Actress Dame Maggie Smith, known for the Harry Potter films and Downton Abbey, has died at the age of 89, her family has said.

A legend of British stage and screen, she won two Oscars during her career – for The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie in 1970 and California Suite in 1979.

She had four other nominations, and received seven Bafta awards.

Leading the tributes, Prime Minister Keir Starmer said Dame Maggie “was beloved by so many for her great talent, becoming a true national treasure whose work will be cherished for generations to come”.

In the Harry Potter films, Dame Maggie played the acerbic Professor Minerva McGonagall, famous for her pointed witch’s hat and stern manner with the young wizards at Hogwarts.

In hit ITV drama Downton Abbey, she played Violet Crawley, the Dowager Countess of Grantham, the grand matriarch who excelled at withering one-liners through the show’s six series.

• Follow live: Tributes to Dame Maggie Smith
• Obituary: A formidable star on stage and screen

A statement from her sons Toby Stephens and Chris Larkin said: “It is with great sadness we have to announce the death of Dame Maggie Smith.

“She passed away peacefully in hospital early this morning, Friday 27th September.

“An intensely private person, she was with friends and family at the end. She leaves two sons and five loving grandchildren who are devastated by the loss of their extraordinary mother and grandmother.”

They thanked “the wonderful staff at the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital for their care and unstinting kindness during her final days”.

They added: “We thank you for all your kind messages and support and ask that you respect our privacy at this time.”

Tributes were also paid by her co-stars.

Hugh Bonneville, who appeared in Downton Abbey, said: “Anyone who ever shared a scene with Maggie will attest to her sharp eye, sharp wit and formidable talent.

“She was a true legend of her generation and thankfully will live on in so many magnificent screen performances. My condolences to her boys and wider family.”

Dame Maggie also reprised her role for the two Downton Abbey films.

In 2022’s Downton Abbey: A New Era, her character died of the illness she revealed at the end of the 2019 film, to the huge upset of her family and friends.

Downton followed the success of 2002 period drama Gosford Park, which earned Dame Maggie both Oscar and Bafta nominations for playing Dowager Countess of Trentham.

In his statement on Friday, the prime minister said Dame Maggie “introduced us to new worlds with the countless stories she acted over her long career”.

“Our thoughts are with her family and loved ones. May she rest in peace,” he wrote.

Dame Kristin Scott-Thomas, who starred alongside Dame Maggie in 2005’s Keeping Mum and 2014’s My Old Lady, said she “took acting very seriously but saw through the nonsense and razzmatazz”.

“She really didn’t want to deal with that,” Dame Kristin added.

“She had a sense of humour and wit that could reduce me to a blithering puddle of giggles. And she did not have patience with fools. So you had to be a bit careful. I absolutely adored her.

“The last time I saw her, she was very cross about being old. ‘Maddening’ I think she said. Much loved, much admired and irreplaceable.”

A National Theatre spokesperson said her career “spanned the theatrical, film and television world without equal”.

Praising her stage performances, the statement added: “She will forever be remembered as one of the greatest actors this country has had the inestimable pleasure of witnessing.

“Her deep intelligence, effortless dexterity, sublime craft and sharp wit were simply legendary.”

Bafta added that she was a “legend of British stage and screen”, praising her five competitive Bafta wins, plus the special award and fellowship she received from the organisation.

Dame Maggie’s career spanned eight decades, with early acclaim coming when she gained her first Bafta nomination for Nowhere to Go in 1958.

In 1963, she was offered the part of Desdemona in Othello at the National Theatre by Laurence Olivier, and two years later it was made into a film and Smith was nominated for her first Oscar.

The actress’s other memorable roles included 1985 Merchant Ivory film A Room With a View, in which she played the chaperone Charlotte Barlett, accompanying Helen Bonham Carter’s Lucy Honeychurch to Italy.

The role earned her another Oscar nomination and a Bafta.

And along with another national treasure, Dame Judi Dench, she appeared as an English woman living in 1930s Italy in the film Tea with Mussolini, which was released in 1999.

The two dames also shared screen time in A Room With a View and The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel.

Dame Maggie played the firm but fair Reverend Mother in the two Sister Act films, starring Whoopi Goldberg as nightclub singer Doloris Wilson, who takes refuge from the mob in San Francisco by posing as a nun in a local convent.

Goldberg called Dame Maggie “a great woman and a brilliant actress”, adding: “I still can’t believe I was lucky enough to work with the ‘one-of-a-kind’.”

Rob Lowe, who starred with Dame Maggie in 1993’s Suddenly, Last Summer, recalled “the unforgettable experience of working with her”.

“Sharing a two-shot was like being paired with a lion,” he said.

“She could eat anyone alive, and often did. But funny, and great company. And suffered no fools.

“We will never see another. God speed, Ms Smith!”

The veteran actress also played the old woman who spent 15 years living in a van outside Alan Bennett’s house in a film adaptation of the writer’s The Lady in the Van in 2015.

Her final roles included 2023’s The Miracle Club, which follows a group of women from Dublin who go on a pilgrimage to the French town of Lourdes, co-starring Kathy Bates and Laura Linney.

Japan’s scandal-hit ruling party has elected Shigeru Ishiba as its new leader, positioning the former defence chief as Japan’s next leader.

Ishiba, 67, said he would clean up his Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), revitalise the economy and address security threats after winning Friday’s party election.

Since the LDP has a parliamentary majority, its party chief will become prime minister and Ishiba is expected to be appointed to the role on Tuesday.

The change of guard comes at a turbulent time for the party, which has been rocked by scandals and internal conflicts that disbanded its once-powerful factions.

Nine candidates contested for the party leadership after Prime Minister Fumio Kishida announced last month that he would not stand for re-election.

Ishiba led in most opinion polls, with this being his fifth and, he said, final bid to lead the LDP, which has ruled Japan for most of the post-war era. It headed into a run-off between Ishiba and Sanae Takaichi, 63, who vied to become Japan’s first female leader.

“We ought to be a party that lets members discuss the truth in a free and open manner, a party that is fair and impartial on all matters and a party with humility,” he told a press conference.

Ishiba is in favour of allowing female emperors – a hugely controversial issue opposed by many LDP member and successive governments.

His 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.

Ishiba is well-versed on the machinations of party politics as well as security policies. He said Japan must strengthen its security in view of recent incursions from Russia and China into Japan’s territory and North Korea’s missile tests.

At a moment of flux within the LDP, he offers a safe pair of hands and stability.

What he doesn’t offer is a fresh face for an organisation desperate to reinvent itself and regain public trust amid a stagnant economy, struggling households and a series of political scandals. His economic strategy includes boosting wages to counter rising prices.

He has said that he reads three books a day and that he prefers doing that instead of mingling with his party colleagues.

Takaichi, on the other hand, was one of two women vying for the LDP leadership, but was also among the more conservative of the candidates.

A close ally to late former prime minister Shinzo Abe, Takaichi’s positions on women’s issues are in line with the LDP’s policy of having women serve in their traditional roles of being good mothers and wives.

She opposes legislation allowing women to retain their maiden name as well as allowing female emperors.

Consistent among the frontrunners, however, was a pledge to overhaul the LDP – which has held power almost continuously since it was formed in 1955 – 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,” 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.”

The other seven candidates in the first round were 43-year-old Shinjiro Koizumi, the youngest candidate; 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.

A Chinese nuclear-powered attack submarine sank in its dock earlier this year while under construction, in a major setback for the Chinese military, according to US defence officials.

Speaking on condition of anonymity to the BBC’s US partner, CBS, the officials said the loss of the submarine probably happened between May and June.

Satellite images taken in June show what appear to be floating salvage cranes at the berth in Wuhan where, a month previously, the vessel had been seen. Beijing has not confirmed the reports.

The US officials said it was “not surprising” the Chinese military would have covered up the loss of one of its newest assets.

It is unclear whether the submarine was carrying nuclear fuel at the time.

A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson said on Friday he was not familiar with the topic and did not provide any information when asked about it at a Beijing news conference.

The incident raises questions about China’s defence industry, which is allegedly riddled with corruption.

China has the biggest navy in the world, with more than 370 ships, and is currently producing a new generation of nuclear-armed submarines, the Zhou-class, of which this was the first.

