, according to IRNA.

It is “considered the richest and largest coal area in Iran,” IRNA said.

Local prosecutor Ali Nesaei was quoted by state media as saying “gas accumulation in the mine” has made search operations difficult.

“Currently, the priority is to provide aid to the injured and pull people from under the rubble,” Nesaei said.

He added that “the negligence and fault of the relevant agents will be dealt with” at a later date.

Last year, an explosion at a coal mine in the northern city of Damghan killed six people, also likely the result of methane leak according to local media.

In May 2021, two miners died in a collapse at the same site, local media reported at the time.

A blast in 2017 killed 43 miners in Azad Shahr city in northern Iran, triggering anger towards Iranian authorities.

Wild Mother – the online alias of a woman called Desirée – lives in the mountains of Colorado, where she posts videos to 80,000 followers about holistic wellness and bringing up her little girl. She wants Donald Trump to win the presidential election.

About 70 miles north in the suburbs of Denver is Camille, a passionate supporter of racial and gender equality who lives with a gaggle of rescue dogs and has voted Democrat for the past 15 years.

The two women are poles apart politically – but they both believe assassination attempts against Mr Trump were staged.

Their views on the shooting in July and the apparent foiled plot earlier this month were shaped by different social media posts pushed to their feeds, they both say.

I travelled to Colorado – which became a hotbed of conspiracy theories about the 2020 election being stolen – for the BBC Radio 4 podcast Why Do You Hate Me? USA. I wanted to understand why these evidence-free staged assassination theories seemed to have spread so far across the political spectrum and the consequences for people like Camille and Wild Mother.

Dozens of evidence-free posts I found suggesting both incidents were staged have racked up more than 30 million views on X. Some of these posts came from anti-Trump accounts that did not seem to have a track record of sharing theories like this, while a smaller share were posted by some of the former president’s supporters.

For Democrat Camille, Trump’s team orchestrated this to boost his chances of winning the election.

Wild Mother – who already follows QAnon, the unfounded conspiracy theory which claims Donald Trump is involved in a secret war against an elite cabal of Satan-worshipping paedophiles – wants to believe Trump’s own team staged the attack in order to frame his supposed enemies in the “Deep State”.

The Deep State is claimed to be a shadowy coalition of security and intelligence services looking to thwart certain politicians.

There is no evidence to support either of the women’s theories.

The idea that news events have been staged to manipulate the public is a classic trope in the conspiracy theory playbook. Wild Mother says she is no stranger to this alternative way of thinking.

Camille, however, says this is the first time she has ever used the word “staged” about an event in the news like this. She always believed Covid-19 was real and she was extremely opposed to false claims the 2020 election had been rigged.

But on 13 July this year, when she was sitting in front of her TV at home watching live as Donald Trump was shot at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania, she says she immediately thought: “Oh, that’s staged.”

The way Donald Trump was able to pose for a photo and raise his fist in the air was what ignited Camille’s suspicions.

She had questions about how the US Secret Service allowed the shooting to happen in the first place. The director of the service has since resigned over failings that day.

The shooter was a 20-year-old called Thomas Matthew Crooks, who was killed by Secret Service snipers. His motives remain unknown – which left many questions wide open. And so Camille’s thoughts continued to spiral.

Already sceptical that something did not add up, Camille turned to X for more answers. In the years before the shooting, she had already started spending more and more time on the social media site, formerly known as Twitter. She had taken an interest in pro-Democrat anti-Trump accounts and followed some of them.

“I would admit to you that I spend too much time on social media now, and it, in my mind, is kind of a problem,” she tells me.

Recent changes to how X’s “For You” feed works meant she started seeing more posts from accounts she does not follow, but that pushed ideas in line with her political views. Lots of these accounts had also purchased blue ticks on the site, which give their posts more prominence.

So when the first assassination attempt happened, unfounded conspiracy theories suggesting it had been staged were not only recommended directly to her feed – but were all the more convincing as they came from other profiles with the same political views she holds about Donald Trump.

Most of the social media companies say they have guidelines to protect users and reduce harmful content. X did not respond to the BBC’s request for comment.

Why Do You Hate Me? USA – Episode one

Marianna Spring travels from Colorado to Baltimore and New York to uncover how social media is shaping the Presidential race. It’s social media’s world and the election is just living in it.

Listen on BBC Sounds.

Wild Mother had also turned to social media to find her tribe – having been called “a weirdo, an alien, a diamond in the rough” offline – and has built a following of thousands.

As we stand chatting in a waterfall in the small town she calls home, she explains how she began sharing her views on natural medicine and motherhood in 2021.

Then she started posting unproven theories about what was happening behind the headlines – such as on the Princess of Wales’ health or the Baltimore bridge collapse earlier this year – and saw her views and likes rack up.

She says she has been immersed in what she calls this “alternative idea about reality” from a young age and believes we have been lied to about what really happened when John F Kennedy was assassinated in the 1960s, when 9/11 happened in 2001, and during the Covid-19 pandemic.

She started to like Trump when she began spending more time online during the pandemic and became exposed to the QAnon movement, which she believes could be linking all these events. As a mum, she was especially concerned about allegations around child abuse and trafficking its supporters often talk about.

“I would never in my life even imagine some of the stuff that I’ve had to hear is going on right now, under our noses. And it blows my mind. We have to be able to protect our most innocent,” Wild Mother says.

QAnon supporters were among the crowd that stormed the US Capitol building on 6 January, 2021, in a violent protest against Joe Biden’s election victory. Now Wild Mother wants to believe the idea she has seen on social media that they might have been involved somehow in staging Trump’s shooting in July – in order to frame the Deep State.

But Wild Mother says, according to the posts she has seen online, “good guys in the military”, known as White Hats, had been doing covert operations to counter the Deep State. And one theory that popped up on her feed claimed the July assassination attempt was staged by them to show the public the threat Trump is under.

Wild Mother doesn’t claim to know for sure if the QAnon theory is true – but she does know what she wants to believe.

“I think our country needs rescuing from our government right now. It’s a horrible mess. A horrible mess,” she says.

Once Wild Mother started to question whether a news event could have been staged, it seemed as though any of them could be.

“It’s like going to a magic show as a kid and then that you find out for the first time that the magician is pulling one over on you. Now, every time you go to a magic show, you know what they’re doing,” she tells me.

As both Camille and Wild Mother came to rely more on social media, the beliefs they picked up contributed to a fracturing of their relationships in the real world.

Camille finds it hard to have conversations with some of her close family who support Trump, while Wild Mother says it played a part in her separating from her now ex-husband, who she says strongly opposed conspiracy theories.

“Does it make it difficult? Yes. Did it create a wedge? Was it possibly one of the things that ended my marriage? Maybe,” Wild Mother says.

Meanwhile, Camille also found herself embroiled in arguments on X which left her with her guard up in the real world, too. “It’s a little scary because I feel like every time I leave the house, it’s a potential for conflict,” she says.

This atmosphere of suspicion and conflict doesn’t just have consequences for these women’s personal lives – but for society too.

Officials, election workers – and politicians around the USA have found themselves subject to hate and threats as a consequence of this wider belief that almost anything and everything – including elections – is being rigged and staged.

For Wild Mother, people are “walking a really fine line” between seeking justice and harmful behaviour.

“It’s not writing your senators and calling them racist names. But if you were somebody who truly did your research and found that there was an issue, do I agree that you should use your voice? Absolutely,” she says.

“I think that we all have ways of doing that. For them, it just so happens to be harassing people.”

While Wild Mother and Camille say they have never threatened anyone themselves – and strike me as empathetic, kind people – the mistrust fostered in part by their social media feeds has eroded their faith in society and its institutions.

Camille, who was so opposed conspiracy theories, now finds herself using the language of them.

She appears to be one of many recruited into this way of thinking – by July’s assassination attempt and the social media algorithms drawing people deeper into an online world detached from reality.

At least four people have been killed and 18 injured in a mass shooting in Birmingham, Alabama, police say.

“Multiple shooters fired multiple shots on a group of people” late on Saturday in the Five Points South area of the city, Birmingham police officer Truman Fitzgerald said.

Officers found the bodies of two men and one woman at the scene, while a third man later died of bullet wounds in hospital, Birmingham Police said.

Detectives are investigating whether the gunmen walked up to the victims or drove by, Mr Fitzgerald said. No suspects have been arrested.

He added that they believed the shooting was “not random and stemmed from an isolated incident where multiple victims were caught in the crossfire”.

Detectives are working to identify who was the intended target or targets of the attack, Mr Fitzgerald also said.

They are also pressing to find the shooters. The police said in a statement that they are working with the FBI and other federal agencies, are offering a $5,000 reward for information and have opened a web portal for submitting photos and videos of the incident.

The Five Points South district is known for its nightlife. The shooting occurred on Magnolia Avenue, Mr Fitzgerald said.

Witnesses who were queuing outside a hookah and cigar lounge on Magnolia Avenue at the time told local news site Al.com that some of the gunfire sounded as though it came from a gun converted to be fully automatic.

Earlier on Sunday, Mr Fitzgerald had told reporters there were “dozens of gunshot victims” after the incident.

Birmingham Mayor Randall Woodfin blamed “Glock switches” – devices that can be attached to handguns to make them fire automatically – for the violence, posting on social media on Sunday that they “are the number one public safety issue in our city and state”.

“Converting a semi-automatic weapon into a fully automatic weapon that discharges all bullets within seconds doesn’t belong on our domestic streets,” he wrote, adding that the city does not have the power to outlaw Glock switches, only the state.

There have been more than 400 mass shootings across the US so far this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive, which defines a mass shooting as an incident in which four or more people are injured or killed.

The far right could be on the brink of its first election victory in a state known as the bastion of Germany’s social democrats.

Brandenburg, close to Berlin, has been governed by Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s centre-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) ever since German reunification.

But two million voters are heading to the polls on Sunday for a tightly fought regional election that Alternativ für Deutschland (AfD) stands a chance of winning.

It would add to the AfD’s recent election successes – and prove a major embarrassment for Scholz, who lives in the state’s capital, Potsdam.

Such a result, while far from certain, would cast further doubts on Scholz’s ability to lead the party into next year’s federal elections, where he hopes for a second term despite a slump in his approval ratings.

The AfD became the first far-right party to win a state election in Germany since World War Two, in the eastern state of Thuringia, on 1 September and came a narrow second in Saxony on the same day.

The group, officially classified “extremist” in some states, would be unlikely to enter regional government if it were to win in Brandenburg, as every other party has refused to work with it.

Polls close in Brandenburg at 18:00 (1600 GMT) and the first exit polls and preliminary projections will be announced as soon as voting ends.

The AfD did not win a majority in Thuringia or Saxony and is unlikely to do so in Brandenburg either.

But it would be a symbolic victory, as the AfD continues to capitalise on worries over an economic slowdown, immigration and the Ukraine war – concerns that resonate strongly in the formerly Communist eastern Germany.

Brandenburg is the SPD’s traditional stronghold – it has won elections in the sparsely populated state since East and West Germany were reunified in 1990.

Its popular SPD premier, Dietmar Woidke, has mostly shunned campaigning with Scholz and is critical of his ruling coalition’s behaviour and policies.

Scholz, meanwhile, called earlier this month on other parties to block the “right-wing extremist” AfD from office by maintaining a so-called firewall against it.

The chancellor, an SPD member and former leader, described the results in Thuringia and Saxony as “bitter” and “worrying”.

Hans-Christoph Berndt, the AfD candidate for Brandenburg state premier, cast his ballot in the town of Golssen, south of Berlin on Sunday and said the party had seen growing support since the last state election in 2019.

Bolstered by youth support, the AfD has been narrowly leading the SPD in the polls – but more than a quarter of voters are estimated to be undecided.

One person has died and seven others are missing, officials said, after “unprecedented” rains caused floods and landslides in the coastal quake-hit region of Ishikawa in northern Japan.

Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) on Saturday issued its highest “life-threatening” alert level for the Ishikawa region, following torrential rains which are expected to last until midday on Sunday.

More than 40,000 people across four cities have been ordered to evacuate after at least a dozen rivers in the region burst their banks.

Two of the missing were carried away by strong river currents, according to Japan’s public service broadcaster NHK.

Meanwhile, another four workers carrying out road repairs following a deadly New Year’s Day earthquake are also unaccounted for.

More than 120mm (4.7in) of rain was recorded in Wajima on Saturday morning, NHK reported, the heaviest downpour in the region since records began.

JMA forecaster Sugimoto Satoshi told reporters: “This level of downpours has never been experienced in this region before. Residents must secure their safety immediately. The risk to their lives is imminent.”

Footage aired by NHK showed an entire street in Wajima submerged under water.

Government official Koji Yamamoto told AFP that 60 people had been working to restore a road hit by the quake in the city of Wajima, but were hit by a landslide on Saturday morning.

“I asked [contractors] to check the safety of workers… but we are still unable to contact four people,” Mr Yamamoto said.

Rescue workers who had tried to gain access to the site, he said, were “blocked by landslides”.

A further two people have been seriously injured, according to government officials.

Some 6,000 households have been left without power, with an unknown number of households without running water, AFP agency reported.

The cities of Wajima and Suzu and the town of Noto have ordered some 44,000 residents to evacuate and seek shelter in Ishikawa prefecture, Honshu island.

Meanwhile, another 16,000 residents in the Niigata and Yamagata prefectures north of Ishikawa were also told to evacuate, the AFP news agency said.

Wajima and Suzu, in central Japan’s Noto peninsula, were among the areas hardest hit by a huge 7.5 magnitude earthquake on New Years Day that killed at least 236 people.

