Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has told the country’s military to continue fighting with “full force” against the armed group Hezbollah, despite calls from the US and other allies for a ceasefire.

Lebanon’s health ministry said at least 92 people were killed in Israeli air strikes on Thursday, with hundreds more killed since the strikes escalated on Monday.

Hezbollah has confirmed that an air strike on an apartment building in the south of Beirut killed the head of its drone unit, Mohammad Surur.

Fears of an all-out war between Israel and Hezbollah are at a high, after a dramatic escalation in Israeli strikes on Lebanon since Monday.

The increase in hostilities prompted a 12-strong bloc – including the US, UK and EU – to propose a three week ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah on Wednesday.

The proposal was initially met with hope after Israeli ambassador to the UN, Danny Danon, said his country was “open to ideas”.

But by Thursday it had been roundly rejected by Israeli politicians.

Landing in New York for the UN General Assembly, Mr Netanyahu said Israel would “not stop” in Lebanon until it reached all of its goals, “chief among them the return of the residents of the north securely to their homes.”

The White House later said the ceasefire proposal had been “coordinated” with Israel, despite Mr Netanyahu’s assertion, just hours later, that his country would continue fighting.

Speaking in New York, UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer called for an “immediate ceasefire to provide space for a diplomatic settlement” to resolve the conflict in Lebanon.

He said the conflict could spill over into a war “no one can control”.

Around 70,000 Israelis have been displaced from the north of the country since hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah, sparked by the war in Gaza, began nearly a year ago.

In Lebanon, around 90,000 people have been displaced since Monday, adding to the 110,000 who had fled their homes already, according to the UN.

Through Thursday, the Israeli military said it struck Hezbollah targets in Lebanon’s south and in the Bekaa Valley in the country’s east.

It also struck infrastructure on the Lebanese-Syrian border, which it said was to cut weapons supplies to the group.

Meanwhile, Hezbollah said it had fired 50 rockets towards the city of Kiryat Ata, and 80 missiles towards the city of Safed, both in northern Israel.

The Israeli army said it intercepted a missile that was fired from Yemen after sirens and explosions were heard.

Israel’s military chief Lt Gen Herzi Halevi said on Wednesday Israeli air strikes on Lebanon could pave the way for the IDF to “enter enemy territory”.

Israeli Air Force (IAF) Commander Maj Gen Tomer Bar told troops on Thursday they should be “prepared” to support a “ground manoeuvre” into Lebanon.

Meanwhile, Qatar joined calls for a de-escalation with government spokesman Majed al-Ansari saying the country had received “horrific reports from Lebanon about targeting whole families, in a way that is similar to the atrocities in Gaza”.

After meeting with British and Australian counterparts in London, US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin said that Israel and Hezbollah face the risk of “an all-out war” but that “a diplomatic solution is still viable”.

“Israel has stated that its goal is to return its citizens to their home in the north. I believe the quickest way to do that is through diplomacy,” Austin said.

On Thursday evening, Israel’s defense ministry (IMoD) said it had secured an $8.7bn (£6.5bn) US aid package to support its current military campaigns.

In a statement, IMoD said the package includes $3.5bn for “essential wartime procurement”, which has already been transferred, and $5.2bn for air defense systems such as the Iron Dome, David’s Sling and an advanced laser system.

After the US, the EU and 10 other counties called for an immediate ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah, the White House went into spin mode trying to build momentum for its proposal.

On a late night Zoom briefing so packed with reporters that some had to be turned away, senior Biden administration officials described the announcement as a “breakthrough”.

What they meant was they saw getting an agreement from key European countries and Arab states, led by Washington, as a big diplomatic achievement during the current explosive escalation

But this was world powers calling for a ceasefire – not a ceasefire itself.

The statement urges both Israel and Hezbollah to stop fighting now, using a 21-day truce, “to provide space” for further mediated talks. It then urges a diplomatic settlement consistent with United Nations Security Council Resolution 1701 – adopted to end the last Israel-Lebanon war of 2006, which was never properly implemented. It also calls for agreement on the stalled Gaza ceasefire deal.

Beyond the three-week truce, it packages up a series of already elusive regional objectives. Some have remained out of reach for diplomats for nearly two decades already.

To issue the agreed upon text, the Americans had the advantage of world leaders gathered in New York for the annual United Nations General Assembly.

But the “breakthrough” did not mean – as it has become abundantly clear on the ground – was that Israel and Hezbollah had signed off on anything at all.

Here, it seemed like US officials were trying to present the position of the two sides as more advanced than it really was – likely an attempt to build public momentum behind the plan and to pressure both sides.

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Asked whether Israel and Hezbollah were onboard, one of the senior officials said: “I can share that we have had this conversation with the parties and felt this was the right moment based on the [ceasefire] call, based on our discussion – and they are familiar with the text… We’ll let them speak to their actions of accepting the deal in the coming hours.”

Pressed again on whether this meant Israel and Hezbollah had signed on – especially given the fact that the US does not have direct contact with Hezbollah – the official clarified that the US had talked intensively about the text with Israeli officials and with Lebanon’s government (meaning its officials would have contact with Hezbollah).

“Our expectation is when the government of Lebanon and when the government of Israel both accept this, this will carry and to be implemented as a ceasefire on both sides,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

That sounded pretty promising. But after the late-night call, the diplomats woke to news of more Israeli airstrikes on Lebanon, including in Beirut, and more Hezbollah rocket fire into Israel. This week has seen Lebanon’s bloodiest day since its civil war; Israeli airstrikes killed more than 600 people including 50 children, according to Lebanese health officials.

So how significant is the diplomacy, and can it actually lead to a ceasefire?

The early signs don’t bode well. The office of Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu, as he boarded a flight to New York for his UN speech on Friday, issued a defiant statement saying he hadn’t agreed to anything yet. It added that he ordered Israeli military to continue fighting with “full force”.

Lebanon’s prime minister Najib Mikati dismissed reports that he signed on to the proposed ceasefire, saying they were “entirely untrue”.

Instead, the joint statement creates a baseline position for the international community to try to exert pressure on Israel and Hezbollah to pull back and stop.

More work will be done in New York before the week is up. And it likely will continue afterwards.

It is significant that the Americans, leading the charge along with the French, have used the words “immediate ceasefire”. After 7 October, the US for months actively blocked resolutions from the UN Security Council calling for such a ceasefire in Gaza, until President Biden unexpectedly used the word and the US position shifted.

Since then, intensive diplomacy led by Washington has failed to reach a ceasefire and hostage release deal between Israel and Hamas, with the US currently blaming a lack of “political will” by Hamas and Israel. Meanwhile, the US has continued to arm Israel.

That doesn’t inspire confidence that Washington and its allies can now strong-arm Israel and Hezbollah into a quick truce, especially given the fighting on the ground, the intensity of Israel’s air strikes and last week’s explosive pager attacks on Hezbollah, which has continued to fire into Israel.

On the other hand, the difference between this and the Gaza ceasefire is that the Israel-Lebanon agreement doesn’t involve hostage negotiations, which contributed to the deadlock over a Gaza deal.

But the objectives for each side are still very significant. Israel wants to be able to return 60,000 displaced residents from the north and maintain security there free from Lebanon’s daily rocket fire.

Hezbollah seeks to stop Israeli strikes on Lebanon where more than 90,000 people also are displaced from the south.

The Shia militant group will aim to maintain its dominance in the country and its presence in the south while trying to ensure the bloody events of the last week don’t invoke more internal resentment of the group amid Lebanon’s fractious sectarian divisions.

Finding agreement between these two sides has already evaded Amos Hochstein, Washington’s envoy on the Israel-Lebanon crisis, for months.

And here is where the US-led desire to get an immediate truce gets complicated.

My understanding of the negotiations to reach the joint statement is that Washington pushed to make sure it linked the 21-day ceasefire to creating the negotiating time for a longer-term settlement.

Namely, that the two sides negotiate to implement Resolution 1701, which implements multiple conditions on Israel and Hezbollah. These include the group’s retreat from a strip of Lebanon south of the Litani River and, in the long term, Hezbollah’s disarmament.

Ever since 2006, each side has long accused the other of breaking the terms of 1701.

All of this means that an objective, which has already evaded diplomats for nearly two decades, is now being wrapped into the short-term plan for calm between these two sides. As the missiles continue to fall, the current diplomacy is asking a lot.

An 88-year-old man who is the world’s longest-serving death row inmate has been acquitted by a Japanese court, after it found that evidence used against him was fabricated.

Iwao Hakamada, who was on death row for almost half a century, was found guilty in 1968 of killing his boss, the man’s wife and their two teenage children.

He was recently granted a retrial amid suspicions that investigators may have planted evidence that led to his conviction for quadruple murder.

The 46 years spent on death row has taken a heavy toll on Hakamada’s mental health, though, meaning he was unfit to attend the hearing where his acquittal was finally handed down.

Hakamada’s case is one of Japan’s longest and most famous legal sagas, and has attracted widespread public interest, with some 500 people lining up for seats in the courtroom in Shizuoka on Thursday.

As the verdict was handed down, Hakamada’s supporters outside the court cheered “banzai” – a Japanese exclamation that means “hurray”.

Hakamada, who was exempted from all hearings due to his deteriorated mental state, has been living under the care of his 91-year-old sister Hideko since 2014, when he was freed from jail and granted a retrial.

She fought for decades to clear his name and said it was sweet to hear the words “not guilty” in court.

“When I heard that, I was so moved and happy, I couldn’t stop crying,” she told reporters.

Her brother has previously said his battle for justice was like “fighting a bout every day”. “Once you think you can’t win, there is no path to victory,” he told AFP news agency in 2018.

A former professional boxer, Hakamada was working at a miso processing plant in 1966 when the bodies of his employer, the man’s wife and two children were recovered from a fire at their home in Shizuoka, west of Tokyo. All four had been stabbed to death.

Authorities accused Hakamada of murdering the family, setting fire to their home and stealing 200,000 yen in cash.

Hakamada initially denied having robbed and murdered the victims, but later gave what he came to describe as a coerced confession following beatings and interrogations that lasted up to 12 hours a day.

In 1968 he was convicted of murder and arson, and sentenced to death.

The decades-long legal saga ultimately turned on some clothes found in a tank of miso a year after Hakamada’s arrest. Those clothes, purportedly bloodstained, were used to incriminate him.

For years, however, Hakamada’s lawyers argued that the DNA recovered from the clothes did not match his, raising the possibility that the items belonged to someone else. The lawyers further suggested that police could have fabricated the evidence.

Their argument was enough to persuade Judge Hiroaki Murayama, who in 2014 noted that “the clothes were not those of the defendant”.

“It is unjust to detain the defendant further, as the possibility of his innocence has become clear to a respectable degree,” Murayama said at the time.

Hakamada was then released from jail and granted a retrial.

Prolonged legal proceedings meant that it took until last year for that retrial to begin – and until Thursday morning for the court to declare the verdict.

The detail upon which his retrial and final acquittal hinged was the nature of the red stains on clothing prosecutors said was his. The defence questioned how the stains had aged. It said the fact they remained red and had not darkened after an extended time immersed in soybean paste meant the evidence was fabricated.

Thursday’s ruling found that “investigators tampered with clothes by getting blood on them” which they then hid in the tank of miso, according to AFP.

Hakamada was declared innocent.

Decades of detention, mostly in solitary confinement with the ever-present threat of execution, have taken a heavy toll on Hakamada’s mental health, according to his lawyers and family.

His sister has long advocated for his release. Last year, when the retrial commenced, Hideko expressed relief and said “finally a weight has been lifted from my shoulders”.

Retrials for death row inmates are rare in Japan – Hakamada’s is only the fifth in Japan’s post-war history.

Along with the United States, Japan is the only G7 country that still imposes capital punishment, with death row prisoners being notified of their hanging just a few hours in advance.

The US and China are the two largest economies in the world. They have the two most powerful militaries in the world. The US-China rivalry, in the view of many international analysts, will be the defining global theme of the 21st Century.

But at the moment, only one of the two major party presidential candidates is regularly talking about US-China policy – as he has done consistently for years.

According to a review by BBC Verify, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has mentioned China 40 times in his five rallies since the presidential debate earlier this month. In just one hour at a town hall forum last week in Michigan, he brought up the country 27 times.

And when he talks about China, Trump focuses on matters of tension between the two global powers, painting the country and the world’s second-largest economy, as a kind of economic predator.

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He has talked about the new tariffs he plans to impose on imports from Chinese companies – and those from other nations – should he return to the White House.

He has said he wants to prevent Chinese-made cars from being sold because he believes they will destroy the American auto industry. He has warned China not to attempt to replace the US dollar as the world’s reserve currency. And he has blamed the Chinese government for the Covid pandemic.

Many economists question the effectiveness of Trump’s tariff plans and warn that they would ultimately be harmful to US consumers. But Trump’s message is tailored to blue-collar voters in the key industrial Midwest battleground states who have felt the impact of increased competition from Chinese manufacturers.

Meanwhile, BBC Verify finds, Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris did not mention China at all in her six rallies since the 10 September debate. Although, in a speech on the economy in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on Wednesday afternoon, she made a handful of references to the country.

“I will never hesitate to take swift and strong measures when China undermines the rules of the road at the expense of our workers, communities, and companies,” she said at that event.

Asked for comment, an aide to the vice-president told the BBC that even if Harris does not talk about China regularly, she has a record of working to counter what they described as China’s efforts to undermine global stability and prosperity.

But when it comes to discussing China, the contrast between Trump and Harris on the campaign trail is unmistakable.

On Monday afternoon, at a barn in Smithton, a small town in rural western Pennsylvania, Trump sat down with a group of local farmers and ranchers for a roundtable discussion specifically about China.

The town may be just an hour outside of Pittsburgh, a Democratic Party urban stronghold, but this was decidedly Republican territory. Cows grazed peacefully on grasslands lined with dozens of “Trump for President signs”, while Trump supporters decorated two donkeys in “Make America Great Again” gear.

The topic of the event, hosted by the Protecting America Initiative, a conservative think-tank, was “the Chinese Communist Party’s growing threat to the US food supply”.

The forum ended up being a more open-ended conversation about the threat of China, full stop. The farmers, ranchers and business executives on the panel complained about having to compete with heavily subsidised Chinese imports and about the low quality of Chinese goods.

While the former president didn’t spend much time discussing the perceived dangers of Chinese ownership of US farmland – he instead promised that he would convince Chinese President Xi Jinping to buy more US agriculture exports – he again emphasised that he would use tariffs to shield the American economy from China.

At one point, he spoke of the need to protect the US steel industry – in order to prepare for a hypothetical war with China.

“If we’re in a war, and we need army tanks and we need ships and we need other things that happen to be made of steel, what are we going to do, go to China and get the steel?” he asked. “We’re fighting China, but would you mind selling us some steel?”

Some of the heavier lifting on China during the forum was left to Richard Grenell, a roundtable panelist and senior advisor for the Protecting America Initiative.

He warned the country has “quietly but strategically” worked against the US – particularly when Americans were distracted by other global issues.

“They go after our local and state politicians; they go after our manufacturing,” he said. “There is no question they are looking to, at some point, leverage that investment and activity.”

Grenell, who served as US ambassador to Germany and acting director of national intelligence while Trump was in office, is considered a possible secretary of state – America’s top diplomat – if Trump wins another term in November.

If Harris wins, on the other hand, there may not be a significant change from the current Biden administration, even if the current president has frequently deployed sharper rhetoric to describe the US-China rivalry.

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Since the start of his presidency, Joe Biden has identified China as one of the autocracies competing with the world’s leading democracies in what he describes as a historic global inflection point.

According to public opinion surveys, China ranks low on the list of issues American voters care about – dwarfed by the economy, immigration and healthcare.

In a recent National Security Action survey of voters in key electoral battleground states, only 14% listed China as the top national security priority for the next president. Immigration led the list at 38%, followed by the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, both at 28%.

That could in part explain Harris’s seeming lack of interest in talking about China as she has sought to define herself in the eyes of voters during an abbreviated presidential campaign, as well as Trump’s attempts to tie his China policies, particularly tariffs, to an economic pitch.

After the Trump event in Smithton, Bill Bretz, chair of the local county Republican Party committee, said that while China may not be at the top of voter concerns in Pennsylvania, it was important for Trump to talk about it.

As the largest up-for-grabs electoral prize, Pennsylvania is perhaps the pivotal state in the 2024 presidential election. Both Trump and Harris will be hard-pressed to win the White House without it in their column. Polls currently show the two candidates in a dead heat there.

“The majority of people have already picked the camp that they’re in, but there are those group of people that are undecided,” he said. “If China is a straw that sways the scale one way or another, I think it’s a great thing to bring up.”

North America correspondent Anthony Zurcher makes sense of the race for the White House in his weekly US Election Unspun newsletter. Readers in the UK can sign up here. Those outside the UK can sign up here.

Japan’s ruling party will vote for its new leader on Friday, following Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s announcement last month that he would not stand for re-election.