Taiwan has said it carried out its own investigations into the fate of the submarine and had “a grasp of the situation through multiple intelligence and surveillance methods”, but gave no further details.

Thomas Shugart, a former US Navy submariner and an analyst at the Center for a New American Security, first noticed the incident involving the submarine in July.

He told the BBC the sinking was a “setback” that would cause “pretty significant embarrassment” for the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) navy, but the safety risk was probably “pretty low”.

However, he added: “If this ship eventually does get repaired, and I’m sure it will, it’ll be a far more capable submarine than what they were building before at that shipyard.

“I do not see it significantly altering the really impressive upward trajectory of the PLA navy’s capability.”

The sinking comes at a time when Beijing been increasingly assertive in laying claim to virtually the whole South China Sea, which is crucial to international trade.

It has long-standing maritime disputes with other nations in the region, including Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam.

Just Stop Oil supporters have thrown soup over two Vincent van Gogh paintings, hours after two activists were given jail sentences for targeting one of the same works of art.

Three protesters threw an orange-coloured soup at Sunflowers 1888 and Sunflowers 1889 in the Poets and Lovers exhibition at the National Gallery in central London. They have been arrested on suspicion of causing criminal damage.

Earlier, Phoebe Plummer, 23, was given a two-year jail term, while Anna Holland, 22, got 20 months, for throwing soup over Sunflowers 1888 in October 2022.

The National Gallery said the two paintings targeted on Friday had been removed for examination were found to be undamaged.

As the latest activists – two women and a man – threw soup over the two paintings, onlookers could be heard shouting “no” and “don’t do it”.

In a video, posted on X by JSO, the activists can be heard telling an angry crowd: “There are people in prison for demanding an end to new oil and gas, something which is now government policy after sustained, disruptive actions, countless headlines and the resulting political pressure.

“Future generations will regard these prisoners of conscience to be on the right side of history.”

A spokesperson for the gallery said three people entered Room 6 of the exhibition just after 14:30 BST and threw a soup-like substance over two works.

The Metropolitan Police said three people had been held on suspicion of causing criminal damage and its inquiries were continuing.

It is the third time in recent years an artwork at the National Gallery has been selected as a target for protest action.

In July 2022, two supporters glued themselves to John Constable’s The Hay Wain.

Rebel groups have rejected a peace offer from Myanmar’s embattled junta, which is reeling from battlefield losses and defections in a civil war that has dragged on for more than three years.

This is dictatorship’s first such outreach since it seized power in 2021. It also comes after a ceasefire brokered by China in the northern Shan state fell apart.

The junta called on ethnic armed groups and “terrorist insurgent groups” to “communicate with us to solve political problems politically”, also urging them to join elections planned for next year.

The exiled National Unity Government (NUG) said the offer was not worth considering, adding the junta had no authority to hold an election.

The junta extended an olive branch Thursday as it struggled to fight on multiple fronts and stem a widespread rebellion.

Some reports say the junta now has control of less than half of Myanmar’s territories.

In June, an alliance of three ethnic armies renewed an offensive against the military, seizing territory along a key highway to China’s Yunnan province, which borders Myanmar.

The fighting near the border in Shan state has blocked China’s ambitious plan to connect its landlocked south-west to the Indian Ocean via Myanmar.

Beijing’s top diplomat, Wang Yi, is thought to have delivered a warning to the country’s ruler Min Aung Hlaing during a visit to Myanmar last month.

Armed groups should follow “the path of party politics and elections in order to bring about lasting peace and development”, the junta said in its statement on Thursday.

“The country’s human resources, basic infrastructure and many people’s lives have been lost, and the country’s stability and development have been blocked [because of the conflict]” it said.

But the rebel groups are sceptical of the offer.

The Karen National Union (KNU), which has been fighting for decades with the military for more autonomy along the border with Thailand, told AFP news agency that talks were only possible if the military agreed to “common political objectives”.

“Number one: no military participation in future politics. Two [the military] has to agree to a federal democratic constitution,” KNU spokesman Padoh Saw Taw Nee told AFP.

“Number three: they have to be accountable for everything they have committed… including war crimes and crimes against humanity,” he said. “No impunity.”

If the junta does not accede to these demands, the KNU will “keep putting pressure on [the junta] politically and militarily,” he added.

Maung Saungkha, the leader of the Bamar People’s Liberation Army, told Reuters news agency that his group is “not interested in this offer”.

“They are hanging goat’s heads but selling dog meat,” Soe Thu Ya Zaw, commander of the Mandalay People’s Defense Forces, wrote on Facebook.

After the military ousted Myanmar’s democratically-elected government in 2021, peaceful protests were met with killings and arrests.

This led ethnic armed groups to join forces with anti-coup militias across the country to fight back, plunging the country into a civil war.

At least 50,000 people have been killed since the coup and more than two million people displaced, according to the United Nations.

The UN warned last week that Myanmar was “sinking into an abyss of human suffering”. Eyewitnesses had previously told the BBC about how the military has tourtued people in its custody, including by pouring burning petrol on them and forcing some to drink their urine.

Donald Trump met Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky at his New York base in Trump Tower on Friday and said it was time Russia’s war in Ukraine was settled.

The Republican presidential nominee has repeatedly criticised the Ukrainian leader on the US campaign trail, and a meeting between the pair had seemed unlikely until hours before.

As the two men stood side by side, Zelensky said he thought they had a “common view that the war has to be stopped and Putin can’t win”, adding that he would discuss with Trump details of his “victory plan”.

Despite years of differences, Trump insisted he had a very good relationship with Zelensky: “I also have a very good relationship as you know with President Putin and I think if we win [the election] we’re going to get it resolved very quickly.”

“It has to end, [Zelensky] is going through hell, his country’s going through hell like few countries have ever,” he told reporters.

The pair have endured a tumultuous relationship. Trump was impeached in 2019 over accusations that he pressured Zelensky to dig up damaging information on the Biden family.

A rough transcript of the call revealed Trump had urged Zelensky to investigate Joe Biden, as well as Biden’s son Hunter.

Standing beside Zelensky on Friday, he praised the Ukrainian leader’s handling of the issue.

Since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Trump has frequently repeated Moscow’s talking points about the war. During September’s presidential debate, he sidestepped a question on whether he wanted Ukraine to emerge victorious in the conflict.

Ahead of Friday’s meeting, Trump repeated his long-standing claim that he would be able to “work out something” to settle the war if he won the presidential election, long before Joe Biden leaves office in January.

He has refused to elaborate when asked whether he believes Ukraine should cede territory to Russia as a means of ending the war.

Although Zelensky has been visiting the US since Sunday, their meeting was only confirmed on Thursday night, when Trump posted a screenshot of a text message from President Zelensky saying it was “important for us to have a personal contact and to understand each other 100%”.

There have been tensions all week 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, including state Governor Josh Shapiro, earlier this week.

Zelensky’s trip to the key swing state was labelled by leading Republicans as a partisan campaign event. In a public letter, House Speaker Mike Johnson said the visit was “designed to help Democrats” and claimed it amounted to “election interference”.

Trump has 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”.

In contrast, Zelensky recently told the New Yorker magazine that he believes 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.”

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.

Hours before, Biden had announced a further $7.9bn (£5.9bn) package of military assistance to Ukraine.

As Zelensky visited the US, drone attacks continued in Ukraine. On Thursday night, three people were killed and 14 others wounded in a Russian drone attack on Izmail, a port city on the River Danube.

Russia has targeted Izmail’s grain export facilities in the past. Prosecutors say two boys aged three and 13, and a girl aged 14, were among those wounded in the latest attack.

Romania’s defence ministry said it was possible that one of the Russian drones involved in the attack had crossed the border into Romania, a Nato member state, for a very short period.

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.

The military attacked across two bridges which up until now have been closed and contested. Reports say it has secured a bridgehead on the eastern side for the first time since the conflict began.

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 for four hours to a market in army-controlled territory at the edge of Omdurman, where food is cheaper.

The women had come from an area in Sudan called Dar es Salaam, which is 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 Sudan’s 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

Nicola Bulley’s partner has described the social media fixation and online obsession with her disappearance as a “monster” that got out of control.

