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 Power – 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.

Left-leaning politician Anura Kumara Dissanayake has been elected as Sri Lanka’s next president after he won the debt-ridden country’s first election since its economy collapsed in 2022.

The 55-year-old beat off his nearest rival, opposition leader Sajith Premadasa, to emerge as the clear winner after a historic second round of counting, which included second-preference votes. Outgoing president Ranil Wikremesinghe trailed in third.

It’s a remarkable turnaround for a man who won just 3% of the votes in the 2019 election. Dissanayake, who contested as candidate for the National People’s Power (NPP) alliance, has drawn increasing support in recent years for his anti-corruption platform and pro-poor policies – particularly in the wake of the country’s worst ever economic crisis, which is still having an impact on millions.

He will now inherit governance of a nation that is struggling to emerge from the shadow of that crisis, and a populace that is desperate for change.

So who is president-elect Anura Kumara Dissanayake?

Dissanayake was born on 24 November, 1968 in Galewela, a multi-cultural and multi-religious town in central Sri Lanka.

Raised as a member of the middle-class, he is public school educated, has a degree in physics, and first entered politics as a student around the time when the Indo-Sri Lanka Agreement was signed in 1987: an event that would lead to one of Sri Lanka’s bloodiest periods.

From 1987 to 1989, the Janatha Vimukti Peramuna (JVP) – a Marxist political party with which Dissanayake would later become closely associated – spearheaded an armed revolt against the Sri Lankan government.

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 which claimed thousands of lives.

Dissanayake, who was elected to the JVP’s central committee in 1997 and became its leader in 2008, has since apologised for the group’s violence during this so-called “season of terror”.

“A lot of things happened during the armed conflict that should not have happened,” he said in a 2014 interview with the BBC.

“We are still shocked, and shocked that things happened at our hands that should not have happened. We are always deeply saddened and shocked about that.”

The JVP, which currently has just three seats in parliament, is part of the NPP coalition that Dissanayake now heads.

While campaigning for the presidential election, Dissanayake addressed another violent moment in Sri Lanka’s recent history: the 2019 Easter Sunday bombings.

On 21 April 2019, a succession of deadly blasts tore through churches and international hotels across the capital Colombo, killing at least 290 people and injuring hundreds more in what quickly became the worst attack in Sri Lanka’s history.

Five years later, however, investigations into how the co-ordinated attacks happened, and the security failures that led to them, have failed to provide answers.

Some have accused the former government, led by Gotabaya Rajapaksa, of obstructing investigations.

In a recent interview with BBC Sinhala, Dissanayake promised he would hold an investigation into the matter if elected – suggesting that authorities had avoided doing so because they were afraid of revealing “their own responsibility”.

It’s just one of many unfulfilled promises from Sri Lanka’s political elite, he added.

“It’s not just this investigation,” he said. “Politicians who promised to stop corruption have engaged in corruption; those who promised to create a debt-free Sri Lanka have only worsened the debt burden; people who promised to strengthen the law have broken it.

“This is exactly why the people of this country want different leadership. We are the ones who can provide it.”

Dissanayake was viewed as a strong contender in the lead-up to Saturday’s election, positioning himself as the candidate for change against a backdrop of simmering nationwide discontent.

Former president Gotabaya Rajapaksa was driven out of Sri Lanka in 2022 by mass protests sparked by the economic meltdown.

Years of under-taxation, weak exports and major policy errors, combined with the Covid-19 pandemic, dried up the country’s foreign exchange reserves. Public debt reached more than $83bn and inflation soared to 70%.

Rajapaksa and his government were blamed for the crisis. And though his successor, President Wickremesinghe, introduced economic reforms that brought down inflation and strengthened the Sri Lankan rupee, people continue to feel the pinch.

On a deeper level, the 2022 economic crisis and the circumstances surrounding it – including systemic corruption and political impunity – created demand for a different kind of political leadership. Dissanayake has leveraged that demand to his advantage.

He has cast himself as a potential disruptor to a status quo which critics say has long rewarded corruption and cronyism among the political elite.

Dissanayake has repeatedly said he plans to dissolve parliament after coming to power, in order to have a clean slate and a fresh mandate for his policies – suggesting in a recent interview with BBC Sinhala that he would do this within days of being elected.

“There is no point continuing with a parliament that is not in line with what the people want,” he said.

Among Dissanayake’s policy pledges are tough anti-corruption measures, bigger welfare schemes and a promise to slash taxes.

Tax hikes and welfare cuts were imposed by the current government as part of austerity measures aimed at steering the country’s economy back on track – but they also left many people unable to make ends meet.

Dissanayake’s promise to rein in those measures appears to have galvanised support among voters, in an election where analysts predicted economic concerns would be front of mind.

“The country’s soaring inflation, skyrocketing cost-of-living and poverty have left the electorate desperate for solutions to stabilise prices and improve livelihoods,” Soumya Bhowmick, an associate fellow at India-based think tank the Observer Research Foundation, told the BBC before the election.

“With the country seeking to emerge from its economic collapse, this election serves as a crucial moment for shaping Sri Lanka’s recovery trajectory and restoring both domestic and international confidence in its governance.”

Some onlookers, including investors and market participants, expressed concern that Dissanayake’s economic policies could have an impact on fiscal targets and disrupt Sri Lanka’s road to recovery.

The presidential candidate tempered his messaging during campaign speeches, however, insisting that he was committed to ensuring repayment of Sri Lanka’s debt.

He also noted that any changes would be imposed in consultation with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which has provided a buttress for the country’s still-embattled economy.

Many analysts think the next president’s main task is building a stable economy.

Athulasiri Samarakoon, senior lecturer in political science and international studies at the Open University of Sri Lanka, told the BBC that “the most serious challenge is how to restore this economy”, including managing public expenditure and increasing public revenue generation.

“Any future government will have to work with the International Monetary Fund,” he noted.

About 76% of Sri Lanka’s 17.1 million electorate turned out to vote in Saturday’s election, according to officials.

By mid-morning on Sunday, Dissanayake had already received messages of congratulations from supporters of his two main rivals, incumbent president Ranil Wickremesinghe and opposition leader Sajith Premadasa.

Foreign Minister Ali Sabry said on X that early results clearly pointed to a Dissanayake victory.

“Though I heavily campaigned for President Ranil Wickremesinghe, the people of Sri Lanka have made their decision, and I fully respect their mandate for Anura Kumara Dissanayake,” Sabry said.

MP Harsha de Silva, who supported Premadasa, said he had called Dissanayake to offer his congratulations.

“We campaigned hard for @sajithpremadasa but it was not to be. It is now clear @anuradisanayake will be the new President of #SriLanka,” said de Silva, who represents Colombo in parliament.

Another Premadasa supporter, Tamil National Alliance (TNA) spokesman MA Sumanthiran, said Dissanayake delivered an “impressive win” without relying on “racial or religious chauvinism”.

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.

Germany’s chancellor appears to have narrowly dodged humiliation after exit polls suggested his party has held off the far right in his home state.

Olaf Scholz’s centre-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) won Sunday’s regional election in stronghold Brandenburg by just one or two percentage points, according to polls by the two main public broadcasters.

Alternative for Germany (AfD) stood a chance of winning the state, which has been governed by the SPD since German reunification in 1990.

But after voting ended at 18:00 (16:00 GMT), predictions put the SPD on 31 to 32% to the AfD’s 29 to 30%.