The region is still recovering from the powerful quake which had toppled buildings, ripped up roads and sparked a major fire.

Japan has seen unprecedented rainfall in parts of the country in recent years, with floods and landslides sometimes causing casualties.

The Crown Prosecution Service has said that it twice considered bringing charges against ex-Harrods owner Mohammed Al Fayed but concluded there was no realistic prospect of a conviction.

Police officers presented the CPS with evidence in 2009 and 2015 “which our prosecutors looked carefully at”, it confirmed.

Fresh allegations are being made about the late billionaire, who died last year at the age of 94.

A BBC documentary has led to dozens of women coming forward to say they were raped or sexually assaulted by the businessman.

In 2008, the Metropolitan Police investigated Fayed after a 15-year-old girl said he sexually assaulted her in the Harrods boardroom.

The force said it handed a file of evidence to the CPS – a step which has to be taken before charges can be issued.

Three other investigations into claims made by three other women – in 2018, 2021 and 2023 – got to an advanced enough stage that the CPS was called in to advise detectives, as first reported by the Sunday Times.

But, in those instances a full file of evidence was not passed to prosecutors.

• Five things we learned from the news conference
• It feels good to change Fayed’s legacy, says survivor
• Fulham ‘protected’ women’s team players from Fayed
• Mohamed Al Fayed accused of multiple rapes by staff
• Watch: Al Fayed: Predator at Harrods

Fayed bought Harrods in 1985 and sold it in 2010.

More than 20 women have told the BBC the businessman sexually assaulted or raped them while they worked at Harrods luxury department store in London.

The legal team representing many of the women making allegations against Fayed outlined their case against Harrods on Friday.

Harrods’ current owners said earlier this week they were “utterly appalled by the allegations of abuse perpetrated by Mohamed Al Fayed”.

“These were the actions of an individual who was intent on abusing his power wherever he operated and we condemn them in the strongest terms,” they said in a response to the BBC investigation.

“We also acknowledge that during this time his victims were failed and for this we sincerely apologise. We are doing everything we can to fix this.”

The company said it is a “very different organisation” now and “seeks to put the welfare of our employees at the heart of everything we do”.

The department store’s new owners have a compensation scheme for ex-employees who say they were attacked by Fayed, which is separate to the legal action being taken by some accusers.

Harrods has already reached financial settlements with the majority of people who have approached them since 2023, and has had new inquiries this week.

Harrods is accepting vicarious liability for the actions of Fayed, and there are no non-disclosure agreements attached to the settlements.

Dean Armstrong KC, one of the barristers representing alleged victims, said he was “at a loss” as to what the new information Harrods received in 2023 may have been.

In a BBC interview on Saturday, he argued the new owners – who bought Harrods in 2010 – “either didn’t know [about the allegations] – which I find very difficult to accept – or refused to acknowledge that there was this background of sexual misconduct”.

Mr Armstrong also said his team had 37 clients, but that the number of people who had contacted them with claims about Fayed was approaching 150.

Lawyers allege Fayed’s assaults occurred around the world – including in the UK, US, Canada, France, Malaysia and Dubai.

“It’s very much a global case, it’s not just the UK. It happened all over the world,” another lawyer, Bruce Drummond, told the BBC.

On Sunday, Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner said she was concerned by a culture of “powerful people who seem to get away with it” in response to the sex abuse allegations made against Al Fayed.

Speaking on the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg programme, she said: “I think there’s a lot of work that needs to be done to make sure that nobody is above the law and can hide in plain sight.”

Al-Fayed: Predator at Harrods

A BBC investigation into allegations of rape and attempted rape by Mohamed Al Fayed, the former owner of Harrods. Did the luxury store protect a billionaire predator?

Watch Al-Fayed: Predator at Harrods on BBC iPlayer now.

Listen to World of Secrets, Season 4: Al Fayed, Predator at Harrods on BBC Sounds. If you’re outside the UK, you can listen wherever you get your podcasts, external.

Anonymous letters have created a “village of poison” in East Yorkshire, according to residents.

Those on the receiving end of the “vulgar” mail say they have been “terrorised” through their letterboxes for the past two years.

The post sent by a mysterious writer to Shiptonthorpe, some of which has been seen by the BBC, is described as “personal, obscene and targeted”.

Humberside Police has carried out inquiries into some of the incidents.

The saga is reminiscent of scandalous letters that blighted Littlehampton, a small seaside town in Sussex, in the spring of 1920 – which sparked a House of Commons debate and period comedy drama Wicked Little Letters, starring Olivia Colman.

In Shiptonthorpe, Sophie – not her real name – said she received her first letter in December 2022 and reported it to the police.

At the time she was trying to become a ward councillor – and she was left “astonished” after opening it.

“It was vile, I ripped it up, I couldn’t believe where it had come from or why I’d received it,” she said.

Despite destroying the letter, the hurtful accusations have stuck with Sophie.

“It was accusing me of what you could call being a loose woman,” she said.

“It said the only way I would ever get anywhere within politics would be if I was to perform unspeakable things to men.”

The writer ended the letter and said Sophie should be “turned out on the Beverley Westwood pasture with the rest of the cows”.

“It was just vile,” Sophie recalled.

Humberside Police confirmed it received a report of the letter. “Inquiries were carried out at the time, including reviewing CCTV,” the force said.

“However, the content of the alleged letter was unavailable and subsequently no further investigative opportunities were able to be obtained.”

Officers said they gave Sophie safety advice. She has received three more letters since and reported them all to police.

Elsewhere in the village – home to just 500 people – Sophie’s partner Sam has opened letters claiming to be from a friend, urging him “to be honest” with himself.

One, which the BBC has seen, warned Sam about Sophie’s private life, urging him to stop Sophie from “roaming”.

The letter was signed: “From a caring dear friend.”

Sam said he feared for his partner after they both received letters. “I was frightened,” he said. “I was worried that anybody would approach her because I didn’t know who else had knowledge of this letter.”

Humberside Police said it received a report from a man who felt concerned after he received an anonymous letter to his home address.

“Officers reviewed the letter, however the content was not found to contain any aggressive language and it was established that no criminal offences had been committed,” the force said.

Officers urged him to call them again if further incidents took place.

In another letter seen by the BBC, an anonymous writer told a villager: “I hope cancer finds you.”

Another resident, Jason, said although he had not received any letters, the damage stretches further throughout the village.

“A cloud of vitriol has fallen over Shiptonthorpe,” he said.

“It is a wonderful village with wonderful people, but someone has brought poison to this village.”

Jason claimed some people had left the village because of the letters.

“People come here for a quiet, tranquil, community-spirted life and that’s being damaged badly by one or two devilish people,” he said.

“In my opinion I believe this constitutes a hate crime.”

Hull and East Yorkshire on BBC Soundslatest episode of Look North here.

Israeli forces have raided the offices of news broadcaster Al Jazeera in Ramallah, in the occupied West Bank, and ordered it to close for an initial period of 45 days.

Armed and masked Israeli soldiers entered the building early on Sunday during a live broadcast.

Viewers watched as the troops handed the closure order to the network’s West Bank bureau chief Walid al-Omari who read it out live on air.

Israel raided Al Jazeera’s offices in Nazareth and occupied East Jerusalem in May having described the Qatar-based broadcaster as a threat to national security.

“Targeting journalists this way always aims to erase the truth and prevent people from hearing the truth,” Omari said in comments reported by his employer.

The soldiers confiscated the last microphone and camera off the street outside and forced Omari out of the office, Al Jazeera journalist Mohammad Alsaafin said.

Posting about the raid on social media, Alsaafin said the troops also pulled down a poster of Shireen Abu Aqla – an Al Jazeera reporter who was killed while covering a raid by Israeli forces in the West Bank.

The network and witnesses at the time said the Palestinian-American reporter was shot by Israeli forces. Israel initially argued she had been shot by a Palestinian, however months later concluded there was a “high probability” that one of its soldiers killed her.

Relations between the Qatari-owned broadcaster and the Israeli government have long been tense but have worsened dramatically following the outbreak of war in Gaza.

With foreign journalists banned from entering the strip, Al Jazeera staff based in the area have been some of the only reporters able to cover the war on the ground.

Israel has repeatedly branded the network a terrorist mouthpiece, an accusation Al Jazeera has denied.

In April, the Israeli parliament passed a law giving the government power to temporarily close foreign broadcasters considered a threat to national security during the war.

A ban would be in place for a period of 45 days at a time, as seen in Sunday’s raid, and can be renewed.

In early May, the Al Jazeera offices in Nazareth and occupied East Jerusalem were subject to separate raids.

Israel is yet to comment on Sunday’s operation.

“One village, two countries” used to be the tagline for Yinjing on China’s south-western edge.

An old tourist sign boasts of a border with Myanmar made of just “bamboo fences, ditches and earth ridges” – a sign of the easy economic relationship Beijing had sought to build with its neighbour.

Now the border the BBC visited is marked by a high, metal fence running through the county of Ruili in Yunnan province. Topped by barbed wire and surveillance cameras in some places, it cuts through rice fields and carves up once-adjoined streets.

China’s tough pandemic lockdowns forced the separation initially. But it has since been cemented by the intractable civil war in Myanmar, triggered by a bloody coup in 2021. The military regime is now fighting for control in large swathes of the country, including Shan State along China’s border, where it has suffered some of its biggest losses.

The crisis at its doorstep – a nearly 2,000km (1,240-mile) border – is becoming costly for China, which has invested millions of dollars in Myanmar for a critical trade corridor.

The ambitious plan aims to connect China’s landlocked south-west to the Indian Ocean via Myanmar. But the corridor has become a battleground between Myanmar rebels and the country’s army.

Beijing has sway over both sides but the ceasefire it brokered in January fell apart. It has now turned to military exercises along the border and stern words. Foreign Minister Wang Yi was the latest diplomat to visit Myanmar’s capital Nay Pyi Taw and is thought to have delivered a warning to the country’s ruler Min Aung Hlaing.

Conflict is not new to impoverished Shan State. Myanmar’s biggest state is a major source of the world’s opium and and methamphetamine, and home to ethnic armies long opposed to centralised rule.

But the vibrant economic zones created by Chinese investment managed to thrive – until the civil war.

A loudspeaker now warns people in Ruili not to get too close to the fence – but that doesn’t stop a Chinese tourist from sticking his arm between the bars of a gate to take a selfie.

Two girls in Disney T-shirts shout through the bars – “hey grandpa, hello, look over here!” – as they lick pink scoops of ice cream. The elderly man shuffling barefoot on the other side barely looks up before he turns away.

“Burmese people live like dogs,” says Li Mianzhen. Her corner stall sells food and drinks from Myanmar – like milk tea – in a small market just steps from the border checkpoint in Ruili city.

Li, who looks to be in her 60s, used to sell Chinese clothes across the border in Muse, a major source of trade with China. But she says almost no-one in her town has enough money any more.

Myanmar’s military junta still controls the town, one of its last remaining holdouts in Shan State. But rebel forces have taken other border crossings and a key trading zone on the road to Muse.

The situation has made people desperate, Li says. She knows of some who have crossed the border to earn as little as 10 yuan – about one pound and not much more than a dollar – so that they can go back to Myanmar and “feed their families”.

The war has severely restricted travel in and out of Myanmar, and most accounts now come from those who have fled or have found ways to move across the borders, such as Li.

Unable to get the work passes that would allow them into China, Li’s family is stuck in Mandalay, as rebel forces edge closer to Myanmar’s second-largest city.

“I feel like I am dying from anxiety,” Li says. “This war has brought us so much misfortune. At what point will all of this end?”

Thirty-one-year-old Zin Aung (name changed) is among those who made it out. He works in an industrial park on the outskirts of Ruili, which produces clothes, electronics and vehicle parts that are shipped across the world.

Workers like him are recruited in large numbers from Myanmar and flown here by Chinese government-backed firms eager for cheap labour. Estimates suggest they earn about 2,400 yuan ($450; £340) a month, which is less than their Chinese colleagues.

“There is nothing for us to do in Myanmar because of the war,” Zin Aung says. “Everything is expensive. Rice, cooking oil. Intensive fighting is going on everywhere. Everyone has to run.”

His parents are too old to run, so he did. He sends home money whenever he can.

The men live and work on the few square kilometres of the government-run compound in Ruili. Zin Aung says it is a sanctuary, compared with what they left behind: “The situation in Myanmar is not good, so we are taking refuge here.”

He also escaped compulsory conscription, which the Myanmar army has been enforcing to make up for defections and battlefield losses.

As the sky turned scarlet one evening, Zin Aung ran barefoot through the cloying mud onto a monsoon-soaked pitch, ready for a different kind of battle – a fiercely fought game of football.

Burmese, Chinese and the local Yunnan dialect mingled as vocal spectators reacted to every pass, kick and shot. The agony over a missed goal was unmistakable. This is a daily affair in their new, temporary home, a release after a 12-hour shift on the assembly line.

Many of the workers are from Lashio, the largest town in Shan State, and Laukkaing, home to junta-backed crime families – Laukkaing fell to rebel forces in January and Lashio was encircled, in a campaign which has changed the course of the war and China’s stake in it.

Both towns lie along China’s prized trade corridor and the Beijing-brokered ceasefire left Lashio in the hands of the junta. But in recent weeks rebel forces have pushed into the town – their biggest victory to date. The military has responded with bombing raids and drone attacks, restricting internet and mobile phone networks.

“The fall of Lashio is one of the most humiliating defeats in the military’s history,” says Richard Horsey, Myanmar adviser to the International Crisis Group.