Speaking publicly for the first time since Nicola’s body was found, Paul Ansell tells the BBC the family felt the initial wave of interest in the case was a positive thing.

They hoped it would keep the pressure on Lancashire Police to keep searching for her, he says. But that was quickly overtaken by a wave of amateur social media “sleuths” posting hurtful and wildly misleading claims about the case – with the family receiving online hate.

“I think anything like that is a double-edged sword,” he adds. “That’s the problem. You’re poking a monster.”

The Lancashire mother-of-two disappeared on 27 January 2023 while walking her dog in St Michael’s on Wyre, shortly after dropping her daughters off at school.

Her body was found in a river on 19 February and an inquest in June last year found she had died due to accidental drowning.

A documentary, called the Search For Nicola Bulley, explores the media coverage and the impact of amateur internet sleuths conducting their own investigations, as well as hearing from Lancashire Police and Nicola’s family.

The Friday morning of her disappearance was “normal”, Paul tells the documentary.

He says Nicola left at about 08:30 to take their two children to school with the family’s dog, Willow.

When she didn’t return at the usual time, Paul says he wasn’t overly worried. But at about 10:30 the children’s school rang to say somebody had found their dog and Nicola’s phone by a bench.

“I mean, that’s not a normal phone call to get,” he tells the documentary. “She would never have left Willow.”

He says he immediately knew “something isn’t right here” and recalls feeling like he was having a panic attack.

“It’s where you feel like your legs have gone. In a situation like that, your mind is going absolutely crazy. And so I rang the police as I was driving.”

“That Friday, I was just sat at my desk, and I got a phone call from Paul,” Louise Cunningham, Nicola’s sister tells the documentary. “And he was panicky and frantic, and he was like, ‘something’s happened, something strange has happened’.”

The documentary hears the turmoil the family went through as the search for Nicola intensified – as well as the impact it had on Nicola and Paul’s young children.

“The nights were the hardest,” Paul remembers of the search. ”In the morning the hope would be strong. It used to go dark at like 4pm.

“It used to get to about 3pm and then I’d start panicking that I knew it would start going dark in an hour. So we had an hour to find her.

“And then obviously I’d have the girls. The first they’d do when they came out of school was run over and say ‘have we found mummy?”

“One morning, I got up,” Nicola’s mother, Dorothy, tells the programme. “The youngest one, she says: ‘Cold, isn’t it, Nanny?’ She said: ‘I hope mummy’s not cold and hungry’.”

As the search for Nicola continued, so-called “amateur detectives” began travelling to Lancashire to see what they could find.

As their fascination with the case spiralled, police became increasingly concerned they might interfere with the investigation.

And the amount of online hate focused on the family began to get worse.

“I was getting direct messages from people that I’ve never met – they don’t know me, they don’t know us, they don’t know Nikki,” Paul says.

He was told “you can’t hide” and “we know what you did”. Unable to reply, he says he felt “silenced”.

“On top of the trauma of the nightmare that we’re in, to then think that all these horrendous things are being said about me towards Nikki – everyone has a limit.”

At a news conference days before she was found, Lancashire Police told the public Nicola had “significant issues” with alcohol brought on by her ongoing struggles with the menopause.

“It’s not uncommon to go through it young,” Louise tells the documentary. “But Nikki had it tough. And then, I guess, over about a three-week period in total, she just wasn’t functioning like normal Nikki.”

Paul describes how Nicola developed trouble sleeping. “The lack of sleep, irritability, brain fog – she’d be awake for hours in the night, hot sweats every single day. Everything was becoming difficult.”

The family says Nicola stopped taking her hormone replacement therapy over that period and began drinking to deal with it.

“It was literally [a] normal, weird blip. That’s the most honest answer I can give you,” Louise says.

Police officers investigating Nicola’s disappearance say they felt they had to release personal information about her struggle with the menopause and drinking.

“Because of the commentary that was coming up on social media, Paul was just key to a lot of people’s theories, and we had to negate that,” says Det Supt Rebecca Smith, who played a key role in the investigation.

The family were not happy about Nicola’s alcohol and menopause struggles being revealed to the public, with Paul saying Nicola would have been “mortified” about the information being shared.

“Went mad again, didn’t it, in the media,” recalls Louise. Nicola’s family criticised parts of the press for what they described as “absolutely appalling” conduct.

The family’s worst fears came true on 19 February, three weeks after Nicola’s disappearance, when police were called to reports of a body in the River Wyre.

Visibly upset, Det Supt Smith tells the documentary about the moment Nicola was found and describes sitting in a police tent with her body “for quite a long time until she was taken to hospital.”

Reliving the moment the family was informed about Nicola’s body being found, Louise says: “I’ll never forget dad coming into the kitchen. Just, like, completely breaking down and Paul being out in the garden. Just in a complete state.”

“I’ll never forget the cries,” says Nicola’s dad Ernest, who describes hugging his son-in-law Paul as they tried to process the devastating news.

Last year, a coroner recorded Ms Bulley’s death as accidental, saying she had fallen into the river and suffered “cold water shock”, and there was “no evidence” to suggest suicide.

Police accused people on TikTok of “playing private detectives” in the area, and said they had been “inundated with false information, accusations and rumours” relating to the case.

“It doesn’t always have to be something sinister linked to something that happens,” Louise says.

“Sometimes bad things just happen. I just wish it didn’t happen to us. We’re just a normal family. We’ve had a really tough time.”

Paul says he still sees Nicola in the faces of the couple’s two daughters.

“I see her in the girls every single day. I see all these little mannerisms in them and I’m like ‘that was Mummy, you know?’ And that is worth everything, I think.”

• The Search for Nicola Bulley will be broadcast on BBC One on 3 October at 21:00 BST and on BBC iPlayer

More than half of Argentina’s 46 million people are now living in poverty, new figures indicate, in a blow to right-wing President Javier Milei’s efforts to turn around the country’s beleaguered economy.

The poverty figure for the first six months of this year was 52.9%, up from 41.7% in the second half of 2023, said the country’s Indec statistics agency.

Since taking office in December, Milei has slashed subsidies for transport, fuel and energy and sacked thousands of civil servants, as he seeks to bring down inflation and reduce government expenditure.

Argentina’s annual inflation rate in August remained one of the highest in the world at more than 230%.

• Have Milei’s first six months improved the Argentine economy?
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However, Milei has successfully curbed rampant government overspending, widely blamed for the country’s economic woes. After years of racking up huge budget deficits, Argentina has seen fiscal surpluses every month since February.

Speaking at a news conference, government spokesperson Manuel Adorni blamed previous left-leaning Peronist governments for the current troubles.

He described the increase in poverty as “a consequence of the populism that has subjected Argentina to so many years of misfortune and devastation”.

“The government inherited a disastrous situation, the worst inheritance that a government has received in a democracy, perhaps one of the worst that a government has received in history,” he added.

Poverty was already on the rise in Argentina before the Milei government took office. As recently as 2017, only about a quarter of the population were affected.

When Milei assumed the presidency, he promised shock therapy, devaluing the peso by 50% and cutting the number of government ministries by half.

But the president faces strong opposition, including from trade unions, who have repeatedly taken to the streets in protest at his programme and its effect on workers’ rights.

Adding to his difficulties, his La Libertad Avanza coalition (Freedom Advances) does not command a majority in the Argentine Congress and has found it hard to strike cross-party deals.

Peronist lawmakers were quick to attack the figures, with one – Victoria Tolosa Paz – accusing the government of pursuing “relentless austerity” policies which she said were “battering working families”.

While Milei’s approval rating fell between August and September to 40%, his government remains relatively popular with Argentines at 53%, according to pollster Poliarquía.

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.

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.

• Explained: What is Hezbollah and why is Israel attacking Lebanon?
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• Analysis: Israel is gambling Hezbollah will crumple but it faces a well-armed, angry enemy
• Watch: Deserted streets in Israel’s border towns

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 what the “breakthrough” did not mean – as it has become abundantly clear on the ground – was that Israel and Hezbollah had reached an agreement.

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.

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.

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.

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.”

• Live: Latest news on Israel and Hezbollah
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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.”

Dame Maggie Smith, who has died at the age of 89, brought an incredible range of expression to her roles, winning high praise from directors and fellow actors alike.