Whoever is named the new chief of the conservative Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), which has ruled Japan for most of the post-war era, will become prime minister since the party has a parliamentary majority.

But the election comes at a turbulent time for the LDP, which has been rocked by scandals and internal conflicts that have disbanded its once-powerful factions.

Nine candidates are contesting the vote, the largest number in the LDP’s history, with three frontrunners offering very different visions for Japan’s future.

The first is political veteran Shigeru Ishiba, 67, a former defence minister contesting the LDP leadership for the fifth time. Ishiba’s blunt candour and public criticism of Prime Minister Kishida – a rarity in Japanese politics – has rankled fellow party members while resonating with members of the public.

Also popular is 43-year-old Shinjiro Koizumi, the youngest candidate, who offers a fresh face and the promise of reforming the LDP in the eyes of the public. Koizumi is the son of former “maverick” prime minister Junichiro Koizumi, and is favoured by younger voters and women – but critics argue that he lacks experience.

Third in the running is Sanae Takaichi, 63, who is vying to become the LDP’s – and Japan’s – first female leader. A close ally to late former prime minister Shinzo Abe, Takaichi is one of two women vying for the LDP leadership, but is also among the more conservative of the candidates.

Takaichi’s positions on women’s issues are also in contrast to those of Koizumi and Ishiba.

Koizumi supports legislation allowing women to retain their maiden name, while Ishiba is in favour of allowing female emperors – a hugely controversial issue opposed by many LDP member and successive governments. Takaichi opposes both stances because they break with tradition.

The winner of Friday’s contest will be decided by an internal party vote, rather than a public one. Consistent among the frontrunners, however, is a pledge to overhaul the embattled LDP in the face of public fury and plummeting approval ratings.

“In the upcoming presidential election, it’s necessary to show the people that the Liberal Democratic Party will change,” Prime Minister Kishida said at a press conference last month, when announcing his decision not to run for another term.

The LDP leadership contest is not just a race for the top job, but also an attempt to regain public trust that the party has haemorrhaged over the past few months amid a stagnant economy, struggling households and a series of political scandals.

Chief among these scandals are revelations regarding the extent of influence that Japan’s controversial Unification Church wields within the LDP, as well as suspicions that party factions underreported political funding over the course of several years.

The fallout from the political funding scandal led to the dissolution of five out of six factions in the LDP – factions that have long been the party’s backbone, and whose support is typically crucial to winning an LDP leadership election.

Perhaps more salient in the minds of the Japanese public, however, are the country’s deepening economic woes.

In the wake of the Covid pandemic, average Japanese families have been feeling the pinch as they struggle with a weak yen, a stagnant economy and food prices that are soaring at the fastest rate in almost half a century.

Meanwhile, data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) shows that wages in Japan have barely changed in 30 years. That drawn-out slump, coupled with 30-year-high inflation, is tightening the screws on Japanese households and prompting calls for government help.

It’s also damaging the LDP’s historically favourable standing among voters.

“People are tired of the LDP,” Mieko Nakabayashi, former opposition MP and political science professor at Tokyo’s Waseda University, told the BBC. “They’re frustrated with the inflation that they are facing currently and the so-called ‘lost 30 years’. The Japanese currency is low, lots of imports got expensive with inflation, and many people see it.”

Another major agenda item is the issue of Japan’s ageing and shrinking population, which puts pressure on social and medical services and presents a real challenge for the country’s medium and long-term workforce. Whoever takes charge of the LDP, and in turn government, will have to rethink how Japan operates its labour market and whether it should shift its attitudes towards immigration.

It’s a desperately needed recalibration in the lead-up to the Japanese general election, which is set to take place by October 2025 – or sooner, as some of the candidates have indicated. Koizumi, for example, has said that he would call a general election soon after the LDP contest.

The last two weeks of campaigning for the LDP leadership are seen by experts as an audition for the general election. For that reason, candidates have been presenting themselves not only to fellow party members but also to the public, in an attempt to win over the electorate.

“The public are changing,” Kunihiko Miyake, a visiting professor at Kyoto’s Ritsumeikan University who has worked closely with both Abe and Kishida, told the BBC. “It’s time for the conservative politics in this country to adapt to a new political environment and political battlefield.”

Also in the running for the LDP leadership are Foreign Minister Yoko Kamikawa, 71, who is the other female candidate; Digital Transformation Minister Taro Kono, 61; Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi, 63; Toshimitsu Motegi, 68, the LDP’s secretary-general; Takayuki Kobayashi, 49, a former economic security minister; and Katsunobu Kato, 68, a former chief cabinet secretary.

Four of the nine have served as foreign minister; three as defence minister.

Results of the party leadership contest are set to be announced on Friday, the same day as the vote. A first round of voting will see LDP lawmakers casting 367 ballots, followed by another 368 votes to represent the party’s membership base of approximately 1.1 million.

If no-one wins a majority, a run-off will be held between the top two candidates. The ultimate winner will then be announced as prime minister by parliament, which is expected to take place in early October.

Sudan is at breaking point.

After 17 months of a brutal civil war which has devastated the country, the army has launched a major offensive in the capital Khartoum, targeting areas in the hands of its bitter rival, the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces.

The RSF seized most of Khartoum at the start of the conflict, while the army controls the twin city of Omdurman, just across the River Nile.

But there are still places where people can, and do, cross between the two sides.

At one such point, I met a group of women who had walked four hours to a market in army-controlled territory at the edge of Omdurman, where food is cheaper.

The women had come from Dar es Salaam, an area held by the RSF.

Their husbands were no longer leaving the house, they told me, because RSF fighters beat them, took any money they earned, or detained them and demanded payment for their release.

“We endure this hardship because we want to feed our children. We’re hungry, we need food,” said one.

And the women, I asked, were they safer than the men? What about rape?

The chorus of voices died down.

Then one erupted.

“Where is the world? Why don’t you help us?” she said, her words coming out in torrents as tears ran down her cheeks.

“There are so many women here who’ve been violated, but they don’t talk about it. What difference would it make anyway?”

“Some girls, the RSF make them lie in the streets at night,” she went on. “If they come back late from this market, the RSF keeps them for five or six days.”

As she spoke her mother sat with her head in her hand, sobbing. Other women around her also started crying.

“You in your world, if your child went out, would you leave her?” she demanded. “Wouldn’t you go look for her? But tell us, what can we do? Nothing is in our hands, no one cares for us. Where is the world? Why don’t you help us!”

The crossing point was a window into a world of desperation and despair.

Travellers described being subjected to lawlessness, looting and brutality in a conflict that the UN says has forced more than 10.5 million people to flee their homes.

But it is sexual violence that has become a defining characteristic of the protracted conflict, which started as a power struggle between the army and the RSF but has since drawn in local armed groups and fighters from neighbouring countries.

The UN’s High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Turk, has said rape is being used as “a weapon of war”.

A recent UN fact-finding mission documented several cases of rape and rape threats from members of the army, but found that large-scale sexual violence was committed by the RSF and its allied militias, and amounted to violations of international law.

One woman the BBC spoke to blamed the RSF for raping her.

We met her in the market at the crossing, aptly named Souk al-Har – the Heat Market.

Since the war began the market has expanded across the barren land on a desert road out of Omdurman, attracting the poorest of the poor with its low prices.

Miriam, not her real name, had fled her home in Dar es Salaam to take refuge with her brother.

She now works in a tea stall. But early in the war, she said, two armed men entered her house and tried to rape her daughters – one 17 years old and the other 10.

“I told the girls to stay behind me and I said to the RSF: ‘If you want to rape anyone it has to be me,’” she said.

“They hit me and ordered me to take off my clothes. Before I took them off, I told my girls to leave. They took the other children and jumped over the fence. Then one of the men laid on me.”

The RSF has told international investigators that it has taken all the necessary measures to prevent sexual violence and other forms of violence that constitute human rights violations.

But the accounts of sexual assault are numerous and consistent, and the damage has a lasting impact.

Sitting on a low stool in the shade of a row of trees, Fatima, not her real name, told me she had come to Omdurman to deliver twins, and planned to stay.

One of her neighbours, she said, a 15-year-old girl, had also become pregnant, after she and her 17-year-old sister were raped by four RSF soldiers.

People were awakened by screams and came out to see what was going on, she said, but the armed men told them they would be shot if they did not go back into their houses.

The next morning, they found the two girls with signs of abuse on their bodies, and their elder brother locked in one of the rooms.

“During the war, since the RSF arrived, immediately we started hearing of rapes, until we saw it right in front of us in our neighbours,” Fatima said. “Initially we had doubts [about the reports] but we know that it’s the RSF who raped the girls.”

The other women are gathering to begin the trek back home to areas controlled by the RSF – they are too poor, they say, to start a new life like Miriam has done by leaving Dar es Salaam.

For as long as this war goes on, they have no choice but to return to its horrors.

• A simple guide to the Sudan war
• ‘Our future is over’: Forced to flee by a year of war
• I recognised my sister in video of refugees captured in Sudan war

Donald Trump has said he will meet Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in New York on Friday.

The Republican presidential nominee told a news conference that the pair will meet around 09:45 ET (14:45 BST) at his Trump Tower property.

The meeting is set to go ahead despite earlier reports it had been cancelled amid growing anger from senior Republicans after Zelensky earlier visited the key swing US state of Pennsylvania.

On Thursday, Zelensky met US President Joe Biden and Vice-President Kamala Harris at the White House to discuss his “victory plan”, which he hopes will pressure Russia into agreeing a diplomatic end to the war.

“President Zelensky has asked to meet with me, and I will be meeting with him tomorrow morning,” Trump told reporters in New York.

“And it’s a shame what’s happening in Ukraine. So many deaths, so much destruction. It’s a horrible thing.”

Trump said he believed he would be able to “make a deal” between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Zelensky “quite quickly”.

When pushed to provide details of such a deal, he replied: “I don’t want to tell you what that looks like”.

The former US president was speaking after Zelensky had earlier met Biden and Harris. Hours before, Biden had announced a further $7.9bn (£5.9bn) package of military assistance to Ukraine.

Speaking alongside the Ukrainian president after their meeting, Harris said there are “some in my country” that would “force Ukraine to give up large parts of its sovereign territory”.

“These proposals are the same of those of Putin,” she said, calling them “proposals for surrender”.

Asked at the news conference by a reporter whether Ukraine should cede land to Russia to end the war, Trump did not answer directly.

“Let’s get some peace,” he said. “We need peace. We need to stop the death and destruction.”

Friday’s meeting comes amid tension between Zelensky and the Republican party ahead of November’s US presidential election.

Some Republicans were angered by Zelensky’s visit to an arms factory in Biden’s hometown of Scranton, Pennsylvania, with top Democrats this week, including its governor Josh Shapiro.

Zelensky’s visit to the key swing state was labelled by leading Republicans as a partisan campaign event.

In a public letter, speaker of the US House Mike Johnson said the visit was “designed to help Democrats” and claimed it amounted to “election interference”.

Trump and Zelensky have a complicated relationship.

In 2019, Trump was impeached by the US House over accusations that he pressured Ukraine’s leader to dig up damaging information on a political rival. A rough transcript of the call revealed Trump had urged Zelensky to investigate Biden, as well as Biden’s son.

Trump has also grown increasingly critical of continued US funding for Ukraine, and in recent days has sharpened his attacks against Zelensky, calling him the “greatest salesman on Earth”.

Zelensky recently told the New Yorker magazine that he believe Trump “doesn’t really know how to stop the war”.

When asked about Zelensky’s comments on Thursday, Trump replied: “I do believe I disagree with him. He doesn’t know me.”

New York City Mayor Eric Adams is due to be arraigned in a federal courthouse on Friday to face five counts of criminal offences, including bribery, wire fraud and soliciting illegal foreign campaign donations.

An indictment unveiled on Thursday alleges Adams sought and accepted illegal campaign funds and over $100,000 (£75,000) in luxury travel benefits from Turkish businessmen and an official seeking to gain his influence.

Adams, 64, is a former police officer who was elected to lead the most populous US city nearly three years ago on a promise to be tough on crime.

The mayor has denied any wrongdoing and rejected growing calls for his resignation.

Mr Adams’ arraignment, in which he will be formally informed of the charges and asked to enter a plea, will take place at noon local time before Magistrate Judge Katherine Parker.

“I ask New Yorkers to wait to hear our defence before making any judgments,” Adams said at a press conference on Thursday.

“I follow the rules, I follow the federal law, I do not do anything that’s going to participate in illegal campaign activity.”

The news conference was regularly interrupted by New York residents who called Adams a “disgrace” to the city and asked for “justice”.

If convicted, the mayor could face up to 45 years in prison.

• What is NYC Mayor Eric Adams accused of?

New York Governor Kathy Hochul – who has the power to remove the mayor from his post – said on Thursday she was reviewing the charges.

“I’m going to take the time I need to review this indictment, see what’s embedded with this, but my number one responsibility is to make sure the people of New York city and state of New York are served,” Governor Hochul said.

Adams can also be ousted from the mayor’s office by a so-called “inability committee”, which would likely include at least a few city officials who oppose him.

The 57-page indictment lays out an alleged scheme of corruption and bribery that spans a decade, beginning when he was the Brooklyn borough president. The corrupt activity continued after he became mayor, the documents alleged, and included extravagant international travel.

In one alleged text exchange included in the indictment, an Adams staffer and an airline manager discuss where the mayor should stay on a trip to Turkey.

After the airline manager suggests the Four Seasons, the staffer replies “it’s too expensive”.

“Why does he care? He is not going to pay,” the manager replies.

“Super,” the Adams staffer says.

Prosecutors claim that same staffer asked the airline manager to charge Adams an artificial price for his travel, to conceal the favourable treatment.

“His every step is being watched right now,” the staffer says, suggesting the mayor be charged $1,000 for a flight to Turkey. “Let it be somewhat real.”

At a Thursday press conference, US attorney for the Southern District of New York Damian Williams alleged that the mayor developed relationships with foreign nationals to take in illegal funds for his 2021 campaign.

“In 2023 the mayor rekindled these corrupt relationships, seeking more illegal campaign contributions from some of the same foreign sources to support his re-election campaign,” said Mr Williams.

The indictment notes Adams used straw donors – a scheme that a person or entity uses to evade campaign finance limits – to take in illegal donations from foreign entities.

Prosecutors say his campaign also applied and received NYC funds that are supposed to match small dollar contributions from city residents, which amounted to more than $10m.

He is also accused of seeking to conceal the benefits he received, hiding the gifts from annual disclosure forms and telling a co-conspirator he “always” deleted text messages related to illegal trips and gifts, according to court documents.

Several high-profile New York Democrats, including Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, have called on Adams to step down.

Others, including House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries, stopped short, saying Adams was entitled to the presumption of innocence.

White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre denied any connection to political squabbles over immigration and disputed any coordination between the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the White House.

“DOJ is handling this case independently,” she told reporters on Thursday.

Since being sworn in on the first day of 2022, Adams and his colleagues have been put under growing federal scrutiny.

The FBI raided the home of his chief fundraiser, Brianna Suggs, and other members of his campaign last year as part of a probe believed to be focused on whether he received illegal campaign contributions from the Turkish government and other foreign sources.

In more recent weeks, the Adams’ administration has been roiled by the resignation of a number of top aides as new investigations grew to a fever pitch. The police commissioner, the health commissioner, and the mayor’s chief counsel have all left office.

New York City Schools Chancellor David Banks also announced his plans to resign weeks after federal investigators seized his phones during a search of the home that he shares with his partner, Deputy Mayor Sheena Wright, on 4 September.

Amid the upheaval, Adams has received some of the lowest approval ratings of any mayor in city history and a crowded field of Democratic primary challengers – potentially including disgraced former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo – is gearing up to challenge his bid for re-election.

If Adams resigns or is removed before his term ends next year, Jumaane Williams – the city’s left-leaning public advocate – will replace him.

A Japanese warship has sailed through the Taiwan Strait between Taiwan and China for the first time, prompting Beijing to lodge complaints with Tokyo.

The JS Sazanami, a naval destroyer, travelled south through the strait on Wednesday, accompanied by ships from Australia and New Zealand.

It was on its way to military exercises in the South China Sea, Japanese media reported government ministers saying.

The passage is a significant move by Japan, which is thought to have avoided sailing its ships through the strait in order not to upset China, which claims self-governed Taiwan and the strait.

Japan’s government has declined to comment on the ship, citing military operation discretion.

But China on Thursday confirmed its military had responded to “the activities of a Japanese Self-Defence Force ship entering the Taiwan Strait”.

“China is highly vigilant about the political intentions of Japan’s actions and has lodged stern representations with Japan,” foreign ministry spokesman Lin Jian said.

Chinese state newspaper Global Times, citing an unnamed source, said the Chinese military “conducted tracking and monitoring throughout [the vessels’] entire course and had the situation under control”.

There has been an increase in patrols by the US and its allies to assert their freedom of navigation in the 180km (112-mile) Taiwan Strait.

