Israel’s assassination of Hassan Nasrallah, the long–standing leader of Hezbollah, is a major escalation in its war with the Lebanese militant group.

It has, potentially, brought the region one step closer to a much wider and even more damaging conflict, one that pulls in both Iran and the US.

So where is it likely to go from here?

That largely depends on three basic questions.

Hezbollah is reeling from blow after blow.

Its command structure has been decapitated, with more than a dozen top commanders assassinated. Its communications have been sabotaged with the shocking detonations of its pagers and walkie-talkies, and many of its weapons have been destroyed in air strikes.

The US-based Middle East security analyst Mohammed Al-Basha says: “The loss of Hassan Nasrallah will have significant implications, potentially destabilising the group and altering its political and military strategies in the short term.”

But any expectation that this vehemently anti-Israel organisation is going to suddenly give up and seek peace on Israel’s terms is likely to be misplaced.

• LIVE: Latest Israel-Lebanon updates as Israeli strikes continue

Hezbollah has already vowed to continue the fight. It still has thousands of fighters, many of them recent veterans of combat in Syria, and they are demanding revenge.

It still has a substantial arsenal of missiles, many of them long-range, precision-guided weapons which can reach Tel Aviv and other cities. There will be pressure within its ranks to use those soon, before they too get destroyed.

But if they do, in a mass attack that overwhelms Israel’s air defences and kills civilians, then Israel’s response is likely to be devastating, wreaking havoc on Lebanon’s infrastructure, or even extending to Iran.

This assassination is as much of a blow to Iran as it is to Hezbollah. It’s already announced five days of mourning.

It’s also taken emergency precautions, hiding away its leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamanei, in case he too gets assassinated.

Iran has yet to retaliate for the humiliating assassination in July of the Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh in a Tehran guesthouse. What has happened now will be causing hardliners in the regime to contemplate some kind of response.

Iran has a whole galaxy of allied heavily-armed militias around the Middle East, the so-called “Axis of Resistance“.

As well as Hezbollah, it has the Houthis in Yemen, and numerous groups in Syria and Iraq. Iran could well ask these groups to step up their attacks on both Israel and US bases in the region.

But whatever response Iran chooses, it will likely calibrate it to be just short of triggering a war that it cannot hope to win.

If anyone was in any doubt before this assassination, they won’t be now.

Israel clearly has no intention of pausing its military campaign for the 21-day ceasefire proposed by 12 nations, including its closest ally, the United States.

Its military reckon they have Hezbollah on the back foot now, so it will want to press on with its offensive until the threat of those missiles is removed.

Short of a capitulation by Hezbollah – which is unlikely – it is hard to see how Israel can achieve its war aim of removing the threat of Hezbollah attacks without sending in troops on the ground.

The Israel Defense Forces have released footage of its infantry training close to the border for this very purpose.

But Hezbollah has also spent the last 18 years, since the end of the last war, training to fight the next one. In his final public speech before his death, Nasrallah told his followers that an Israeli incursion into south Lebanon would be, in his words, “a historic opportunity”.

For the IDF, going into Lebanon would be relatively easy. But getting out could – like Gaza – take months.

Diego Garcia, a remote island in the Indian Ocean, is a paradise of lush vegetation and white-sand beaches, surrounded by crystal blue waters.

But this is no tourist destination. It is strictly out of bounds to most civilians – the site of a highly secretive UK-US military base shrouded for decades in rumour and mystery.

The island, which is administered from London, is at the centre of a long-running territorial dispute between the UK and Mauritius, and negotiations have ramped up in recent weeks.

The BBC gained unprecedented access to the island earlier this month.

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“It’s the enemy,” a private security officer jokes as I return to my room one night on Diego Garcia, my name highlighted in yellow on a list he is holding.

For months, the BBC had fought for access to the island – the largest of the Chagos Archipelago.

We wanted to cover a historic court case being held over the treatment of Sri Lankan Tamils, the first people ever to file asylum claims on the island, who have been stranded there for three years. Complex legal battles have been waged over their fate and a judgement will soon determine if they have been unlawfully detained.

Up until this point, we could only cover the story remotely.

Diego Garcia, which is about 1,000 miles (1,600 km) from the nearest landmass, features on lists of the world’s most remote islands. There are no commercial flights and getting there by sea is no easier – permits for boats are only granted for the archipelago’s outer islands and to allow safe passage through the Indian Ocean.

To enter the island you need a permit, only granted to people with connections to the military facility or the British authority that runs the territory. Journalists have historically been barred.