It was said of her that she never took a role lightly and would often be pacing around at rehearsals going over her lines while the rest of the cast was on a break.

In a profession notorious for its uncertainties her career was notable for its longevity.

She made her acting debut in 1952 and was still working six decades later having moved from aspiring star to national treasure.

• Acting legend Dame Maggie Smith dies at 89
• Follow live: Tributes to Dame Maggie Smith

Margaret Natalie Smith was born in Ilford, Essex, on 28 December 1934, the daughter of a pathologist.

With war looming the family moved to Oxford and the young Maggie attended the Oxford School for Girls.

She started out in the theatre as a prompt girl and understudy at the Oxford Repertory. She once claimed that she never got onto the stage while she was there because no-one in the company ever fell ill.

Her company moved to a small theatre in London in 1955 where she attracted the attention of an American producer, Leonard Stillman, who cast her in New Faces, a revue that opened on Broadway in June 1956.

She stood out among the cast of unknowns and, on her return to London, was offered a six-month stint in the revue Share My Lettuce opposite Kenneth Williams.

Her first film role was an uncredited part in the 1956 production Child in the House.

Two years later she was nominated for a Bafta as best newcomer in the 1958 melodrama Nowhere to Go, in which she played a girl who shelters an escaped convict.

The Times, describing her role in the hit London production of Mary Mary in 1963, said that she was “the salvation of this fluffy Broadway comedy”.

She nearly stole the show from Richard Burton in the film The VIPs when she appeared in a pivotal scene with the Welsh star.

One critic noted that “when Maggie Smith is on the screen, the picture moves,” and Burton afterwards teasingly described her upstaging of him as “grand larceny”.

Later in 1963, Laurence Olivier offered her the part of Desdemona opposite his Othello, at the National Theatre. The production, with the original cast, was made into a film two years later, with Smith being nominated for an Academy Award.

The role which brought her international fame came in 1969 when she played the determinedly non-conformist teacher in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie.

The part won her a best actress Oscar.

She also married her co-star Robert Stephens.

The actress continued with the National Theatre for another two years including a performance as Mrs Sullen in the Restoration comedy The Beaux’ Stratagem in Los Angeles.

She received another Oscar nomination for best actress after playing Aunt Augusta in the George Cukor film, Travels With My Aunt, in 1972.

She and Stephens divorced in 1975, and a year later she was married to the playwright, Beverley Cross, and also moved to Canada and spent four years in a repertory company where she took on weightier roles in Macbeth and Richard III.

One critic, writing of her performance as Lady Macbeth, decided she had “merged her own vivid personality with that of her charismatic subject”.

Despite her success she was modest about her achievements, stating simply that “One went to school, one wanted to act, one started to act, and one’s still acting.”

She continued to work in the cinema playing opposite Peter Ustinov in the 1978 film, Death on the Nile and, in the same year, the part of Diana Barrie in Neil Simon’s California Suite.

The 80s saw a number of memorable cinema performances, and more awards including Baftas for A Private Function and A Room With A View, the latter also garnering her a Golden Globe and an Oscar nomination.

There were more Baftas, first for her interpretation of the ageing alcoholic in The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne and then in Bed Among The Lentils, one of Alan Bennett’s Talking Heads series for the BBC.

It was back to the stage in 1987 in Lettice and Lovage at the Globe Theatre in London before the production transferred to New York. But her run was interrupted after she suffered a bicycle accident and then learned she would need eye surgery.

When she finally resumed work on Lettice and Lovage, after a 12 month break, her New York performance won her a Tony.

In 1990 she was created DBE and, a year later, appeared as the ageing Wendy in Hook, Stephen Spielberg’s sequel to Peter Pan.

Other films followed including Sister Act, alongside Whoopi Goldberg, and The Secret Garden for which she was nominated for a Bafta.

The new century brought a Bafta and an Emmy nomination for role as Betsey Trotwood in the BBC production of David Copperfield.

A year later, she appeared as Professor McGonagall in Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, a role she would reprise in all of the subsequent Potter movies.

She was, reportedly, the only performer the author JK Rowling specifically asked for, bringing a small touch of Miss Jean Brodie to Hogwarts.

In 2004 she appeared with her long time friend and fellow Dame Judi Dench, in the gentle drama Ladies in Lavender.

The New York Times decided that Smith and Dench “sink into their roles as comfortably as house cats burrowing into a down quilt on a windswept, rainy night”.

Two years later she was the cash-strapped Countess of Trentham in Gosford Park, Robert Altman’s take on the English country house murder.

Her performance was a delight, with a veneer of snobbery from which would emerge the masterly put down, particularly in the case of Mr Novello’s failed movie.

It was a role that she arguably reprised in all but name when she was cast in ITV drama, Downton Abbey. The name of her character may have changed to the Dowager Countess of Grantham but the performance was similar in essence.

“It’s true I don’t tolerate fools, but then they don’t tolerate me, so I am spiky,” she once said. “Maybe that’s why I’m quite good at playing spiky elderly ladies.”

She remained with the Downton Abbey cast until 2015 when the series finally came to an end, reprising the role for two films in 2019 and 2022.

In 2007, while filming Harry Potter and The Half-Blood Prince she was diagnosed with breast cancer. She was given the all-clear after two years of treatment.

Despite being left feeling weak after her illness, she went on to star in the final Harry Potter film and received a Bafta nomination for her role in the 2012 film, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel.

In 2015 she gave a moving performance in the film, The Lady in the Van, based on the true tale of Mary Shepherd, an elderly woman who lived in a dilapidated van on the writer Alan Bennett’s driveway in London for 15 years.

She had previously appeared in the stage version of the story, for which she won an Olivier for Best Actress, and a 2009 BBC Radio 4 adaptation of Bennett’s play.

Dame Maggie gave few interviews but she was once asked to define the appeal of acting. “I like the ephemeral thing about theatre, every performance is like a ghost – it’s there and then it’s gone.”

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. The Biden-Harris administration, however, has maintained, and even at times increased, the more narrowly focused tariffs that Trump imposed on China during his first term in office.

Trump’s protectionist 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.

In this abbreviated presidential campaign for her, she has a shorter timeframe to define herself in the eyes of voters, so focusing on America’s main economic competitor may be less of a priority for the Democrat.

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.

“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.”

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, 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.

Here’s 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.

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.”

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

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• Journalist’s apology not enough to satisfy Ghanaian king
• The journey that helped save Nigeria’s art for the nation

A controversial women’s-only museum exhibit could soon re-open in Australia, after an appeal judge overturned a ruling that it breached anti-discrimination laws.

The luxurious Ladies Lounge at the Museum of Old and New Art (Mona) in Hobart had sought to highlight historic misogyny by banning male visitors from entering.

It was forced to shut in May when one affected patron sued the gallery for gender discrimination and won.

But on Friday, Tasmanian Supreme Court Justice Shane Marshall found that men could be excluded from the Ladies Lounge, because the law allows for discrimination if it promotes “equal opportunity” for a marginalised group.

“(The Ladies Lounge provides) women with a rare glimpse of what it is like to be advantaged rather than disadvantaged,” he said.

Kirsha Kaechele, the artist who created the exhibit, called the ruling a “big win”.

“It took 30 seconds for the decision to be delivered – 30 seconds to quash the patriarchy,” she said in a statement.

“Today’s verdict demonstrates a simple truth: women are better than men.”

Mona has a longstanding reputation for being provocative, and the exclusive opulence and pageantry of the the Ladies Lounge – which opened in 2020 and housed some of the museum’s most acclaimed works – is no different.

Ms Kaechele said that she had created the space to highlight the exclusion Australian women faced for decades, such as the decision to ban them from drinking in the main section of bars until 1965.

She described the exhibit as a “flipped universe” that provided a much needed “reset from this strange and disjointed world of male domination”.

But one man felt that the message was unlawful, and after being denied entry into the lounge last year, New South Wales native Jason Lau took his case to the Tasmania’s civil and administrative tribunal.

Representing himself throughout the case, he argued that the museum had violated the state’s anti-discrimination act by failing to provide “a fair provision of goods and services in line with the law” to him and other ticket holders who didn’t identify as female.