Both the US and Taiwan say it is a key shipping and trade route through which about half of the global container fleet passes, and is part of international waters and is open to all naval vessels.

Beijing, which claims sovereignty and jurisdiction over the strait, disagrees.

For decades the US Pacific fleet was the only foreign navy that regularly transited the strait. But recently, it was joined by Canada and Australia, Britain and France. Two weeks ago Germany sailed two navy ships through the strait for the first time in decades.

China’s military accused Germany of increasing security risks by sailing though the strait on 13 September, but Berlin said it acted in accordance with international standards. It was the first time in 22 years for a German naval vessel to traverse the strait.

These transits are highly political and designed to show China that America and its allies do not accept Beijing’s claims.

For Japan, it is also another big step away from its long-held policy of not directly challenging China.

On Thursday, Japan’s chief cabinet secretary did not confirm details of the naval operation, but he said Japan felt a strong sense of crisis after repeated airspace violations by the Chinese military, which he said had occurred one after another over a short period of time.

Taiwan has not commented on the passage, but its defence ministry said on Wednesday that it saw a surge in the number of Chinese military planes operating around the island.

Bec Strating, an international relations professor at La Trobe University in Australia, said Japan’s reported transit is “part of a broader pattern of greater naval presence by countries in and beyond Asia that are concerned about China’s maritime assertions”.

“Japan in particular has been dealing with China’s ‘grey zone’ tactics in the East China Sea,” she told AFP news agency.

Grey zone warfare tactics are aimed at weakening an adversary over a prolonged period of time, analysts say.

Last week, Beijing sent an aircraft carrier between two Japanese islands near Taiwan for the first time. In August, a Chinese spy plane flew inside Japan’s airspace, prompting Tokyo to condemn the incursion as “utterly unacceptable” and a “serious violation of sovereignty”.

The leaders of the Quad group of nations – Japan, Australia, India and the US – said last week that they would expand cooperation on maritime security to counter China’s increasing assertiveness in the South China Sea.

Coldplay are to play an unprecedented 10 nights at London’s Wembley Stadium next summer, breaking a record held by Taylor Swift and Take That.

The band originally announced a six-night run at the stadium next August, but added four extra shows in September due to “phenomenal demand” during a fan-only presale on Thursday morning.

The general ticket sale begins at 9am on Friday, 27 September, with prices starting at £20 (plus fees).

Unlike Oasis, the band have declined to use Ticketmaster’s dynamic pricing model – where prices are adjusted according to demand. A message on the company’s website stated, “all ticket prices for these concerts are fixed at the advertised rate”.

The 2025 tour dates are in support of the band’s 10th album Moon Music, which is due for release on 4 October.

As well as Wembley, the band will play two nights at Hull’s Craven Park Stadium.

Fifty per cent of the tickets for those shows will go to local fans, who live in the HU, YO, DN or LN postcodes.

The 12 concerts will be the band’s only European dates of 2025. Ten per cent of the proceeds will be donated to the Music Venue Trust, which supports small, grassroots concert halls around the UK.

Earlier this year, the band headlined the Glastonbury festival, where they were joined on stage by Back to the Future star Michael J Fox, and a host of other musicians including rapper Little Simz, Nigerian musician Femi Kuti and Palestinian-Chilean singer Elyanna.

In a series of five-star reviews, The Independent called the show “the spectacle of a lifetime” and The Guardian said it would be “churlish” not to be swept up by a set full of “cartoonish good fun“.

Film star Tom Cruise, who watched the set from a VIP area at the side of the Pyramid Stage simply branded the concert “awesome“.

• Why do concert tickets suddenly cost as much as a games console?

During the set, the band also previewed songs from their upcoming album, which frontman Chris Martin has hinted could be their last.

“Our last proper record will come out in 2025 and after that I think we will only tour,” he told BBC Radio 2’s Jo Whiley in 2021.

“Maybe we’ll do some collaborative things but the Coldplay catalogue, as it were, finishes then.”

However, he subsequently backtracked those comments, telling the NME the band had another two records left in them.

“We’re going to make 12 albums. Because it’s a lot to pour everything into making them,” he explained. “I love it and it’s amazing, but it’s very intense too.”

Pre-sale tickets for Coldplay’s 2025 tour went on sale on Thursday morning for fans who had placed advance orders for Moon Music.

According to social media messages, the first tranche of dates sold out in about 20 minutes.

One fan reported a message on the Ticketmaster website flashing up at 09:22, stating: “UPDATE: There are currently no available tickets in this pre-sale.”

Recognising the demand, Coldplay added four extra dates at Wembley, with pre-sales starting at 2:30pm BST.

The 10-date residency means Coldplay will become the act to have played the most nights at the world-famous stadium in a single year.

Taylor Swift and Take That were previously tied for the record, playing eight nights apiece.

Coldplay previously played six nights at Wembley during the 2022 leg of their world tour – which means that, in total, their tour will have doubled the previous record.

The band have made efforts to reduce the environmental impact of their concerts – and announced earlier this year that they had achieved a 59% reduction in carbon dioxide emissions compared with their previous world tour.

They also made efforts to combat rising ticket prices by offering £20 “Infinity tickets” for every show.

They are sold in pairs and can be placed anywhere in the venue – including the very best seats.

For the Wembley dates, a pair of tickets will cost around £52, once fees – including the stadium’s £2.75 sustainability fee – are added.

Many hardline conservatives in Iran are growing uneasy about its lack of action as Israel targets the Lebanese armed group Hezbollah, their country’s closest and most long-standing ally.

When President Masoud Pezeshkian addressed the UN General Assembly on Tuesday, he criticised Israel’s war in Gaza and warned that its attacks on Lebanon could not go unanswered.

But Mr Pezeshkian, who was elected in July, adopted a more conciliatory tone than his hard-line predecessors, avoiding rhetoric about annihilating the Islamic Republic’s arch-enemy.

“We seek peace for all and have no intention of conflict with any country,” he stated.

He also expressed his government’s readiness to resume nuclear talks with Western powers, saying: “We are ready to engage with participants of the 2015 nuclear deal.”

Other senior Iranian officials and commanders of the Islamic Revolution Guard Corps (IRGC) have also appeared to be unusually restrained when expressing their intentions to take revenge on Israel for its actions against their country and its key allies Hamas and Hezbollah.

Iran has armed, funded and trained both armed groups, but Tehran’s leaders rely on Hezbollah to be a major deterrent preventing direct attacks on their country by Israel.

Iranian support has been critical to Hezbollah’s transformation into Lebanon’s most powerful armed force and political actor since the IRGC helped found the group in the 1980s.

It is the main supplier of the weapons that Hezbollah can deploy against Israel, particularly advanced missiles and drones, and the US has previously alleged that it also provides as much as $700m in funds annually.

Last week, Mojtaba Amani, Iran’s ambassador to Lebanon, was severely injured when his pager exploded last week at the embassy in Beirut. Thousands more pagers and walkie-talkies used by Hezbollah members also blew up in two attacks that killed a total of 39 people.

Iran blamed Israel, but it made no immediate public threats of retaliation.

In contrast, when Israel struck the Iranian consulate in Damascus in April, killing eight high-ranking IRGC Quds Force commanders, Iran swiftly responded by launching hundreds of drones and missiles at Israel.

Iran also vowed to retaliate after blaming Israel for the assassination of Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran in late July, although it has not announced that it has taken any action yet.

A former IRGC commander told the BBC that repeatedly threatening Israel without following through was further damaging the force’s credibility among its supporters inside Iran and its proxies abroad.

On Monday, President Pezeshkian told members of the US media in New York that Israel was seeking to draw Iran into a war.

“Iran is ready to defuse tensions with Israel and lay down arms if Israel does the same,” he insisted.

Some hardline conservatives close to Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, criticised the president for talking about defusing tensions with Israel, asserting that he should recognize his position and avoid giving live interviews.

Mr Pezeshkian was due to hold a press conference in New York on Wednesday, but it was cancelled. It was unclear if he was forced to cancel because of his comments.

In Iran, power lies in the hands of Ayatollah Khamenei and the IRGC. They are the ones making the key strategic decisions, not the president.

It is notable that Ayatollah Khamenei also did not mention any plans for retaliation or issue threats toward Israel, which is quite unusual for him, when he addressed veterans on Wednesday.

Barak Ravid, an Israeli journalist at the US news site Axios, reported on Tuesday that two Israeli officials and Western diplomats had indicated that Hezbollah was urging Iran to come to its aid by attacking Israel. The Israeli officials claimed that Iran had told Hezbollah that “the timing isn’t right”, according to Ravid.

Last week, the host of the Iranian internet TV program Maydan, which is known to have ties to the IRGC, cited Iranian intelligence sources as claiming that Israel had also “carried out a special operation last month, killing IRGC members and stealing documents”.

He asserted that the Iranian press had been forbidden from reporting on the incident, which allegedly happened inside in Iran, and that the authorities were attempting to control the narrative.

In response, Tasnim News Agency, which also linked to the IRGC, denied the allegations.

The Islamic Republic finds itself in a precarious situation.

It is concerned that attacking Israel could provoke a US military response, dragging the country into a broader conflict.

With a crippled economy due to US sanctions and ongoing domestic unrest, a potential US strike against the IRGC could further weaken its the regime’s security apparatus, possibly emboldening the Iranian opponents to rise up once more.

However, if Iran refrains from direct intervening in Hezbollah’s conflict with Israel, it risks sending a signal to other allied militias in the region that, in times of crisis, the Islamic Republic may prioritize its own survival and interests over theirs.

This could weaken Iran’s influence and alliances across the region.

Britons have told the BBC they are struggling to get out of Lebanon, as Sir Keir Starmer repeats his call for UK nationals to leave.

The UK has urged British nationals to leave immediately because of the escalation in fighting between Israel and Hezbollah.

Speaking to BBC News, the prime minister said Britons still in the country should: “Leave now. It’s very important.”

The UK and allied nations have called for an immediate 21-day ceasefire in Lebanon “to provide space for diplomacy towards the conclusion of a diplomatic settlement”.

Speaking to the BBC’s political editor Chris Mason at the UN in New York, Sir Keir said the situation in Lebanon was escalating and he urged Britons to “leave now” without waiting for an evacuation.

The prime minister said he would not go into detail about evacuation plans, but contingency measures were in place.

The government has sent about 700 additional military personnel to Cyprus in case an emergency evacuation is required.

Britons in Lebanon have spoken of their difficulty in leaving the country.

BBC News understands there are between 4,000 and 6,000 UK nationals including dependents in Lebanon.

When the BBC visited Beirut–Rafic Hariri International Airport, the only civilian airport in the country, most flights were cancelled after international airlines suspended flights to and from the city.

Middle East Airlines, as well Iraqi Airways and Iran Air, are the only companies still operating at the moment.

Chloe Lewin, 24, from London, told BBC News she was due to get a flight out of Lebanon on Friday.

“Keir Starmer’s telling everyone to get out but we can’t,” the freelance journalist, who has lived in Beirut since January 2023, said.

“You can’t get out this week because they’re [flights] all full and every time you get to the last page of the booking, it just crashes and it says you can’t book a flight.

She added: “My friends were meant to leave this morning on Egyptair – that got cancelled, so they can’t get out. “

Isabella Baker said she was too scared to go to the airport in Beirut and had decided to head to Tripoli in the north of the country to stay with a friend and then continue by boat to Turkey.

The student, who had been studying for a masters degree in human rights at a French university in Beirut, described hearing drones and sonic booms over the city following the pagers attack.

Emma Bartholomew, who splits her time between London and Beirut, is booked on a flight home to London next week.

She described a gridlock on the roads from ambulances on the day of the pager explosions and Israeli jets flying low over her hotel, where hundreds of displaced people have arrived from the city’s southern suburbs.

“There’s an intense sense of anticipation and anxiety amongst Lebanese people,” she said.

A woman stuck in a town outside Beirut with a British spousal visa and Biometric Residence Permit said she hadn’t heard from the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) since August to register her to leave in case of emergency.

Rita, who asked we only use her first name, told BBC Radio 4’s the World Tonight that she was booked on a commercial flight departing next week, but was eligible to leave on a British evacuation flight.

Her British husband and two sons are in London and have encouraged her to flee over land.

The FCDO said it had asked British nationals to let the UK government know they were in Lebanon through its Register Your Presence service.

Other Britons have decided to stay in Lebanon for the time being.

Anne Bouji, who has lived in the country for the last seven years, said she was going to stay with her partially paralysed Lebanese husband who does not have a British passport or visa.

She told BBC Radio 4’s World at One programme “it was relatively safe” on the eastern side of Beirut where she lives, but in other parts of the city people were “very afraid and you can taste the fear in the air”.

Hayat Fakhoury, a British-Lebanese dual national, said she would leave the country only “if it becomes completely unsafe everywhere”.

Speaking to The World Tonight on BBC Radio 4, she said the possibility of an Israeli ground invasion in Lebanon was “definitely something” she feared.

Earlier, Sir Keir, addressing the UN Security Council, said the region was “on the brink” as he called for an immediate ceasefire.

The FCDO said the situation in Lebanon was deeply concerning and the risk of escalation remained high.

“That’s why we are continuing to advise people to leave now while commercial routes remain available,” a statement said.

“The government is planning for a range of scenarios and is prepared to provide additional support to British nationals if required.”

It has also said it was sending £5m to UNICEF to support humanitarian efforts.

Officials say the UK already has a significant diplomatic and military presence close to Lebanon, including RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus and two Royal Navy ships – RFA Mounts Bay and HMS Duncan – which have been in the eastern Mediterranean over the summer.

The Royal Air Force also has planes and helicopters on standby.

Tensions have been growing across the Middle East since Hamas gunmen attacked Israel on 7 October last year, killing about 1,200 people and taking 251 others as hostages.

Previously sporadic fighting between Israel and armed group Hezbollah escalated on 8 October – the day after Hamas’s unprecedented attack. Hezbollah fired at Israeli positions, in solidarity with Hamas.

Hezbollah, proscribed as a terrorist organisation in the UK and other countries, has launched more than 8,000 rockets at northern Israel and the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. It has also fired anti-tank missiles at armoured vehicles and attacked military targets with explosive drones.

Last week Hezbollah’s communication devices started exploding across Lebanon.

Israel then launched a series of air strikes on Monday that have so far killed 569 people according to the Lebanese government.

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Israel’s attacks on Hezbollah targets have had terrifying effects on local civilians, who have been forced to flee place after place in search of safety.

Cross-border attacks by Israel and Hezbollah have left tens of thousands of people displaced on both sides.

In Lebanon, recent Israeli air strikes have killed 600 people and left thousands of injured and another 90,000 newly displaced.

Some of those abandoning their houses told the BBC of their experiences, leaving their possessions behind and having to rely on strangers to survive.

Among them is Valentine Nesser, a journalist who fled southern Lebanon with her mother and brother on Monday, when an intense bombardment made it Lebanon’s deadliest day in decades.

“We went to Mount Lebanon, about 30 minutes from Beirut, which is currently considered a safe zone,” she said.

The journey took them 15 hours because of severe traffic jams as thousands tried to get away.

“We came here without anything, because the bombs were everywhere and we want to be safe as soon as possible,” she added.

“We are staying in a hotel that’s been converted into a displaced centre and there are more than 300 people here now, with the number increasing.

“We have, like, 50 people in the same room. Many people still haven’t found a place to stay and some have been forced to sleep in their cars.”

She said local authorities were providing food and water, adding that although she had lived through periods of conflict before, this time was different.

“This time is more tension, more sadness, more anger.”

Those in eastern Lebanon, which has seen fewer air strikes than the south, are hoping to avoid the worst of the conflict, with some volunteers providing support.

Amani Deni lives in Beirut and came back to her mother’s house in the Bekaa Valley a few days ago.

She says: “I have 13 relatives staying with me and my mum, they were displaced from the Baalbek area. They are all staying together in our house, which has only one bedroom and one living room.

“I had to sit with the kids and say, ‘We do have air strikes in this area, the Bekaa Valley too, but it’s safer than Baalbek where you come from.’”

“I am also volunteering in the schools which are housing – helping get them food. The situation is really hard.

“Several schools in my town have refugees in them – many, many people from all over Lebanon – but mainly coming from the south.

“Local people, volunteers, are taking food from our houses and trying to support these people. We have been trying to talk to children, to do psychological first aid. They are panicking and we try to play with them to calm them down.

“They were crying as they were hungry. They’d had only biscuits to eat all day.”

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Another resident of Bekaa, Omar Hayek, works with several NGOs including Medecins Sans Frontieres.

He told the BBC there was no sense of safety in the region and people were unsure of what was going to happen next.

“In the Bekaa area, we don’t have many exits,” he said. “If you want to flee, you can flee to Syria, and the question is, is Syria a safe place for us? These questions come up in people’s minds, and you feel like you’re lost.”

Wading through the waist-high water that used to be a street, Briana Gagnier tells BBC News that in her 12 years of living on Holmes Beach she’s never seen such strong storm surge.

“It looks like whitewater rapids outside,” the 29-year-old said over the phone.