“The only reason the rebel groups didn’t push into Muse is they likely feared it would upset China,” Mr Horsey says. “Fighting there would have impacted investments China has hoped to restart for months. The regime has lost control of almost all northern Shan state – with the exception of Muse region, which is right next to Ruili.”

Ruili and Muse, both designated as special trade zones, are crucial to the Beijing-funded 1,700km trade route, known as the China-Myanmar Economic Corridor. The route also supports Chinese investments in energy, infrastructure and rare earth mining critical for manufacturing electric vehicles.

But at its heart is a railway line that will connect Kunming – the capital of Yunnan province – to Kyaukphyu, a deep sea port the Chinese are building on Myanmar’s western coast.

The port, along the Bay of Bengal, would give industries in and beyond Ruili access to the Indian Ocean and then global markets. The port is also the starting point for oil and gas pipelines that will transport energy via Myanmar to Yunnan.

But these plans are now in jeopardy.

President Xi Jinping had spent years cultivating ties with his resource-rich neighbour when the country’s elected leader Aung San Suu Kyi was forced from power.

Mr Xi refused to condemn the coup and continued to sell the army weapons. But he also did not recognise Min Aung Hlaing as head of state, nor has he invited him to China.

Three years on, the war has killed thousands and displaced millions, but no end is in sight.

Forced to fight on new fronts, the army has since lost between half and two-thirds of Myanmar to a splintered opposition.

Beijing is at an impasse. It “doesn’t like this situation” and sees Myanmar’s military ruler Min Aung Hlaing as “incompetent”, Mr Horsey says. “They are pushing for elections, not because they necessarily want a return to democratic rule, but more because they think this is a way back.”

Myanmar’s regime suspects Beijing of playing both sides – keeping up the appearance of supporting the junta while continuing to maintain a relationship with ethnic armies in Shan State.

Analysts note that many of the rebel groups are using Chinese weapons. The latest battles are also a resurgence of last year’s campaign launched by three ethnic groups which called themselves the Brotherhood Alliance. It is thought that the alliance would not have made its move without Beijing’s tacit approval.

Its gains on the battlefield spelled the end for notorious mafia families whose scam centres had trapped thousands of Chinese workers. Long frustrated over the increasing lawlessness along its border, Beijing welcomed their downfall – and the tens of thousands of suspects who were handed over by the rebel forces.

For Beijing the worst-case scenario is the civil war dragging on for years. But it would also fear a collapse of the military regime, which might herald further chaos.

How China will react to either scenario is not yet clear – what is also unclear is what more Beijing can do beyond pressuring both sides to agree to peace talks.

That predicament is evident in Ruili with its miles of shuttered shops. A city that once benefited from its location along the border is now feeling the fallout from its proximity to Myanmar.

Battered by some of China’s strictest lockdowns, businesses here took another hit when cross-border traffic and trade did not revive.

They also rely on labour from the other side, which has stopped, according to several agents who help Burmese workers find jobs. They say China has tightened its restrictions on hiring workers from across the border, and has also sent back hundreds who were said to be working illegally.

The owner of a small factory, who did not want to be identified, told the BBC that the deportations meant “his business isn’t going anywhere… and there’s nothing I can change”.

The square next to the checkpoint is full of young workers, including mothers with their babies, waiting in the shade. They lay out their paperwork to make sure they have what they need to secure a job. The successful ones are given a pass which allows them to work for up to a week, or come and go between the two countries, like Li.

“I hope some good people can tell all sides to stop fighting,” Li says. “If there is no-one in the world speaking up for us, it is really tragic.”

She says she is often assured by those around her that fighting won’t break out too close to China. But she is unconvinced: “No-one can predict the future.”

For now, Ruili is a safer option for her and Zin Aung. They understand that their future is in Chinese hands, as do the Chinese.

“Your country is at war,” a Chinese tourist tells a Myanmar jade seller he is haggling with at the market. “You just take what I give you.”

They are two competing views on where desk-based employees work best.

Amazon is ordering its staff back to the office five days a week, just as the government is pushing for rights to flexible working – including working from home – to be strengthened.

The tech giant says employees will be able to better “invent, collaborate, and be connected”.

But just as the firm’s announcement became news, the UK government was linking flexibility to better performance and a more productive, loyal workforce.

Few are short of an opinion on how effective working from home is and for a government there are broader considerations such as how, for example, caring responsibilities are affected.

But more than four years since the start of the pandemic, what does the evidence tell us about how we work best and is Amazon right to believe people being in the office full time will allow them to collaborate better?

Amazon’s fellow tech giant Microsoft studied its employees during the pandemic. It looked at the emails, calendars, instant messages and calls of 61,000 of its employees in the US during the first six months of 2020. The findings were published in Nature Human Behaviour.

The study indicated that, during Covid, remote workers tended to collaborate more with networks of colleagues they already had, and that they built fewer “bridges” between different networks.

There was also a drop in communication that happened in real time – meetings that would have happened in real life weren’t necessarily happening online. Instead, more emails and instant messages were sent.

The authors suggested this may make it harder to convey and understand complex information.

Microsoft’s was a data-led study. But what about human experience?

A 2020 survey by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) of 1,000 senior decision-makers in organisations found about a third struggled with “reduced staff interaction and cooperation”.

However, more than 40% of the managers said there was more collaboration when people were working from home.

Greater collaboration is hard to object to, but equally it is no guarantee of productivity.

In 2010, China’s biggest travel agency CTrip tried something very new among staff in its airfare and hotel booking department.

Almost 250 staff were identified as potential home workers – they needed to be established at the company and have a proper home working set-up.

Around half that group started working from home. The other group stayed office-based.

Researchers at Stanford University found the workers were 13% more productive when working from home – mainly because workers had fewer breaks and sick days, and they could take more calls because it was quieter.

There was a particularly significant drop in staff quitting for non-managers, women, and people with long commutes, the researchers said.

However, those Chinese home-workers were seeing a bit of the office: they were spending one day a week among colleagues. It could be this brought some benefit – a separate study years later from researchers at Stanford suggested fully remote work can lead to a 10% drop in productivity compared with working in the office all the time.

Barriers to communication, lack of mentoring for staff, problems building a work culture, and difficulties with self-motivation were all cited.

Amazon is not alone in telling employees to return to the office full-time.

Goldman Sachs chief executive David Solomon famously described working from home as an “aberration”. The US firm requires bankers to be in the office five days per week.

Rival US banks JPMorgan and Morgan Stanley have also backed workers returning to the office, whereas some banks in Europe have taken a softer approach.

Elon Musk’s Tesla also requires employees to be in the office full time, leading to reports of problems finding space for them.

Another Musk company, SpaceX, brought in a policy requiring workers to return to the office full-time.

But it wasn’t without consequences: when it brought the policy in, SpaceX lost 15% of its senior-level employees, according to a study published earlier this year.

The pandemic changed work routines that were in many cases decades old.

Linda Noble, now 62, from Barnsley, was used to putting on a suit and make-up. In 2020 she was a senior officer in local government, scrutinising governance in the fire service and the police service.

Then Covid struck and she was working from home.

“I loathed it. I missed the communication – going into work, someone would make you smile,” she says.

But with time, Ms Noble adjusted. She set up her home office and she thinks that before long she was twice as productive as previously – even if that was in part because of an inability to switch off.

Many disabled people also believe working from home makes them more productive.

A 2023 study of 400 people suggested that disabled workers felt they had more autonomy and control when working from home, which led them to better manage their health and wellbeing, and 85% felt more productive.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, not all studies come to the same conclusions. Some suggest an improvement to physical health from working at home, others disagree. The same goes for mental health.

The wellbeing of staff was a key reason one UK business decided to get them back to the office as soon as possible after lockdown restrictions ended, according to one of its directors, Francis Ashcroft.

He was chief executive of a large private UK children’s care services company. He says “some people were struggling with raised anxiety” and wanted to get back to the office “to be part of a team”.

Mr Ashcroft said there was “also a recognition that 80% of staff were at the coalface”, working in person in children’s homes and education, and so it was “right to come back” for reasons of fairness.

Although team members were collaborating online at 95% of what they had been, “coming back into the office added that 5% back”, he argues.

“It brought a realness and a sense of belonging,” Mr Ashcroft says, adding that “when it comes to delivering a service, the teamwork was much better in the office”.

Despite this experience, an umbrella review of home working that examined a range of other studies concluded that, on the whole, working from home boosts how much workers can get done.

What difference there is in approach between the government and Amazon essentially boils down to whether or not some home working should be part of the mix, with Amazon believing it shouldn’t.

Linda Noble’s time solely working from home is over. She is just about to start a hybrid job. She’s attracted by the “balance” between working from home and office work.

According to the CIPD, benefits of hybrid working include “a better work/life balance, greater ability to focus with fewer distractions, more time for family and friends and wellbeing activity, saved commuting time and costs, plus higher levels of motivation and engagement.”

And it may be that this can reduce staff churn. A study published this year found that a Chinese firm that adopted hybrid working reduced the rate at which employees quit by a third.

From an employee perspective, the optimum time for hybrid working is three days in the office – this makes employees most engaged, according to a Gallup survey of US workers, although it also says there is “no one-size-fits-all”.

In the UK, the number of people exclusively working from home is falling. But, crucially, hybrid working is continuing to rise, running at 27% of the working population.

Gallup says that despite highly publicised moves by firms to get employees back in the office, the underlying trend is that the future of office work is hybrid.

This tallies with the position of the UK government, which is clear that it believes the potential to work at home drives up productivity.

The calculation by Amazon appears to be that what evidence there is for increased productivity among employees who work in part from home fails to capture the particulars of how they operate.

Under normal circumstances, the victory of Anura Kumara Dissanayake in Sri Lanka’s presidential election would have been called a political earthquake.

But with many having labelled the left-leaning politician as a strong frontrunner in the run-up to the poll, his win was not a massive surprise for Sri Lankans.

The 55-year-old Dissanayake heads the National People’s Power (NPP) alliance, which includes his Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP), or People’s Liberation Front – a party that has traditionally backed strong state intervention and lower taxes, and campaigned for leftist economic policies.

With his win, the island will see for the first time a government headed by a leader with a strong left-wing ideology.

“It’s a vote for a change,” Harini Amarasuriya, a senior NPP leader and MP, told the BBC.

“The result is a confirmation of what we have been campaigning for – like a drastic change from the existing political culture and the anti-corruption drive.”

Dissanayake is expected to dissolve parliament and call parliamentary elections soon.

It will be a challenge, however, for him to implement his coalition policies in a country that has adopted liberalisation and free-market principles from the late 1970s.

The resounding victory of the NPP came following a wave of public anger over the devastating economic crisis in 2022, when Sri Lanka ground to a halt as inflation surged and its foreign reserves emptied.

The country was unable to pay for imports of food, fuel and medicines and declared bankruptcy.

An unprecedented public uprising against the government’s handling of the economy forced then president Gotabaya Rajapaksa to flee the country in July 2022.

Two months earlier, his elder brother and veteran leader Mahinda had been forced to resign as prime minister during the initial phase of the protest, known as “aragalaya” (struggle) in Sinhala.

Ranil Wickremesinghe took over as president with the backing of the Rajapaksas’ party. He stabilised the economy and negotiated a $2.9bn bailout package with the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

For the millions of Sri Lankans who took to the streets, the political change was nothing but a transfer of power between established parties and political dynasties.

The NPP and Dissanayake capitalised on this sentiment, as many in the country saw him as someone outside the old order.

Though he was a minister briefly when the JVP became part of a coalition government during the presidency of Chandrika Kumaratunga in the early 2000s, Dissanayake’s supporters say he is not tainted by corruption or cronyism charges.

The question is how his presidency will tackle Sri Lanka’s massive economic challenges.

During his campaign he promised to lower taxes and utility bills. That means lower revenue for the government, and will go against some of the conditions set by the IMF loan.

“We will work within the broad agreement that the IMF has reached within the current government,” said Amarasuriya from the NPP. “But we will negotiate certain details, particularly regarding the austerity measures.”

The election win is a remarkable turnaround for Dissanayake, who received just over 3% of votes in the 2019 presidential poll.

But while he may have convinced a large section of voters this time, there are concerns over the political ideology of Dissanayake and his JVP, which is remembered for insurrections that led to the deaths of tens of thousands of people in the late 1980s.

From 1987, the JVP spearheaded an armed revolt against the Sri Lankan government in what would come to be known as the “season of terror”.

The insurrectionist campaign, spurred by discontent among the youth of the rural lower and middle classes, precipitated a conflict marked by raids, assassinations and attacks against both political opponents and civilians.

Dissanayake, who was elected to the JVP’s central committee in 1997 and became its leader in 2008, has since apologised for the party’s violence. But his victory at the polls raises questions as to what role the JVP might play in Sri Lankan politics going forward.

“The JVP has a history of violence and there are concerns about the party’s position in a new government,” said Bhavani Fonseka, a senior researcher with the Centre for Policy Alternatives (CPA) in Colombo.

“I think Mr Dissanayake has softened the radical messaging during his public outreach. My question is, while he may have softened, what about the old guard of the JVP? Where do they situate themselves in a new government?”

Another challenge for Dissanayake will be to reach out to the country’s Tamil minority, who have been seeking devolution of powers to the north and east and reconciliation since the end of a civil war in May 2009.

That conflict, between the Tamil Tiger rebels and the Sri Lankan state, erupted in 1983. The Tigers eventually had vast areas under their control in their fight for an independent territory in the island’s north and east, but were defeated and all but wiped out in a 2009 military offensive.

Fifteen years later, the Sri Lankan government’s promises to share power and devolve their own political authority in Tamil-majority areas have largely failed to materialise.