Mona had responded by claiming the rejection Mr Lau had felt was part of the artwork – so he hadn’t missed out – but the tribunal dismissed that reasoning. Further, it found that women no longer experienced the same level of exclusion from public spaces as they had in the past.

The new ruling will now send the case back to the tribunal, which will have to reconsider its judgement.

A spokesperson from Mona said that several steps remain before the lounge can officially re-open – including the tribunal’s updated ruling.

But the legal team representing the museum said Friday’s decision recognised the intended purpose of the Ladies Lounge “to highlight and challenge inequality that exists for woman in all spaces today”.

“I look forward to sharing what comes next. I think a celebration is in store,” Ms Kaechele added.

Facebook parent company Meta has been fined €91m (£75m) by the Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) following an investigation into the storage of passwords.

An inquiry was launched in April 2019 after Meta notified the DPC that it had inadvertently stored certain passwords of social media users on its internal systems without encryption.

The DPC submitted a draft decision to other European data watchdogs in June 2024.

No objections were raised by the other authorities.

Meta has been found to have four breaches of General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

DPC deputy commissioner Graham Doyle said: “It is widely accepted that user passwords should not be stored in ‘plaintext’ considering the risks of abuse that arise from persons accessing such data.

“It must be borne in mind, that the passwords the subject of consideration in this case are particularly sensitive, as they would enable access to users’ social media accounts.” he added.

The decision, which was made by the commissioners for data protection, Dr Des Hogan and Dale Sunderland, and notified to Meta on 26 September, includes a reprimand and a fine.

In May 2023, Meta was fined €1.2bn (£1bn) for mishandling data when transferring it between Europe and the United States.

That fine was also issued by Ireland’s DPC; the largest fine imposed under the EU’s GDPR privacy law.

In 2022, Meta was fined €265m (£220m) after data from 533m people in 106 countries was published on a hacking forum having been “scraped” from Facebook years earlier.

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
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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

Thousands in Ethiopia’s capital city defied a downpour to celebrate Meskel, the first big festival of the religious year.

It marks the discovery of the cross Jesus was crucified on, according to Ethiopian Orthodox Christian tradition.

On Thursday, believers gathered in a large public plaza in Addis Ababa for rituals, speeches and even a spot of theatre.

But the highlight was the lighting of a bonfire in the centre of the square.

There was heavy security presence at this year’s celebration – personnel numbers have been beefed up at many major events in Ethiopia amid sporadic fighting in regions such as Amhara and Oromia.

Traditional instruments play a significant role in Meskel proceedings.

Heavy rain fell at one point during the evening, prompting musicians playing the 10-stringed begena to cover their instruments.

Vocalists also put on a show.

This all-female choir adorned themselves with mock versions of adey abeba, an indigenous flower that symbolises the Ethiopian New Year, which was marked earlier this month.

As is customary, a huge pyre was lit at the centre of the square. The bonfire signifies the efforts made by Queen Eleni, a medieval Ethiopian ruler, to find Jesus’ cross.

Sunday school students portrayed this scene for Thursday’s crowds, with one young woman donning a huge crown and red cape to play Queen Eleni.

During the celebration Abune Mathias, the patriarch of Ethiopia’s Orthodox Church, called on Ethiopians to unite and play a part in bringing peace to the country.

One wreath-wearing attendee had a similar message.

• The country where a year lasts 13 months
• Ethiopians leap into pool during holy festival
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Rebel groups have rejected a peace offer from Myanmar’s embattled junta, which is reeling from battlefield losses and defections in a civil war that has dragged on for more than three years.

This is dictatorship’s first such outreach since it seized power in 2021. It also comes after a ceasefire brokered by China in the northern Shan state fell apart.

The junta called on ethnic armed groups and “terrorist insurgent groups” to “communicate with us to solve political problems politically”, also urging them to join elections planned for next year.

The exiled National Unity Government (NUG) said the offer was not worth considering, adding the junta had no authority to hold an election.

The junta extended an olive branch Thursday as it struggled to fight on multiple fronts and stem a widespread rebellion.

Some reports say the junta now has control of less than half of Myanmar’s territories.

In June, an alliance of three ethnic armies renewed an offensive against the military, seizing territory along a key highway to China’s Yunnan province, which borders Myanmar.

The fighting near the border in Shan state has blocked China’s ambitious plan to connect its landlocked south-west to the Indian Ocean via Myanmar.

Beijing’s top diplomat, Wang Yi, is thought to have delivered a warning to the country’s ruler Min Aung Hlaing during a visit to Myanmar last month.

Armed groups should follow “the path of party politics and elections in order to bring about lasting peace and development”, the junta said in its statement on Thursday.

“The country’s human resources, basic infrastructure and many people’s lives have been lost, and the country’s stability and development have been blocked [because of the conflict]” it said.

But the rebel groups are sceptical of the offer.

The Karen National Union (KNU), which has been fighting for decades with the military for more autonomy along the border with Thailand, told AFP news agency that talks were only possible if the military agreed to “common political objectives”.

“Number one: no military participation in future politics. Two [the military] has to agree to a federal democratic constitution,” KNU spokesman Padoh Saw Taw Nee told AFP.

“Number three: they have to be accountable for everything they have committed… including war crimes and crimes against humanity,” he said. “No impunity.”

If the junta does not accede to these demands, the KNU will “keep putting pressure on [the junta] politically and militarily,” he added.

Maung Saungkha, the leader of the Bamar People’s Liberation Army, told Reuters news agency that his group is “not interested in this offer”.

“They are hanging goat’s heads but selling dog meat,” Soe Thu Ya Zaw, commander of the Mandalay People’s Defense Forces, wrote on Facebook.

After the military ousted Myanmar’s democratically-elected government in 2021, peaceful protests were met with killings and arrests.

This led ethnic armed groups to join forces with anti-coup militias across the country to fight back, plunging the country into a civil war.

At least 50,000 people have been killed since the coup and more than two million people displaced, according to the United Nations.

The UN warned last week that Myanmar was “sinking into an abyss of human suffering”. Eyewitnesses had previously told the BBC about how the military has tourtued people in its custody, including by pouring burning petrol on them and forcing some to drink their urine.

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”.

Actress Dame Maggie Smith, known for the Harry Potter films and Downton Abbey, has died at the age of 89, her family has said.

A legend of British stage and screen, she won two Oscars during her career – for The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie in 1970 and California Suite in 1979.

She had four other nominations, and received seven Bafta awards.

Leading the tributes, Prime Minister Keir Starmer said Dame Maggie “was beloved by so many for her great talent, becoming a true national treasure whose work will be cherished for generations to come”.

In the Harry Potter films, Dame Maggie played the acerbic Professor Minerva McGonagall, famous for her pointed witch’s hat and stern manner with the young wizards at Hogwarts.

In hit ITV drama Downton Abbey, she played Violet Crawley, the Dowager Countess of Grantham, the grand matriarch who excelled at withering one-liners through the show’s six series.

• Follow live: Tributes to Dame Maggie Smith
• Obituary: A formidable star on stage and screen

A statement from her sons Toby Stephens and Chris Larkin said: “It is with great sadness we have to announce the death of Dame Maggie Smith.

“She passed away peacefully in hospital early this morning, Friday 27th September.

“An intensely private person, she was with friends and family at the end. She leaves two sons and five loving grandchildren who are devastated by the loss of their extraordinary mother and grandmother.”

They thanked “the wonderful staff at the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital for their care and unstinting kindness during her final days”.

They added: “We thank you for all your kind messages and support and ask that you respect our privacy at this time.”

Tributes were also paid by her co-stars.

Hugh Bonneville, who appeared in Downton Abbey, said: “Anyone who ever shared a scene with Maggie will attest to her sharp eye, sharp wit and formidable talent.

“She was a true legend of her generation and thankfully will live on in so many magnificent screen performances. My condolences to her boys and wider family.”

Dame Maggie also reprised her role for the two Downton Abbey films.

In 2022’s Downton Abbey: A New Era, her character died of the illness she revealed at the end of the 2019 film, to the huge upset of her family and friends.

Downton followed the success of 2002 period drama Gosford Park, which earned Dame Maggie both Oscar and Bafta nominations for playing Dowager Countess of Trentham.