“It’s so strong and you can see everything being carried away – chairs, cushions, coolers, garbage.”

Ms Gagnier was getting a preview of Hurricane Helene, which was barrelling towards Florida on Thursday night as a category four storm with wind speeds of up to 130mph (215 km/h) and deemed “extremely dangerous” by the National Hurricane Center.

Authorities warn it could bring a “catastrophic” and “unsurvivable” storm surge, where inundations could reach as high as 20 ft (6m).

She watched the storm quickly strengthen from a tropical storm into a category four hurricane but said she felt she needed to stay behind and try to protect her one-story home, which sits on a barrier island off Florida’s Gulf Coast.

“The water is already in our garage,” she said. “We have every sandbag possible at every door – anything to help stop it from coming inside.”

Ms Gagnier said while walking through the area, she saw basically every home along the coast with water flowing inside.

“You see images like this on the news but I’ve never seen it in my backyard.”

“It’s eerie.”

Anna Maria Island resident ML Ferguson told BBC News that homes and businesses were seeing water gushing into buildings as the hurricane approached.

The streets now look like rivers, she said.

Water quickly overwhelmed the beachside bar where she works – the Bridge Tender Inn Dockside & Tiki Bar – with waves splashing the sign and chunks of seaweed clumped near tables.

“We are resilient,” she said. “We keep an attitude of ‘and this too shall pass.'”

By the time she returned to her home, water was starting to creep up her porch.

“Oh my gosh, it’s literally up to the second step,” she told BBC in phone interview. “My house is about the flood.”

Ms Ferguson quickly moved some tables so she could put things on top of them to prevent the floodwaters from ruining belongings.

But while she spoke to BBC News a person drove down her street, causing a wake of water that splashed inside.

“The water is already coming in,” she exclaimed before rushing off the phone to try to stop it.

Cainnon Gregg, an oyster farmer in Wakulla County on Florida’s Big Bend, spent the last few days trying to protect his farm by sinking it onto the ocean bed.

His farm was destroyed once before, during Hurricane Michael, a category five hurricane that hit the Florida panhandle in 2018, and Mr Gregg said he is determined to learn from that lesson.

“Hopefully, and nothing is for certain, the farm is sitting nice and safe on the bottom,” he said. “But anything could happen.”

To weather the storm, Mr Gregg plans to hunker down in his hometown of Tallahassee with a friend who has a shelter.

The city is also in the hurricane’s projected path, and it has not experienced a storm of this magnitude in recent memory.

“Right now it’s pretty much a ghost town. Everything’s closed. Everything’s boarded up.” he said.

Denise O’Connor Badalamenti has seen countless hurricanes in her decades living in Florida, but Helene has her more on edge than ever before.

“I think this is going to be the one,” the 62-year-old told BBC News from her Bradenton home, which sits just a few streets from the water, as the storm moved closer to making landfall.

“I feel like we’re always in the cone of possibly being targeted but then get sparred at the last minute but I don’t think we’re going to lucky again.”

Her mother’s home has flooded six times over the years and this morning water was already creeping up their driveway. Her family has taped up all the doors shut, hoping to stop any flooding.

“This one is just massive. It’s scary,” Ms O’Connor Badalamenti said.

Following the guidance of emergency officials, she said has stockpiled supplies and has an assortment of food ready if they lose electricity.

“We’re ready for the worst.”

Michael Bobbit, a clam farmer on the island of Cedar Key on Florida’s Big Bend, said that some people in his community have decided to stay behind despite the warnings.

“The last several hours have really just been a frantic effort to beg people to leave,” Mr Bobbit, 48, told the BBC on Thursday, before the storm made landfall.

“Here in Florida, we sort of believe that we’ll just ride it out, it’s no big deal. But this is not one of those storms.”

He added that locals have been trying, “to sandbag as many buildings as we can”, as well as board up windows and get the island’s clam farms secured.

“The mood is sombre,” Mr Bobbit said.

“A lot of people when they’re leaving the island are hugging each other and crying, saying ‘I hope we have a home to go back to.'”

Mickey Moore, 54, has lived in his home in Tallahassee for about 15 years and the worst he’s seen coming from a hurricane was his power going out.

This one, he said, has him concerned.

His home is about 20 miles (32km) from the Gulf of Mexico – and right in the storm’s path.

“A category four – it’s just so big,” he said, taking a break from a game of Monopoly with his two sons and his wife.

“We’ve been fortunate in past storms,” he adds. “We don’t take it for granted.”

India’s most popular sweet – the laddu – is caught in an unsavoury row.

The controversy erupted last week when Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu said that lab reports had shown that laddus offered to the deity and then distributed to devotees every day at the famous Tirupati temple in the state were contaminated with animal and vegetable fat.

He said the ghee (clarified butter) used in the sweets was adulterated with “beef tallow, fish oil and other impurities”. Temple offerings in India are usually vegetarian.

On the face of it, it appeared like a matter of food adulteration – something that authorities in India routinely grapple with.

But since Naidu’s announcement, the issue has dominated headlines, caused a major political row and prompted other temples to test their sweets for “purity”.

The Tirupati temple in Andhra Pradesh is one of Hinduism’s most sacred shrines. Dedicated to Hindu god Sri Venkateswara – popularly known as Balaji – the temple owns assets worth tens of billions of dollars and attracts nearly 24 million devotees from India and abroad every year.

The famous Tirupati laddus – made with gram flour, sugar, cashews, raisins and cardamom and cooked in “pure cow ghee” – are prized by devotees who consider them god’s blessing and carry them back home to share with family and friends. Reports say more than 350,000 laddus are prepared daily in the temple’s kitchen.

So Naidu’s revelations have been met with dismay, with many religious leaders calling on authorities to protect the sanctity of temples.

“Care should be taken that such great sins are not repeated in a temple that has tens of millions of devotees,” Ramana Deekshitulu, a priest, told news agency ANI.

Swami Avimukteshwaranand Saraswati, another prominent priest, called it “an attack on the faith and belief of tens of millions of Hindus”.

“This is an organised crime and a huge betrayal of Hindus. It should be investigated and strict action should be taken against the guilty,” he told a news channel.

The issue has also turned into a political slugfest after Naidu blamed his rival and former chief minister YS Jagan Mohan Reddy for the “desecration”.

Naidu, who was sworn in as the state’s chief minister in June, alleged that the impure laddus were distributed to devotees during Reddy’s term. The temple board is run by the state government, which appoints its chief.

Naidu said he had changed the ghee supplier and formed a special investigation team led by a senior police officer to address the issue.

An angry Reddy has rejected the allegations and accused Naidu of playing politics. In a strongly-worded letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, he asked him to “severely reprimand” Naidu, who’s a key ally in Modi’s federal government.

“Naidu is a pathological and habitual liar” who was tarnishing the image of the temple trust with false campaigns, he wrote.

Reddy said even though the temple did not have a lab to check the ghee’s purity, its officials were experienced in identifying impurities by appearance and smell and that there had been instances – both during his government and also earlier when Naidu’s party had been in power – when ghee tankers were sent back to suppliers.

Reddy’s party has also invited people to take part in religious rituals in temples across the state to “atone for the sin” that, they say, Naidu has committed by making allegations about the laddus.

Meanwhile, the Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams (TTD) – the board that manages the nearly 2,000-year-old temple – has been trying to do damage control.

A board spokesperson told reporters that they were sourcing ghee from five companies via tenders. After complaints from pilgrims and laddu makers, they sent samples for lab tests which revealed that four tankers from AR Dairy in Tamil Nadu were of substandard quality.

In response, AR Dairy, which has been producing ghee since 1998 and claims to conduct 102 quality checks on its milk, dismissed the allegations as “absurd” and stated that they are “severely damaging to our business.”

It said a quality control officer at the firm had called the allegations that fish oil was added “nonsensical”, as fish oil costs more than ghee, and that “any form of adulteration would be immediately noticeable by its odour”.

The temple, meanwhile, said it had done its own penance. To assure devotees that its laddus were now rid of defects and fit for gods and humans, the priests held a four-hour-long “purification ritual” on Monday.

Photographs released by the temple board showed priests sprinkling holy water in the kitchen, on sacks of ingredients and on huge trays of laddus.

The controversy, however, refuses to die down and has dominated headlines in the state. Popular actor and the state’s Deputy Chief Minister Pawan Kalyan called the adulteration “an attack on Hindu religion”. Kalyan is also performing what he called 11 days of atonement rituals to rectify the “great injustice”.

Members of a Hindu nationalist group have demonstrated outside Reddy’s home, chanting slogans. They left after painting the gate and walls saffron – a colour that is worn by many Hindu priests and is also the colour of flags of BJP and other Hindu parties.

Authorities in other states have also been rushing to test sweets offered at other Hindu temples, including the famous Krishna temple in Mathura in Uttar Pradesh and the Jagannath temple in Odisha state.

The issue has also found resonance on social media. Laddu, along with hashtags such as #TirupatiLaddu, #TirupatiLadduControversy and #TirupatiLadduRow, has trended for days on X (formerly Twitter), with many expressing their outrage at what they called deliberate attempts to hurt Hindu faith.

Some of this outrage, however, appeared to be manufactured after it was pointed out that many handles pledging support to Hindu nationalist groups had shared images of Reddy wearing a Muslim skullcap and derided him as “anti-Hindu”.

One tweet, shared by many handles two days after Naidu’s allegation, was especially flagged for using identical words by people who appeared unrelated. It said: “For the past 2-3 years, Amma [mother] used to fall sick if she tasted Tirupati laddus and used to tell us not to eat too much of it. We put it on her general paranoia. Now I feel she sensed something was terribly wrong.”

The tragic death of a 26-year-old Indian employee at a leading accounting firm has ignited a serious debate about workplace culture and employee welfare in corporate environments.

Anna Sebastian Perayil, a chartered accountant at Ernst & Young (EY), died in July, four months after joining the firm. Her parents have alleged that the “overwhelming work pressure” at her new job took a toll on her health and led to her death.

EY has refuted the allegation, saying that Perayil was allotted work like any other employee and that it didn’t believe that work pressure could have claimed her life.

Her death has resonated deeply, sparking a discussion on the “hustle culture” promoted by many corporates and start-ups – a work ethic that prioritises productivity, often at the expense of employee well-being.

Some argue that this culture drives innovation and growth, with many choosing extra hours out of passion or ambition. Others say that employees are often pressured by management, leading to burnout and a diminished quality of life.

Perayil’s death came under the spotlight after a letter written by her mother Anita Augustine to EY went viral on social media last week. In the letter, she detailed the alleged pressures her daughter had experienced at work, including working late into the night and on weekends, and appealed to EY to “reflect on its work culture” and take steps to prioritise its employees’ health.

“Anna’s experience sheds light on a work culture that seems to glorify overwork while neglecting the very human beings behind the roles,” she wrote. “The relentless demands and the pressure to meet unrealistic expectations are not sustainable, and they cost us the life of a young woman with so much potential.”

Many people condemned EY for its “toxic work culture”, sharing their experiences on Twitter and LinkedIn. One user alleged that he had been made to work for 20 hours a day at a top consultancy firm without being paid overtime.

“Work culture in India is horrid. Pay is dismal, exploitation is max [maximum]. There are zero repercussions and no remorse on the part of employers who routinely harass workers,” another user wrote, adding that managers are often praised for overworking and underpaying their employees.

A former EY employee criticised the work culture at the firm and alleged that employees were often “mocked” for leaving on time and “shamed” for enjoying weekends.

“Interns [are] given crazy workload, unrealistic timelines and [are] humiliated during reviews as it builds character for their future,” he wrote.

EY’s India chief, Rajiv Memani, has since said that the firm attaches the “highest importance” to the wellbeing of its employees. “I would like to affirm that the wellbeing of our people is my top-most priority and I will personally champion this objective,” he wrote in a post on LinkedIn.

Perayil’s death isn’t the first incident that has brought India’s work culture under scrutiny. In October last year, Infosys co-founder Narayana Murthy faced criticism for suggesting that young Indians should work 70-hour weeks to boost the country’s economic growth.

His views were backed by Ola’s India chief Bhavesh Aggarwal, who said that he didn’t believe in the concept of work-life balance because “if you are enjoying your work, you will find happiness in life also and work also, and both of them will be in harmony”.

In 2022, Shantanu Deshpande, founder of the Bombay Shaving Company, asked youngsters to stop “cribbing” about working hours and suggested that new recruits at any job should be prepared to work 18 hours a day for the first four to five years of their career.

But mental health experts and labour rights activists say that such demands are unfair and put employees under immense stress. In her letter, Perayil’s mother alleged that her daughter had experienced “anxiety and sleeplessness” soon after joining EY.

India is known to have one of the most overworked workforces globally. A recent report by the International Labour Organisation said half of India’s workforce worked for over 49 hours each week, making India the second country after Bhutan to have the longest working hours.

Labour economist Shyam Sunder said India’s work culture had shifted post-1990s with the rise of the service sector, leading firms to bypass labour laws to meet round-the-clock demands.

He added that the culture has now been “institutionalised” by firms but it has also been accepted by employees. “Even in business schools, students are tacitly told that working long hours to earn a high salary is normal and even desirable,” he said.

According to him, for there to be any real change in corporate culture, a “mindset shift” is necessary – one where both firms and employees approach work with a more mature outlook, viewing it as important, but not the only part and purpose of life.

“Till then, all the other steps by corporates, like offering period leave or partnering with mental health firms will remain supplementary at best and symbolic at worst,” he said.

Chandrasekhar Sripada, a professor at the Indian School of Business, agrees with this view. He said that toxic work culture was a “complex, multi-stake holder problem” and that everyone, from industry leaders to managers to employees and even society, would have to change the way they viewed productivity in order for there to be any real change.

“We’re still confusing hard work with productive work,” Mr Sripada said. “The point of technology is to reduce human work so why are working hours getting longer?”

“We need to start focussing on sustainable growth, not just from an environmental standpoint, but also from a labour rights perspective,” he added.

“Scandinavian countries have already created much gentler working environments, so there are models for India to follow. All it needs is willpower.”

US prosecutors have charged New York City Eric Adams with bribery and fraud charges as part of a “long-running” scheme that has upended politics in America’s largest city.

As part of what officials have described as an “abuse of power”, Adams is alleged to have accepted illegal gifts worth over $100,000 (£75,000) from Turkish citizens and at least one government official.

In exchange, the Turkish officials are believed to have sought favours from the mayor, including help skirting safety regulations to open a consulate in New York, according to prosecutors.

Adams, a former police captain, has denied any wrongdoing and vowed to fight the allegations in court.

Let’s take a look at what we know.

Eric Adams is facing five separate criminal counts, including “conspiracy to commit wire fraud, federal program bribery, and to receive campaign contributions by foreign nationals”, wire fraud, two counts of solicitation of a contribution by a foreign national and bribery”.

According to the 57-page indictment, Adams allegedly accepted more than $100,000 in luxury travel – including hotel stays, lavish meals and airline upgrades – from Turkish nationals beginning in 2016, when he still served as president of the New York borough of Brooklyn.

In one instance, for example, Adams is alleged to have received a “heavily discounted” stay at the “Bentley Room” of Istanbul’s St Regis hotel, paying $600 for a two-day visit that was valued at approximately $7,000.

“This was a multi-year scheme to buy favour with a single New York City politician on the rise,” US Attorney Damian Williams said at a news conference.

Additionally, Adams is alleged to have sought out campaign contributions from Turkish sources for his 2021 mayoral election campaign.

None of this was publicly declared, and prosecutors claim Adams used “straw donors” to hide the sources of the money, and at times created “fake paper trails” that suggested he paid, or intended to pay, for the gifts.

One of the charges in the indictment, wire fraud, stems from allegations that Adams devised a scheme to obtain money “by making false and fraudulent pretences” in his dealings.

Specifically, prosecutors claim that the money Adams obtained from Turkey allowed him to qualify for a public financing programme that provides eligible political candidates with funds to match donations from New York City residents.

As part of the initiative, known as the Matching Funds Program, candidates are prohibited from accepting contributions from people who are not US citizens or lawful residents, as well as corporations and foreign entities and organisations.

According to the justice department, Adams fraudulently obtained as much as $2,000 in public funds for each illegal contribution.

In exchange for the campaign contributions and lavish travel, Adams is alleged to have responded to a variety of concerns from Turkish nationals and at least one government official.

In 2016, for example, the indictment claims that Adams was told that he would cut ties with a Turkish community centre in Brooklyn after a Turkish official told him it was affiliated with a group “hostile” to Turkey’s government.

That Turkish official also reportedly told him that he could no longer associate with the centre if he wished to keep receiving “support” from Turkey’s government.

In another instance in 2021, prosecutors allege that Adams – at the behest of a Turkish diplomat – also pressured an official from New York’s fire department to help make sure the new Turkish consular building in the city was ready for a visit from Turkey’s president – without a fire inspection.

The fire department official responsible for the assessment of the skyscraper consulate building was told he would lose his job if he failed to approve the building, prosecutors allege.