Though the votes for the NPP have increased in the north and the east, Tamils did not vote for Dissanayake overwhelmingly, reflecting concerns over the NPP’s policy towards their political demands.

The UN Human Rights Commissioner’s office in Geneva has urged the new government to pursue an inclusive national vision for Sri Lanka that addresses the root causes of the ethnic conflict.

The government “should undertake the fundamental constitutional and institutional reforms needed to strengthen democracy and the devolution of political authority and to advance accountability and reconciliation,” it said in its latest report.

It’s not just about domestic policies, either. The rise of the NPP and JVP is being keenly watched in India and China, which are vying for influence in Sri Lanka. Both have loaned billions of dollars to Colombo.

Dissanayake, with his Marxist leanings, is seen as ideologically closer to China. The JVP in the past had been critical of India’s policy towards Sri Lanka and opposed what it called Indian expansionism.

During his campaign speech Dissanayake also promised to scrap a wind power project in the north funded by the Indian business tycoon Gautam Adani, who is believed to be close to Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

“The Adani project’s costs should decrease, given its large scale, but it’s the opposite,” Dissanayake said last week. “This is clearly a corrupt deal, and we will definitely cancel it.”

In any case, expectations are high among many ordinary Sri Lankans who have voted for change.

“Whoever comes to power, they should reduce the prices of food, fuel and electricity. They also need to increase wages,” said Colombo resident Sisira Padmasiri. “The new president should give some immediate relief to the public.”

Experts point out that Sri Lanka will have to make further tough decisions on austerity measures to balance the books and meet its debt obligations.

Once he takes over, Dissanayake will find out how far he can realistically fulfil the expectations of the people.

A British soldier’s handwritten account of how he escaped a Nazi prisoner of war camp during World War Two has been published after it was discovered at an auction.

Pte Ray Bailey, from Dunstable in Bedfordshire, was among the Allied troops captured by the Germans in 1940 after the French forces at St Valery-en-Caux surrendered.

The 21-year-old managed to escape captivity and travel 2,000 miles, through Nazi-occupied Europe, to Spain, where he was then transported back to his parents’ home in England.

His 80,000-word account of the experience was found in an online auction won by amateur social-historian David Wilkins, who has now published it under the title Blighty or Bust.

The 69-year-old, from Portland, Dorset, bid on the box of World War Two memorabilia without knowing exactly what the contents would be.

Inside, the diary collector found photographs, foreign currency and several notebooks that Pte Bailey wrote on his return to England in 1940.

He said: “When it arrived, I couldn’t believe the quality of what there was.

“Most published World War Two memoirs are written much later in people’s lives, but he was writing like you would write about a holiday you went on 18 months ago – he remembers it very clearly.”

“I don’t think there is anything from this early in the war written by a soldier ever to be found.”

Known to family as Ray, Pte Bailey was born in in 1919 in Chester-le-Street, County Durham.

The family moved during his childhood to Dunstable, where the family found work at Vauxhall Motor Works in neaby Luton.

In May 1940, he was part of the Kensington Regiment deployed to France to bolster to French army.

Allied troops were forced to surrender to the Germans on 12 June 1940 and the 270 men of the Kensington Regiment were taken to prisoner of war camps where they remained until May 1945.

Pte Bailey, who had managed to escape as he was being transported to the camp by ducking into a cornfield, was home in Dunstable by December 1940.

Over the next few years, he wrote a full account of his escape, the days he went without food and the people who helped him hide or move further through the continent.

Mr Wilkins wants readers to discover what happened to Pte Bailey during the rest of the war by reading the book.

He added: “I think anybody who looked at the original manuscript would think ‘people have got to read this’. It tells us something about the war.”

“My dad fought in World War Two. We never knew anything about what he did because he wouldn’t talk about it.

“That’s why this is so interesting – and to think it was written by this lad who had left school at 14. He clearly had a gift.”

Raymond Tattle, historical officer of the princess Louise Kensington Regimental Association, described the story as “unique”.

He said: “This is somebody who worked as an apprentice at Vauxhall cars, probably has never been abroad before. His tenacity, initiative, cunning and daring allowed him to affect this escape.

“We have a regimental motto: Quid nobis ardui – which means nothing is too difficult for us. Raymond Bailey showed a true Kensington Spirit.

“The fact David managed to unearth these documents is quite unique.”

The Nigerian National Museum in Lagos sits in the city like a respected but unloved relative – it somehow exudes importance but remains largely unvisited.

This is perhaps because the concept of a museum is based on a colonial idea – stuffing cabinets full of exoticised objects removed from the context that gave them any meaning.

Olugbile Holloway, who was appointed earlier this year to head the commission that runs the National Museum, is keen to change this – he wants to take the artefacts on the road and get them seen back where they once belonged.

“How organically African [is this concept of a museum] or has this ideology kind of been superimposed on us?” he asked me.

“Maybe the conventional model of a nice building with artefacts and lights and write-ups, maybe that isn’t what’s going to work in this part of the world?”

Established in 1957 – three years before independence – the museum houses objects from across the country, including Ife bronze and terracotta heads, Benin brass plaques and ivories, and Ibibio masks and costumes.

But there is also an irony – Mr Holloway’s job would not exist if the antiquities department, set up by the colonial government, had not got people to go around the country to collect the pieces that ended up in the museum.

Some may have otherwise been stolen by Western visitors with less scruples to be sold on the lucrative European and American artefacts market. While others could have been destroyed by zealous Nigerian Christians convinced that they were the devil’s work.

In 1967, an unlikely American duo of Charlie Cushman, a hitchhiker, and Herbert “Skip” Cole, a postgraduate student, were sent around the country by the antiquities department, to gather up some of the heritage.

“It was an incredible opportunity to spend – what was it, two weeks? – to venture into small enclaves and villages in south-eastern Nigeria,” Mr Cushman, now 90, told me.

At that time, significant cultural artefacts were kept in traditional shrines, palaces and sometimes caves. They were often central to the area’s traditional religions.

Household heads and shrine priests were responsible for maintaining and protecting these items.

“What I found particularly interesting is that many people in the villages seemed very willing to part with masks and objects that had been in their families for a long time,” 89-year-old Mr Cole told me.

“I was able to buy masks for two or three dollars. They would be worth hundreds in Europe at the time.

“Its monetary value wasn’t important in Igbo villages.

“They used the objects for ceremonies, for entertainment, for commemorating ancestors and nature spirits… which is probably why they were able to sell things inexpensively when they decided that they were no longer useful to them.”

Mr Cushman kept detailed journals of his experiences as they travelled together in a VW minibus and on foot to retrieve these artworks, including ceremonies they observed and people they met – and those handwritten notebooks have survived more than 50 years.

I was especially fascinated by their efforts to persuade Christian converts not to destroy artefacts, which they considered pagan and evil.

The diaries describe meeting a Mr Akazi, a school headmaster and “self-appointed crusader of God” who had burnt some ancestral figures.

“They are evil and remain as crutches to the people. Only with their destruction can we rid the people of these monstrous influences,” Mr Akazi is quoted as saying.

Mr Cole tried his best to explain.

“We are here to try and preserve these art objects for future generations. Rather than destroy them, could we not have them sent to the Lagos Museum where they will accomplish both of our purposes? For you, they will no longer be here to serve as obstructions to Christianity, and for us, they will be preserved.”

It seems that the headmaster was persuaded to hand them over, but did not see their cultural value.

“You see for me there are too many emotional ties connected with these hideous manifestations of Satan. Perhaps for you, these things are art, but they can never be so for me,” Mr Akazi said.

Reading those excerpts reminded me of the times I have accompanied compatriots, who were visiting me in London, to the British Museum to see some of the Nigerian artwork on display, mostly looted from our country.

Some of my guests, who were committed Christians, refused to take photographs of themselves standing with any of the objects, concerned that they might be fraternising with demonic items. We laughed about it, but they were serious.

Mr Cushman and Mr Cole’s mission originated from an assignment by Kenneth C Murray, a British colonial art teacher, who was a key figure in Nigeria’s museum history.

Murray was invited to Nigeria at the request of Aina Onabolu, a European-trained Yoruba fine artist who convinced the colonial government to bring qualified art teachers from the UK to Nigerian secondary schools and teacher training institutions.

Murray believed that contemporary art education should be grounded in traditional art, but there were no collections in Nigeria available for study.

He was also concerned about the unregulated export of Nigerian items.

To address these issues, Murray and his colleagues pressured the colonial government to legislate against the exportation of artefacts and to establish museums.

This resulted in the inauguration of the Nigerian Antiquities Service in 1943, with Murray as its first director. He established Nigeria’s first museums in Esie in 1945, Jos in 1952 and Ife in 1955.

Mr Cole was studying African art at New York’s Columbia University and conducting fieldwork in Nigeria when Murray assigned him to collect artwork from south-eastern Nigeria for the newer museum in Lagos.

Other scholars and Nigerian employees of the museums were tasked with doing this elsewhere in the country.

“I collected more than 400 artworks for the museum,” Mr Cole said. “Murray came to my flat in Enugu and carted things off both to the museum in Lagos, and also to the museum in Oron.”

Mr Cushman studied at Yale and Stanford Universities. He turned down the opportunity to work with investment company Merrill Lynch in New York, eventually deciding to travel the world. He ended up in Nigeria where he met Mr Cole, an old school friend, and was persuaded to join him on his mission.

The journals that Mr Cushman kept are all that survive from the trip.

Unfortunately, “Skip” lost all his own records when he was forced to flee south-east Nigeria during the civil war, which started in July 1967 when the region’s leaders seceded from Nigeria and formed the nation of Biafra.

He was sad to learn later that some of the artwork he had collected for the museum in the southern town of Oron had been destroyed.

“The Nigerian army took over the museum because it was the only building around with air-conditioning so they would use artefacts as firewood to cook their food,” he said.

But much of what the two men, and others, collected survived and is now the responsibility of Mr Holloway as the head of the Nigerian Commission for Museums and Monuments.

He hopes to develop a new concept of a museum that is more appealing to, and representative of, Nigerians and Africans.

“We have about 50-something museums across the country and the vast majority are not viable, because people are not interested in going into a building that has no life.

“To the white man or to the West, what they would call an artefact to us is a sacred object… I feel that the richness in those objects would be to display them as they would originally have been used.”

• Nigeria dispute jeopardises return of artefacts
• Benin Bronzes: ‘My great-grandfather sculpted the looted treasures’
• Ghana, Nigeria and the quest for UK looted treasure

As the age-old saying goes, if it ain’t broke don’t fix it – which is something author Bella Mackie has certainly stuck by.

After the success of her debut novel How To Kill Your Family, she is back with another deep dive into the lives of the super-rich.

What A Way To Go is both a dark and humorous look at wealth, class and society’s fascination with people’s deaths.

Mackie, 41, says her inspiration for the novel came from the way “British people are obsessed with class” but not really with money.

Two of the central narrators in the book – millionaire Anthony Wistern and his wife Olivia – are in constant conflict, with Anthony’s working-class upbringing often clashing with Olivia’s upper class roots.

“The British society mechanism never seems to change and it doesn’t allow people to move up or down,” Mackie tells the BBC.

“We understand it in a weirdly unspoken way that other countries don’t.”

It is easy to imagine these two characters as real-life individuals.

Anthony seems like someone who could appear as one of the millionaire investors on Dragon’s Den, whilst in the book itself, Olivia is referenced as someone who frequents the pages of glossy high society magazine Tatler.

Mackie herself has spoken about her obsession with these publications when she was growing up, and how they have shaped her interest in the lives of the upper classes – or as she calls them “ghost citizens”.

“We can never fully see them, it’s kind of a new phenomenon because there have always been super-rich people who can do whatever they want, but there is a new kind of 1%,” she says.

“They can get away with whatever they want because they’re not really conforming to the same rules or standards as everyone else”.

Mackie says “because we can’t see [them], I’ve tried to imagine it”.

Another central theme of the book is its true-crime element, as a local citizen journalist, or sleuther, investigates whether Anthony Wistern’s death should be considered murder.

Mackie, who herself is a journalist who has worked for The Guardian and Vice, says this storyline was inspired by the case of Nicola Bulley.

Bulley disappeared in a small Lancashire village in 2023, promoting social media users to show up, speculating that she had been murdered.

A coroner later ruled that her death was accidental.

The app TikTok was one of the biggest drivers of interest in the case.

“I was just aghast at what was happening, the misinformation about her was just ridiculous,” Mackie says.

“People seem to have stepped over boundaries that previously they might not have crossed.

“Contacting someone’s family or accusing a victim of being involved – maybe without the internet you wouldn’t think these were acceptable things to do,” she adds.

Mackie’s debut novel, How to Kill Your Family, is currently being adapted by Netflix into an eight-part series.

The book, which sold more than a million copies, sees protagonist Grace take revenge on her billionaire dad and the wealthy family members who rejected her.

After the success of the film Saltburn, which takes a playful, if slightly absurd look at the British upper classes, Mackie says she is intrigued to see how her 2021 bestseller is written for the small screen.

“The conversation [around Saltburn] was more about the class structures in the film than the plot,” she says.

“I think Americans saw that in the way they love Downton Abbey, they probably thought ‘wow that house is beautiful, what an amazing life’.

“I wonder whether they fully understood the darkness of it.”

She adds that there is definitely “a romanticisation of posh British people from Americans”.

Mackie says “it would be a shame” if the adaption of her book was tailored to an American audience as “a lot of the humour is quite British”.

The author hasn’t had any involvement in the screenwriting process, so says she will be “watching along for the first time with everyone else”.