The election, on the outskirts of Berlin, was being watched closely after 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.

The party also came a narrow second in Saxony on the same day.

An AfD win in Sunday’s election would have dealt a major blow to Scholz’s hopes of a second term in Germany’s federal elections next year.

It would also have been embarrassing, given he lives in the state’s capital, Potsdam.

Scholz has faced plummeting opinion polls and infighting in his embattled coalition government.

But about two million voters in Brandenburg may have given him a rare political lifeline.

Dietmar Woidke, the state’s popular SPD premier, 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.

He described the results in Thuringia and Saxony as “bitter” and “worrying”.

“The AfD is damaging Germany. It is weakening the economy, dividing society and ruining our country’s reputation,” he said in a previous statement to Reuters.

The AfD, officially classified “extremist” in some states, is unlikely to enter any regional governments because every other party has refused to work with it.

Bolstered by youth support, it continues to capitalise on worries over an economic slowdown, immigration and the Ukraine war – concerns that resonate strongly in the formerly Communist eastern Germany.

Its win with almost a third of the vote in Thuringia shocked the political establishment. It placed nine points ahead of the conservative CDU and far in front of Germany’s three governing parties.

The AfD is second in national opinion polls, with the federal elections only a year away.

Co-leader Alice Weidel has claimed that “without us, a stable government is no longer possible at all”.

Australia’s consumer watchdog is suing the country’s two biggest supermarket chains, alleging they falsely claimed to have permanently dropped the prices of hundreds of items.

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) claims Coles and Woolworths broke consumer law by temporarily raising prices before lowering them to a value either the same as or higher than the original cost.

Coles said it would defend itself against the allegations, while Woolworths said it would review the claims.

The grocery giants, which account for two thirds of the Australian market, have come under increasing scrutiny in the past year over alleged price gouging and anti-competitive practices.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said the alleged conduct, if proven to be true, is “completely unacceptable”.

“This is not in the Australian spirit. Customers don’t deserve to be treated as fools,” he said at a press conference, at which he also revealed draft legislation for a previously promised “code of conduct” for supermarkets.

ACCC chair Gina Cass-Gottlieb said Coles and Woolworths have spent years marketing their ‘Prices Dropped’ and ‘Down Down’ promotions, which Australian shoppers now understand to represent a sustained reduction in the regular prices of products.

But in many cases “the discounts were, in fact, illusory”, she added.

The watchdog’s investigation – sparked by complaints and the ACCC’s own monitoring – found Woolworths had misled customers about 266 products over 20 months, and Coles for 245 products across 15 months.

The products included everything from pet food, Band-Aid plasters and mouthwash, to Australian favourites like Arnott’s Tim Tam biscuits, Bega Cheese and Kellogg’s cereal.

The ACCC estimated that the two companies “sold tens of millions” of the affected products and “derived significant revenue from those sales”.

“Many consumers rely on discounts to help their grocery budgets stretch further, particularly during this time of cost of living pressures,” Ms Cass-Gottlieb said.

“It is critical that Australian consumers are able to rely on the accuracy of pricing and discount claims.”

The ACCC is seeking that the Federal Court of Australia impose “significant” penalties on the two firms, and an order forcing them to increase their charitable meal delivery programs.

In a statement, Coles said the company’s own costs were rising which led to an increase in product prices.

It had “sought to strike an appropriate balance” between managing that and “offering value to customers” by restarting promotions “as soon as possible” after new prices were set, it said.

The company takes consumer law “extremely seriously” and “places great emphasis on building trust with all stakeholders”, it added.

Woolworths said in a statement that it would engage with the ACCC over the claims.

“Our customers are telling us they want us to work even harder to deliver meaningful value to them and it’s important they can trust the value they see when shopping our stores.”

Amid growing scrutiny of the supermarkets, the government commissioned a review of the country’s existing Food and Grocery Code of Conduct.

The review recommended a stronger, mandatory code of conduct be introduced and policed by the ACCC, so they can protect suppliers as well as consumers.

The new code will set out standards for the companies’ dealings with providers, who say they are being unfairly squeezed, and introduce massive fines for breaches.

Six people have been killed and 10 others missing after record rainfall caused floods and landslides in parts of Japan’s Ishikawa prefecture.

The cities of Wajima and Suzu, which are still recovering from a deadly earthquake that devastated the area on 1 January, are among the hardest hit by the deluge, which began on Saturday and is expected to continue until noon on Monday.

On Sunday, both cities saw twice the amount of rainfall they typically receive in September in an average year, local media reported.

Dozens of rivers burst their banks, cutting off roads and isolating more than 100 communities across the prefecture, the reports said.

Two of the people who died were found near a landslide-hit tunnel in Wajima. One of them was a construction worker carrying out road repairs.

Two elderly men and an elderly woman were among the other fatalities, The Japan Times said citing local authorities.

Japan’s meteorological agency issued its highest “life-threatening” alert level for Ishikawa on Saturday and downgraded it to a regular warning on Sunday. However, authorities have called for continued vigilance as the torrential rain is likely to continue until at least noon on Monday.

The floodwaters inundated temporary housing built for people who had lost their homes in the New Year’s Day earthquake. Footage aired by NHK showed an entire street in Wajima submerged under water.

The region is still recovering from the powerful 7.5 magnitude earthquake in January which killed at least 236 people, toppled buildings and sparked a major fire.

Some 4,000 households were left without power on Monday, according to the Hokuriku Electric Power Company.

More than 40,000 residents across four cities in Ishikawa – including Wajima, Suzu and the town of Noto – have been evacuated over the weekend.

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

Former President Donald Trump has said he does not expect to run for election again in 2028 if he is defeated in this November’s US presidential poll.

Trump, 78, has been the Republican candidate for three national elections in a row and has reshaped the party greatly over the last eight years.

In an interview with Sinclair Media Group, he was asked if he could foresee another run in the event that he loses to Democratic Vice-President Kamala Harris. “No, I don’t. I think… that will be it,” Trump said. “I don’t see that at all.”

But he added that “hopefully, we’re going to be very successful”.

US law bars presidents from serving more than two terms, and so Trump is not expected to run in 2028 if he wins, either.

In the past, the real estate mogul has rarely acknowledged the possibility of losing the election, more often firing up supporters with speeches and social media posts pledging victory at the polls.

But this is the second time in four days he has mentioned a chance of defeat.

During an event held by the Israeli-American Council on Thursday, he brought up losing, and suggested that any such loss would partly be the fault of Jewish voters.

“Do they know what the hell is happening if I don’t win this election?” he said, according to various media reports. “And the Jewish people would have to do a lot with that if that happens because at 40% [support] that means 60% of the people are voting for the enemy.”

The comments were condemned by the Harris campaign and by the nonpartisan American Jewish Committee and Anti-Defamation League.

Trump’s acknowledgments of a possible loss may reflect how the Democratic Party’s prospects have changed since Harris became its nominee following President Joe Biden’s decision to quit the race.

Her campaign raised more than $190m (£142m) in August, compared to $130m brought in by the Trump campaign and affiliated organisations.

In national polling averages tracked by the BBC she is ahead of Trump, and a poll released on Sunday by CBS shows she leads Trump 52% to 48% nationally.

In key US battleground states which look set to prove decisive to the overall result, Harris has a narrower lead of 51% to 49%, which is a slight improvement from the even 50% in a similar poll conducted last month by CBS, the BBC’s news partner.