In that instance, the indictment claims that a Turkish official told Adams it was “his turn to repay” him.

“After Adams intervened, the skyscraper opened as requested by the Turkish official,” the indictment says.

Adams has denied these claims as well.

“I know I don’t take money from foreign donors,” he said on Thursday.

In theory, Adams could face a lengthy prison sentence for the charges.

The wire fraud count alone carries a maximum sentence of 20 years, while both counts of soliciting campaign contributions from foreign nationals each carry a maximum sentence of five years.

The bribery charge carries a maximum charge of 10 years in prison.

The remaining charge, “conspiracy to commit wire fraud, federal program bribery, and to receive campaign contributions by foreign nationals” carries with it a maximum sentence of five years.

In the shorter-term, the charges are likely to imperil Adams’ political future ahead of his 2025 re-election bid.

Dozens of lawmakers, including members of New York’s city council and Democratic US Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortes, have called on him to step down.

Adams has vowed to fight the charges and called for an “immediate” trial, resisting calls to resign.

“I will continue to do my job as mayor,” he said at a news conference.

A selection of the week’s best photos from across the African continent:

• Why Samia’s hesitant reforms are fuelling Tanzanian political anger
• Journalist’s apology not enough to satisfy Ghanaian king
• The journey that helped save Nigeria’s art for the nation

“I was always drawn to Elizabeth Taylor,” says Kim Kardashian.

The media personality was the last person to have a published interview with Taylor before she died in 2011. The interview – for Harper’s Bazaar magazine – featured a photoshoot inspired by the star’s famous role in the 1963 movie Cleopatra.

“We were actually supposed to meet up for tea at her house, and then she fell ill,” Kardashian says.

Instead, the pair arranged to speak over the phone. What struck her, she remembers, was Taylor’s approach to life.

“We were talking about fighting for people,” Kardashian says. “She understood her power and her beauty.”

Taylor’s life – from her Oscar wins to her seven husbands – is explored in new BBC documentary series Elizabeth Taylor: Rebel Superstar.

Kardashian – who has more than 360 million followers on Instagram after first rising to fame on reality TV series Keeping Up With the Kardashians – serves as an executive producer on the series and explains how the movie star inspired her.

“There’s so many young people I want to remind or even teach them about who she is,” she says.

Kardashian wants to “ensure” Taylor’s legacy continues.

Taylor, born in 1932, was in the public eye for most of her life. She moved from England to Beverly Hills, Los Angeles, when she was seven – and had her first hit film with National Velvet at the age of 12.

She went on to be the first actress to sign a million dollar contract for a single film, for Cleopatra, and her romantic relationship with co-star Richard Burton sparked a paparazzi frenzy.

“She was very honest about her love life and she would obviously fall in and out of love,” Kardashian says, adding “she loved love”.

Taylor’s eight marriages – she married Welsh actor Burton twice – were heavily publicised.

And in the 1980s, the star would go on to use her spotlight to campaign for Aids patients.

“What really moved me [is] how she would fight for people that were voiceless, and how she was so passionate about it,” Kardashian says.

In 1985, Taylor helped found the American Foundation for Aids Research (amfAR), a month before her close friend Rock Hudson died from an Aids-related illness.

She was instrumental in getting US president Ronald Reagan to speak at a dinner for the organisation after years of mostly avoiding the topic – and she sold the exclusive photos from her eighth wedding to start the Elizabeth Taylor Aids Foundation in 1991.

Kardashian says Taylor’s involvement in Aids activism, at a time when few celebrities spoke up, is “completely inspiring”.

“The main thing is that she just did not care,” Kardashian says, “the scrutiny was worth the help that she was able to accomplish.”

She adds that Taylor is someone she would “look to” when approaching her prison reform advocacy. In 2018, she met with Donald Trump to discuss the topic and lobbied the White House for the release of Alice Johnson, a great-grandmother jailed for two decades. And in April, she met Kamala Harris to discuss pardons issued by President Joe Biden.

“I know that when I do prison reform work and people think it’s too, maybe, crazy of a topic to really get involved in, you just think of her.”

Kardashian had other connections to the Hollywood star, too.

“I would always hear a lot about Elizabeth Taylor,” Kardashian says, explaining she once dated a nephew of Michael Jackson and recalls seeing “beautiful paintings” of Taylor in the singer’s home (Jackson and Taylor were close friends).

Kardashian also remembers Taylor gifting her a bottle of her signature White Diamonds perfume. “I will cherish that forever,” she says, adding her famous jewellery collection inspired her too.

Some of the items in her collection were named after her relationships, like the Mike Todd tiara and the Taylor-Burton diamond.

“I just thought that was so fun and inspiring,” Kardashian says. “There was a time when I stopped wearing jewellery for a while and then I think of her, she was so unapologetically herself, and I just love that.”

She says she is excited for people to see the documentary series.

“My sisters want to watch it, my mom and my grandma. So that makes me really proud. When every generation wants to see it.

“I just really want people to understand that she was everything: she could be the glamorous actress, she could be having a hard time and going through health issues and then she can also be the strongest activist.”

You can watch Elizabeth Taylor: Rebel Superstar on BBC iPlayer.

Treating patients during the pandemic was like responding to a daily terror attack, the Covid inquiry has heard.

Giving testimony, Professor Kevin Fong, spoke of staff he met during a hospital visit being in “total bits”.

The former national clinical adviser in emergency preparedness at NHS England recalled a conversation with an intensive care doctor during a visit in December 2020.

“I asked him immediately what things had been like and… I’ll never forget, he replied it’s been like a terrorist attack every day since it started, and we don’t know when the attacks are going to stop.”

Prof Fong described Covid as the “biggest national emergency this country has faced since World War Two”, and repeatedly broke down in tears on the stand while describing what he had seen and his conversations with other staff members.

During the pandemic, Prof Fong, a consultant anaesthetist, conducted around 40 visits of the “hardest hit” intensive care units on behalf of NHS England to offer peer support to the doctors and nurses working there.

He wrote reports which were sent back to senior managers including England’s chief medical officer Prof Sir Chris Whitty.

He said the “scale of death” was “very difficult to capture in the figures”.

“It was truly, truly astounding… We had nurses talking about patients ‘raining from the sky’, where one of the nurses told me they got tired of putting people in body bags.”

“We went to another unit where things got so bad they were so short of resources, they ran out of body bags and instead were stuck with nine-foot clear plastic sacks and cable ties.”

“These are people who are used to seeing death but not on that scale and not like that.”

Prof Fong said that “despite the best efforts of everyone in the system” the surge of demand for healthcare caused by Covid meant it was “not possible to deliver the standard of care that would ordinarily be expected.”

He described the situation as the worst he had witnessed: “I was on the scene of the Soho bombing in 1999, I worked in the emergency department during the 7th July suicide bombing with the helicopter medical service. And nothing I saw during all of those events was as bad as really Covid was every single day for every single one of these hospitals through the pandemic surges.

“It’s painful now because it was very clear what was happening to the patients, it was very clear what was happening to the staff. The staff were very injured by just how overwhelmed they were by the whole thing.”

In December 2020 as Covid rates were rising again across the UK, he said he was asked to visit an unnamed hospital with a medium-sized intensive care unit.

“I’ll never forget it,” he said. “It was a scene from hell.”

“This was a hospital in massive, massive trouble…. there were so few staff that some of the nurses had chosen to either use the patient commodes [or] wear adult diapers because there was literally no one to give them a toilet break,” he added.

“This was a hospital breaking at the seams.”

At the end of his evidence, he was thanked by the inquiry’s chairwoman Baroness Hallett who said “it was obvious how distressing it was for you and reliving such an ordeal is never easy.”

England’s chief medical officer Prof Sir Chris Whitty, who was next to speak at the inquiry, said he agreed with the evidence “very powerfully laid out” by Prof Fong.

He said that NHS hospitals in England entered the pandemic in early 2020 with a “very low” level of beds in intensive care compared to similar high-income countries.

“That’s a political choice. It’s a system configuration choice, but it is a choice,” he told the inquiry.

“Therefore, you have less in reserve when a major emergency happens, even if it’s short of something of the scale of covid.”

Sir Chris suggested that countries like the UK had no alternative but to impose lockdown and other social restrictions to avoid a “catastrophic” amount of pressure on the healthcare system.

He accepted that “in many individual cases” doctors and nurses found the situation “incredibly difficult” but said without lockdown restrictions “the expectation is it would have got worse. Not a trivial amount worse, but really quite substantially worse”.

Asked about PPE for healthcare workers, Sir Chris said that messaging around which masks NHS staff should wear was “confused” at the start of the pandemic, leading to an “erosion of trust”.

He suggested that more research was needed to see if a higher grade FFP3 mask offered more protection than a basic surgical mask in real-life hospital use, rather than in a laboratory.

“The question is what happens when people are using it day-in and day-out in operational circumstances, and if it doesn’t hold up in that situation, it’s not doing a heck of a lot of good,” he said.

In a future pandemic, he said he would give healthcare workers the choice of which mask to wear “within reason”.

Sudan’s army has launched a major offensive against the powerful paramilitary group it is fighting in the country’s civil war, targeting areas in the capital it lost at the start of the conflict.

In dawn strikes on Thursday, government forces shelled Rapid Support Forces (RSF) bases in the capital Khartoum, and Bahri to its north.

Sudan has been embroiled in a war since the army and the RSF began a vicious struggle for power in April 2023, leading to what the UN has called one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises.

Up to 150,000 people have been killed in the conflict while more than 10 million people – about a fifth of the population – have been forced from their homes.

The military escalation comes despite US-led efforts to broker a ceasefire, which is being discussed on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly this week.

Residents of the capital said the artillery and air strikes started overnight and intensified at dawn.

Numerous accounts said the army crossed key bridges over the River Nile – which had separated government-controlled areas in Omdurman from the regions controlled by the RSF.

The RSF claimed to have repelled the attempts, but sounds of clashes and plumes of smoke were reported coming from locations in central Khartoum.

Since early in the war, the paramilitaries have been in control of nearly all of the capital.

Thursday’s advances appear to be the government’s first significant push in months to regain some territory.

Speaking later at the UN General Assembly in New York, Sudan’s de facto leader, Gen Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, said that he supported efforts to bring an end to the war, but only if they brought an end to the RSF’s occupation of Sudanese territory.

He questioned why the international community had not stepped in to help counter the group, and accused states in the region of “providing funding and mercenaries for their own political and economic benefit, in flagrant violation of law and international will”.

• A simple guide to the Sudan war
• Starvation in war-hit Sudan ‘almost everywhere’ – WHO
• Who was behind one of the deadliest attacks in Sudan?

The UN has called for “immediate” action to protect civilians and end the fighting.

It says that, since the start of September, it has documented at least 78 civilian deaths as a result of artillery shelling and air strikes in the greater Khartoum area.

Much of the worst and most intense fighting has taken place in heavily populated regions. Both sides have accused each other of indiscriminately bombing civilian areas.

“Relentless hostilities across the country have brought misery to millions of civilians, triggering the world’s fastest-growing displacement crisis,” warned the UN on Wednesday.

It noted that half of the 10 million people who had fled their homes were children, while at least two million have sought protection in neighbouring countries.

It also called Sudan “the world’s largest hunger crisis”. There are fears of widespread famine as people have not been able to grow any crops.

There have also been warnings of a possible genocide against non-Arabs in the western region of Darfur.

A cholera epidemic is also raging throughout the country- more than 430 people have died from the easily-treatable disease in the past month, the health ministry said on Wednesday.

But getting treatment to those affected areas is hugely complicated by the conflict.

• ‘Our future is over’: Forced to flee by a year of war
• I recognised my sister in video of refugees captured in Sudan war
• A photographer’s 11-day trek to flee war-torn Sudan

The world’s richest person, Elon Musk, has hit back after not being invited to the UK government’s International Investment Summit.

He was not invited due to his social media posts during last month’s riots, the BBC understands.

“I don’t think anyone should go to the UK when they’re releasing convicted pedophiles in order to imprison people for social media posts,” Mr Musk claimed on X.

Earlier this month, the government released some prisoners to reduce prison overcrowding, but no people serving sentences for sex offences were included.

Following disorder and rioting across the UK in August, some people were jailed for encouraging unrest on social media.

Violence spread across the country after a stabbing attack in Southport, in which three children attending a dance class were killed. At the time, Mr Musk posted on X, formerly Twitter, predicting civil war in the UK and repeatedly attacking the prime minister.

The summit in October is the key moment that PM Sir Keir Starmer hopes will attract tens of billions of pounds in inward funding for business from the world’s biggest investors.

Mr Musk was invited to last year’s event but did not attend. However, he took a starring role in November’s AI Summit, including a fireside chat with then-PM Rishi Sunak.

The government declined to comment on the tech entrepreneur not being invited to the summit and the billionaire’s backlash to the decision.

But Jeremy Hunt, the former Conservative chancellor and now the shadow chancellor, told the BBC it was a “big loss” not to have Mr Musk at the summit.

“He told me last year he was planning a new car plant in Europe and had not decided where but the UK was a candidate,” Mr Hunt claimed.

During the August riots, Mr Musk shared, and later deleted, a conspiracy theory about the UK building “detainment camps” on the Falkland Islands for rioters, on X – the social media platform he owns.

At the time ministers said his comments were “totally unjustifiable” and “pretty deplorable”.

The BBC understands this is why he has not been invited to join hundreds of the world’s biggest investors at the event on 14 October.

David Yelland, a public relations specialist and former editor of the Sun newspaper, told the BBC that if Mr Musk were to attend the summit, it would be “reputationally disastrous for the whole event”.

“He’s a fan of free speech but he behaves like a child and he post things that are deeply inaccurate and extremely damaging,” he said.

“This is just not a guy that is saying stuff in the pub. This is a guy that is encouraging untruths around the world.

“Just because he’s so wealthy, just because he’s so influential doesn’t make any difference. At some point we have to stand up against him, no matter what the consequences are.”

The government’s decision not to invite Mr Musk to the investment summit suggests that it thinks the potential investment is not worth the reputational risk and opens up uncomfortable questions about the background of other investors it has actively encouraged.

Attracting international investment routinely involves charm offensives with investors or nations with questionable human rights records.

The government has actively pursued trade links in the Gulf. Sir Keir, for example, publicly boycotted the 2022 World Cup in Qatar as leader of the opposition, but now he and his team routinely visit these nations to drum up trade and investment.

A number of top sovereign wealth fund executives are expected at the summit next month.

Privately, insiders suggested that Mr Musk’s presence at such a summit would be unthinkable given his comments about the UK last month.

Coming two weeks head of the Budget, the government is billing it as a huge opportunity to attract foreign investment to grow the UK economy. The Labour Party committed before the general election to hold this event within its first 100 days in office.

Mr Musk is said to be turning his attention to a second European gigafactory in addition to his plant in Berlin, Germany, after completing his Mexican plant.

Under the Conservatives, the Tesla boss was quietly shown around various UK sites with potential for a gigafactory for cars and batteries.

He has previously told journalists he opened the site in Berlin and not the UK partly because of Brexit.

Mr Musk is a regular at the equivalent French investment summit. In July, he attended a three-hour lunch with top executives with President Emmanuel Macron ahead of the Paris Olympics earlier this summer.

Under his ownership of the site formerly known as Twitter, Mr Musk lifted the ban on far-right figures, including on the Britain First group.

The UK is considering a tougher Online Safety Act, after the role of misinformation in the widespread racist disorder in August.

He is the world’s richest person and has used his platform to make his views known on a vast array of topics.

Bloomberg estimates his net worth to be around $228bn.

That’s based largely on the value of his shares in Tesla, of which he owns more than 13%. The company’s stock soared in value – some say unreasonably – in 2020 as the firm’s output increased and it started to deliver regular profits.

Since bursting on to the Silicon Valley scene more than two decades ago, the 53-year-old serial entrepreneur has kept the public captivated with his business antics.

Born in Pretoria, South Africa, Mr Musk showed his talents for entrepreneurship early, going door to door with his brother selling homemade chocolate Easter eggs and developing his first computer game at the age of 12.

For a long time Mr Musk, who became a US citizen in 2002, resisted efforts to label his politics – calling himself “half-Democrat, half-Republican”, “politically moderate” and “independent”.

He says he voted for Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and – reluctantly – Joe Biden, all of them Democrats.

But in recent years he’s swung behind Donald Trump, who is a Republican. Mr Musk officially endorsed the former president for a second term in 2024 after his attempted assassination.

Instagram owner Meta says Dame Judi Dench and John Cena will be voice options for its artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot.

Users will also be able to get information from AI versions of Awkwafina, Keegan-Michael Key or Kristen Bell.

Meta will be hoping this use of celebrity chatbots goes better than its last attempt.

In September 2023, it debuted what it called AI chatbots with “personality”, based on celebrities such as Kendall Jenner and Snoop Dogg, only to pull the plug less than a year later.

The technology giant’s chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, announced its new foray into celebrity chatbots during the company’s annual Connect conference.