UK government lawyers brought a legal challenge to try to block the BBC from attending the hearing, and even when permission was granted following a ruling by the territory’s Supreme Court, the US later objected, saying it would not provide food, transport or accommodation to all those attempting to reach the island for the case – including the judge and barristers.

Notes exchanged between the two governments this summer, seen by the BBC, suggested both were extremely concerned about admitting any media to Diego Garcia.

“As discussed previously, the United States agrees with the position of HMG [His Majesty’s Government] that it would be preferable for members of the press to observe the hearing virtually from London, to minimize risks to security of the Facility,” one note sent from the US government to British officials said.

When permission was finally granted for me to spend five days on the island, it came with stringent restrictions. These did not just cover the court reporting. They also extended to my movements on the island and even a ban on reporting what the actual restrictions were.

Requests for minor changes to the permit were denied by British and US officials.

Personnel from the security company G4S were flown to the territory to guard the BBC and lawyers who had flown out for the hearing.

But despite the constraints, I was still able to observe illuminating details, all of which helped to paint a picture of one of the most restricted locations in the world.

Approaching by plane, coconut trees and thick foliage are visible across the 44 sq km footprint-shaped atoll, the greenery punctuated by white military structures.

Diego Garcia is one of about 60 islands that make up the Chagos Archipelago or British Indian Ocean Territory (Biot) – the last colony established by the UK by separating it from Mauritius in 1965. It is located about halfway between East Africa and Indonesia.

Pulling on to the runway alongside grey military aircraft, a sign on a hangar greets you: “Diego Garcia. Footprint of Freedom,” above images of the US and British flags.

This is the first of many references to freedom on the island’s signage, a nod to the UK-US military base that has been there since the early 1970s.

Agreements signed in 1966 leased the island to the US for 50 years initially, with a possible extension for a further 20 years. The arrangement was rolled over and is set to expire in 2036.

As I make my way through airport security and beyond, US and UK influences jostle for predominance.

In the terminal, there is a door decorated with a union jack print and walls hung with photos of significant British figures, including Winston Churchill.

On the island itself, I spot British police cars and a nightclub called the Brit Club with a bulldog logo. We pass roads named Britannia Way and Churchill Road.

But cars drive on the right, as they do in the US. We are driven around in a bright yellow bus reminiscent of an American school bus.

The US dollar is the accepted currency and the electricity sockets are American. The food offered to us for the five days includes “tater tots” – a popular American fried-potato side dish – and American biscuits, similar to British scones.

While the territory is administered from London, most personnel and resources there are under the control of the US.

In the BBC’s bid to access the island, UK officials referred questions up to US staff. When the US blocked the court hearing from taking place on Diego Garcia this summer, a senior official at the Ministry of Defence said the UK “did not have the ability to grant access”.

“The US security assessment is classified… [they] have demonstrated that they have strict controls in place,” he wrote in an email to a Foreign Office colleague.

Biot’s acting commissioner has said it is not possible for him to “compel the US authorities” to grant access to any part of the military facility constructed by the US under the terms of the UK-US agreement, despite it being a British territory.

In recent years, the territory has been costing the UK tens of millions of pounds, with the bulk of this categorised under “migrant costs”. Communications obtained by the BBC between foreign office officials in July regarding the Sri Lankan Tamils warn that “the costs are increasing and the latest forecast is that these will be £50 million per annum”.

The atmosphere on the island feels relaxed. Troops and contractors ride past me on bikes, and I see people playing tennis and windsurfing in the late afternoon sun.

A cinema advertises screenings of Alien and Borderlands, and there is even a bowling alley and a museum with a gift shop attached, though I was not allowed inside.

We pass a fast-food spot called Jake’s Place, and a scenic patch of land next to the sea with a sign that reads: “Ye olde swimming hole and picnic area.” Diego Garcia-branded T-shirts and mugs are on sale on the island.

But there are also constant reminders of the sensitive base that is here. Military drills can be heard early in the morning, and near our accommodation block is a fenced-off building identified as an armoury.

All the time, US and British military officials keep a close eye on the court’s movements.

The island has startling natural beauty, from lush vegetation to pristine white beaches, and is also home to the world’s biggest terrestrial arthropod – the coconut crab. Military personnel warn of the dangers of sharks in the surrounding waters.

Biot’s website boasts that it has the “greatest marine biodiversity in the UK and its Overseas Territories, as well as some of the cleanest seas and healthiest reef systems in the world”.

But there are also clues pointing to its brutal past.

When the UK took control of the Chagos Islands – Diego Garcia is the southernmost – from former British colony Mauritius, it sought to rapidly evict its population of more than 1,000 people to make way for the military base.