She points to Netflix shows like Sex Education, which “felt British, but not fully – it felt like it could have been [set] anywhere”.

But despite not being involved in the screenwriting process, she says she is confident in the abilities of production company Sid Gentle Films, who were also behind the hugely successful Killing Eve.

“The writers are British and Irish so they’ll probably try and keep it as [authentic] as possible.

“And I think that works for other audiences who are looking at us and thinking what a ridiculous country we are” she adds.

It is the least populated continent on Earth, but for Scottish composer Michael Begg spending several weeks in Antarctica was anything but silent.

“Antarctica is often called the quietest continent but it is actually raging with sound,” says the Edinburgh native, now back on home soil.

“The wind never lets up and there is so much wildlife. If you’re on the ocean then you’re never far from whales, you always hear them calling and spouting around. Then when you’re on shore you have seals and penguins screaming everywhere.”

Now Michael’s trip – where he spent nearly three months aboard the Royal Navy’s ice patrol vessel, HMS Protector – has provided material for both an album and film.

While on his trip he captured everything from glaciers crumbling to a penguin colony that resembled “a holiday camp”, resulting in a continual spectacle that left the 58-year-old awestruck.

Those sounds have now been blended into Michael’s own musical ideas, resulting in Out of Whose Womb Comes The Ice – a collection of eerie, haunting music he will premiere at the end of September.

“The sense of awe became almost tiring as it never let up,” he reflects.

“There wasn’t a lot of darkness, so it was almost 24 hours straight for the most extraordinary sights and sounds and colours. Obviously, I expected the cold, I expected ice and I expected white but what I didn’t expect was the entire colour palette of the planet changes.

“You have bizarre lemon sherbet yellow sunsets and curious purple colours of water. There is so little that’s familiar to hold onto, so you just have to let go.”

Musical experiments are nothing new to Michael, and neither is utilizing nature and science in his work.

A prolific sound artist since 2000, previous experiences have included composer residencies with the Ocean ARTic Partnership and the European Marine Board.

That work saw him collaborate with scientists to create music from polar research – a style he describes as “finding music to come to us from the world”, where he uses computer programming and studio manipulation to soundtrack data.

That work led him to becoming musician in residence with the Friends of the Scott Polar Research Institute in Cambridge, and when they suggested taking a trip with the Royal Navy he jumped at the chance.

While onboard the composer was “treated very well”, even though his hosts may have raised eyebrows at some requests.

“I was going to a place on the planet that is very harsh and you can’t survive in for any length of time,” he says.

“So when I asked if the Marines could take me down in a small dinghy, take me across to an inhospitable island and leave me there for the day, they were like, ‘if that’s what you want we’ll need to prepare you as much as we can’.

“I was going into these extraordinary locations and left to my own devices.”

The results proved inspiring in more ways than expected.

Michael also captured enough footage to create an accompany film of his experiences.

It is a body of work that he hopes will convey a changing climate, where water is increasingly warm and glacier ice is carving away.

“There is a fragility there. All I had to do was point the microphone at it, and you have this great, sorrowful expanse of ice beginning to crack and fade.

Michael admits that he has no desire “to be the sort of climate artist who is hitting people with a very hard message”, and instead hopes his work will let people “find their own way into it”.

Yet some of his experiences spokes for themselves.

“I was on Deception Island (in the South Shetland Islands, near the Antarctic Peninsula), which was actually the cauldron of a volcano.

“There had been a research station there and a whaling station there, but a succession of volcanic eruptions had driven people away. At this time of year it should be pretty solid, but there was just a sound of running water everywhere – it was like a Scottish spring after snow.

“It felt wrong, because it shouldn’t sound like that there.”

That uneasiness carries over into his work, which he will premiere at the Glad Cafe in Glasgow on 27 September as part of Sonica, the festival that combines new music and dynamic audiovisual art.

But if parts of his trip could be unsettling, then there was considerable wonder and beauty too, particularly from blending in with the natives on Bertha’s Beach in the Falkland Islands.

“I was a penguin for the afternoon,” he recalls.

“I took a long walk out there and found a colony of Gentoo penguins. It was a curious affair, because most of them barely acknowledged me.

“A few came up to me and were like ‘what ye uptae?’.

“It was being in a penguin holiday camp – there were lovers having an argument, kids swimming, others sunbathing and some were gathered at a wee dune, having what looked like a meeting.

“There were guidelines about not getting close, but no-one had told the penguins that…”

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

The next theme is “arches” and the deadline for entries is 1 October 2024.

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

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

Terms and conditions apply.

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

All photographs subject to copyright.

Kenya has pledged to send 600 more police officers to Haiti in the coming weeks to help fight gangs controlling much of the capital, Port-au-Prince, and nearby areas.

This would bring the Kenyan contingent, deployed incrementally since June to help the Caribbean nation’s beleaguered police force, up to 1,000.

During a visit to the country, Kenya’s President William Ruto also said he supported turning the current Kenya-led security mission into a full United Nations peacekeeping operation.

A handful of other countries have together pledged at least 1,900 more troops.

Violence in Haiti is still rife and a UN human rights expert has warned that gangs are targeting new areas, causing further displacement.

The UN Security Council is due to meet by the end of the month to decide whether to renew Kenya’s current mandate for another 12 months, paving the way for a full UN mission in 2025.

This would lead to increased funding and resources for the operation, which has been hampered by a lack of equipment.

• Kenyan police taunted as they square up to Haiti’s gangs
• Haiti vows to restore order with Kenya-led force’s help

Addressing the Kenyan police officers at their base in Port-au-Prince, President Ruto commended the force for their successes over the last few months.

“There are many people who thought Haiti was mission impossible, but today they have changed their minds because of the progress you have made.”

He said they would succeed against the gangs and he promised to try to get them better equipment.

The nearly 400 Kenyan officers on the ground were going out on patrol “working hand-in-hand with Haitian forces to protect the people and restore security”, Ruto said.

“Our next batch, an additional 600, is undergoing redeployment training. We will be mission-ready in a few weeks’ time and look forward to the requisite support to enable their deployment,” he added.

But there has been some criticism in Haiti at the lack of a decisive move against the gangs.

A UN human rights expert who has just been there said the mission was inadequately equipped and needed helicopters, as well as night vision goggles and drones.

“The Multinational Security Support Mission (MSS), authorised by the UN Security Council in October 2023, has so far deployed less than a quarter of its planned contingent,” William O’Neil said on Friday.

Despite an international embargo, arms and ammunition continued to be smuggled into the country. allowing the gangs to extend their control to new territories, he said.

The UN expert had visited the south-east of the country, where he said the police lacked the logistical and technical capacity to counter the gangs.

He quoted a policeman in Jérémie as saying: “The situation borders on the impossible. We have to learn to walk on water.”

Sexual violence had drastically increased and more than 700,000 people were now displaced, Mr O’Neil said.

“This enduring agony must stop. It is a race against time.”

He said the solutions already existed, but efforts had to be “redoubled immediately”.

“It is crucial to stifle the gangs by giving the MSS Mission the means to be effective in supporting the operations of the Haitian National Police, as well as to implement the other measures provided for by the United Nations Security Council, including the sanctions regime and the targeted arms embargo.”

• Batons, tear gas, live fire – Kenyans face police brutality
• In Haiti, a phone message can bring relief or agony
• How gangs came to dominate Haiti

Ukraine has banned the use of the Telegram messaging platform on official devices issued to government and military personnel, as well as defence sector and critical infrastructure employees.

The country’s powerful National Security and Defence Council (Rnbo) said this was done to “minimise” threats posed by Russia, which launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

“Telegram is actively used by the enemy for cyber-attacks, the distribution of phishing and malicious software, user geolocation and missile strike correction,” the Rnbo said on Friday.

In a statement to the BBC, Telegram said it has “never provided any messaging data to any country, including Russia”.

Telegram is widely used by the government and the military in both Ukraine and Russia.

In a statement, the Rnbo said the ban was agreed at a meeting of Ukraine’s top information security officials, the military as well as lawmakers.

It said military intelligence chief Kyrylo Budanov had presented credible evidence of Russian special services’ ability to access personal correspondence of Telegram users, even their deleted messages.

“I have always supported and continue to support freedom of speech, but the issue of Telegram is not a matter of freedom of speech, it is a matter of national security,” Budanov was quoted as saying.

The Rnbo said that those officials for whom the use of Telegram was part of their work duties would be exempt from the ban.

Separately, Andriy Kovalenko, head of the Rnbo’s centre on countering disinformation, stressed the ban only applied to official devices – not personal smartphones.

He added that government officials and military personnel would be able to continue to maintain and update their official Telegram pages.

Last year, a USAID-Internews survey found that Telegram was the top social platform in Ukraine for news consumption, with 72% of Ukrainians using it.

Telegram – which offers end-to-end encryption – was co-founded by Russian-born Pavel Durov and his brother in 2013.

A year later, Durov left Russia after refusing to comply with government demands to shut down opposition communities on the platform.

Last month, Durov, who is also a French national, was placed under formal investigation in France as part of a probe into organised crime.

His case has fuelled a debate about freedom of speech, accountability and how platforms moderate content.

In July, Durov claimed that Telegram reached 950 million monthly active users.

Following Ukraine’s claims, a spokesperson for Telegram said the company would be “interested in reviewing any evidence that supports Mr Budanov’s claims”, adding that “to our knowledge, no such evidence exists”.

“Telegram has never provided any messaging data to any country, including Russia,” the spokesperson added.

Telegram also said “deleted messages are deleted forever and are technically impossible to recover”.

The firm added that “every instance of supposed ‘leaked messages’ Telegram has investigated has been the result of a compromised device, whether through confiscation or malware”.

South Carolina has executed its first death row inmate in 13 years, administering a lethal injection to Freddie Owens.

Owens, 46, was found guilty by a jury of killing shop worker Irene Graves during an armed robbery in Greenville in 1997.

He was executed despite his co-defendant signing a sworn statement this week claiming Owens was not present at the time of the robbery and killing.

The South Carolina Supreme Court refused to halt Owens’ execution, saying the claims were inconsistent with testimony made at his trial.

Owens was executed at the Broad River Correctional Institute in Columbia, South Carolina, on Friday evening.

He was pronounced dead at 18:55 local time (22:55 GMT) after being injected with a drug called pentobarbital. He made no final statement.

His death followed a pause in executions in the state because prison officials were unable to procure the drug required for lethal injections.

Owens was sentenced to death in 1999, two years after killing Graves, after being convicted of murder, armed robbery and criminal conspiracy.

The day after he was found guilty, he killed his cellmate in jail, reports CNN affiliate WHNS.

According to reporting on his trial by South Carolina newspaper The State, Owens was 19 when he and Steve Golden, then 18, held Graves at gunpoint while attempting to rob the convenience store where she worked.

Owens shot and killed Graves after she failed to open a safe below the counter, according to testimony provided by Golden at Owens’s trial.

At the time of her death, Graves was a 41-year-old single mother of three.

Lawyers for Owens tried to halt his execution a few times, including twice in September. But the court denied each request.

In the latest attempt, lawyers pointed to an affidavit signed by Golden on Wednesday, which claimed Owens was innocent.

The court denied the request to halt the execution by saying that the new affidavit was “squarely inconsistent with Golden’s testimony at Owens’s 1999 trial” and the statement he gave to police right after their arrest.

Other witnesses testified that Owens had told them he shot Graves, prosecutors said.

Advocates against the death penalty and Owens’s mother also appealed to the state for clemency, which was denied by Governor Henry McMaster.

Hours before his execution, Owens’s mother said in a statement it was a “grave injustice that has been perpetrated against my son”.

“Freddie has maintained his innocence since day one,” his mother, Dora Mason, said, according to local news outlet the Greenville News.

Inmates in South Carolina are allowed to choose whether they want to die by lethal injection, electric chair or firing squad.

Owens deferred the decision to his lawyer, who chose the lethal injection option for him, according to the Greenville News.

Journalists who witnessed the execution said members of Graves’ family were also present.

An employee of California’s state fire protection agency has been arrested on suspicion of starting five forest fires in recent weeks, local officials have said.

Robert Hernandez, a 38-year-old apparatus engineer at Cal Fire, was charged with five counts of arson, and is due to appear in court on Tuesday.

He is suspected of igniting the blazes while off duty in three areas of northern California between 15 August and 14 September.

Thanks to the quick response by firefighters and local residents less than an acre (0.4 ha) of wildland was burned, the officials said.

“I am appalled to learn one of our employees would violate the public’s trust and attempt to tarnish the tireless work of the 12,000 women and men of Cal Fire,” agency chief Joe Tyler said.

Hernandez was arrested on Friday, and booked into Sonoma County Jail on Friday.

He is suspected of starting the five fires near the towns of Geyserville, Healdsburg and Windsor, some 56-62 miles (90-100km) north of San Francisco.

Apparatus engineers at Cal Fire are responsible for operating and maintaining fire engines and water tanks during emergency responses.

California has seen a number of severe wildfires during the summer, with nearly three times as much acreage burn as during all of 2023, the AP news agency reported.

On Tuesday a 34-year-old delivery driver pleaded not guilty to 11 arson-related crimes by prosecutors in southern California.

Justin Wayne Halstenberg is alleged to have started one major wildfire – dubbed the Line Fire – which burned through 61 square miles (158 square kilometers) of the San Bernardino mountains east of Los Angeles.

An Israeli air strike on a school in Gaza City has killed at least 22 Palestinians, mostly women and children, according to Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry.

The school, closed during the war, was housing displaced people, the health ministry said.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said it targeted a Hamas command centre which Israel said the militant group was using to “plan and carry out terrorist attacks”.