• Who won the Harris-Trump presidential debate?
• Watch key moments from Harris-Trump clash

Another poll released on Sunday by NBC shows Harris with a five percentage point lead over Trump across the US.

It also found that 48% of registered voters see her positively compared to 32% in July – the largest jump since then-President George W Bush’s favourability surged after the 11 September 2001 attacks.

But like other surveys, the NBC poll showed Trump held a clear advantage with voters on some of the election’s biggest issues, including the economy, the cost of living and immigration.

The BBC has contacted the Trump campaign for comment on the polling data.

• SIMPLE GUIDE: Everything you need to know about the vote
• EXPLAINER: Seven swing states that could decide election
• FACT CHECK: Was US economy stronger under Biden or Trump?
• POLICIES: What Harris or Trump would do in power
• POLLS: Who is winning the race for the White House?

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is set to present what he has called his “plan for victory” to President Joe Biden during a visit to the US this week.

After meeting Biden, Zelensky said he intended to present it to Congress and the two candidates in the US election – Vice-President Kamala Harris and former president Donald Trump.

Trump has previously criticised US support for Ukraine and spoken highly of Russian President Vladimir Putin but said he will “probably” meet Zelensky.

The Ukrainian president’s visit to the US – where he is also due to attend the UN General Assembly – coincides with efforts from the White House to prepare a new $375m military aid package for Ukraine.

“This fall will determine the future of this war,” Zelensky said in a post on X alongside his nightly video address, which he delivered from his plane.

In a statement ahead of the visit, the Ukrainian leader previewed three elements to this victory plan.

He listed further weapons donations for the military, diplomatic efforts to force Russia into peace, and to hold Moscow accountable for the full-scale invasion of his country in 2022.

Ukraine has been pleading for months for the US, UK and other Western allies to ease restrictions on the use of long-range missiles so it can strike targets in Russia which Kyiv says are used to launch attacks.

Earlier in September, Putin warned Western countries that he would consider long-range missile strikes as “direct participation” by the Nato military alliance in the war.

When asked by reporters on Sunday whether he had made a decision on allowing Ukraine to use US-made long-range weapons, President Biden answered “no”.

• What weapons are the UK and other countries giving Ukraine?

Trump has previously flagged his own plan to end the war “within 24 hours” if he is elected in November, but has provided no details other than to label US support for Ukraine as a waste of money.

According to Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who met Trump in March, the former president said he would “not give a penny in the Ukraine-Russia war. That is why the war will end”.

Zelensky’s statement also voiced gratitude for the support from Ukraine’s allies thus far, singling out the US in particular as its “leading supporter”.

The US has been the largest foreign donor to Ukraine, and to date has provided $56bn (£42m) for Ukraine’s defence.

“I thank every nation and every leader who has felt that this war, Russia’s war against Ukraine, is about much more than just the fate of our Ukrainian people,” he said.

Following his Washington visit Zelensky is expected to head to New York and the United Nations where he is expected to attend a meeting of the Security Council on Tuesday and give a speech at the General Assembly on Wednesday.

Pro-government supporters and security forces in Bolivia have clashed with protesters loyal to the former President Evo Morales on Sunday.

Rival groups hurled firecrackers, homemade explosives and stones at each other while police fired tear gas in the city of El Alto. Morales – who was president from 2006 to 2019 – has been leading thousands of supporters in a week-long march to the capital La Paz.

He wants to run as the candidate for the ruling Mas party in the country’s 2025 presidential elections. But the current president, Luis Arce, also intends to run. Arce’s supporters took to the streets to protest against Morales and his followers.

Morales was declared the winner of the 2019 election, but resigned weeks later after protests triggered by reports of irregularities in the vote count, and went into exile.

Israel and Hezbollah both threatened to increase their cross-border attacks on Sunday, despite international appeals for them to step back from all-out war.

Israel’s military said about 150 rockets, missiles and other projectiles were fired at its territory overnight on Saturday and early on Sunday – mostly from within Lebanon.

Some reached further than previous strikes, sending thousands of Israelis to bomb shelters and damaging homes near the city of Haifa.

Israel launched its own strikes on targets in southern Lebanon, which it said destroyed thousands of Hezbollah’s rocket launchers.

On Sunday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel would take “whatever action is necessary to restore security” and return people safely to their homes along the Israel-Lebanon border.

He said Israel had dealt “a series of blows on Hezbollah that it could have never imagined”. But the group’s deputy leader Naim Qassem declared: “Threats will not stop us… We are ready to face all military possibilities”.

Speaking at the funeral of Ibrahim Aqil, a high-ranking Hezbollah commander killed in Israel’s Friday strike on Lebanon’s capital, Beirut, he said: “We have entered a new phase, namely an open reckoning” with Israel.

Sheikh Nadeem Qassem told mourners that Israel had failed in all its aims, while the resistance – meaning Hezbollah – had continued firing for the last three days.

He said more Israeli residents would be pushed out from their homes in the north of the country, adding that Israel had failed to break the group’s resistance and connection with Gaza. Hezbollah is allied with Hamas, which is also part of Iran’s so-called “Axis of Resistance”.

Huge crowds lined the streets and followed the coffin as it was driven on an elevated platform on the back of a pick-up truck.

Among the grief and anger at the funeral, there was a message of defiance from the gathered Hezbollah supporters – including chants of “death to America” from the crowd.

The ceremony took place in a square in the southern suburb of Dahieh in Beirut, the heartland of Hezbollah, just a few streets away from Friday’s air strike.

Lebanese officials said 45 people were killed in the attack, including Ibrahim Aqil and 15 of his men.

Aqil had many enemies, and a bounty of $7m on his head. He was wanted by the US for his alleged links to the killing of hundreds of Americans in Beirut in the 1980s – in attacks on the US Embassy and a Marine barracks.

About 30 civilians were also killed in Friday’s Israeli strike, including entire families. At the scene today, relatives remained at the edge of a vast crater, hoping for remains to be found.

Lebanese Minister for Public Works Ali Hamie – who is linked with Hezbollah – said Israel is dragging the region to war.

“At the end, Lebanon is not seeking the war,” he told the BBC at the scene of the strike.

“Even the Lebanese people. But Israel is calling us worldwide, come to war. Come to war.”

Asked if he thought war would happen, he replied: “I don’t know, we will see.”

Hezbollah is the most powerful political and military organisation in Lebanon. The Shia Muslim organisation is better armed than many nations. It is classed as a terrorist organisation by countries including the UK and the US.

Fighting between Hezbollah and Israel escalated on 8 October 2023 – the day after the attack on Israel by Hamas gunmen from Gaza – when Hezbollah fired at Israeli positions.

About 1,200 people were killed and more than 250 taken hostage in the Hamas attacks on southern Israel, while 60,000 people in the north have been evacuated as a result of near-daily rocket attacks by Hezbollah since.

The latest cross-border exchanges have sparked renewed international concern.

UN chief Antonio Guterres told CNN he feared “the possibility of transforming Lebanon [into] another Gaza”.

The UN special co-ordinator in Lebanon, Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert, posted on X that the Middle East was on the brink of “imminent catastrophe”.

“It cannot be overstated enough: there is NO military solution that will make either side safer,” she posted on Sunday.

US President Joe Biden said Washington would do “everything we can to keep a wider war from breaking out”.