Enslaved people were brought to the Chagos Islands from Madagascar and Mozambique to work on coconut plantations under French and British rule. In the following centuries, they developed their own language, music and culture.

I get to see a former plantation on the east of the island, where buildings stand in disrepair. The grand plantation manager’s house has a sign outside reading: “Danger unsafe structure. Do not enter. By order: Brit rep [representative].” A large crab crawls up the door of an abandoned guest house.

At a church on the plantation site, a sign, in French, beneath the crucifix reads: “Let us pray for our Chagossian brothers and sisters.”

Wild donkeys still roam in the area. David Vine, author of Island of Shame: The Secret History of the US Military Base on Diego Garcia, describes them as a “ghostly remnant of the society that had been there for almost 200 years”.

A Foreign Office memo in 1966 stated that the object of its plan “was to get some rocks which will remain ours; there will be no indigenous population except seagulls”.

A British diplomat responded that the islands were home only to “some few Tarzans or Man Fridays whose origins are obscure and are hopefully being wished on to Mauritius”.

Another government document stated that the islands were chosen “not only for their strategic location but also because they had, for all practical purposes, no permanent population”.

“The Americans in particular attached great importance to this freedom of manoeuvre, divorced from the normal considerations applying to a populated dependent territory,” it said.

Mr Vine says the plans came at a time when the “decolonisation movement was unfolding and accelerating” and the US was concerned about losing access to military bases around the world.

Diego Garcia was one of many islands that were considered, he says, but it became the “prime candidate” because of its relatively small population and strategic location in the middle of the Indian Ocean.

For the UK, he says, it was a chance to maintain close military ties with the US, even with only a “token British presence” there – but there was also financial motivation, he adds.

The US agreed to a $14m discount on the UK’s purchase of its Polaris nuclear missiles as part of the secret deal over the islands.

In 1967, the eviction of all residents from the Chagos islands began. Dogs, including pets, were rounded up and killed. Chagossians have described being herded onto cargo ships and taken to Mauritius or the Seychelles.

The UK granted citizenship to some Chagossians in 2002, and many of them came to live in the UK.

In testimony given to the International Court of Justice years later, Chagossian Liseby Elysé said people on the archipelago had lived a “happy life” that “did not lack anything” before the expulsions.

“One day the administrator told us that we had to leave our island, leave our houses and go away. All persons were unhappy. But we had no choice. They did not give us any reason,” she said. “Nobody would like to be uprooted from the island where he was born, to be uprooted like animals.”

Chagossians have fought for years to return to the land.

Mauritius, which won independence from the UK in 1968, maintains that the islands are its own and the United Nations’ highest court has ruled, in an advisory opinion, that the UK’s administration of the territory is “unlawful” and must end.

It said the Chagos Islands should be handed over to Mauritius in order to complete the UK’s “decolonisation”.

Clive Baldwin, senior legal adviser at Human Rights Watch, says the “forced displacement of the Chagossians by the UK and US, their persecution on the grounds of race, and the ongoing prevention of their return to their homeland amount to crimes against humanity”.

“These are the most serious crimes a state can be responsible for. It is an ongoing, colonial crime as long as they prevent the Chagossians from returning home.”

The UK government has previously stated that it has “no doubt” as to its claim over the islands, which had been “under continuous British sovereignty since 1814”.

However, in 2022, it agreed to open negotiations with Mauritius over the future of the territory, with then-Foreign Secretary James Cleverly saying he wanted to “resolve all outstanding issues”.

Earlier this month, the government announced that former Prime Minister Tony Blair’s chief of staff, Jonathan Powell, who played a central role in negotiating the Good Friday agreement in Northern Ireland, had been appointed to negotiate with Mauritius over the islands.

In a statement, new Foreign Secretary David Lammy – who has criticised previous governments for having for years “ignored the opinions” of various UN bodies over the islands – said the UK was endeavouring to “reach a settlement that protects UK interests and those of our partners”, as he stressed the need to protect the “long-term, secure and effective operation of the joint UK/US military base”.

Matthew Savill, military sciences director at leading UK defence think tank Rusi, says Diego Garcia is an “enormously important” base, “because of its position in the Indian Ocean and the facilities it has: port, storage and airfield”.

The nearest UK facility is some 3,400km (2,100 miles) away, and for the US, nearly 4,800km (3,000 miles), he explains, with the island also an important location for “space tracking and observation capabilities”.

Tankers operating from Diego Garcia refuelled US B-2 bombers that had flown from the US to carry out the first airstrikes on Afghanistan after the 9/11 attacks. And, during the subsequent “war on terror”, aircraft were also sent directly from the island itself to Afghanistan and Iraq.