“I think that voice is going to be a way more natural way of interacting with AI than text,” he told attendees.

Other new offerings for the ChatGPT-like chatbot include it being able to recognise things users photograph, and give them information about them.

An image editing feature will allow users to alter photos by telling the Meta AI what changes they want.

The firm said that more than 400 million people were now using Meta AI a month, with 185 million of them returning to it every week.

Mr Zuckerberg also unveiled the first working prototype of Meta’s augmented-reality (AR) glasses, called Orion.

Showing off the Orion glasses, Mr Zuckerberg said: “A lot of people have said this is the craziest technology they’ve ever seen.”

Users will be able to interact with Orion through hand-tracking, voice and wrist-based interface.

Meta also announced an entry-level version of its Quest line of mixed-reality headsets, with prices for the new Quest 3S starting at $300 (£225).

Some of the world’s biggest technology firms have been developing AR glasses but have not yet launched commercially successful mass market devices.

In recent years, Meta has pumped billions of dollars into developing AI, AR and other metaverse technologies.

The company expects to spend as much as $40bn on new projects this year, a record high.

Before the event, Meta’s shares ended Wednesday’s trading day at a record high of $568.31.

The company – which also owns social media platforms Facebook and WhatsApp – has seen its stock market value rise by more than 60% since the start of this year.

However, ahead of Meta’s annual showcase, thousands of Facebook and Instagram users, including many celebrities, shared a Stories post that falsely claimed people had to repost it if they did not want the firm to use their content to train its AI tools.

James McAvoy and Tom Brady were among those who fell for the hoax.

A Meta spokesperson confirmed users can only object to having their content used by submitting an objection form.

This can be accessed by clicking on a notification sent to users about the plans, or by going to the privacy centre under account settings.

An 88-year-old man who is the world’s longest-serving death row inmate has been acquitted by a Japanese court, after it found that evidence used against him was fabricated.

Iwao Hakamada, who was on death row for almost half a century, was found guilty in 1968 of killing his boss, the man’s wife and their two teenage children.

He was recently granted a retrial amid suspicions that investigators may have planted evidence that led to his conviction for quadruple murder.

The 46 years spent on death row has taken a heavy toll on Hakamada’s mental health, though, meaning he was unfit to attend the hearing where his acquittal was finally handed down.

Hakamada’s case is one of Japan’s longest and most famous legal sagas, and has attracted widespread public interest, with some 500 people lining up for seats in the courtroom in Shizuoka on Thursday.

As the verdict was handed down, Hakamada’s supporters outside the court cheered “banzai” – a Japanese exclamation that means “hurray”.

Hakamada, who was exempted from all hearings due to his deteriorated mental state, has been living under the care of his 91-year-old sister Hideko since 2014, when he was freed from jail and granted a retrial.

She fought for decades to clear his name and said it was sweet to hear the words “not guilty” in court.

“When I heard that, I was so moved and happy, I couldn’t stop crying,” she told reporters.

Her brother has previously said his battle for justice was like “fighting a bout every day”. “Once you think you can’t win, there is no path to victory,” he told AFP news agency in 2018.

A former professional boxer, Hakamada was working at a miso processing plant in 1966 when the bodies of his employer, the man’s wife and two children were recovered from a fire at their home in Shizuoka, west of Tokyo. All four had been stabbed to death.

Authorities accused Hakamada of murdering the family, setting fire to their home and stealing 200,000 yen in cash.

Hakamada initially denied having robbed and murdered the victims, but later gave what he came to describe as a coerced confession following beatings and interrogations that lasted up to 12 hours a day.

In 1968 he was convicted of murder and arson, and sentenced to death.

The decades-long legal saga ultimately turned on some clothes found in a tank of miso a year after Hakamada’s arrest. Those clothes, purportedly bloodstained, were used to incriminate him.

For years, however, Hakamada’s lawyers argued that the DNA recovered from the clothes did not match his, raising the possibility that the items belonged to someone else. The lawyers further suggested that police could have fabricated the evidence.

Their argument was enough to persuade Judge Hiroaki Murayama, who in 2014 noted that “the clothes were not those of the defendant”.

“It is unjust to detain the defendant further, as the possibility of his innocence has become clear to a respectable degree,” Murayama said at the time.

Hakamada was then released from jail and granted a retrial.

Prolonged legal proceedings meant that it took until last year for that retrial to begin – and until Thursday morning for the court to declare the verdict.

The detail upon which his retrial and final acquittal hinged was the nature of the red stains on clothing prosecutors said was his. The defence questioned how the stains had aged. It said the fact they remained red and had not darkened after an extended time immersed in soybean paste meant the evidence was fabricated.

Thursday’s ruling found that “investigators tampered with clothes by getting blood on them” which they then hid in the tank of miso, according to AFP.

Hakamada was declared innocent.

Decades of detention, mostly in solitary confinement with the ever-present threat of execution, have taken a heavy toll on Hakamada’s mental health, according to his lawyers and family.

His sister has long advocated for his release. Last year, when the retrial commenced, Hideko expressed relief and said “finally a weight has been lifted from my shoulders”.

Retrials for death row inmates are rare in Japan – Hakamada’s is only the fifth in Japan’s post-war history.

Along with the United States, Japan is the only G7 country that still imposes capital punishment, with death row prisoners being notified of their hanging just a few hours in advance.

Vladimir Putin says Russia would consider an attack from a non-nuclear state that was backed by a nuclear-armed one to be a “joint attack”, in what could be construed as a threat to use nuclear weapons in the war in Ukraine.

In key remarks on Wednesday night, the Russian president said his government was considering changing the rules and preconditions around which Russia would use its nuclear arsenal.

Ukraine is a non-nuclear state that receives military support from the US and other nuclear-armed countries.

His comments come as Kyiv seeks approval to use long-range Western missiles against military sites in Russia.

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky has travelled to the US this week and is due to meet US President Joe Biden in Washington on Thursday, where Kyiv’s request is expected to be top of the agenda.

Ukraine has pushed into Russian territory this year and wants to target bases inside Russia which it says are sending missiles into Ukraine.

Responding to Putin’s remarks, Zelensky’s chief of staff Andriy Yermak said Russia “no longer has anything other than nuclear blackmail to intimidate the world”.

Putin has threatened the use of nuclear weapons before. Ukraine has criticised it as “nuclear sabre-rattling” to deter its allies from providing further support.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken described the comments as “totally irresponsible” in an MSNBC television interview.

Russian ally China has also called for calm, with reports President Xi Jinping has warned Putin against using nuclear arms.

But on Wednesday, after a meeting with his Security Council, Putin announced the proposed radical expansion.

A new nuclear doctrine would “clearly set the conditions for Russia to transition to using nuclear weapons,” he warned – and said such scenarios included conventional missile strikes against Moscow.

He said that Russia would consider such a “possibility” of using nuclear weapons if it detected the start of a massive launch of missiles, aircraft and drones into its territory, which presented a “critical threat” to the country’s sovereignty.

He added: “It is proposed that aggression against Russia by any non-nuclear state, but with the participation or support of a nuclear state, be considered as their joint attack on the Russian Federation.”

The country’s nuclear arms were “the most important guarantee of security of our state and its citizens”, the Kremlin leader said.

Since the end of World War Two, nuclear-armed states have engaged in a policy of deterrence, which is based on the idea that if warring states were to launch major nuclear strikes it would lead to mutually assured destruction.

But there are also tactical nuclear weapons which are smaller warheads designed to destroy targets without widespread radioactive fallout.

In June, Putin delivered a warning to European countries supporting Ukraine, saying Russia had “many more [tactical nuclear weapons] than there are on the European continent, even if the United States brings theirs over.”

“Europe does not have a developed [early warning system],” he added. “In this sense they are more or less defenceless.”

At the time he had hinted of changes to Russia’s nuclear doctrine – the document which sets out the conditions under which Moscow would use nuclear weapons.

The Kremlin said on Thursday that changes outlined by Putin should be considered a warning to the West.

Elaborating on the move, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters: “It must be considered a specific signal – a signal that warns these countries of the consequences if they participate in an attack on our country by various means, not necessarily nuclear.”

Peskov said that Russia would make a decision on whether not to publish the updated nuclear documents, adding that adjustments to the document on state nuclear deterrence were being formulated.

A Hong Kong Court has jailed two journalists who led a pro-democracy newspaper after they were found guilty in a landmark sedition case last month.

Chung Pui-kuen and Patrick Lam, editors at the now-defunct Stand News media outlet, had published articles about the crackdown on civil liberties in the city under China.

Chung was sentenced to 21 months, while Lam was given 11 months, but was released on medical grounds. The publisher behind Stand News – Best Pencil – has been fined HK$5,000 (US$643; £480).

It is the first sedition case against journalists in Hong Kong since the territory’s handover from Britain to China in 1997.

After a lengthy trial, which began in October 2022 and was originally scheduled to last just 20 days, district court judge Kwok Wai-kin Kwok found that 11 articles published by Stand News were seditious and that Stand News had become a “danger to national security”.

Their newspaper’s editorial line supported “Hong Kong local autonomy”, Mr Kwok said in a written statement.

“It even became a tool to smear and vilify the Central Authorities [in Beijing] and the [Hong Kong] SAR Government,” he added.

Both journalists were charged under a colonial-era sedition law – which until recently had been rarely used by prosecutors – rather than the controversial national security law (NSL).

Stand News was among a handful of relatively new online news portals that especially gained prominence during the 2019 pro-democracy protests.

Rights groups have condemned the sentencing. Reporters Without Borders told the BBC it is “yet another nail in the coffin for press freedom in Hong Kong”.

Since the introduction of the NSL in 2020, a host of media outlets have closed in Hong Kong.

Critics say the law effectively reduces the city’s once-prized judicial autonomy, making it easier to punish demonstrators and activists. China defends it as necessary for maintaining stability.

Stand News was among the last openly pro-democratic publications until its closure in December 2021, when more than 200 police officers were sent to raid its office.

Seven employees were arrested and accused of a “conspiracy to publish seditious publications”, which included interviews with pro-democracy activists.

Hong Kong’s current chief executive John Lee supported the police operation at the time, calling those arrested the “evil elements that damage press freedom”.

The case has drawn international scrutiny and condemnation from western countries.

The United States has repeatedly condemned the prosecutions of journalists in Hong Kong, saying that the case against the both editors “creates a chilling effect on others in the press and media”.

The former British colony has seen its standing in press freedom rankings plummet from 18th place to 135th over the past two decades, according to the World Press Freedom Index compiled by Reporters Without Borders.

Their Asia-based Advocacy Manager Aleksandra Bielakowska told the BBC that the Hong Kong judiciary has become “a political tool, used to threaten those who dare to speak independently”.

“Like in China, the regime is trying to create its own narratives, and make sure that all reporters will be only ‘telling Hong Kong’s story well’,” she said.

“Deliberately targeting independent media and its journalists has left a huge void in Hong Kong’s media landscape that will be very difficult to rebuild,” she added.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has told the country’s military to continue fighting with “full force” against the armed group Hezbollah, despite calls from the US and other allies for a ceasefire.

Lebanon’s health ministry said at least 92 people were killed in Israeli air strikes on Thursday, with hundreds more killed since the strikes escalated on Monday.

Hezbollah has confirmed that an air strike on an apartment building in the south of Beirut killed the head of its drone unit, Mohammad Surur.

Fears of an all-out war between Israel and Hezbollah are at a high, after a dramatic escalation in Israeli strikes on Lebanon since Monday.

The increase in hostilities prompted a 12-strong bloc – including the US, UK and EU – to propose a three week ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah on Wednesday.

The proposal was initially met with hope after Israeli ambassador to the UN, Danny Danon, said his country was “open to ideas”.

But by Thursday it had been roundly rejected by Israeli politicians.

Landing in New York for the UN General Assembly, Mr Netanyahu said Israel would “not stop” in Lebanon until it reached all of its goals, “chief among them the return of the residents of the north securely to their homes.”

The White House later said the ceasefire proposal had been “coordinated” with Israel, despite Mr Netanyahu’s assertion, just hours later, that his country would continue fighting.

Speaking in New York, UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer called for an “immediate ceasefire to provide space for a diplomatic settlement” to resolve the conflict in Lebanon.

He said the conflict could spill over into a war “no one can control”.

Around 70,000 Israelis have been displaced from the north of the country since hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah, sparked by the war in Gaza, began nearly a year ago.

In Lebanon, around 90,000 people have been displaced since Monday, adding to the 110,000 who had fled their homes already, according to the UN.

Through Thursday, the Israeli military said it struck Hezbollah targets in Lebanon’s south and in the Bekaa Valley in the country’s east.

It also struck infrastructure on the Lebanese-Syrian border, which it said was to cut weapons supplies to the group.

Meanwhile, Hezbollah said it had fired 50 rockets towards the city of Kiryat Ata, and 80 missiles towards the city of Safed, both in northern Israel.

The Israeli army said it intercepted a missile that was fired from Yemen after sirens and explosions were heard.

Israel’s military chief Lt Gen Herzi Halevi said on Wednesday Israeli air strikes on Lebanon could pave the way for the IDF to “enter enemy territory”.

Israeli Air Force (IAF) Commander Maj Gen Tomer Bar told troops on Thursday they should be “prepared” to support a “ground manoeuvre” into Lebanon.

Meanwhile, Qatar joined calls for a de-escalation with government spokesman Majed al-Ansari saying the country had received “horrific reports from Lebanon about targeting whole families, in a way that is similar to the atrocities in Gaza”.

After meeting with British and Australian counterparts in London, US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin said that Israel and Hezbollah face the risk of “an all-out war” but that “a diplomatic solution is still viable”.

“Israel has stated that its goal is to return its citizens to their home in the north. I believe the quickest way to do that is through diplomacy,” Austin said.

On Thursday evening, Israel’s defense ministry (IMoD) said it had secured an $8.7bn (£6.5bn) US aid package to support its current military campaigns.

In a statement, IMoD said the package includes $3.5bn for “essential wartime procurement”, which has already been transferred, and $5.2bn for air defense systems such as the Iron Dome, David’s Sling and an advanced laser system.

The US and China are the two largest economies in the world. They have the two most powerful militaries in the world. The US-China rivalry, in the view of many international analysts, will be the defining global theme of the 21st Century.

But at the moment, only one of the two major party presidential candidates is regularly talking about US-China policy – as he has done consistently for years.

According to a review by BBC Verify, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has mentioned China 40 times in his five rallies since the presidential debate earlier this month. In just one hour at a town hall forum last week in Michigan, he brought up the country 27 times.

And when he talks about China, Trump focuses on matters of tension between the two global powers, painting the country and the world’s second-largest economy, as a kind of economic predator.

• Who is ahead – Harris or Trump?

He has talked about the new tariffs he plans to impose on imports from Chinese companies – and those from other nations – should he return to the White House.

He has said he wants to prevent Chinese-made cars from being sold because he believes they will destroy the American auto industry. He has warned China not to attempt to replace the US dollar as the world’s reserve currency. And he has blamed the Chinese government for the Covid pandemic.

Many economists question the effectiveness of Trump’s tariff plans and warn that they would ultimately be harmful to US consumers. But Trump’s message is tailored to blue-collar voters in the key industrial Midwest battleground states who have felt the impact of increased competition from Chinese manufacturers.

Meanwhile, BBC Verify finds, Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris did not mention China at all in her six rallies since the 10 September debate. Although, in a speech on the economy in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on Wednesday afternoon, she made a handful of references to the country.

“I will never hesitate to take swift and strong measures when China undermines the rules of the road at the expense of our workers, communities, and companies,” she said at that event.

Asked for comment, an aide to the vice-president told the BBC that even if Harris does not talk about China regularly, she has a record of working to counter what they described as China’s efforts to undermine global stability and prosperity.

But when it comes to discussing China, the contrast between Trump and Harris on the campaign trail is unmistakable.

On Monday afternoon, at a barn in Smithton, a small town in rural western Pennsylvania, Trump sat down with a group of local farmers and ranchers for a roundtable discussion specifically about China.

The town may be just an hour outside of Pittsburgh, a Democratic Party urban stronghold, but this was decidedly Republican territory. Cows grazed peacefully on grasslands lined with dozens of “Trump for President signs”, while Trump supporters decorated two donkeys in “Make America Great Again” gear.

The topic of the event, hosted by the Protecting America Initiative, a conservative think-tank, was “the Chinese Communist Party’s growing threat to the US food supply”.

The forum ended up being a more open-ended conversation about the threat of China, full stop. The farmers, ranchers and business executives on the panel complained about having to compete with heavily subsidised Chinese imports and about the low quality of Chinese goods.

While the former president didn’t spend much time discussing the perceived dangers of Chinese ownership of US farmland – he instead promised that he would convince Chinese President Xi Jinping to buy more US agriculture exports – he again emphasised that he would use tariffs to shield the American economy from China.

At one point, he spoke of the need to protect the US steel industry – in order to prepare for a hypothetical war with China.