The EU said it was “extremely” concerned, while UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy called for an “immediate ceasefire”.

The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) said many of the projectiles it faced had been intercepted overnight on Saturday, including two that had been launched from Iraq.

The Islamic Resistance in Iraq, a Iran-backed group, said it had fired cruise missile and explosive drone attacks at Israel.

Northern Israel remains on high alert, with schools closed and hospitals moving patients underground. People there have been told to restrict outdoor gatherings to fewer than 10.

One resident of Kirayt Bialik on the outskirts of Haifa, which was hit by rocket fire, 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.”

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 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.

Four members of the same family, including two young children, have died in a gas explosion in southern Italy.

Their two-storey home in the town of Saviano, near Naples, partially collapsed in the blast, killing the siblings – a boy and a girl – as well as their mother and grandmother.

The father and a newborn baby were recovered from the rubble alive, Italian firefighters said.

He remains in hospital in Naples in serious condition, while the baby’s injuries are not life-threatening, local media reported.

The Vigili del Fuoco, Italy’s fire service, reported that the parents and three children lived on one floor of the property, while another woman – said to be the grandmother – lived on the floor above.

“Firefighters recovered the father and a newborn baby alive, entrusting them to the care of the health workers on site, while they could do nothing for the two children, a boy and a girl, whose bodies were unfortunately recovered lifeless,” The Vigili del Fuoco said in a statement.

While authorities have not confirmed the ages of the children, local media reported that they were four and six.

The explosion occurred at around 07:00 local time (06:00 BST), the Vigili del Fuoco said.

Firefighters found the children and father in the morning, then spent the day searching through the rubble, not locating the mother until 16:45.

Firefighters’ spokesman Luca Cari told reporters during the day that rescuers had to be “very careful and move slowly, to avoid new collapses” as they searched, the Associated Press reported.

Search and rescue teams, operating with sniffer dogs, continued the search for the grandmother into the night, announcing they had found her and had wrapped up the search at 01:00.

Investigations are continuing into the exact cause of the building’s collapse, but early theories suggest the house collapsed after a gas explosion.

More than 60 civil protection volunteers joined the rescue efforts, the Campania region authority wrote in a post on Facebook.

Images shared by the fire service showed rescue teams working through the rubble of the destroyed building through the night.

Drone footage of the scene showed two gaping holes in the roof of the building, which was partially collapsed.

Abba’s Björn Ulvaeus has married his partner Christina Sas in a ceremony hosted by the comedian and broadcaster Sandi Toksvig.

The 79-year-old Swedish singer, who has been married twice before, met Sas in Nuremberg, Germany, in 2021 in connection with the release of Abba’s last album Voyage.

A post to his Instagram page said: “Today on the 21st of September 2024, Björn Ulvaeus married Christina Sas from Herning, Denmark.

They met in Nurnberg in 2021 in connection with the release of Abba’s last album Voyage and started dating in the spring of 2022.”

The wedding took place in Copenhagen in the presence of close friends and family.

Ulvaeus posted a number of photos from the day, one of which showed the host of BBC show QI, Toksvig, dressed in red robes standing next to Ulvaeus, who donned a suit, and his wife Sas, who wore a green wrap dress.

The broadcaster Gyles Brandreth said in a post to Instagram that he had “loved meeting Abba’s Björn Ulvaeus” and Sas for his Rosebud podcast.

He added that Toksvig had officiated the ceremony and Ulvaeus said she made the day “extra special”.

TV presenter Toksvig has been friends with Björn since the pair collaborated on Mamma Mia: The Party! in 2018.

Ulvaeus is known for being one quarter of Swedish pop group Abba, who this year celebrated 50 years since their winning performance at the Eurovision Song Contest with their song Waterloo.

The group was comprised of two couples – Ulvaeus and Agnetha Faltskog, and Benny Andersson and Anni-Frid Lyngstad.

The Swedish musician married Abba bandmate Fältskog in 1971. The pair had two children, Linda, 49, and Peter, 44, before divorcing in 1980.

Andersson and Lyngstad also divorced in 1981, a year before the band split.

The quartet did not reform to perform at Eurovision 2024 despite the event being held in Malmo, Sweden.

Ulvaeus was also previously married to Lena Kallersjo, from 1981-2022.

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.

From finding an alligator in a car boot to being called out to an ostrich loose on the street in the middle of the night, the Scottish SPCA’s Mike Flynn MBE has seen it all.

After 37 years with the organisation, the chief superintendent retires on Monday as he turns 65. He was a zoo elephant keeper before joining the animal charity.

“Everyone always thinks the Scottish SPCA is all puppies and kittens, but it’s far from it,” he told BBC Scotland News of his varied animal encounters over the years.

As for his proudest work-related moment, he said that was the ban on the use of snares and glue traps being introduced earlier this year.

The alligator incident happened back in 2004 in Edinburgh, after the Scottish SSPCA initially spotted an advert.

A man was trying to sell the 4ft (1.2m) reptile, after buying it over the internet but then realising he could not care for it.

Posing as potential buyers, officers and plain-clothes police met him in a car park. The boot of the Vauxhall Cavalier was opened and they were confronted by the unrestrained and unmuzzled creature.

“He was keeping it in a bath on the fifth floor of a tenement in Leith,” Mr Flynn said.

“He advertised it. We got in touch pretending to be buyers and he turned up at a car park with this alligator in the back of the car. We caught him red-handed.

“So I ended up with my colleague getting the enviable task of taking this alligator to Torremolinos in Spain.

“It was transported in a purpose-built crate, it was flown from Edinburgh to London, then London to Madrid. It was then transported in the rear of a hire car by myself and a colleague from Madrid to Torremolinos.

“And he’s still there today – Jimmy the alligator from Leith in Edinburgh.”

He started with the Scottish SPCA back in 1987.

“Prior to that I worked seven years at Edinburgh Zoo as an elephant keeper,” he said. “So I’ve always enjoyed the animal background.

“I joined the society with the intention of being here until I dropped. But 65 is beckoning and I think that’s a fair enough stint – 37 years is long enough for anybody.

“Working with animals has always been a passion, but to be honest being an inspector isn’t always about working with animals. That’s a tiny part of it.

“Every animal you deal with, you’ve got to deal with a person. So for every animal we help, we’re helping a member of the public or other organisations. You’ve got to have an empathy with animals, but you’ve got to have a lot of people skills too.”

Mr Flynn still “vividly” remembers his first day at the animal charity.

“The chief inspector at the time, the first thing he did was take you into this old cupboard to give you second hand uniform,” he recalled.

“So first day on the street, I think I had a jacket that fitted somebody about six sizes bigger than me.

“In my day you had to carry about a pocket full of two pences if you had to phone back to the office – you had to find a phone box – to find out if there were any other jobs coming. Back in those days, trying to find a phone box in Edinburgh that worked was a bit of a miracle anyway.”

He described another memorable incident.

“We’ve had wild boar, ostriches – I remember getting a phone call one Sunday morning from someone I actually thought was drunk,” Mr Flynn said.

“He said that he had seen an ostrich on Leith Walk in Edinburgh, but he said it was limping.

“And lo and behold, I got there and the police are pointing at this ostrich which is walking down the street.

“It was a farmed ostrich which had fallen off the back of a lorry. The guy wasn’t that drunk after all.”

He spoke out about many high-profile criminal cases over the years, including what was believed to be Scotland’s biggest puppy farm, in the north east of Scotland.