In his statement on Friday, the prime minister said Dame Maggie “introduced us to new worlds with the countless stories she acted over her long career”.

“Our thoughts are with her family and loved ones. May she rest in peace,” he wrote.

Dame Kristin Scott-Thomas, who starred alongside Dame Maggie in 2005’s Keeping Mum and 2014’s My Old Lady, said she “took acting very seriously but saw through the nonsense and razzmatazz”.

“She really didn’t want to deal with that,” Dame Kristin added.

“She had a sense of humour and wit that could reduce me to a blithering puddle of giggles. And she did not have patience with fools. So you had to be a bit careful. I absolutely adored her.

“The last time I saw her, she was very cross about being old. ‘Maddening’ I think she said. Much loved, much admired and irreplaceable.”

A National Theatre spokesperson said her career “spanned the theatrical, film and television world without equal”.

Praising her stage performances, the statement added: “She will forever be remembered as one of the greatest actors this country has had the inestimable pleasure of witnessing.

“Her deep intelligence, effortless dexterity, sublime craft and sharp wit were simply legendary.”

Bafta added that she was a “legend of British stage and screen”, praising her five competitive Bafta wins, plus the special award and fellowship she received from the organisation.

Dame Maggie’s career spanned eight decades, with early acclaim coming when she gained her first Bafta nomination for Nowhere to Go in 1958.

In 1963, she was offered the part of Desdemona in Othello at the National Theatre by Laurence Olivier, and two years later it was made into a film and Smith was nominated for her first Oscar.

The actress’s other memorable roles included 1985 Merchant Ivory film A Room With a View, in which she played the chaperone Charlotte Barlett, accompanying Helen Bonham Carter’s Lucy Honeychurch to Italy.

The role earned her another Oscar nomination and a Bafta.

And along with another national treasure, Dame Judi Dench, she appeared as an English woman living in 1930s Italy in the film Tea with Mussolini, which was released in 1999.

The two dames also shared screen time in A Room With a View and The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel.

Dame Maggie played the firm but fair Reverend Mother in the two Sister Act films, starring Whoopi Goldberg as nightclub singer Doloris Wilson, who takes refuge from the mob in San Francisco by posing as a nun in a local convent.

Goldberg called Dame Maggie “a great woman and a brilliant actress”, adding: “I still can’t believe I was lucky enough to work with the ‘one-of-a-kind’.”

Rob Lowe, who starred with Dame Maggie in 1993’s Suddenly, Last Summer, recalled “the unforgettable experience of working with her”.

“Sharing a two-shot was like being paired with a lion,” he said.

“She could eat anyone alive, and often did. But funny, and great company. And suffered no fools.

“We will never see another. God speed, Ms Smith!”

The veteran actress also played the old woman who spent 15 years living in a van outside Alan Bennett’s house in a film adaptation of the writer’s The Lady in the Van in 2015.

Her final roles included 2023’s The Miracle Club, which follows a group of women from Dublin who go on a pilgrimage to the French town of Lourdes, co-starring Kathy Bates and Laura Linney.

Donald Trump met Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky at his New York base in Trump Tower on Friday and said it was time Russia’s war in Ukraine was settled.

The Republican presidential nominee has repeatedly criticised the Ukrainian leader on the US campaign trail, and a meeting between the pair had seemed unlikely until hours before.

As the two men stood side by side, Zelensky said he thought they had a “common view that the war has to be stopped and Putin can’t win”, adding that he would discuss with Trump details of his “victory plan”.

Despite years of differences, Trump insisted he had a very good relationship with Zelensky: “I also have a very good relationship as you know with President Putin and I think if we win [the election] we’re going to get it resolved very quickly.”

“It has to end, [Zelensky] is going through hell, his country’s going through hell like few countries have ever,” he told reporters.

The pair have endured a tumultuous relationship. Trump was impeached in 2019 over accusations that he pressured Zelensky to dig up damaging information on the Biden family.

A rough transcript of the call revealed Trump had urged Zelensky to investigate Joe Biden, as well as Biden’s son Hunter.

Standing beside Zelensky on Friday, he praised the Ukrainian leader’s handling of the issue.

Since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Trump has frequently repeated Moscow’s talking points about the war. During September’s presidential debate, he sidestepped a question on whether he wanted Ukraine to emerge victorious in the conflict.

Ahead of Friday’s meeting, Trump repeated his long-standing claim that he would be able to “work out something” to settle the war if he won the presidential election, long before Joe Biden leaves office in January.

He has refused to elaborate when asked whether he believes Ukraine should cede territory to Russia as a means of ending the war.

Although Zelensky has been visiting the US since Sunday, their meeting was only confirmed on Thursday night, when Trump posted a screenshot of a text message from President Zelensky saying it was “important for us to have a personal contact and to understand each other 100%”.

There have been tensions all week 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, including state Governor Josh Shapiro, earlier this week.

Zelensky’s trip to the key swing state was labelled by leading Republicans as a partisan campaign event. In a public letter, House Speaker Mike Johnson said the visit was “designed to help Democrats” and claimed it amounted to “election interference”.

Trump has 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”.

In contrast, Zelensky recently told the New Yorker magazine that he believes 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.”

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.

Hours before, Biden had announced a further $7.9bn (£5.9bn) package of military assistance to Ukraine.

As Zelensky visited the US, drone attacks continued in Ukraine. On Thursday night, three people were killed and 14 others wounded in a Russian drone attack on Izmail, a port city on the River Danube.

Russia has targeted Izmail’s grain export facilities in the past. Prosecutors say two boys aged three and 13, and a girl aged 14, were among those wounded in the latest attack.

Romania’s defence ministry said it was possible that one of the Russian drones involved in the attack had crossed the border into Romania, a Nato member state, for a very short period.

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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Just Stop Oil supporters have thrown soup over two Vincent van Gogh paintings, hours after two activists were given jail sentences for targeting one of the same works of art.

Three protesters threw an orange-coloured soup at Sunflowers 1888 and Sunflowers 1889 in the Poets and Lovers exhibition at the National Gallery in central London. They have been arrested on suspicion of causing criminal damage.

Earlier, Phoebe Plummer, 23, was given a two-year jail term, while Anna Holland, 22, got 20 months, for throwing soup over Sunflowers 1888 in October 2022.

The National Gallery said the two paintings targeted on Friday had been removed for examination were found to be undamaged.

As the latest activists – two women and a man – threw soup over the two paintings, onlookers could be heard shouting “no” and “don’t do it”.

In a video, posted on X by JSO, the activists can be heard telling an angry crowd: “There are people in prison for demanding an end to new oil and gas, something which is now government policy after sustained, disruptive actions, countless headlines and the resulting political pressure.

“Future generations will regard these prisoners of conscience to be on the right side of history.”

A spokesperson for the gallery said three people entered Room 6 of the exhibition just after 14:30 BST and threw a soup-like substance over two works.

The Metropolitan Police said three people had been held on suspicion of causing criminal damage and its inquiries were continuing.

It is the third time in recent years an artwork at the National Gallery has been selected as a target for protest action.

In July 2022, two supporters glued themselves to John Constable’s The Hay Wain.

A Chinese nuclear-powered attack submarine sank in its dock earlier this year while under construction, in a major setback for the Chinese military, according to US defence officials.

Speaking on condition of anonymity to the BBC’s US partner, CBS, the officials said the loss of the submarine probably happened between May and June.

Satellite images taken in June show what appear to be floating salvage cranes at the berth in Wuhan where, a month previously, the vessel had been seen. Beijing has not confirmed the reports.

The US officials said it was “not surprising” the Chinese military would have covered up the loss of one of its newest assets.

It is unclear whether the submarine was carrying nuclear fuel at the time.

A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson said on Friday he was not familiar with the topic and did not provide any information when asked about it at a Beijing news conference.

The incident raises questions about China’s defence industry, which is allegedly riddled with corruption.

China has the biggest navy in the world, with more than 370 ships, and is currently producing a new generation of nuclear-armed submarines, the Zhou-class, of which this was the first.

Taiwan has said it carried out its own investigations into the fate of the submarine and had “a grasp of the situation through multiple intelligence and surveillance methods”, but gave no further details.