Hamas has denied using schools and other civilian sites for military purposes.

Warning: This story contains details which some people may find upsetting

The Hamas-run government media office said the people killed in Saturday’s strike in the al-Zaytoun area included several children and six women.

Gaza’s civil defence agency reported the same death toll and added that one of the women was pregnant.

Several graphic videos of the aftermath of the strike examined by BBC Verify appear to corroborate this.

Other footage shows children among the victims. Some are seen with severe injuries, including parts of their legs missing. Others are seen lying motionless while adults try to deliver CPR.

BBC Verify confirmed the location by comparing details seen in the background to satellite and ground-level images of the targeted school.

The IDF said it took steps to mitigate the risk of harming civilians, and accused Hamas of exploiting civilian infrastructure.

Hamas “systematically violates international law by operating from inside civilian infrastructure in the Gaza Strip and exploiting the Gazan civilian population for its terrorist activities”, the IDF said.

Also on Saturday, the health ministry said that four of its workers were killed and six injured in an Israeli “targeting” of a health ministry warehouse in the Musabah area of southern Gaza. The ministry did not specify whether the incident was an air strike.

The BBC has approached the IDF for comment on the report of health workers killed.

Other schools have been hit, some several times, by Israeli air strikes since the latest conflict with Hamas began on 7 October.

Earlier this month, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (Unrwa) said six of its employees were killed in an Israeli air strike on al-Jaouni school in Nuseirat refugee camp, which is being used as a shelter by thousands of displaced Palestinians.

Unrwa said it was the fifth time the school had been hit since 7 October.

Israel’s military said it carried out a “precise strike on terrorists” planning attacks from the school. The military alleged that nine of those killed were members of Hamas’s armed wing and that three of them were Unrwa staff.

Hamas gunmen attacked Israel on 7 October last year, killing about 1,200 people and taking 251 others as hostages.

Israel responded with a military campaign in Gaza that has killed more than 41,000 people, according to the health ministry.

A US Secret Service internal review has identified poor planning and a communication breakdown among a litany of security failures on the day of the attempted assassination of Donald Trump two months ago.

Secret Service acting Director Ronald Rowe said the interim report suggested “complacency” by some of its agents.

He said the use of different radio frequencies by police and Secret Service meant Trump’s protection team were unaware a suspicious person had been identified at the Butler, Pennsylvania, rally.

The report also highlighted the failure to secure the building that the shooter fired from. The attack on 13 July led to the resignation of the Secret Service’s last director.

“Secret Service did not give clear guidance or direction to local law enforcement partners,” Mr Rowe said on Friday.

A gunman fired eight shots at Trump from the roof of a building. The Republican White House candidate’s ear was grazed by a bullet, while one rally attendee was killed and two others were injured before a Secret Service sniper shot the suspect dead.

Friday’s internal findings suggest Trump’s security detail was not aware that state and local law enforcement were intensely pursuing a suspicious person, who turned out to be the gunman.

Had they been aware, agents might have moved Trump to another location during the search, according to the report.

Law enforcement also communicated vital information outside the Secret Service’s radio frequencies.

The suspect was able to get on to a nearby rooftop with a direct line of sight to where the former president was speaking.

Mr Rowe described a “lack of follow-through” on access control to the building and the rooftop.

He added that line-of-sight issues involving the building were acknowledged, but were not mitigated or escalated to supervisors.

The acting director said the Secret Service cannot “defer our responsibilities to others” as the agency moves to an accountability phase of its review.

“This was a failure on the part of the United States Secret Service,” Mr Rowe said.

“It’s important that we hold ourselves accountable for the failures of July 13, and that we use the lessons learned to make sure that we do not have another failure like this again.”

The agency says disciplinary actions will be taken for agents involved.

The acting director spoke of a heightened threat environment following the second apparent assassination attempt involving Trump on Sunday in Florida.

He said the agency needed a “paradigm shift”.

Also on Friday, the US House of Representatives voted unanimously to bolster Secret Service protection for presidential and vice- presidential candidates. The bill will need to pass the Senate.

Wild Mother – the online alias of a woman called Desirée – lives in the mountains of Colorado, where she posts videos to 80,000 followers about holistic wellness and bringing up her little girl. She wants Donald Trump to win the presidential election.

About 70 miles north in the suburbs of Denver is Camille, a passionate supporter of racial and gender equality who lives with a gaggle of rescue dogs and has voted Democrat for the past 15 years.

The two women are poles apart politically – but they both believe assassination attempts against Mr Trump were staged.

Their views on the shooting in July and the apparent foiled plot earlier this month were shaped by different social media posts pushed to their feeds, they both say.

I travelled to Colorado – which became a hotbed of conspiracy theories about the 2020 election being stolen – for the BBC Radio 4 podcast Why Do You Hate Me? USA. I wanted to understand why these evidence-free staged assassination theories seemed to have spread so far across the political spectrum and the consequences for people like Camille and Wild Mother.

Dozens of evidence-free posts I found suggesting both incidents were staged have racked up more than 30 million views on X. Some of these posts came from anti-Trump accounts that did not seem to have a track record of sharing theories like this, while a smaller share were posted by some of the former president’s supporters.

For Democrat Camille, Trump’s team orchestrated this to boost his chances of winning the election.

Wild Mother – who already follows QAnon, the unfounded conspiracy theory which claims Donald Trump is involved in a secret war against an elite cabal of Satan-worshipping paedophiles – wants to believe Trump’s own team staged the attack in order to frame his supposed enemies in the “Deep State”.

The Deep State is claimed to be a shadowy coalition of security and intelligence services looking to thwart certain politicians.

There is no evidence to support either of the women’s theories.

The idea that news events have been staged to manipulate the public is a classic trope in the conspiracy theory playbook. Wild Mother says she is no stranger to this alternative way of thinking.

Camille, however, says this is the first time she has ever used the word “staged” about an event in the news like this. She always believed Covid-19 was real and she was extremely opposed to false claims the 2020 election had been rigged.

But on 13 July this year, when she was sitting in front of her TV at home watching live as Donald Trump was shot at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania, she says she immediately thought: “Oh, that’s staged.”

The way Donald Trump was able to pose for a photo and raise his fist in the air was what ignited Camille’s suspicions.

She had questions about how the US Secret Service allowed the shooting to happen in the first place. The director of the service has since resigned over failings that day.

The shooter was a 20-year-old called Thomas Matthew Crooks, who was killed by Secret Service snipers. His motives remain unknown – which left many questions wide open. And so Camille’s thoughts continued to spiral.

Already sceptical that something did not add up, Camille turned to X for more answers. In the years before the shooting, she had already started spending more and more time on the social media site, formerly known as Twitter. She had taken an interest in pro-Democrat anti-Trump accounts and followed some of them.

“I would admit to you that I spend too much time on social media now, and it, in my mind, is kind of a problem,” she tells me.

Recent changes to how X’s “For You” feed works meant she started seeing more posts from accounts she does not follow, but that pushed ideas in line with her political views. Lots of these accounts had also purchased blue ticks on the site, which give their posts more prominence.

So when the first assassination attempt happened, unfounded conspiracy theories suggesting it had been staged were not only recommended directly to her feed – but were all the more convincing as they came from other profiles with the same political views she holds about Donald Trump.

Most of the social media companies say they have guidelines to protect users and reduce harmful content. X did not respond to the BBC’s request for comment.

Why Do You Hate Me? USA – Episode one

Marianna Spring travels from Colorado to Baltimore and New York to uncover how social media is shaping the Presidential race. It’s social media’s world and the election is just living in it.

Listen on BBC Sounds.

Wild Mother had also turned to social media to find her tribe – having been called “a weirdo, an alien, a diamond in the rough” offline – and has built a following of thousands.

As we stand chatting in a waterfall in the small town she calls home, she explains how she began sharing her views on natural medicine and motherhood in 2021.

Then she started posting unproven theories about what was happening behind the headlines – such as on the Princess of Wales’ health or the Baltimore bridge collapse earlier this year – and saw her views and likes rack up.

She says she has been immersed in what she calls this “alternative idea about reality” from a young age and believes we have been lied to about what really happened when John F Kennedy was assassinated in the 1960s, when 9/11 happened in 2001, and during the Covid-19 pandemic.

She started to like Trump when she began spending more time online during the pandemic and became exposed to the QAnon movement, which she believes could be linking all these events. As a mum, she was especially concerned about allegations around child abuse and trafficking its supporters often talk about.

“I would never in my life even imagine some of the stuff that I’ve had to hear is going on right now, under our noses. And it blows my mind. We have to be able to protect our most innocent,” Wild Mother says.

QAnon supporters were among the crowd that stormed the US Capitol building on 6 January, 2021, in a violent protest against Joe Biden’s election victory. Now Wild Mother wants to believe the idea she has seen on social media that they might have been involved somehow in staging Trump’s shooting in July – in order to frame the Deep State.

But Wild Mother says, according to the posts she has seen online, “good guys in the military”, known as White Hats, had been doing covert operations to counter the Deep State. And one theory that popped up on her feed claimed the July assassination attempt was staged by them to show the public the threat Trump is under.

Wild Mother doesn’t claim to know for sure if the QAnon theory is true – but she does know what she wants to believe.

“I think our country needs rescuing from our government right now. It’s a horrible mess. A horrible mess,” she says.

Once Wild Mother started to question whether a news event could have been staged, it seemed as though any of them could be.

“It’s like going to a magic show as a kid and then that you find out for the first time that the magician is pulling one over on you. Now, every time you go to a magic show, you know what they’re doing,” she tells me.

As both Camille and Wild Mother came to rely more on social media, the beliefs they picked up contributed to a fracturing of their relationships in the real world.

Camille finds it hard to have conversations with some of her close family who support Trump, while Wild Mother says it played a part in her separating from her now ex-husband, who she says strongly opposed conspiracy theories.

“Does it make it difficult? Yes. Did it create a wedge? Was it possibly one of the things that ended my marriage? Maybe,” Wild Mother says.

Meanwhile, Camille also found herself embroiled in arguments on X which left her with her guard up in the real world, too. “It’s a little scary because I feel like every time I leave the house, it’s a potential for conflict,” she says.

This atmosphere of suspicion and conflict doesn’t just have consequences for these women’s personal lives – but for society too.

Officials, election workers – and politicians around the USA have found themselves subject to hate and threats as a consequence of this wider belief that almost anything and everything – including elections – is being rigged and staged.

For Wild Mother, people are “walking a really fine line” between seeking justice and harmful behaviour.

“It’s not writing your senators and calling them racist names. But if you were somebody who truly did your research and found that there was an issue, do I agree that you should use your voice? Absolutely,” she says.

“I think that we all have ways of doing that. For them, it just so happens to be harassing people.”

While Wild Mother and Camille say they have never threatened anyone themselves – and strike me as empathetic, kind people – the mistrust fostered in part by their social media feeds has eroded their faith in society and its institutions.

Camille, who was so opposed conspiracy theories, now finds herself using the language of them.

She appears to be one of many recruited into this way of thinking – by July’s assassination attempt and the social media algorithms drawing people deeper into an online world detached from reality.

Left-leaning politician Anura Kumara Dissanayake has won Sri Lanka’s presidential election after a historic second round of counting.

No candidate won more than 50% of the total votes in the first round, where Dissanayake got 42.31% while his closest rival, opposition leader Sajith Premadasa, got 32.76%.

But Dissanayake, who promised voters good governance and tough anti-corruption measures, emerged as winner after the second count, which tallied voters’ second and third choice candidates.

The election on Saturday was the first to be held since mass protests unseated the country’s leader, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, in 2022 after Sri Lanka suffered its worst economic crisis.

Dissanayake, 55, told Sri Lankans “this victory belongs to us all”, in a message on the social media platform X.

Once preferences had been tallied, the Election Commission said he had won a total of 5,740,179 votes to Premadasa’s 4,530,902.

To revive the economy, Dissanayake has promised to develop the manufacturing, agriculture and IT sectors. He has also committed to continuing the deal struck with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to bail Sri Lanka out of the economic crisis while reducing the impact of its austerity measures on the country’s poorest.

Until this weekend’s vote, all of Sri Lanka’s eight presidential elections since 1982 have seen the winner emerge during the first round of counting. This poll has been described as one of the closest in the country’s history.

Seventeen million Sri Lankans were eligible to vote on Saturday and the country’s elections commission said it was the most peaceful in the country’s history.

Still, police announced a curfew late Saturday night citing “public safety”. It was lifted at noon local time (06:30 GMT).

Dissanayake promised voters tough anti-corruption measures and good governance – messages that resonated strongly with voters who have been clamouring for systematic change since the crisis.

This enabled him to overcome trepidation over the violent past of his political party, the Marxist Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP), which carried out two armed insurrections against the Sri Lankan state in the 1970s and 80s.

His alliance, the National People’s Party – of which the JVP is a part – rose to prominence during the 2022 protests, known as the Aragalaya – Sinhala for struggle.

He has also sought to moderate the hard left stance of his party, in more recent years.

Early results showed him rocketing to the lead, prompting several high-profile figures – including the country’s foreign minister – to congratulate him.

But he lost some ground to Premadasa as voting continued, prompting the need for the second round of counting.

Incumbent president Ranil Wickremesinghe won 17% of the vote, putting him in third place in the polling. He was eliminated from the second count, which was only between the two frontrunners.

Wickremesinghe congratulated his successor.

“With much love and respect for this beloved nation, I hand over its future to the new president,” Wickremesinghe said in a statement.

The country’s new president will be faced with the twin tasks of reviving the economy and lifting millions from crushing poverty.