More than 100 dogs, puppies, rabbits and ferrets were seized when Scottish SPCA officers and police raided the farm, near Fyvie, in November 2017.

In 2006 he was awarded an MBE in the Queen’s 80th birthday honours lists for services to animal welfare in Scotland.

“That was fantastic,” he said. “It was surreal. It was a real privilege.

“It came totally out of the blue. I got the MBE, but that was for the work of the Scottish SPCA.

“Everyone in our organisation deserves that recognition.”

He continued: “Work wise I think the biggest achievement – and it’s taken at least 15 years to get there – is getting snaring banned.

“That was first raised way back in 2010 and we’ve constantly been at that and it’s finally been passed by the Scottish Parliament that snaring of all forms will be banned.

“That’s been a personal passion of mine because I’ve pulled too many animals out of legal and illegal snares that have just suffered immensely.”

He added: “I’ve achieved all the things I wanted to achieve over the last 20 years that I was aiming for. And with the 65th birthday coming up, I thought well let’s go out on a high and enjoy what you’ve done.

“And honestly I’ve never had a bad day with the society. And that’s all down to the goodwill of the Scottish public because it’s all donations from the public and I just hope they will continue to support us because they do make a change.”

And as for the prospect of retired life?

“It will be strange,” he admitted. “I’ll be checking the phone isn’t broken because it won’t be ringing as much.

“I’m going to take it quietly. I’ve got a couple of projects I’m going to be helping other people with. I’ll still be on the Scottish government’s animal welfare commission.

“I’m not disappearing completely off the scene and I’ll still be in contact with my old colleagues.”

The lifelong animal lover added: “It will take a while to sink in. It’s been 37 glorious years. I can’t complain. I can honestly say that I haven’t had one bad day in all that time. I’ve loved it.”

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.

Russia’s chess team is to remain banned from international competitions, officials have ruled.

In a dramatic move, an International Chess Federation (Fide) general assembly meeting in Budapest voted to maintain sanctions against Russia and its ally, Belarus.

Both countries were kicked out of the federation after Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022.

Those supporting the move say chess in Russia is controlled by Vladimir Putin, with people including the Kremlin spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, sitting on the board which runs the game domestically.

A majority of delegates in Budapest voted in favour of a motion to conduct consultations with the International Olympic Committee (IOC) regarding the possibility of lifting some restrictions against children and vulnerable groups.

However, bans against the Russian national team, officials, flag and anthem in international competitions will remain.

The final decision now rests with the federation’s strategic body, the Fide Council, which is unlikely to overturn the results of the ballot.

Malcolm Pein, head of the English Chess Federation, told the BBC the result was a “crushing defeat” for Russia.

“There is no doubt that many delegates feared consequences for the governing body’s relationship with the IOC if policy diverged,” he said.

Sixty-six countries supported the motion, with 41 opting for a third option – that all restrictions should remain in place.

Just 21 countries voted to lift sanctions. As well as Russia and Belarus, they included several former Soviet republics and other Russian allies in Africa and Asia.

The highly anticipated vote was seen as a test of Western resolve to maintain pressure on Russia in culture, sport and diplomacy.

Before voting began, Ukraine called on delegates to reject the proposal to lift sanctions.

“It’s a victory for Ukraine,” the Ukrainian Chess Federation’s Viktor Kapustin told the BBC.

“This vote means that Russia does not have enough support that they assumed they had,” he added.

“Russia is an aggressor and invader, and the aggressor must be punished in all spheres of their life, including sport. It’s important to keep the sanctions, or even strengthen them. For them to recognise their crimes.”

Russia said politics should be left out of chess and urged other representatives to vote to lift all sanctions.

Kyiv was supported by England, Scotland, Wales, the US, France and many other western nations. The IOC, with which Fide is affiliated, had also recommended that the organisation comply with an earlier decision by the Olympic body that sanctions against Russia in sport remain in place.

Following Moscow’s full-scale invasion in 2022, Fide voted to ban the Russian national team and officials from competitions.

In a separate move, a Fide commission applied sanctions to the Russian Chess Federation (CFR) last June, excluding it for two years for “bringing chess into disrepute” and violating the international organisation’s principles.

It found that the Russian federation had organised tournaments in areas of Ukraine illegally occupied by Russian forces and reprimanded Fide’s Russian president for his membership of the CFR board.

Earlier this month, the ban was commuted to a €45,000 (£37,700) fine and the reprimand cancelled, a move which was criticised by Ukraine and its allies.

Ex-defence minister Sergei Shoigu and Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, who are both under international sanctions, are also CFR board members.

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.

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.

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

Planned power cuts in Ecuador have begun a day early as severe drought disrupts its hydroelectric plants.

The country is suffering its worst drought in 60 years, with no significant rainfall in more than two months.

The government had already announced nightly blackouts across the country from Monday, but 12 provinces had their power cut from 08:00 to 17:00 local time over the weekend.

Several South American countries are currently experiencing their worst droughts on record, which is also fuelling a number of wildfires.

Hydroelectric plants cover 70% of Ecuador’s electricity demand, but the water reserves that fuel it have fallen to critical levels.

Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa said there could be further cuts and other emergency measures introduced if water levels in the hydroelectric plants are not restored soon.

In addition to the 71 days without rain, Noboa also blamed the emergency on political failings.

In a statement, the president blamed the power crisis on the failure of previous governments to adequately maintain infrastructure and the lack of contingency planning.

A red alert has been imposed in 15 provinces including the capital Quito.

Sixty neighbourhoods in Quito have had their water supplies cut as part of rationing measures.

It was less than six months ago that Ecuadorians were last rationing electricity.

In April, drought saw the country impose power cuts of up to 13 hours a day.

The current drought is certainly not contained to Ecuador – several other countries in South America are suffering the impact of the worst drought in living memory

Extreme drought has devastated vast areas of the Amazon and the Pantanal in Brazil, Bolivia and Peru.

In Colombia, firefighters are battling dozens of fires, which have so far ravaged almost 11,000 hectares (27,000 acres).

Earlier this week, Peru’s government declared a 60-day state of emergency in the jungle regions bordering Brazil and Ecuador which have been worst affected by forest fires.

The drought has also weakened the vast Amazon River, affecting food supplies and the livelihoods of locals.

Last week, the Brazilian Geological Service (SGB) said water levels in many of the rivers in the Amazon basin had reached their lowest on record.

In 2023, the Amazon basin suffered its most severe drought in at least 45 years – which scientists at the World Weather Attribution group found had been made many times more likely by climate change.

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

The culprits are believed to have approached the scene in a vehicle before getting out and opening fire. No suspects have been arrested.

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

The shooting may have been a result of a murder-for-hire plot, Police Chief Scott Thurmond was quoted as saying by local news outlet Al.com.

The intended target was among those killed, Mr Thurmond said at a news conference on Sunday.

“It wasn’t the location, it was the person, so wherever the person was was where it was going to take place, wherever they can catch that individual,’’ Mr Thurmond said. “That’s just where they happened to catch them.”

The other victims – all of whom were standing outside – are so far believed to have been caught in the gunfire.

Four of the injured suffered life-threatening wounds, according to Mr Fitzgerald.

The BBC has contacted the Birmingham Police Department for comment.

Authorities 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.

He told CNN later on Sunday that more than 100 shell casings had been found at the crime scene.