Thomas Shugart, a former US Navy submariner and an analyst at the Center for a New American Security, first noticed the incident involving the submarine in July.

He told the BBC the sinking was a “setback” that would cause “pretty significant embarrassment” for the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) navy, but the safety risk was probably “pretty low”.

However, he added: “If this ship eventually does get repaired, and I’m sure it will, it’ll be a far more capable submarine than what they were building before at that shipyard.

“I do not see it significantly altering the really impressive upward trajectory of the PLA navy’s capability.”

The sinking comes at a time when Beijing been increasingly assertive in laying claim to virtually the whole South China Sea, which is crucial to international trade.

It has long-standing maritime disputes with other nations in the region, including Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam.

Rebel groups have rejected a peace offer from Myanmar’s embattled junta, which is reeling from battlefield losses and defections in a civil war that has dragged on for more than three years.

This is dictatorship’s first such outreach since it seized power in 2021. It also comes after a ceasefire brokered by China in the northern Shan state fell apart.

The junta called on ethnic armed groups and “terrorist insurgent groups” to “communicate with us to solve political problems politically”, also urging them to join elections planned for next year.

The exiled National Unity Government (NUG) said the offer was not worth considering, adding the junta had no authority to hold an election.

The junta extended an olive branch Thursday as it struggled to fight on multiple fronts and stem a widespread rebellion.

Some reports say the junta now has control of less than half of Myanmar’s territories.

In June, an alliance of three ethnic armies renewed an offensive against the military, seizing territory along a key highway to China’s Yunnan province, which borders Myanmar.

The fighting near the border in Shan state has blocked China’s ambitious plan to connect its landlocked south-west to the Indian Ocean via Myanmar.

Beijing’s top diplomat, Wang Yi, is thought to have delivered a warning to the country’s ruler Min Aung Hlaing during a visit to Myanmar last month.

Armed groups should follow “the path of party politics and elections in order to bring about lasting peace and development”, the junta said in its statement on Thursday.

“The country’s human resources, basic infrastructure and many people’s lives have been lost, and the country’s stability and development have been blocked [because of the conflict]” it said.

But the rebel groups are sceptical of the offer.

The Karen National Union (KNU), which has been fighting for decades with the military for more autonomy along the border with Thailand, told AFP news agency that talks were only possible if the military agreed to “common political objectives”.

“Number one: no military participation in future politics. Two [the military] has to agree to a federal democratic constitution,” KNU spokesman Padoh Saw Taw Nee told AFP.

“Number three: they have to be accountable for everything they have committed… including war crimes and crimes against humanity,” he said. “No impunity.”

If the junta does not accede to these demands, the KNU will “keep putting pressure on [the junta] politically and militarily,” he added.

Maung Saungkha, the leader of the Bamar People’s Liberation Army, told Reuters news agency that his group is “not interested in this offer”.

“They are hanging goat’s heads but selling dog meat,” Soe Thu Ya Zaw, commander of the Mandalay People’s Defense Forces, wrote on Facebook.

After the military ousted Myanmar’s democratically-elected government in 2021, peaceful protests were met with killings and arrests.

This led ethnic armed groups to join forces with anti-coup militias across the country to fight back, plunging the country into a civil war.

At least 50,000 people have been killed since the coup and more than two million people displaced, according to the United Nations.

The UN warned last week that Myanmar was “sinking into an abyss of human suffering”. Eyewitnesses had previously told the BBC about how the military has tourtued people in its custody, including by pouring burning petrol on them and forcing some to drink their urine.

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. The Biden-Harris administration, however, has maintained, and even at times increased, the more narrowly focused tariffs that Trump imposed on China during his first term in office.

Trump’s protectionist 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.

In this abbreviated presidential campaign for her, she has a shorter timeframe to define herself in the eyes of voters, so focusing on America’s main economic competitor may be less of a priority for the Democrat.

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.

Dame Maggie Smith, who has died at the age of 89, brought an incredible range of expression to her roles, winning high praise from directors and fellow actors alike.

It was said of her that she never took a role lightly and would often be pacing around at rehearsals going over her lines while the rest of the cast was on a break.

In a profession notorious for its uncertainties her career was notable for its longevity.

She made her acting debut in 1952 and was still working six decades later having moved from aspiring star to national treasure.

• Acting legend Dame Maggie Smith dies at 89
• Follow live: Tributes to Dame Maggie Smith

Margaret Natalie Smith was born in Ilford, Essex, on 28 December 1934, the daughter of a pathologist.

With war looming the family moved to Oxford and the young Maggie attended the Oxford School for Girls.

She started out in the theatre as a prompt girl and understudy at the Oxford Repertory. She once claimed that she never got onto the stage while she was there because no-one in the company ever fell ill.

Her company moved to a small theatre in London in 1955 where she attracted the attention of an American producer, Leonard Stillman, who cast her in New Faces, a revue that opened on Broadway in June 1956.

She stood out among the cast of unknowns and, on her return to London, was offered a six-month stint in the revue Share My Lettuce opposite Kenneth Williams.

Her first film role was an uncredited part in the 1956 production Child in the House.

Two years later she was nominated for a Bafta as best newcomer in the 1958 melodrama Nowhere to Go, in which she played a girl who shelters an escaped convict.

The Times, describing her role in the hit London production of Mary Mary in 1963, said that she was “the salvation of this fluffy Broadway comedy”.

She nearly stole the show from Richard Burton in the film The VIPs when she appeared in a pivotal scene with the Welsh star.

One critic noted that “when Maggie Smith is on the screen, the picture moves,” and Burton afterwards teasingly described her upstaging of him as “grand larceny”.

Later in 1963, Laurence Olivier offered her the part of Desdemona opposite his Othello, at the National Theatre. The production, with the original cast, was made into a film two years later, with Smith being nominated for an Academy Award.

The role which brought her international fame came in 1969 when she played the determinedly non-conformist teacher in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie.

The part won her a best actress Oscar.

She also married her co-star Robert Stephens.

The actress continued with the National Theatre for another two years including a performance as Mrs Sullen in the Restoration comedy The Beaux’ Stratagem in Los Angeles.

She received another Oscar nomination for best actress after playing Aunt Augusta in the George Cukor film, Travels With My Aunt, in 1972.

She and Stephens divorced in 1975, and a year later she was married to the playwright, Beverley Cross, and also moved to Canada and spent four years in a repertory company where she took on weightier roles in Macbeth and Richard III.

One critic, writing of her performance as Lady Macbeth, decided she had “merged her own vivid personality with that of her charismatic subject”.

Despite her success she was modest about her achievements, stating simply that “One went to school, one wanted to act, one started to act, and one’s still acting.”

She continued to work in the cinema playing opposite Peter Ustinov in the 1978 film, Death on the Nile and, in the same year, the part of Diana Barrie in Neil Simon’s California Suite.

The 80s saw a number of memorable cinema performances, and more awards including Baftas for A Private Function and A Room With A View, the latter also garnering her a Golden Globe and an Oscar nomination.

There were more Baftas, first for her interpretation of the ageing alcoholic in The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne and then in Bed Among The Lentils, one of Alan Bennett’s Talking Heads series for the BBC.

It was back to the stage in 1987 in Lettice and Lovage at the Globe Theatre in London before the production transferred to New York. But her run was interrupted after she suffered a bicycle accident and then learned she would need eye surgery.

When she finally resumed work on Lettice and Lovage, after a 12 month break, her New York performance won her a Tony.

In 1990 she was created DBE and, a year later, appeared as the ageing Wendy in Hook, Stephen Spielberg’s sequel to Peter Pan.

Other films followed including Sister Act, alongside Whoopi Goldberg, and The Secret Garden for which she was nominated for a Bafta.

The new century brought a Bafta and an Emmy nomination for role as Betsey Trotwood in the BBC production of David Copperfield.

A year later, she appeared as Professor McGonagall in Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, a role she would reprise in all of the subsequent Potter movies.

She was, reportedly, the only performer the author JK Rowling specifically asked for, bringing a small touch of Miss Jean Brodie to Hogwarts.

In 2004 she appeared with her long time friend and fellow Dame Judi Dench, in the gentle drama Ladies in Lavender.