An economic meltdown fuelled the Aragalaya (struggle) uprising that unseated Rajapaksa from the presidential palace in 2022.

At that time, Sri Lanka’s foreign currency reserves had dried up, leaving the country unable to import essentials such as fuel. Public debt had ballooned to $83bn while inflation zoomed to 70%.

This made basics such as food and medicine unaffordable to ordinary people.

The country’s economic misery has been blamed on major policy errors, weak exports and years of under-taxation. This was exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic, which choked tourism, a key economic driver.

But many people have also blamed corruption and mismanagement, stoking anger against Rajapaksa and his family, who collectively ruled Sri Lanka for more than 10 years.

“The most serious challenge is how to restore this economy,” Dr Athulasiri Samarakoon, a political scientist at the Open University of Sri Lanka, told the BBC Sinhala Service.

During his term, Wickremesinghe had secured a $2.9bn lifeline from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which is crucial to opening additional funding channels, but comes with strict economic and governance policy reforms.

Sri Lanka is restructuring the terms of its debt payments with foreign and domestic lenders, as mandated by the IMF. The main focus has been the country’s $36bn in foreign debt, of which $7bn is owed to China, its largest bilateral creditor.

Like Dissanayake, Premadasa has also pushed for IT, as well as the establishment of 25 new industrial zones. He said tourism should be supported so that it becomes the country’s top foreign currency earner.

Wickremesinghe said during the campaign he would double tourist arrivals and establish a national wealth fund, as well as new economic zones to increase growth.

Under normal circumstances, the victory of Anura Kumara Dissanayake in Sri Lanka’s presidential election would have been called a political earthquake.

But with many having labelled the left-leaning politician as a strong frontrunner in the run-up to the poll, his win was not a massive surprise for Sri Lankans.

The 55-year-old Dissanayake heads the National People’s Power (NPP) alliance, which includes his Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP), or People’s Liberation Front – a party that has traditionally backed strong state intervention and lower taxes, and campaigned for leftist economic policies.

With his win, the island will see for the first time a government headed by a leader with a strong left-wing ideology.

“It’s a vote for a change,” Harini Amarasuriya, a senior NPP leader and MP, told the BBC.

“The result is a confirmation of what we have been campaigning for – like a drastic change from the existing political culture and the anti-corruption drive.”

Dissanayake is expected to dissolve parliament and call parliamentary elections soon.

It will be a challenge, however, for him to implement his coalition policies in a country that has adopted liberalisation and free-market principles from the late 1970s.

The resounding victory of the NPP came following a wave of public anger over the devastating economic crisis in 2022, when Sri Lanka ground to a halt as inflation surged and its foreign reserves emptied.

The country was unable to pay for imports of food, fuel and medicines and declared bankruptcy.

An unprecedented public uprising against the government’s handling of the economy forced then president Gotabaya Rajapaksa to flee the country in July 2022.

Two months earlier, his elder brother and veteran leader Mahinda had been forced to resign as prime minister during the initial phase of the protest, known as “aragalaya” (struggle) in Sinhala.

Ranil Wickremesinghe took over as president with the backing of the Rajapaksas’ party. He stabilised the economy and negotiated a $2.9bn bailout package with the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

For the millions of Sri Lankans who took to the streets, the political change was nothing but a transfer of power between established parties and political dynasties.

The NPP and Dissanayake capitalised on this sentiment, as many in the country saw him as someone outside the old order.

Though he was a minister briefly when the JVP became part of a coalition government during the presidency of Chandrika Kumaratunga in the early 2000s, Dissanayake’s supporters say he is not tainted by corruption or cronyism charges.

The question is how his presidency will tackle Sri Lanka’s massive economic challenges.

During his campaign he promised to lower taxes and utility bills. That means lower revenue for the government, and will go against some of the conditions set by the IMF loan.

“We will work within the broad agreement that the IMF has reached within the current government,” said Amarasuriya from the NPP. “But we will negotiate certain details, particularly regarding the austerity measures.”

The election win is a remarkable turnaround for Dissanayake, who received just over 3% of votes in the 2019 presidential poll.

But while he may have convinced a large section of voters this time, there are concerns over the political ideology of Dissanayake and his JVP, which is remembered for insurrections that led to the deaths of tens of thousands of people in the late 1980s.

From 1987, the JVP spearheaded an armed revolt against the Sri Lankan government in what would come to be known as the “season of terror”.

The insurrectionist campaign, spurred by discontent among the youth of the rural lower and middle classes, precipitated a conflict marked by raids, assassinations and attacks against both political opponents and civilians.

Dissanayake, who was elected to the JVP’s central committee in 1997 and became its leader in 2008, has since apologised for the party’s violence. But his victory at the polls raises questions as to what role the JVP might play in Sri Lankan politics going forward.

“The JVP has a history of violence and there are concerns about the party’s position in a new government,” said Bhavani Fonseka, a senior researcher with the Centre for Policy Alternatives (CPA) in Colombo.

“I think Mr Dissanayake has softened the radical messaging during his public outreach. My question is, while he may have softened, what about the old guard of the JVP? Where do they situate themselves in a new government?”

Another challenge for Dissanayake will be to reach out to the country’s Tamil minority, who have been seeking devolution of powers to the north and east and reconciliation since the end of a civil war in May 2009.

That conflict, between the Tamil Tiger rebels and the Sri Lankan state, erupted in 1983. The Tigers eventually had vast areas under their control in their fight for an independent territory in the island’s north and east, but were defeated and all but wiped out in a 2009 military offensive.

Fifteen years later, the Sri Lankan government’s promises to share power and devolve their own political authority in Tamil-majority areas have largely failed to materialise.

Though the votes for the NPP have increased in the north and the east, Tamils did not vote for Dissanayake overwhelmingly, reflecting concerns over the NPP’s policy towards their political demands.

The UN Human Rights Commissioner’s office in Geneva has urged the new government to pursue an inclusive national vision for Sri Lanka that addresses the root causes of the ethnic conflict.

The government “should undertake the fundamental constitutional and institutional reforms needed to strengthen democracy and the devolution of political authority and to advance accountability and reconciliation,” it said in its latest report.

It’s not just about domestic policies, either. The rise of the NPP and JVP is being keenly watched in India and China, which are vying for influence in Sri Lanka. Both have loaned billions of dollars to Colombo.

Dissanayake, with his Marxist leanings, is seen as ideologically closer to China. The JVP in the past had been critical of India’s policy towards Sri Lanka and opposed what it called Indian expansionism.

During his campaign speech Dissanayake also promised to scrap a wind power project in the north funded by the Indian business tycoon Gautam Adani, who is believed to be close to Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

“The Adani project’s costs should decrease, given its large scale, but it’s the opposite,” Dissanayake said last week. “This is clearly a corrupt deal, and we will definitely cancel it.”

In any case, expectations are high among many ordinary Sri Lankans who have voted for change.

“Whoever comes to power, they should reduce the prices of food, fuel and electricity. They also need to increase wages,” said Colombo resident Sisira Padmasiri. “The new president should give some immediate relief to the public.”

Experts point out that Sri Lanka will have to make further tough decisions on austerity measures to balance the books and meet its debt obligations.

Once he takes over, Dissanayake will find out how far he can realistically fulfil the expectations of the people.

At least four people have been killed and 18 injured in a mass shooting in Birmingham, Alabama, police say.

“Multiple shooters fired multiple shots on a group of people” late on Saturday in the Five Points South area of the city, Birmingham police officer Truman Fitzgerald said.

Officers found the bodies of two men and one woman at the scene, while a third man later died of bullet wounds in hospital, Birmingham Police said.

Detectives are investigating whether the gunmen walked up to the victims or drove by, Mr Fitzgerald said. No suspects have been arrested.

He added that they believed the shooting was “not random and stemmed from an isolated incident where multiple victims were caught in the crossfire”.

Detectives are working to identify who was the intended target or targets of the attack, Mr Fitzgerald also said.

They are also pressing to find the shooters. The police said in a statement that they are working with the FBI and other federal agencies, are offering a $5,000 reward for information and have opened a web portal for submitting photos and videos of the incident.

The Five Points South district is known for its nightlife. The shooting occurred on Magnolia Avenue, Mr Fitzgerald said.

Witnesses who were queuing outside a hookah and cigar lounge on Magnolia Avenue at the time told local news site Al.com that some of the gunfire sounded as though it came from a gun converted to be fully automatic.

Earlier on Sunday, Mr Fitzgerald had told reporters there were “dozens of gunshot victims” after the incident.

Birmingham Mayor Randall Woodfin blamed “Glock switches” – devices that can be attached to handguns to make them fire automatically – for the violence, posting on social media on Sunday that they “are the number one public safety issue in our city and state”.

“Converting a semi-automatic weapon into a fully automatic weapon that discharges all bullets within seconds doesn’t belong on our domestic streets,” he wrote, adding that the city does not have the power to outlaw Glock switches, only the state.

There have been more than 400 mass shootings across the US so far this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive, which defines a mass shooting as an incident in which four or more people are injured or killed.

Half a billion fans, a multi-million dollar personal fortune and a global business empire.

It would take a lot to dethrone YouTube’s biggest influencer Jimmy Donaldson, aka MrBeast.

But a 54-page court document could be his toughest test yet.

Five female contestants on upcoming Prime Video show Beast Games are launching legal action against his production company MrB2024 and Amazon in Los Angeles.

Billed as the largest ever reality competition series, 1,000 contestants are set to compete for a $5m (£3.7m) prize when the show airs – or if it airs. The lawsuit has plunged the show into crisis.

Among many redacted pages, the legal document includes allegations that they “particularly and collectively suffered” in an environment that “systematically fostered a culture of misogyny and sexism”.

It cuts to the core of MrBeast’s image as one of the nicest guys on the internet.

I flicked through the document, which includes suggestions that participants were “underfed and overtired”. Meals were provided “sporadically and sparsely” which “endangered the health and welfare” of the contestants, it is claimed.

In one section where almost all of the claims are redacted from public view, it says the defendants “created, permitted to exist, and fostered a culture and pattern and practice of sexual harassment including in the form of a hostile work environment”.

Back in August, the New York Times spoke to more than a dozen of the (yet unreleased) show’s participants, and reported there were “several hospitalisations” on the set, with one person telling the paper they had gone over 20 hours without being fed.

Contestants also alleged they had not received their medication on time.

The BBC has approached MrBeast and Amazon – he has not yet publicly commented.

So will these latest allegations hurt the king of YouTube’s popularity?

MrBeast is no stranger to controversy this year – and has managed to come out unscathed each time.

In July, the 26-year-old American said he had hired investigators after his former co-host Ava Kris Tyson was accused of grooming a teenager.

Ava denied the allegations, but has apologised for “past behaviour” which was “not acceptable”.

MrBeast said he was “disgusted” by the “serious allegations”.

Later, further allegations about business practices surfaced on an anonymous YouTube channel, claiming to be a former employee. The BBC has not been able to independently verify the claims or this person’s identity.

Some of his philanthropic efforts – such as building wells in Africa, and paying for surgery for people with reduced sight and hearing – have drawn criticisms around exploitation.

“Deaf people like me deserve better than MrBeast’s latest piece of inspiration porn,” one person told the Independent last year.

But his empire continues to grow. The day before the lawsuit emerged on Wednesday, he revealed a team-up with fellow famous faces KSI and Logan Paul – a new food line designed to challenge Lunchables.

And as I wrote in an article about his meteoric rise last year, he has made his millions through hard work.

His videos are big budget experiences, with his most popular – viewed 652 million times – recreating the Netflix hit Squid Game in real life with a $456,000 (£342,000) prize.

Most of his philanthropy is less controversial – including giving away houses, cash and cars – which has worked to create an image of him being one of the internet’s good guys.

According to his website, he has delivered more than 25 million meals to the needy around the world.

People continue to flock to his social channels. In June, he gained enough subscribers to make his YouTube channel the largest in the world.

According to stats-checker Socialblade, MrBeast picked up an extra five million subscribers in the last 30 days alone.

That’s just one metric – we can’t tell how many people unsubscribed from his channel, for example.

What is certain is that the number of people who’ve actively decided to stop watching his videos has been eclipsed by those who’ve decided to subscribe.

He wouldn’t be the only YouTuber whose popularity holds through controversy – others have faced far more significant storms than MrBeast, with few facing many consequences outside of a public apology.

Logan Paul faced a massive backlash in 2018 after he uploaded a video to his 15 million subscribers which showed the body of a person who had apparently taken their own life.

After removing the original video, he shared a less than two-minute apology titled simply: “So sorry.”

Now, he has 23 million subscribers, owns an incredibly popular sports drink, and up until August was the WWE United States champion. He’s had quite a few pay-per-view boxing bouts, too.

Other high-profile YouTubers, including Pewdiepie, James Charles, and Jeffree Star have all had their own controversies, and got on with their careers after uploading apology videos.

A more modern example is Herschel “Guy” Beahm, known online as Dr Disrespect, who admitted he sent messages to “an individual minor” in 2017.

He stressed that “nothing illegal happened, no pictures were shared, no crimes were committed” and went offline for two months after posting the statement.

His comeback livestream earlier this month attracted more than three million views, despite criticism from other high-profile streamers.

Dr Disrespect remains the second-most watched streamer in the US this year, according to Streams Charts.

The point is: YouTubers tend to be forgiven quickly.

While MrBeast’s fanbase has continued growing, controversy is swirling once again – and his next move could determine his long-term success.

James Lunn, chief strategy officer at Savvy Marketing, says the star is “in an incredibly unique position” with a “multi-faceted” brand spanning many industries.