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 incident in Birmingham is the second mass shooting to place in the city in a two-month period, and the third quadruple homicide of 2024, according to Al.com.

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

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 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.

The Israeli military has raided the offices of news broadcaster Al Jazeera in Ramallah, in the occupied West Bank, confiscated its equipment and ordered it to close for an initial period of 45 days.

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

Israel’s military said a legal opinion and intelligence assessment determined that the offices were being used “to incite terror” and “support terrorist activities”, and that the channel’s broadcasts endanger Israel’s security.

Al Jazeera “vehemently” condemned the closure and “unfounded allegations presented by Israeli authorities to justify these illegal raids”, and called the move an “affront” to press freedom.

The Foreign Press Association said it was “deeply troubled” by the development, which it also said threatened press freedom.

“Restricting foreign reporters and closing news channels signals a shift away from democratic values,” the organisation said.

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

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

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

Posting about the raid on social media, Mr 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 it concluded there was a “high probability” that one of its soldiers killed her.

About the closure of the offices, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said in a statement that it and Israel Border Police, alongside the civil administration, enforced an order signed by the Commander of the Central Command.

The offices had been sealed and equipment confiscated, the IDF added.

Al Jazeera decried the “draconian actions” and “oppressive measures”, but said it would not deter the network from covering Gaza and the West Bank.

The news outlet said it would pursue all available legal channels through international legal institutions to protect its rights and journalists, as well as the public’s right to information.

Relations between the Qatari-owned broadcaster and the Israeli government have long been tense, but have worsened 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.

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.

Former President Donald Trump has said he does not expect to run for election again in 2028 if he is defeated in this November’s US presidential poll.

Trump, 78, has been the Republican candidate for three national elections in a row and has reshaped the party greatly over the last eight years.

In an interview with Sinclair Media Group, he was asked if he could foresee another run in the event that he loses to Democratic Vice-President Kamala Harris. “No, I don’t. I think… that will be it,” Trump said. “I don’t see that at all.”

But he added that “hopefully, we’re going to be very successful”.

US law bars presidents from serving more than two terms, and so Trump is not expected to run in 2028 if he wins, either.

In the past, the real estate mogul has rarely acknowledged the possibility of losing the election, more often firing up supporters with speeches and social media posts pledging victory at the polls.

But this is the second time in four days he has mentioned a chance of defeat.

During an event held by the Israeli-American Council on Thursday, he brought up losing, and suggested that any such loss would partly be the fault of Jewish voters.

“Do they know what the hell is happening if I don’t win this election?” he said, according to various media reports. “And the Jewish people would have to do a lot with that if that happens because at 40% [support] that means 60% of the people are voting for the enemy.”

The comments were condemned by the Harris campaign and by the nonpartisan American Jewish Committee and Anti-Defamation League.

Trump’s acknowledgments of a possible loss may reflect how the Democratic Party’s prospects have changed since Harris became its nominee following President Joe Biden’s decision to quit the race.

Her campaign raised more than $190m (£142m) in August, compared to $130m brought in by the Trump campaign and affiliated organisations.

In national polling averages tracked by the BBC she is ahead of Trump, and a poll released on Sunday by CBS shows she leads Trump 52% to 48% nationally.

In key US battleground states which look set to prove decisive to the overall result, Harris has a narrower lead of 51% to 49%, which is a slight improvement from the even 50% in a similar poll conducted last month by CBS, the BBC’s news partner.

• Who won the Harris-Trump presidential debate?
• Watch key moments from Harris-Trump clash

Another poll released on Sunday by NBC shows Harris with a five percentage point lead over Trump across the US.

It also found that 48% of registered voters see her positively compared to 32% in July – the largest jump since then-President George W Bush’s favourability surged after the 11 September 2001 attacks.

But like other surveys, the NBC poll showed Trump held a clear advantage with voters on some of the election’s biggest issues, including the economy, the cost of living and immigration.

The BBC has contacted the Trump campaign for comment on the polling data.

• SIMPLE GUIDE: Everything you need to know about the vote
• EXPLAINER: Seven swing states that could decide election
• FACT CHECK: Was US economy stronger under Biden or Trump?
• POLICIES: What Harris or Trump would do in power
• POLLS: Who is winning the race for the White House?

Left-leaning politician Anura Kumara Dissanayake has been elected as Sri Lanka’s next president after he won the debt-ridden country’s first election since its economy collapsed in 2022.

The 55-year-old beat off his nearest rival, opposition leader Sajith Premadasa, to emerge as the clear winner after a historic second round of counting, which included second-preference votes. Outgoing president Ranil Wikremesinghe trailed in third.

It’s a remarkable turnaround for a man who won just 3% of the votes in the 2019 election. Dissanayake, who contested as candidate for the National People’s Power (NPP) alliance, has drawn increasing support in recent years for his anti-corruption platform and pro-poor policies – particularly in the wake of the country’s worst ever economic crisis, which is still having an impact on millions.

He will now inherit governance of a nation that is struggling to emerge from the shadow of that crisis, and a populace that is desperate for change.

So who is president-elect Anura Kumara Dissanayake?

Dissanayake was born on 24 November, 1968 in Galewela, a multi-cultural and multi-religious town in central Sri Lanka.

Raised as a member of the middle-class, he is public school educated, has a degree in physics, and first entered politics as a student around the time when the Indo-Sri Lanka Agreement was signed in 1987: an event that would lead to one of Sri Lanka’s bloodiest periods.

From 1987 to 1989, the Janatha Vimukti Peramuna (JVP) – a Marxist political party with which Dissanayake would later become closely associated – spearheaded an armed revolt against the Sri Lankan government.

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 which claimed thousands of lives.

Dissanayake, who was elected to the JVP’s central committee in 1997 and became its leader in 2008, has since apologised for the group’s violence during this so-called “season of terror”.

“A lot of things happened during the armed conflict that should not have happened,” he said in a 2014 interview with the BBC.

“We are still shocked, and shocked that things happened at our hands that should not have happened. We are always deeply saddened and shocked about that.”

The JVP, which currently has just three seats in parliament, is part of the NPP coalition that Dissanayake now heads.

While campaigning for the presidential election, Dissanayake addressed another violent moment in Sri Lanka’s recent history: the 2019 Easter Sunday bombings.

On 21 April 2019, a succession of deadly blasts tore through churches and international hotels across the capital Colombo, killing at least 290 people and injuring hundreds more in what quickly became the worst attack in Sri Lanka’s history.

Five years later, however, investigations into how the co-ordinated attacks happened, and the security failures that led to them, have failed to provide answers.

Some have accused the former government, led by Gotabaya Rajapaksa, of obstructing investigations.

In a recent interview with BBC Sinhala, Dissanayake promised he would hold an investigation into the matter if elected – suggesting that authorities had avoided doing so because they were afraid of revealing “their own responsibility”.

It’s just one of many unfulfilled promises from Sri Lanka’s political elite, he added.

“It’s not just this investigation,” he said. “Politicians who promised to stop corruption have engaged in corruption; those who promised to create a debt-free Sri Lanka have only worsened the debt burden; people who promised to strengthen the law have broken it.

“This is exactly why the people of this country want different leadership. We are the ones who can provide it.”

Dissanayake was viewed as a strong contender in the lead-up to Saturday’s election, positioning himself as the candidate for change against a backdrop of simmering nationwide discontent.