The New York Times decided that Smith and Dench “sink into their roles as comfortably as house cats burrowing into a down quilt on a windswept, rainy night”.

Two years later she was the cash-strapped Countess of Trentham in Gosford Park, Robert Altman’s take on the English country house murder.

Her performance was a delight, with a veneer of snobbery from which would emerge the masterly put down, particularly in the case of Mr Novello’s failed movie.

It was a role that she arguably reprised in all but name when she was cast in ITV drama, Downton Abbey. The name of her character may have changed to the Dowager Countess of Grantham but the performance was similar in essence.

“It’s true I don’t tolerate fools, but then they don’t tolerate me, so I am spiky,” she once said. “Maybe that’s why I’m quite good at playing spiky elderly ladies.”

She remained with the Downton Abbey cast until 2015 when the series finally came to an end, reprising the role for two films in 2019 and 2022.

In 2007, while filming Harry Potter and The Half-Blood Prince she was diagnosed with breast cancer. She was given the all-clear after two years of treatment.

Despite being left feeling weak after her illness, she went on to star in the final Harry Potter film and received a Bafta nomination for her role in the 2012 film, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel.

In 2015 she gave a moving performance in the film, The Lady in the Van, based on the true tale of Mary Shepherd, an elderly woman who lived in a dilapidated van on the writer Alan Bennett’s driveway in London for 15 years.

She had previously appeared in the stage version of the story, for which she won an Olivier for Best Actress, and a 2009 BBC Radio 4 adaptation of Bennett’s play.

Dame Maggie gave few interviews but she was once asked to define the appeal of acting. “I like the ephemeral thing about theatre, every performance is like a ghost – it’s there and then it’s gone.”

A teacher who sent a girl naked photographs and a video of himself performing a sex act has been banned from classrooms in England.

David Amos contacted the student at Sedgefield Community College in County Durham, where he taught, by email and then on the social media platform Snapchat.

He was jailed for 30 months in October 2022 after admitting causing a child to watch a sexual activity and inciting a child to engage in sexual activity.

Banning him from the profession for life, the Teaching Regulation Agency said his behaviour “fell significantly short of the standards expected of the profession”.

The panel found Amos “used his position of trust” to engage in “sexual communications” with the girl, who was under 16.

It added his actions “were serious sexual misconduct against a child”.

The panel said a lack of insight and remorse meant there was some risk of Amos reoffending if he was allowed to return to the classroom which would put pupils’ wellbeing “at risk”.

He had been employed by the college between January 2017 and October 2022.

He is now prohibited from teaching indefinitely in any school, sixth form college, relevant youth accommodation or children’s home in England, although he can appeal to the High Court within 28 days of the decision having been made.

As well as the jail term, Amos was also required to register with police indefinitely and a 10-year sexual harm prevention order was put in place while his iPad and phone were destroyed.

Rising waters from Hurricane Helene had forced Briana Gagnier and her family to swim out of their home on Florida’s Gulf Coast.

Ms Gagnier, who lives in Holmes Beach north of Sarasota, had stayed behind with her family to protect their one-storey home, placing sandbags at every door and moving belongings on to tall furniture to keep them dry. They even used towels to try to stop the water from creeping in.

Then came a loud bang. Their garage door broke open violently – caving in to the powerful storm surge of Helene. Water quickly rose to their shoulders, forcing them to escape quickly.

“Everyone was screaming and panicking,” she told the BBC. “Whatever your worst idea of what this storm is – that is what we’re seeing.”

Ms Gagnier is one of many Floridians living along the state’s Big Bend Coast that are now reeling from the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, a powerful, deadly Category 4 hurricane that made landfall on Thursday evening, before weakening to a tropical storm as it churned inland.

Millions of households were without electricity on Friday morning across the south-eastern US and the storm has been blamed for several deaths in the region.

• Streets in Georgia underwater as deadly Storm Helene rolls north: Follow Live

In some coastal areas, the storm surge was forecast to be up to 20ft (6m) – the size of a two-storey building.

At least one person was killed in Florida, authorities said, after a road sign fell on their car.

Two others died in Georgia, where the storm had brought a tornado that overturned a mobile home.

Footage from the aftermath of Helene shows flooded neighbourhoods and submerged cars, forcing multiple rescue operations of those who were left trapped from the storm, while locals described widespread devastation.

In one rescue, a man and his dog were saved by the US Coast Guard after his 36ft sailboat started taking on water.

The man, whom the Coast Guard did not name, was sailing 25 miles off the coast of Sanibel Island when he was caught by the hurricane. He called Channel 16 – the emergency channel for marine radios – to summon help.

On land, residents saw uncontrollable waters gushing into homes and businesses as the hurricane approached.

ML Ferguson, a resident of Anna Maria Island, told the BBC that the roads around had morphed into rivers.

When she returned to her home late on Thursday, she found it, too, had been flooded.

“Oh my gosh, it’s literally up to the second step,” she told the BBC in a phone interview, before quickly hanging up and rushing to stop more water from coming in.

After Ms Gagnier, the Holmes Beach resident, swam out of her home, she and her family ran across the street to a neighbour’s house, where they ended up rescuing two elderly people whose home had burst into flames.

She said the cause was unclear, but it appeared to be related to a golf cart battery.

Looking around, she said she saw couches, chairs, a bench and even a car float by. The water was above her mailbox for part of the evening, she added.

“I just can’t believe this is real. The eye of the storm didn’t even hit us straight on,” said Ms Gagnier. “This island is completely devastated. Everywhere I look, devastation.”

In Tallahassee, Florida, some residents like Cainnon Gregg had hunkered down to ride out the storm. Mr Gregg, who stayed at a friend’s shelter, said he wanted to remain close to the water to check on his oyster farm as soon as it was safe to do so.

He had spent the last few days trying to protect it by sinking it into the ocean bed. His farm was once destroyed before, during Hurricane Michael – a category five hurricane that hit the Florida panhandle in 2018 – and he said he was determined to learn from that lesson.

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

Japan’s scandal-hit ruling party has elected Shigeru Ishiba as its new leader, positioning the former defence chief as Japan’s next leader.

Ishiba, 67, said he would clean up his Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), revitalise the economy and address security threats after winning Friday’s party election.

Since the LDP has a parliamentary majority, its party chief will become prime minister and Ishiba is expected to be appointed to the role on Tuesday.

The change of guard comes at a turbulent time for the party, which has been rocked by scandals and internal conflicts that disbanded its once-powerful factions.

Nine candidates contested for the party leadership after Prime Minister Fumio Kishida announced last month that he would not stand for re-election.

Ishiba led in most opinion polls, with this being his fifth and, he said, final bid to lead the LDP, which has ruled Japan for most of the post-war era. It headed into a run-off between Ishiba and Sanae Takaichi, 63, who vied to become Japan’s first female leader.

“We ought to be a party that lets members discuss the truth in a free and open manner, a party that is fair and impartial on all matters and a party with humility,” he told a press conference.

Ishiba is in favour of allowing female emperors – a hugely controversial issue opposed by many LDP member and successive governments.

His 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.

Ishiba is well-versed on the machinations of party politics as well as security policies. He said Japan must strengthen its security in view of recent incursions from Russia and China into Japan’s territory and North Korea’s missile tests.

At a moment of flux within the LDP, he offers a safe pair of hands and stability.

What he doesn’t offer is a fresh face for an organisation desperate to reinvent itself and regain public trust amid a stagnant economy, struggling households and a series of political scandals. His economic strategy includes boosting wages to counter rising prices.

He has said that he reads three books a day and that he prefers doing that instead of mingling with his party colleagues.

Takaichi, on the other hand, was one of two women vying for the LDP leadership, but was also among the more conservative of the candidates.

A close ally to late former prime minister Shinzo Abe, Takaichi’s positions on women’s issues are in line with the LDP’s policy of having women serve in their traditional roles of being good mothers and wives.

She opposes legislation allowing women to retain their maiden name as well as allowing female emperors.

Consistent among the frontrunners, however, was a pledge to overhaul the LDP – which has held power almost continuously since it was formed in 1955 – 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,” 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.”

The other seven candidates in the first round were 43-year-old Shinjiro Koizumi, the youngest candidate; 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.