“We are indeed in uncharted waters,” he says, and “a proactive approach, addressing the issues transparently and ensuring accountability, could protect his brand”.

Brand expert Catherine Shuttleworth says the “sheer scale” of MrBeast’s fame may act as a buffer against backlash, but the latest lawsuit could be difficult.

“When it comes to his business ventures, particularly those targeting families and children – like Feastables chocolate bars or Lunchly – it’s a different story,” she says.

“Parents, who often hold the purchasing power, tend to be less tolerant of controversies involving safety, fairness, and ethics.”

Back in August 2023, when writing about MrBeast, I predicted he would soon take the YouTube crown despite him having half as many subscribers then.

He is now facing extra challenges as his fame rises, and a lot of the internet is eagerly awaiting his reply to what is, so far, one side of a complex story.

A team of student volunteers on an archaeological dig in northern France has had a surprise communication from the past.

Sifting through the remains of a Gaulish village on cliff-tops near Dieppe on Monday, they uncovered an earthenware pot containing a small glass flask.

“It was the kind of vial that women used to wear round their necks containing smelling-salts,” said team-leader Guillaume Blondel, who heads the archaeological service for the town of Eu.

Inside the bottle was a message on paper, rolled up and tied with string.

On Tuesday evening, Mr Blondel opened the paper – which read as follows:

“P.J Féret, a native of Dieppe, member of various intellectual societies, carried out excavations here in January 1825. He continues his investigations in this vast area known as the or .”

Féret was a local notable, and municipal records confirm that he conducted a first dig at the site 200 years ago.

“It was an absolutely magic moment,” said Mr Blondel. “We knew there had been excavations here in the past, but to find this message from 200 years ago… it was a total surprise.

“Sometimes you see these time capsules left behind by carpenters when they build houses. But it’s very rare in archaeology. Most archaeologists prefer to think that there won’t be anyone coming after them because they’ve done all the work!”

The emergency dig was ordered because of cliff erosion at the spot just north of Dieppe. Already, a substantial part of the oppidum – or fortified village – has disappeared.

Mr Blondel said: “We knew it was a Gaulish village. What we don’t know is what went on inside the village. Was it a place of importance?”

In the week since the dig began, several artefacts dating from the Gaulish period – mostly pieces of pottery from around 2,000 years ago – have been uncovered.

Anonymous letters have created a “village of poison” in East Yorkshire, according to residents.

Those on the receiving end of the “vulgar” mail say they have been “terrorised” through their letterboxes for the past two years.

The post sent by a mysterious writer to Shiptonthorpe, some of which has been seen by the BBC, is described as “personal, obscene and targeted”.

Humberside Police has carried out inquiries into some of the incidents.

The saga is reminiscent of scandalous letters that blighted Littlehampton, a small seaside town in Sussex, in the spring of 1920 – which sparked a House of Commons debate and period comedy drama Wicked Little Letters, starring Olivia Colman.

In Shiptonthorpe, Sophie – not her real name – said she received her first letter in December 2022 and reported it to the police.

At the time she was trying to become a ward councillor – and she was left “astonished” after opening it.

“It was vile, I ripped it up, I couldn’t believe where it had come from or why I’d received it,” she said.

Despite destroying the letter, the hurtful accusations have stuck with Sophie.

“It was accusing me of what you could call being a loose woman,” she said.

“It said the only way I would ever get anywhere within politics would be if I was to perform unspeakable things to men.”

The writer ended the letter and said Sophie should be “turned out on the Beverley Westwood pasture with the rest of the cows”.

“It was just vile,” Sophie recalled.

Humberside Police confirmed it received a report of the letter. “Inquiries were carried out at the time, including reviewing CCTV,” the force said.

“However, the content of the alleged letter was unavailable and subsequently no further investigative opportunities were able to be obtained.”

Officers said they gave Sophie safety advice. She has received three more letters since and reported them all to police.

Elsewhere in the village – home to just 500 people – Sophie’s partner Sam has opened letters claiming to be from a friend, urging him “to be honest” with himself.

One, which the BBC has seen, warned Sam about Sophie’s private life, urging him to stop Sophie from “roaming”.

The letter was signed: “From a caring dear friend.”

Sam said he feared for his partner after they both received letters. “I was frightened,” he said. “I was worried that anybody would approach her because I didn’t know who else had knowledge of this letter.”

Humberside Police said it received a report from a man who felt concerned after he received an anonymous letter to his home address.

“Officers reviewed the letter, however the content was not found to contain any aggressive language and it was established that no criminal offences had been committed,” the force said.

Officers urged him to call them again if further incidents took place.

In another letter seen by the BBC, an anonymous writer told a villager: “I hope cancer finds you.”

Another resident, Jason, said although he had not received any letters, the damage stretches further throughout the village.

“A cloud of vitriol has fallen over Shiptonthorpe,” he said.

“It is a wonderful village with wonderful people, but someone has brought poison to this village.”

Jason claimed some people had left the village because of the letters.

“People come here for a quiet, tranquil, community-spirted life and that’s being damaged badly by one or two devilish people,” he said.

“In my opinion I believe this constitutes a hate crime.”

Hull and East Yorkshire on BBC Soundslatest episode of Look North here.

Israeli forces have raided the offices of news broadcaster Al Jazeera in Ramallah, in the occupied West Bank, and ordered it to close for an initial period of 45 days.

Armed and masked Israeli soldiers entered the building early on Sunday during a live broadcast.

Viewers watched as the troops handed the closure order to the network’s West Bank bureau chief Walid al-Omari who read it out live on air.

Israel raided Al Jazeera’s offices in Nazareth and occupied East Jerusalem in May having described the Qatar-based broadcaster as a threat to national security.

“Targeting journalists this way always aims to erase the truth and prevent people from hearing the truth,” Omari said in comments reported by his employer.

The soldiers confiscated the last microphone and camera off the street outside and forced Omari out of the office, Al Jazeera journalist Mohammad Alsaafin said.

Posting about the raid on social media, Alsaafin said the troops also pulled down a poster of Shireen Abu Aqla – an Al Jazeera reporter who was killed while covering a raid by Israeli forces in the West Bank.

The network and witnesses at the time said the Palestinian-American reporter was shot by Israeli forces. Israel initially argued she had been shot by a Palestinian, however months later concluded there was a “high probability” that one of its soldiers killed her.

Relations between the Qatari-owned broadcaster and the Israeli government have long been tense but have worsened dramatically following the outbreak of war in Gaza.

With foreign journalists banned from entering the strip, Al Jazeera staff based in the area have been some of the only reporters able to cover the war on the ground.

Israel has repeatedly branded the network a terrorist mouthpiece, an accusation Al Jazeera has denied.

In April, the Israeli parliament passed a law giving the government power to temporarily close foreign broadcasters considered a threat to national security during the war.

A ban would be in place for a period of 45 days at a time, as seen in Sunday’s raid, and can be renewed.

In early May, the Al Jazeera offices in Nazareth and occupied East Jerusalem were subject to separate raids.

Israel is yet to comment on Sunday’s operation.

The Israeli military says about 150 rockets, missiles and other projectiles have been fired at its territory overnight and on Sunday.

It says most of the strikes were launched by Hezbollah in Lebanon. They reached further into Israel than before, including close to the port city of Haifa, where at least three people were wounded.

The Israeli army also said projectiles launched from Iraq had been brought down. Hundreds of thousands of people have sought shelter.

The Israeli military has continued its attacks on Hezbollah targets, after claiming to have struck nearly 300 on Saturday. Lebanon said three people were killed in strikes in the south of the country on Sunday.

Also on Sunday, Hezbollah held funerals for Ibrahim Aqil, one of a dozen senior leaders of the groups killed in an Israeli airstrike near Beirut on Friday. Lebanon said a total of 45 people, including children, died in that attack.

In a statement, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said: “About 150 rockets, cruise missiles and UAVs [drones] were launched towards the territory of Israel, most of them towards the north of the country.”

The barrage reached the town of Kirayt Bialik on the outskirts of Haifa, where rockets damaged homes and vehicles.

Local resident Achiya Itschaky told Reuters news agency: “Around 06:30 there was an alarm and then immediately afterwards a big explosion – very, very big explosion – even three or four houses from here. Our window in the main room was completely destroyed.”

The Israeli military has closed schools in Haifa, as well as in other northern areas up to the Lebanese border. Residents have been told to restrict outdoor gatherings to fewer than 10 people.

Late on Saturday, IDF spokesman Daniel Hagari said dozens of Israeli warplanes were “widely” hitting Hezbollah targets. The IDF later warned that its strikes against Hezbollah “will continue and will intensify”.

On Sunday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said: “In recent days, we have landed a series of blows on Hezbollah that it could have never imagined.”

The IDF said that many of the projectiles had been intercepted overnight, including two that had been launched from Iraq.

The Islamic Resistance in Iraq, a Iran-backed group, said it had launched cruise missile and explosive drone attacks at Israel.

The latest cross-border exchanges have sparked renewed international concern.

The White House said military escalation was not in Israel’s “best interest”. The EU said it was “extremely” concerned and UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy called for an “immediate ceasefire”.

The UN special co-ordinator in Lebanon, Jeanine Hennis-Plasscharet, said the region was “on the brink of an imminent catastrophe”.

Earlier this week, 39 people were killed and thousands wounded after pagers and walkie-talkies used by Hezbollah, the politically-influential Iran-backed organisation, exploded on two days across Lebanon.

On Thursday, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah blamed Israel for the attacks, saying it had crossed “all red lines” and vowed “just punishment”. Israel has not claimed responsibility.

As fears increase that the conflict may break out into a full-scale war, the US state department issued new travel advice for citizens currently in Lebanon.

The US embassy in Beirut has urged people to “depart Lebanon while commercial options still remain available”.

Neighbouring Jordan’s foreign ministry issued similar advice to its citizens, urging those in Lebanon to leave as soon as possible.

Fighting between Israel and Hezbollah escalated on 8 October 2023 – the day after the attack on Israel by Hamas gunmen from Gaza – when Hezbollah fired at Israeli positions.

The Crown Prosecution Service has said that it twice considered bringing charges against ex-Harrods owner Mohammed Al Fayed but concluded there was no realistic prospect of a conviction.

Police officers presented the CPS with evidence in 2009 and 2015 “which our prosecutors looked carefully at”, it confirmed.

Fresh allegations are being made about the late billionaire, who died last year at the age of 94.

A BBC documentary has led to dozens of women coming forward to say they were raped or sexually assaulted by the businessman.

In 2008, the Metropolitan Police investigated Fayed after a 15-year-old girl said he sexually assaulted her in the Harrods boardroom.

The force said it handed a file of evidence to the CPS – a step which has to be taken before charges can be issued.

Three other investigations into claims made by three other women – in 2018, 2021 and 2023 – got to an advanced enough stage that the CPS was called in to advise detectives, as first reported by the Sunday Times.

But, in those instances a full file of evidence was not passed to prosecutors.

• Five things we learned from the news conference
• It feels good to change Fayed’s legacy, says survivor
• Fulham ‘protected’ women’s team players from Fayed
• Mohamed Al Fayed accused of multiple rapes by staff
• Watch: Al Fayed: Predator at Harrods

Fayed bought Harrods in 1985 and sold it in 2010.

More than 20 women have told the BBC the businessman sexually assaulted or raped them while they worked at Harrods luxury department store in London.

The legal team representing many of the women making allegations against Fayed outlined their case against Harrods on Friday.

Harrods’ current owners said earlier this week they were “utterly appalled by the allegations of abuse perpetrated by Mohamed Al Fayed”.

“These were the actions of an individual who was intent on abusing his power wherever he operated and we condemn them in the strongest terms,” they said in a response to the BBC investigation.

“We also acknowledge that during this time his victims were failed and for this we sincerely apologise. We are doing everything we can to fix this.”

The company said it is a “very different organisation” now and “seeks to put the welfare of our employees at the heart of everything we do”.

The department store’s new owners have a compensation scheme for ex-employees who say they were attacked by Fayed, which is separate to the legal action being taken by some accusers.

Harrods has already reached financial settlements with the majority of people who have approached them since 2023, and has had new inquiries this week.

Harrods is accepting vicarious liability for the actions of Fayed, and there are no non-disclosure agreements attached to the settlements.

Dean Armstrong KC, one of the barristers representing alleged victims, said he was “at a loss” as to what the new information Harrods received in 2023 may have been.

In a BBC interview on Saturday, he argued the new owners – who bought Harrods in 2010 – “either didn’t know [about the allegations] – which I find very difficult to accept – or refused to acknowledge that there was this background of sexual misconduct”.

Mr Armstrong also said his team had 37 clients, but that the number of people who had contacted them with claims about Fayed was approaching 150.

Lawyers allege Fayed’s assaults occurred around the world – including in the UK, US, Canada, France, Malaysia and Dubai.

“It’s very much a global case, it’s not just the UK. It happened all over the world,” another lawyer, Bruce Drummond, told the BBC.

On Sunday, Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner said she was concerned by a culture of “powerful people who seem to get away with it” in response to the sex abuse allegations made against Al Fayed.

Speaking on the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg programme, she said: “I think there’s a lot of work that needs to be done to make sure that nobody is above the law and can hide in plain sight.”

Al-Fayed: Predator at Harrods

A BBC investigation into allegations of rape and attempted rape by Mohamed Al Fayed, the former owner of Harrods. Did the luxury store protect a billionaire predator?

Watch Al-Fayed: Predator at Harrods on BBC iPlayer now.

Listen to World of Secrets, Season 4: Al Fayed, Predator at Harrods on BBC Sounds. If you’re outside the UK, you can listen wherever you get your podcasts, external.