Former president Gotabaya Rajapaksa was driven out of Sri Lanka in 2022 by mass protests sparked by the economic meltdown.

Years of under-taxation, weak exports and major policy errors, combined with the Covid-19 pandemic, dried up the country’s foreign exchange reserves. Public debt reached more than $83bn and inflation soared to 70%.

Rajapaksa and his government were blamed for the crisis. And though his successor, President Wickremesinghe, introduced economic reforms that brought down inflation and strengthened the Sri Lankan rupee, people continue to feel the pinch.

On a deeper level, the 2022 economic crisis and the circumstances surrounding it – including systemic corruption and political impunity – created demand for a different kind of political leadership. Dissanayake has leveraged that demand to his advantage.

He has cast himself as a potential disruptor to a status quo which critics say has long rewarded corruption and cronyism among the political elite.

Dissanayake has repeatedly said he plans to dissolve parliament after coming to power, in order to have a clean slate and a fresh mandate for his policies – suggesting in a recent interview with BBC Sinhala that he would do this within days of being elected.

“There is no point continuing with a parliament that is not in line with what the people want,” he said.

Among Dissanayake’s policy pledges are tough anti-corruption measures, bigger welfare schemes and a promise to slash taxes.

Tax hikes and welfare cuts were imposed by the current government as part of austerity measures aimed at steering the country’s economy back on track – but they also left many people unable to make ends meet.

Dissanayake’s promise to rein in those measures appears to have galvanised support among voters, in an election where analysts predicted economic concerns would be front of mind.

“The country’s soaring inflation, skyrocketing cost-of-living and poverty have left the electorate desperate for solutions to stabilise prices and improve livelihoods,” Soumya Bhowmick, an associate fellow at India-based think tank the Observer Research Foundation, told the BBC before the election.

“With the country seeking to emerge from its economic collapse, this election serves as a crucial moment for shaping Sri Lanka’s recovery trajectory and restoring both domestic and international confidence in its governance.”

Some onlookers, including investors and market participants, expressed concern that Dissanayake’s economic policies could have an impact on fiscal targets and disrupt Sri Lanka’s road to recovery.

The presidential candidate tempered his messaging during campaign speeches, however, insisting that he was committed to ensuring repayment of Sri Lanka’s debt.

He also noted that any changes would be imposed in consultation with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which has provided a buttress for the country’s still-embattled economy.

Many analysts think the next president’s main task is building a stable economy.

Athulasiri Samarakoon, senior lecturer in political science and international studies at the Open University of Sri Lanka, told the BBC that “the most serious challenge is how to restore this economy”, including managing public expenditure and increasing public revenue generation.

“Any future government will have to work with the International Monetary Fund,” he noted.

About 76% of Sri Lanka’s 17.1 million electorate turned out to vote in Saturday’s election, according to officials.

By mid-morning on Sunday, Dissanayake had already received messages of congratulations from supporters of his two main rivals, incumbent president Ranil Wickremesinghe and opposition leader Sajith Premadasa.

Foreign Minister Ali Sabry said on X that early results clearly pointed to a Dissanayake victory.

“Though I heavily campaigned for President Ranil Wickremesinghe, the people of Sri Lanka have made their decision, and I fully respect their mandate for Anura Kumara Dissanayake,” Sabry said.

MP Harsha de Silva, who supported Premadasa, said he had called Dissanayake to offer his congratulations.

“We campaigned hard for @sajithpremadasa but it was not to be. It is now clear @anuradisanayake will be the new President of #SriLanka,” said de Silva, who represents Colombo in parliament.

Another Premadasa supporter, Tamil National Alliance (TNA) spokesman MA Sumanthiran, said Dissanayake delivered an “impressive win” without relying on “racial or religious chauvinism”.

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 Power – 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.

Australia’s consumer watchdog is suing the country’s two biggest supermarket chains, alleging they falsely claimed to have permanently dropped the prices of hundreds of items.

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) claims Coles and Woolworths broke consumer law by temporarily raising prices before lowering them to a value either the same as or higher than the original cost.

Coles said it would defend itself against the allegations, while Woolworths said it would review the claims.

The grocery giants, which account for two thirds of the Australian market, have come under increasing scrutiny in the past year over alleged price gouging and anti-competitive practices.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said the alleged conduct, if proven to be true, is “completely unacceptable”.

“This is not in the Australian spirit. Customers don’t deserve to be treated as fools,” he said at a press conference, at which he also revealed draft legislation for a previously promised “code of conduct” for supermarkets.

ACCC chair Gina Cass-Gottlieb said Coles and Woolworths have spent years marketing their ‘Prices Dropped’ and ‘Down Down’ promotions, which Australian shoppers now understand to represent a sustained reduction in the regular prices of products.

But in many cases “the discounts were, in fact, illusory”, she added.

The watchdog’s investigation – sparked by complaints and the ACCC’s own monitoring – found Woolworths had misled customers about 266 products over 20 months, and Coles for 245 products across 15 months.

The products included everything from pet food, Band-Aid plasters and mouthwash, to Australian favourites like Arnott’s Tim Tam biscuits, Bega Cheese and Kellogg’s cereal.

The ACCC estimated that the two companies “sold tens of millions” of the affected products and “derived significant revenue from those sales”.

“Many consumers rely on discounts to help their grocery budgets stretch further, particularly during this time of cost of living pressures,” Ms Cass-Gottlieb said.

“It is critical that Australian consumers are able to rely on the accuracy of pricing and discount claims.”

The ACCC is seeking that the Federal Court of Australia impose “significant” penalties on the two firms, and an order forcing them to increase their charitable meal delivery programs.

In a statement, Coles said the company’s own costs were rising which led to an increase in product prices.

It had “sought to strike an appropriate balance” between managing that and “offering value to customers” by restarting promotions “as soon as possible” after new prices were set, it said.

The company takes consumer law “extremely seriously” and “places great emphasis on building trust with all stakeholders”, it added.

Woolworths said in a statement that it would engage with the ACCC over the claims.

“Our customers are telling us they want us to work even harder to deliver meaningful value to them and it’s important they can trust the value they see when shopping our stores.”

Amid growing scrutiny of the supermarkets, the government commissioned a review of the country’s existing Food and Grocery Code of Conduct.

The review recommended a stronger, mandatory code of conduct be introduced and policed by the ACCC, so they can protect suppliers as well as consumers.

The new code will set out standards for the companies’ dealings with providers, who say they are being unfairly squeezed, and introduce massive fines for breaches.

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.

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.

Abba’s Björn Ulvaeus has married his partner Christina Sas in a ceremony hosted by the comedian and broadcaster Sandi Toksvig.

The 79-year-old Swedish singer, who has been married twice before, met Sas in Nuremberg, Germany, in 2021 in connection with the release of Abba’s last album Voyage.

A post to his Instagram page said: “Today on the 21st of September 2024, Björn Ulvaeus married Christina Sas from Herning, Denmark.

They met in Nurnberg in 2021 in connection with the release of Abba’s last album Voyage and started dating in the spring of 2022.”

The wedding took place in Copenhagen in the presence of close friends and family.

Ulvaeus posted a number of photos from the day, one of which showed the host of BBC show QI, Toksvig, dressed in red robes standing next to Ulvaeus, who donned a suit, and his wife Sas, who wore a green wrap dress.