“If we’re in a war, and we need army tanks and we need ships and we need other things that happen to be made of steel, what are we going to do, go to China and get the steel?” he asked. “We’re fighting China, but would you mind selling us some steel?”

Some of the heavier lifting on China during the forum was left to Richard Grenell, a roundtable panelist and senior advisor for the Protecting America Initiative.

He warned the country has “quietly but strategically” worked against the US – particularly when Americans were distracted by other global issues.

“They go after our local and state politicians; they go after our manufacturing,” he said. “There is no question they are looking to, at some point, leverage that investment and activity.”

Grenell, who served as US ambassador to Germany and acting director of national intelligence while Trump was in office, is considered a possible secretary of state – America’s top diplomat – if Trump wins another term in November.

If Harris wins, on the other hand, there may not be a significant change from the current Biden administration, even if the current president has frequently deployed sharper rhetoric to describe the US-China rivalry.

• 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?

Since the start of his presidency, Joe Biden has identified China as one of the autocracies competing with the world’s leading democracies in what he describes as a historic global inflection point.

According to public opinion surveys, China ranks low on the list of issues American voters care about – dwarfed by the economy, immigration and healthcare.

In a recent National Security Action survey of voters in key electoral battleground states, only 14% listed China as the top national security priority for the next president. Immigration led the list at 38%, followed by the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, both at 28%.

That could in part explain Harris’s seeming lack of interest in talking about China as she has sought to define herself in the eyes of voters during an abbreviated presidential campaign, as well as Trump’s attempts to tie his China policies, particularly tariffs, to an economic pitch.

After the Trump event in Smithton, Bill Bretz, chair of the local county Republican Party committee, said that while China may not be at the top of voter concerns in Pennsylvania, it was important for Trump to talk about it.

As the largest up-for-grabs electoral prize, Pennsylvania is perhaps the pivotal state in the 2024 presidential election. Both Trump and Harris will be hard-pressed to win the White House without it in their column. Polls currently show the two candidates in a dead heat there.

“The majority of people have already picked the camp that they’re in, but there are those group of people that are undecided,” he said. “If China is a straw that sways the scale one way or another, I think it’s a great thing to bring up.”

North America correspondent Anthony Zurcher makes sense of the race for the White House in his weekly US Election Unspun newsletter. Readers in the UK can sign up here. Those outside the UK can sign up here.

The model Naomi Campbell has been banned from being a charity trustee after a watchdog found charity funds were spent on luxury hotels and spa treatments.

A Charity Commission inquiry found Fashion for Relief was not passing on as much of the money raised as it was supposed to.

Instead it was being spent on cigarettes and security for Campbell and other unauthorised payments to one of her fellow charity trustees.

“I’ve just found out today about the findings, and I am extremely concerned,” Campbell, 54, told AP news agency.

She added she was not the person “in control” of the charity.

She has been banned from charity involvement for five years with two other trustees, Bianka Hellmich and Veronica Chou, being banned for nine years and four years respectively.

Representatives for the British model have been contacted by the BBC.

The inquiry found that unauthorised payments totalling £290,000 for consultancy services had been made to Ms Hellmich, which was in breach of the charity’s constitution.

Whilst Ms Hellmich had proactively proposed repaying these funds, the Commission-appointed interim managers secured repayments to the charity.

A sum of nearly £345,000 was recovered from the charity by investigators and protection for a further £98,000 of charity money has been established.

The funds have been used to make payments to two other charities – Save the Children Fund and the Mayor’s Fund for London – and to cover the cost of Fashion for Relief’s liabilities.

The inquiry, which looked at Fashion for Relief’s expenses between April 2016 and July 2022, found that just 8.5% of funds raised were spent on grants to charity.

Following the opening of the inquiry, both Save the Children Fund and the Mayor’s Fund for London made complaints to the commission regarding Fashion for Relief.

Fashion for Relief held fundraising events for the two charities, but the inquiry found that it failed to manage its partnership arrangements.

Tim Hopkins, who was part of the investigations team, said in a statement: “Trustees are legally required to make decisions that are in their charity’s best interests and to comply with their legal duties and responsibilities”.

He added: “Our inquiry has found that the trustees of this charity failed to do so, which has resulted in our action to disqualify them”.

Fashion for Relief was removed from the register of charities on 15 March 2024.

India’s most popular sweet – the laddu – is caught in an unsavoury row.

The controversy erupted last week when Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu said that lab reports had shown that laddus offered to the deity and then distributed to devotees every day at the famous Tirupati temple in the state were contaminated with animal and vegetable fat.

He said the ghee (clarified butter) used in the sweets was adulterated with “beef tallow, fish oil and other impurities”. Temple offerings in India are usually vegetarian.

On the face of it, it appeared like a matter of food adulteration – something that authorities in India routinely grapple with.

But since Naidu’s announcement, the issue has dominated headlines, caused a major political row and prompted other temples to test their sweets for “purity”.

The Tirupati temple in Andhra Pradesh is one of Hinduism’s most sacred shrines. Dedicated to Hindu god Sri Venkateswara – popularly known as Balaji – the temple owns assets worth tens of billions of dollars and attracts nearly 24 million devotees from India and abroad every year.

The famous Tirupati laddus – made with gram flour, sugar, cashews, raisins and cardamom and cooked in “pure cow ghee” – are prized by devotees who consider them god’s blessing and carry them back home to share with family and friends. Reports say more than 350,000 laddus are prepared daily in the temple’s kitchen.

So Naidu’s revelations have been met with dismay, with many religious leaders calling on authorities to protect the sanctity of temples.

“Care should be taken that such great sins are not repeated in a temple that has tens of millions of devotees,” Ramana Deekshitulu, a priest, told news agency ANI.

Swami Avimukteshwaranand Saraswati, another prominent priest, called it “an attack on the faith and belief of tens of millions of Hindus”.

“This is an organised crime and a huge betrayal of Hindus. It should be investigated and strict action should be taken against the guilty,” he told a news channel.

The issue has also turned into a political slugfest after Naidu blamed his rival and former chief minister YS Jagan Mohan Reddy for the “desecration”.

Naidu, who was sworn in as the state’s chief minister in June, alleged that the impure laddus were distributed to devotees during Reddy’s term. The temple board is run by the state government, which appoints its chief.

Naidu said he had changed the ghee supplier and formed a special investigation team led by a senior police officer to address the issue.

An angry Reddy has rejected the allegations and accused Naidu of playing politics. In a strongly-worded letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, he asked him to “severely reprimand” Naidu, who’s a key ally in Modi’s federal government.

“Naidu is a pathological and habitual liar” who was tarnishing the image of the temple trust with false campaigns, he wrote.

Reddy said even though the temple did not have a lab to check the ghee’s purity, its officials were experienced in identifying impurities by appearance and smell and that there had been instances – both during his government and also earlier when Naidu’s party had been in power – when ghee tankers were sent back to suppliers.

Reddy’s party has also invited people to take part in religious rituals in temples across the state to “atone for the sin” that, they say, Naidu has committed by making allegations about the laddus.

Meanwhile, the Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams (TTD) – the board that manages the nearly 2,000-year-old temple – has been trying to do damage control.

A board spokesperson told reporters that they were sourcing ghee from five companies via tenders. After complaints from pilgrims and laddu makers, they sent samples for lab tests which revealed that four tankers from AR Dairy in Tamil Nadu were of substandard quality.

In response, AR Dairy, which has been producing ghee since 1998 and claims to conduct 102 quality checks on its milk, dismissed the allegations as “absurd” and stated that they are “severely damaging to our business.”

It said a quality control officer at the firm had called the allegations that fish oil was added “nonsensical”, as fish oil costs more than ghee, and that “any form of adulteration would be immediately noticeable by its odour”.

The temple, meanwhile, said it had done its own penance. To assure devotees that its laddus were now rid of defects and fit for gods and humans, the priests held a four-hour-long “purification ritual” on Monday.

Photographs released by the temple board showed priests sprinkling holy water in the kitchen, on sacks of ingredients and on huge trays of laddus.

The controversy, however, refuses to die down and has dominated headlines in the state. Popular actor and the state’s Deputy Chief Minister Pawan Kalyan called the adulteration “an attack on Hindu religion”. Kalyan is also performing what he called 11 days of atonement rituals to rectify the “great injustice”.

Members of a Hindu nationalist group have demonstrated outside Reddy’s home, chanting slogans. They left after painting the gate and walls saffron – a colour that is worn by many Hindu priests and is also the colour of flags of BJP and other Hindu parties.

Authorities in other states have also been rushing to test sweets offered at other Hindu temples, including the famous Krishna temple in Mathura in Uttar Pradesh and the Jagannath temple in Odisha state.

The issue has also found resonance on social media. Laddu, along with hashtags such as #TirupatiLaddu, #TirupatiLadduControversy and #TirupatiLadduRow, has trended for days on X (formerly Twitter), with many expressing their outrage at what they called deliberate attempts to hurt Hindu faith.

Some of this outrage, however, appeared to be manufactured after it was pointed out that many handles pledging support to Hindu nationalist groups had shared images of Reddy wearing a Muslim skullcap and derided him as “anti-Hindu”.

One tweet, shared by many handles two days after Naidu’s allegation, was especially flagged for using identical words by people who appeared unrelated. It said: “For the past 2-3 years, Amma [mother] used to fall sick if she tasted Tirupati laddus and used to tell us not to eat too much of it. We put it on her general paranoia. Now I feel she sensed something was terribly wrong.”

Volodymyr Zelensky is meeting Joe Biden and Kamala Harris at the White House to discuss his “victory plan”, which the Ukrainian president hopes will pressure Russia into agreeing a diplomatic end to the war.

Details have been kept secret, but Zelensky is likely to ask the US president and vice-president for continuing military and financial support, as well as security guarantees.

It comes amid a row with Donald Trump and the Republican party ahead of November’s US presidential election.

They were angered by Zelensky’s visit to an arms factory in Biden’s hometown of Scranton with top Democrats. Zelensky will meet Trump on Friday despite earlier reports that the meeting had been cancelled.

Zelensky’s visit to the ammunition factory in the key swing state of Pennsylvania was labelled by leading Republicans as a partisan campaign event.

In a public letter, speaker of the US House Mike Johnson said the visit was “designed to help Democrats” and claimed it amounted to “election interference”.

He also demanded that Ukraine fire its ambassador to Washington who helped arrange the visit.

The Republican-led House Oversight Committee has also announced it would investigate whether Zelensky’s trip was an attempt to use a foreign leader to benefit Harris’s campaign.

Her Republican rival for the presidency, Donald Trump, mocked Zelensky at a campaign event as the “greatest salesman on Earth” and accused him of refusing to “make a deal” with Moscow.

Earlier this week, Trump also praised Russia’s military capabilities, saying: “They beat Hitler, they beat Napoleon – that’s what they do, they fight.”

The two men have long had a fractious relationship. In 2019, Trump was impeached by the US House over accusations that he pressured Ukraine’s leader to dig up damaging information on a political rival.

The row clouded a week in which Zelensky has twice addressed the United Nations, ramping up efforts to persuade the US and other allies to boost support more than two and a half years into Russia’s full-scale invasion.

At the White House meetings, Zelensky is expected to push again for US backing to fire Western-made long-range missiles deep into Russian territory, which Biden has so far blocked.

Before the meeting, Biden said: “Let me be clear, Russia will not prevail in war… Ukraine will prevail”.

He also pledged to support Kyiv “in its path to membership to both the EU and Nato”.

Meanwhile, Zelensky thanked the US for its “unwavering bipartisan support”.

He later met Harris, with the vice-president reiterating her support for Ukraine and arguing the US must continue its role of global leadership.

With Russian troops advancing in the east of Ukraine, the outcome of Zelensky’s meeting with Biden and Harris is seen by many experts as a key moment in his attempt to shore up US support before the November election.

On Wednesday, Russia’s Vladimir Putin announced a plan to revise Moscow’s nuclear doctrine, to enable Russia to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear states if they are supported by nuclear states.

Putin’s spokesperson later clarified that it was meant as a “specific signal” to the West.

• Putin proposes new rules for using nuclear weapons

Hours before his meeting with Zelensky, Biden announced a $7.9bn (£5.9bn) package of military assistance to Ukraine.

The aid, part of a $61bn package that passed Congress in April, will be approved through presidential drawdown authority and will pull from existing Pentagon supplies to deliver the arms more quickly.

Congressional Republicans blocked the package for months earlier this year, before ultimately relenting and passing the legislation. The delay caused arms supplies to Ukraine to dry up for several months.

Zelensky thanked the US – Ukraine’s largest foreign donor.

At the same time, he also reportedly expressed frustration at the delay in delivering weapons that were already promised when he met US congressmen on Thursday morning.

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• FACT CHECK: Was US economy stronger under Biden or Trump?

North America correspondent Anthony Zurcher makes sense of the race for the White House in his weekly US Election Unspun newsletter.

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Sudan is at breaking point.

After 17 months of a brutal civil war which has devastated the country, the army has launched a major offensive in the capital Khartoum, targeting areas in the hands of its bitter rival, the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces.

The RSF seized most of Khartoum at the start of the conflict, while the army controls the twin city of Omdurman, just across the River Nile.

But there are still places where people can, and do, cross between the two sides.

At one such point, I met a group of women who had walked four hours to a market in army-controlled territory at the edge of Omdurman, where food is cheaper.

The women had come from Dar es Salaam, an area held by the RSF.

Their husbands were no longer leaving the house, they told me, because RSF fighters beat them, took any money they earned, or detained them and demanded payment for their release.

“We endure this hardship because we want to feed our children. We’re hungry, we need food,” said one.

And the women, I asked, were they safer than the men? What about rape?

The chorus of voices died down.

Then one erupted.

“Where is the world? Why don’t you help us?” she said, her words coming out in torrents as tears ran down her cheeks.

“There are so many women here who’ve been violated, but they don’t talk about it. What difference would it make anyway?”

“Some girls, the RSF make them lie in the streets at night,” she went on. “If they come back late from this market, the RSF keeps them for five or six days.”

As she spoke her mother sat with her head in her hand, sobbing. Other women around her also started crying.

“You in your world, if your child went out, would you leave her?” she demanded. “Wouldn’t you go look for her? But tell us, what can we do? Nothing is in our hands, no one cares for us. Where is the world? Why don’t you help us!”

The crossing point was a window into a world of desperation and despair.

Travellers described being subjected to lawlessness, looting and brutality in a conflict that the UN says has forced more than 10.5 million people to flee their homes.

But it is sexual violence that has become a defining characteristic of the protracted conflict, which started as a power struggle between the army and the RSF but has since drawn in local armed groups and fighters from neighbouring countries.

The UN’s High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Turk, has said rape is being used as “a weapon of war”.

A recent UN fact-finding mission documented several cases of rape and rape threats from members of the army, but found that large-scale sexual violence was committed by the RSF and its allied militias, and amounted to violations of international law.

One woman the BBC spoke to blamed the RSF for raping her.

We met her in the market at the crossing, aptly named Souk al-Har – the Heat Market.

Since the war began the market has expanded across the barren land on a desert road out of Omdurman, attracting the poorest of the poor with its low prices.

Miriam, not her real name, had fled her home in Dar es Salaam to take refuge with her brother.

She now works in a tea stall. But early in the war, she said, two armed men entered her house and tried to rape her daughters – one 17 years old and the other 10.

“I told the girls to stay behind me and I said to the RSF: ‘If you want to rape anyone it has to be me,’” she said.

“They hit me and ordered me to take off my clothes. Before I took them off, I told my girls to leave. They took the other children and jumped over the fence. Then one of the men laid on me.”

The RSF has told international investigators that it has taken all the necessary measures to prevent sexual violence and other forms of violence that constitute human rights violations.

But the accounts of sexual assault are numerous and consistent, and the damage has a lasting impact.

Sitting on a low stool in the shade of a row of trees, Fatima, not her real name, told me she had come to Omdurman to deliver twins, and planned to stay.

One of her neighbours, she said, a 15-year-old girl, had also become pregnant, after she and her 17-year-old sister were raped by four RSF soldiers.

People were awakened by screams and came out to see what was going on, she said, but the armed men told them they would be shot if they did not go back into their houses.

The next morning, they found the two girls with signs of abuse on their bodies, and their elder brother locked in one of the rooms.

“During the war, since the RSF arrived, immediately we started hearing of rapes, until we saw it right in front of us in our neighbours,” Fatima said. “Initially we had doubts [about the reports] but we know that it’s the RSF who raped the girls.”

The other women are gathering to begin the trek back home to areas controlled by the RSF – they are too poor, they say, to start a new life like Miriam has done by leaving Dar es Salaam.

For as long as this war goes on, they have no choice but to return to its horrors.

• A simple guide to the Sudan war
• ‘Our future is over’: Forced to flee by a year of war
• I recognised my sister in video of refugees captured in Sudan war

An 88-year-old man who is the world’s longest-serving death row inmate has been acquitted by a Japanese court, after it found that evidence used against him was fabricated.

Iwao Hakamada, who was on death row for almost half a century, was found guilty in 1968 of killing his boss, the man’s wife and their two teenage children.

He was recently granted a retrial amid suspicions that investigators may have planted evidence that led to his conviction for quadruple murder.

The 46 years spent on death row has taken a heavy toll on Hakamada’s mental health, though, meaning he was unfit to attend the hearing where his acquittal was finally handed down.

Hakamada’s case is one of Japan’s longest and most famous legal sagas, and has attracted widespread public interest, with some 500 people lining up for seats in the courtroom in Shizuoka on Thursday.

As the verdict was handed down, Hakamada’s supporters outside the court cheered “banzai” – a Japanese exclamation that means “hurray”.

Hakamada, who was exempted from all hearings due to his deteriorated mental state, has been living under the care of his 91-year-old sister Hideko since 2014, when he was freed from jail and granted a retrial.

She fought for decades to clear his name and said it was sweet to hear the words “not guilty” in court.

“When I heard that, I was so moved and happy, I couldn’t stop crying,” she told reporters.

Her brother has previously said his battle for justice was like “fighting a bout every day”. “Once you think you can’t win, there is no path to victory,” he told AFP news agency in 2018.

A former professional boxer, Hakamada was working at a miso processing plant in 1966 when the bodies of his employer, the man’s wife and two children were recovered from a fire at their home in Shizuoka, west of Tokyo. All four had been stabbed to death.

Authorities accused Hakamada of murdering the family, setting fire to their home and stealing 200,000 yen in cash.

Hakamada initially denied having robbed and murdered the victims, but later gave what he came to describe as a coerced confession following beatings and interrogations that lasted up to 12 hours a day.

In 1968 he was convicted of murder and arson, and sentenced to death.

The decades-long legal saga ultimately turned on some clothes found in a tank of miso a year after Hakamada’s arrest. Those clothes, purportedly bloodstained, were used to incriminate him.

For years, however, Hakamada’s lawyers argued that the DNA recovered from the clothes did not match his, raising the possibility that the items belonged to someone else. The lawyers further suggested that police could have fabricated the evidence.

Their argument was enough to persuade Judge Hiroaki Murayama, who in 2014 noted that “the clothes were not those of the defendant”.

“It is unjust to detain the defendant further, as the possibility of his innocence has become clear to a respectable degree,” Murayama said at the time.

Hakamada was then released from jail and granted a retrial.

Prolonged legal proceedings meant that it took until last year for that retrial to begin – and until Thursday morning for the court to declare the verdict.

The detail upon which his retrial and final acquittal hinged was the nature of the red stains on clothing prosecutors said was his. The defence questioned how the stains had aged. It said the fact they remained red and had not darkened after an extended time immersed in soybean paste meant the evidence was fabricated.

Thursday’s ruling found that “investigators tampered with clothes by getting blood on them” which they then hid in the tank of miso, according to AFP.

Hakamada was declared innocent.

Decades of detention, mostly in solitary confinement with the ever-present threat of execution, have taken a heavy toll on Hakamada’s mental health, according to his lawyers and family.

His sister has long advocated for his release. Last year, when the retrial commenced, Hideko expressed relief and said “finally a weight has been lifted from my shoulders”.

Retrials for death row inmates are rare in Japan – Hakamada’s is only the fifth in Japan’s post-war history.

Along with the United States, Japan is the only G7 country that still imposes capital punishment, with death row prisoners being notified of their hanging just a few hours in advance.

The future of K-Pop band NewJeans is in doubt, after they went public with complaints against their record label.

The girl group debuted in 2022, and quickly became a crossover hit, thanks to a 90s club sound, which recalled the heyday of TLC, SWV and En Vogue.

But two weeks ago, the quintet hosted a surprise livestream on YouTube, where they spoke for almost half an hour about their dissatisfaction with their record label, Hybe, and the decision to remove their producer, Min Hee-jin, from her role.

The group even issued an ultimatum, demanding that Min should be reinstated by 25 September. As the deadline ran out, Hybe rejected the request, putting a question mark over New Jeans’ next move.

The band are committed to a seven-year contract, which runs out in 2029, but have signalled their unwillingness to continue under the current arrangement.

The K-pop news site Koreaboo estimated that the band would have to pay about 300 billion South Korean Won (about £170 million) to terminate the contract early.

It’s a highly unusual story in the tightly-controlled world of Korean pop, where artists’ moves are micromanaged down to the tiniest details.

NewJeans’ decision to speak out came after months of internal wrangling at Hybe, one of South Korea’s biggest entertainment companies, which the members said had left them “anxious” and “in a state of shock”.

NewJeans were put together between 2019 and 2022 by by ADOR, a subsidiary of Hybe Corporation, under the direction of the label’s CEO Min Hee-Jin.

The group’s five members – Danielle, Haerin, Hanni, Hyein and Minji – were appointed through a mixture of auditions and traineeships, with Hanni and Minji making an early appearance in the video for BTS’s single Permission To Dance.

Their name was chosen a play on the phrase “new genes” – intended to evoke the idea of a new generation of pop, as well as their devotion to street fashion.

Still teenagers when they released their debut single, Attention, in July 2022, they became an instant hit. Their self-titled debut EP went straight to number one in Korea in 2022, as did the follow-up, OMG.

In 2023, they scored five hits on the US chart, and were named group of the year at the Billboard Women In Music Awards.

The boardroom drama began this April, when Hybe announced it was auditing ADOR and Min-Jee Hin.

The Korea Times reported that the audit included searches of computers within ADOR’s offices in Seoul.

Hybe subsequently accused Min of corporate espionage – saying she had planned a hostile takeover with outside investors, so that she could manage New Jeans and ADOR independently.

“The evidence included detailed discussions that Min has ordered the ADOR management to find ways to pressure Hybe into ultimately selling ADOR’s shares,” the company said in a statement.

Min denied the allegations and claimed Hybe was retaliating after she’d complained that another of the label’s acts, ILLIT, had copied NewJeans’ identity, styling, choreography and music video concepts.

The CEO was granted a court injunction in May, which prevented Hybe from sacking her. But in August, ADOR announced she was standing down.

Initial reports stated that Min would continue to work as a producer for NewJeans, but she later announced she had rejected that offer, saying that Hybe’s terms were “unreasonable”.

After Min’s departure, NewJeans members Hanni, Minji and Danielle spoke to fans on the NewJeans community app Phoning about their frustration and disappointment.

“I was so frustrated with myself for not being able to solve anything,” Minji said, according to Korea Joong-An Daily. .

“I am so sorry that we’re going through this unnecessary trouble when there’s already not enough time in the day to focus on the good things.”

The band continued their promotional activities, however, including the launch of a lucrative new campaign as the faces of Calvin Klein.

But on 11 September, the same day they were nominated for two MTV Awards, they took the unprecedented step of setting up their own YouTube channel and posting a 27-minute long video entitled “What NewJeans Wanted To Say.”

Dressed mainly in black and reading a pre-prepared statement, the five-piece accused Hybe of fostering a toxic work environment and demanded Min’s reinstatement.

In the video, which has since been deleted, 18-year-old Haerin said that videos of the members as trainees, as well as their private medical information had been leaked. She claimed that Hybe “did not resolve the issue nor did it take any proactive measures”, despite being made aware of the situation by the girls’ parents. (Hybe has not responded to the claim).

Hanni, 19, also alleged that the manager of another girl group at Hybe had instructed its members to “ignore her” when they crossed paths at the company’s headquarters.

NewJeans concluded by setting a deadline of 25 September for Min’s reinstatement – although they did not specify what action they would take if thire demands were not met

“What we want is the original ADOR, where CEO Min Heejin integrates management and producing. The reason we are sharing this is because we believe this is the only way to avoid conflict with Hybe,” they said.

“If our message has been properly conveyed, we hope Chairman Bang [Si-Hyuk] and Hybe will wisely restore ADOR to its original state by the 25th.”

On 25 September, Hybe issued a statement to the Korea Herald, saying it would not honour NewJeans’ request.

However, Ador said Min could continue as both an internal director at Ador and NewJeans’ producer.

“The board has resolved to convene an extraordinary shareholders’ meeting to reappoint Min Hee-jin as an internal director,” Ador said in an official statement.

“However, the board cannot accept the request for her reinstatement as CEO at this time. Min Hee-jin’s role and authority as the producer for NewJeans are fully guaranteed, and further discussions on specific terms will take place in the future.”

The K-pop agency also claimed it had “made an offer to Min Hee-jin to stay on as the producer of NewJeans for the next five years, which is the whole duration of the girl group’s contract”, adding that it is “look[ing] forward to talking through the detailed conditions of the deal in the future”.

It is unclear whether the band will accept the new arrangement, which Hybe presumably hopes will be seen as an acceptable compromise.

However, the band have yet to comment on the deal; and Min immediately issued a press release, once again requesting her reinstatement as CEO to ensure the continued success of her artists.

Korean media have suggested that, if NewJeans choose not to accept Hybe’s terms, that they might try to “find legal grounds for contract violations” to get out of their deal, or even “pay a substantial penalty to terminate their contract”.

K-Pop fans are watching with bated breath.

Vladimir Putin says Russia would consider an attack from a non-nuclear state that was backed by a nuclear-armed one to be a “joint attack”, in what could be construed as a threat to use nuclear weapons in the war in Ukraine.

In key remarks on Wednesday night, the Russian president said his government was considering changing the rules and preconditions around which Russia would use its nuclear arsenal.

Ukraine is a non-nuclear state that receives military support from the US and other nuclear-armed countries.

His comments come as Kyiv seeks approval to use long-range Western missiles against military sites in Russia.

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky has travelled to the US this week and is due to meet US President Joe Biden in Washington on Thursday, where Kyiv’s request is expected to be top of the agenda.

Ukraine has pushed into Russian territory this year and wants to target bases inside Russia which it says are sending missiles into Ukraine.

Responding to Putin’s remarks, Zelensky’s chief of staff Andriy Yermak said Russia “no longer has anything other than nuclear blackmail to intimidate the world”.

Putin has threatened the use of nuclear weapons before. Ukraine has criticised it as “nuclear sabre-rattling” to deter its allies from providing further support.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken described the comments as “totally irresponsible” in an MSNBC television interview.

Russian ally China has also called for calm, with reports President Xi Jinping has warned Putin against using nuclear arms.

But on Wednesday, after a meeting with his Security Council, Putin announced the proposed radical expansion.

A new nuclear doctrine would “clearly set the conditions for Russia to transition to using nuclear weapons,” he warned – and said such scenarios included conventional missile strikes against Moscow.

He said that Russia would consider such a “possibility” of using nuclear weapons if it detected the start of a massive launch of missiles, aircraft and drones into its territory, which presented a “critical threat” to the country’s sovereignty.

He added: “It is proposed that aggression against Russia by any non-nuclear state, but with the participation or support of a nuclear state, be considered as their joint attack on the Russian Federation.”

The country’s nuclear arms were “the most important guarantee of security of our state and its citizens”, the Kremlin leader said.

Since the end of World War Two, nuclear-armed states have engaged in a policy of deterrence, which is based on the idea that if warring states were to launch major nuclear strikes it would lead to mutually assured destruction.

But there are also tactical nuclear weapons which are smaller warheads designed to destroy targets without widespread radioactive fallout.

In June, Putin delivered a warning to European countries supporting Ukraine, saying Russia had “many more [tactical nuclear weapons] than there are on the European continent, even if the United States brings theirs over.”

“Europe does not have a developed [early warning system],” he added. “In this sense they are more or less defenceless.”

At the time he had hinted of changes to Russia’s nuclear doctrine – the document which sets out the conditions under which Moscow would use nuclear weapons.

The Kremlin said on Thursday that changes outlined by Putin should be considered a warning to the West.

Elaborating on the move, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters: “It must be considered a specific signal – a signal that warns these countries of the consequences if they participate in an attack on our country by various means, not necessarily nuclear.”

Peskov said that Russia would make a decision on whether not to publish the updated nuclear documents, adding that adjustments to the document on state nuclear deterrence were being formulated.

Japan’s ruling party will vote for its new leader on Friday, following Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s announcement last month that he would not stand for re-election.

Whoever is named the new chief of the conservative Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), which has ruled Japan for most of the post-war era, will become prime minister since the party has a parliamentary majority.

But the election comes at a turbulent time for the LDP, which has been rocked by scandals and internal conflicts that have disbanded its once-powerful factions.

Nine candidates are contesting the vote, the largest number in the LDP’s history, with three frontrunners offering very different visions for Japan’s future.

The first is political veteran Shigeru Ishiba, 67, a former defence minister contesting the LDP leadership for the fifth time. Ishiba’s blunt candour and public criticism of Prime Minister Kishida – a rarity in Japanese politics – has rankled fellow party members while resonating with members of the public.

Also popular is 43-year-old Shinjiro Koizumi, the youngest candidate, who offers a fresh face and the promise of reforming the LDP in the eyes of the public. Koizumi is the son of former “maverick” prime minister Junichiro Koizumi, and is favoured by younger voters and women – but critics argue that he lacks experience.

Third in the running is Sanae Takaichi, 63, who is vying to become the LDP’s – and Japan’s – first female leader. A close ally to late former prime minister Shinzo Abe, Takaichi is one of two women vying for the LDP leadership, but is also among the more conservative of the candidates.

Takaichi’s positions on women’s issues are also in contrast to those of Koizumi and Ishiba.

Koizumi supports legislation allowing women to retain their maiden name, while Ishiba is in favour of allowing female emperors – a hugely controversial issue opposed by many LDP member and successive governments. Takaichi opposes both stances because they break with tradition.

The winner of Friday’s contest will be decided by an internal party vote, rather than a public one. Consistent among the frontrunners, however, is a pledge to overhaul the embattled LDP in the face of public fury and plummeting approval ratings.

“In the upcoming presidential election, it’s necessary to show the people that the Liberal Democratic Party will change,” Prime Minister Kishida said at a press conference last month, when announcing his decision not to run for another term.

The LDP leadership contest is not just a race for the top job, but also an attempt to regain public trust that the party has haemorrhaged over the past few months amid a stagnant economy, struggling households and a series of political scandals.

Chief among these scandals are revelations regarding the extent of influence that Japan’s controversial Unification Church wields within the LDP, as well as suspicions that party factions underreported political funding over the course of several years.

The fallout from the political funding scandal led to the dissolution of five out of six factions in the LDP – factions that have long been the party’s backbone, and whose support is typically crucial to winning an LDP leadership election.

Perhaps more salient in the minds of the Japanese public, however, are the country’s deepening economic woes.

In the wake of the Covid pandemic, average Japanese families have been feeling the pinch as they struggle with a weak yen, a stagnant economy and food prices that are soaring at the fastest rate in almost half a century.

Meanwhile, data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) shows that wages in Japan have barely changed in 30 years. That drawn-out slump, coupled with 30-year-high inflation, is tightening the screws on Japanese households and prompting calls for government help.

It’s also damaging the LDP’s historically favourable standing among voters.

“People are tired of the LDP,” Mieko Nakabayashi, former opposition MP and political science professor at Tokyo’s Waseda University, told the BBC. “They’re frustrated with the inflation that they are facing currently and the so-called ‘lost 30 years’. The Japanese currency is low, lots of imports got expensive with inflation, and many people see it.”

Another major agenda item is the issue of Japan’s ageing and shrinking population, which puts pressure on social and medical services and presents a real challenge for the country’s medium and long-term workforce. Whoever takes charge of the LDP, and in turn government, will have to rethink how Japan operates its labour market and whether it should shift its attitudes towards immigration.

It’s a desperately needed recalibration in the lead-up to the Japanese general election, which is set to take place by October 2025 – or sooner, as some of the candidates have indicated. Koizumi, for example, has said that he would call a general election soon after the LDP contest.

The last two weeks of campaigning for the LDP leadership are seen by experts as an audition for the general election. For that reason, candidates have been presenting themselves not only to fellow party members but also to the public, in an attempt to win over the electorate.

“The public are changing,” Kunihiko Miyake, a visiting professor at Kyoto’s Ritsumeikan University who has worked closely with both Abe and Kishida, told the BBC. “It’s time for the conservative politics in this country to adapt to a new political environment and political battlefield.”

Also in the running for the LDP leadership are Foreign Minister Yoko Kamikawa, 71, who is the other female candidate; Digital Transformation Minister Taro Kono, 61; Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi, 63; Toshimitsu Motegi, 68, the LDP’s secretary-general; Takayuki Kobayashi, 49, a former economic security minister; and Katsunobu Kato, 68, a former chief cabinet secretary.

Four of the nine have served as foreign minister; three as defence minister.

Results of the party leadership contest are set to be announced on Friday, the same day as the vote. A first round of voting will see LDP lawmakers casting 367 ballots, followed by another 368 votes to represent the party’s membership base of approximately 1.1 million.

If no-one wins a majority, a run-off will be held between the top two candidates. The ultimate winner will then be announced as prime minister by parliament, which is expected to take place in early October.