The broadcaster Gyles Brandreth said in a post to Instagram that he had “loved meeting Abba’s Björn Ulvaeus” and Sas for his Rosebud podcast.

He added that Toksvig had officiated the ceremony and Ulvaeus said she made the day “extra special”.

TV presenter Toksvig has been friends with Björn since the pair collaborated on Mamma Mia: The Party! in 2018.

Ulvaeus is known for being one quarter of Swedish pop group Abba, who this year celebrated 50 years since their winning performance at the Eurovision Song Contest with their song Waterloo.

The group was comprised of two couples – Ulvaeus and Agnetha Faltskog, and Benny Andersson and Anni-Frid Lyngstad.

The Swedish musician married Abba bandmate Fältskog in 1971. The pair had two children, Linda, 49, and Peter, 44, before divorcing in 1980.

Andersson and Lyngstad also divorced in 1981, a year before the band split.

The quartet did not reform to perform at Eurovision 2024 despite the event being held in Malmo, Sweden.

Ulvaeus was also previously married to Lena Kallersjo, from 1981-2022.

Israel and Hezbollah both threatened to increase their cross-border attacks on Sunday, despite international appeals for them to step back from all-out war.

Israel’s military said about 150 rockets, missiles and other projectiles were fired at its territory overnight on Saturday and early on Sunday – mostly from within Lebanon.

Some reached further than previous strikes, sending thousands of Israelis to bomb shelters and damaging homes near the city of Haifa.

Israel launched its own strikes on targets in southern Lebanon, which it said destroyed thousands of Hezbollah’s rocket launchers.

On Sunday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel would take “whatever action is necessary to restore security” and return people safely to their homes along the Israel-Lebanon border.

He said Israel had dealt “a series of blows on Hezbollah that it could have never imagined”. But the group’s deputy leader Naim Qassem declared: “Threats will not stop us… We are ready to face all military possibilities”.

Speaking at the funeral of Ibrahim Aqil, a high-ranking Hezbollah commander killed in Israel’s Friday strike on Lebanon’s capital, Beirut, he said: “We have entered a new phase, namely an open reckoning” with Israel.

Sheikh Nadeem Qassem told mourners that Israel had failed in all its aims, while the resistance – meaning Hezbollah – had continued firing for the last three days.

He said more Israeli residents would be pushed out from their homes in the north of the country, adding that Israel had failed to break the group’s resistance and connection with Gaza. Hezbollah is allied with Hamas, which is also part of Iran’s so-called “Axis of Resistance”.

Huge crowds lined the streets and followed the coffin as it was driven on an elevated platform on the back of a pick-up truck.

Among the grief and anger at the funeral, there was a message of defiance from the gathered Hezbollah supporters – including chants of “death to America” from the crowd.

The ceremony took place in a square in the southern suburb of Dahieh in Beirut, the heartland of Hezbollah, just a few streets away from Friday’s air strike.

Lebanese officials said 45 people were killed in the attack, including Ibrahim Aqil and 15 of his men.

Aqil had many enemies, and a bounty of $7m on his head. He was wanted by the US for his alleged links to the killing of hundreds of Americans in Beirut in the 1980s – in attacks on the US Embassy and a Marine barracks.

About 30 civilians were also killed in Friday’s Israeli strike, including entire families. At the scene today, relatives remained at the edge of a vast crater, hoping for remains to be found.

Lebanese Minister for Public Works Ali Hamie – who is linked with Hezbollah – said Israel is dragging the region to war.

“At the end, Lebanon is not seeking the war,” he told the BBC at the scene of the strike.

“Even the Lebanese people. But Israel is calling us worldwide, come to war. Come to war.”

Asked if he thought war would happen, he replied: “I don’t know, we will see.”

Hezbollah is the most powerful political and military organisation in Lebanon. The Shia Muslim organisation is better armed than many nations. It is classed as a terrorist organisation by countries including the UK and the US.

Fighting between Hezbollah and Israel escalated on 8 October 2023 – the day after the attack on Israel by Hamas gunmen from Gaza – when Hezbollah fired at Israeli positions.

About 1,200 people were killed and more than 250 taken hostage in the Hamas attacks on southern Israel, while 60,000 people in the north have been evacuated as a result of near-daily rocket attacks by Hezbollah since.

The latest cross-border exchanges have sparked renewed international concern.

UN chief Antonio Guterres told CNN he feared “the possibility of transforming Lebanon [into] another Gaza”.

The UN special co-ordinator in Lebanon, Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert, posted on X that the Middle East was on the brink of “imminent catastrophe”.

“It cannot be overstated enough: there is NO military solution that will make either side safer,” she posted on Sunday.

US President Joe Biden said Washington would do “everything we can to keep a wider war from breaking out”.

The EU said it was “extremely” concerned, while UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy called for an “immediate ceasefire”.

The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) said many of the projectiles it faced had been intercepted overnight on Saturday, including two that had been launched from Iraq.

The Islamic Resistance in Iraq, a Iran-backed group, said it had fired cruise missile and explosive drone attacks at Israel.

Northern Israel remains on high alert, with schools closed and hospitals moving patients underground. People there have been told to restrict outdoor gatherings to fewer than 10.

One resident of Kirayt Bialik on the outskirts of Haifa, which was hit by rocket fire, 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.”

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 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.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is set to present what he has called his “plan for victory” to President Joe Biden during a visit to the US this week.

After meeting Biden, Zelensky said he intended to present it to Congress and the two candidates in the US election – Vice-President Kamala Harris and former president Donald Trump.

Trump has previously criticised US support for Ukraine and spoken highly of Russian President Vladimir Putin but said he will “probably” meet Zelensky.

The Ukrainian president’s visit to the US – where he is also due to attend the UN General Assembly – coincides with efforts from the White House to prepare a new $375m military aid package for Ukraine.

“This fall will determine the future of this war,” Zelensky said in a post on X alongside his nightly video address, which he delivered from his plane.

In a statement ahead of the visit, the Ukrainian leader previewed three elements to this victory plan.

He listed further weapons donations for the military, diplomatic efforts to force Russia into peace, and to hold Moscow accountable for the full-scale invasion of his country in 2022.

Ukraine has been pleading for months for the US, UK and other Western allies to ease restrictions on the use of long-range missiles so it can strike targets in Russia which Kyiv says are used to launch attacks.

Earlier in September, Putin warned Western countries that he would consider long-range missile strikes as “direct participation” by the Nato military alliance in the war.

When asked by reporters on Sunday whether he had made a decision on allowing Ukraine to use US-made long-range weapons, President Biden answered “no”.

• What weapons are the UK and other countries giving Ukraine?

Trump has previously flagged his own plan to end the war “within 24 hours” if he is elected in November, but has provided no details other than to label US support for Ukraine as a waste of money.

According to Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who met Trump in March, the former president said he would “not give a penny in the Ukraine-Russia war. That is why the war will end”.

Zelensky’s statement also voiced gratitude for the support from Ukraine’s allies thus far, singling out the US in particular as its “leading supporter”.

The US has been the largest foreign donor to Ukraine, and to date has provided $56bn (£42m) for Ukraine’s defence.

“I thank every nation and every leader who has felt that this war, Russia’s war against Ukraine, is about much more than just the fate of our Ukrainian people,” he said.

Following his Washington visit Zelensky is expected to head to New York and the United Nations where he is expected to attend a meeting of the Security Council on Tuesday and give a speech at the General Assembly on Wednesday.

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.