The base is also one of an “extremely limited number of places worldwide available to reload submarines” with weapons like Tomahawk missiles, says Mr Savill, and the US has positioned a large amount of equipment and stores there for contingencies.

Walter Ladwig III, a senior lecturer in international relations at King’s College London, agrees the base fulfils “a lot of important roles” – but that “there is this level of secrecy that seems to go beyond what we see at other places”.

“There has been this hyper-focus on controlling access and on limiting access, which… seems to go beyond what, given what we publicly know about the assets, capabilities and units are based there.”

During my time on the island, I am required to wear a red visitor pass and am closely monitored at all times. My accommodation is guarded 24-hours-a-day and the men outside make a note of when I leave and return – always under escort.

In the mid-1980s, British journalist Simon Winchester pretended his boat had run into trouble next to the island. He remained in the bay for about two days, and managed to briefly step on shore before being escorted away and told: “Go away and don’t come back.”

He tells me he remembers British authorities there being “incredibly hostile” and the island as “extraordinarily beautiful”. More than two decades later, a Time magazine journalist spent 90 minutes or so on the island when the US presidential plane stopped there to refuel.

Rumours have long swirled about the uses of Diego Garcia, including that it has been used as a CIA black-site – a facility used to house and interrogate terror suspects.

The UK government confirmed in 2008 that rendition flights carrying terror suspects had landed on the island in 2002, following years of assurances that they had not.

“The detainees did not leave the plane, and the US Government has assured us that no US detainees have ever been held on Diego Garcia. US investigations show no record of any other rendition through Diego Garcia or any other Overseas Territory or through the UK itself since then,” then-Foreign Secretary David Miliband told parliament at the time.

On the same day, former CIA director Michael Hayden said that information previously “supplied in good faith” to the UK about rendition flights – stating that they had never landed there – had “turned out to be wrong”.

“Neither of those individuals was ever part of [the] CIA’s high-value terrorist interrogation programme. One was ultimately transferred to Guantanamo, and the other was returned to his home country. These were rendition operations, nothing more,” he said, while denying reports that the CIA had a holding facility on Diego Garcia.

Years later, Lawrence Wilkerson, chief of staff to the former US Secretary of State Colin Powell, told Vice News that intelligence sources had told him that Diego Garcia had been used as a site “where people were temporarily housed and interrogated from time to time.”

I was not allowed near any of Diego Garcia’s sensitive military areas.

After leaving my island accommodation for the last time I received an email, thanking me for my recent stay and asking for feedback. “We want every guest to experience nothing less than a welcoming and comfortable experience,” it read.

Before flying out, my passport was stamped with the territory’s coat of arms. Its motto reads: “In tutela nostra Limuria”, meaning “Limuria is in our charge” – a reference to a mythical lost continent in the Indian Ocean.

A continent that doesn’t exist seems like a fitting symbol for an island whose legal status is in doubt and that few, since the Chagossians were expelled, have been allowed to see.

Hollywood actor Damian Lewis has taken part in an “eccentric” tradition dating back hundreds of years by herding sheep over the River Thames.

The star joined more than 1,000 Freemen of the City who ushered their sheep along a historic trading route on Sunday.

The Golden Globe and Emmy Award-winning actor, who is himself a Freeman of the City, described the event as “fabulous”.

It is part of celebrations which began in 2013 to mark the medieval right to bring produce to market over the Thames without paying tolls.

Lewis wore his grandfather’s wool coat and carried a crook as he herded the animals over Southwark Bridge.

The 53-year-old said he was asked to attend by the Worshipful Company of Woolmen, one of the oldest livery companies in the city which dates back to 1180.

Lewis, who is himself a Freeman of the City, was photographed keeping the animals in check ahead of other freemen dressed in black hats and red and fur cloaks at the London Sheep Drive.

“It was fabulous, I’m down here on this eccentric, very British day, honouring an old tradition where Freemen of the City of London can drive their sheep… toll free, free of charge, across the bridge – London Bridge as it was in the day – into the City of London in order to sell their produce,” he said.

Master Woolman at the Worshipful Company of Woolmen, Manny Cohen, said Lewis’ great grandfather, grandfather, and his brother, were all Lord Mayors of London.

Those in the position are elected annually and run the governing body of the City of London Corporation.

Lewis studied at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and “has a really close link to the City of London”, Mr Cohen added.

He explained the tradition of taking sheep over London Bridge was resurrected about 15 years ago and the event is sometimes held on Southwark Bridge, depending on traffic plans.

“We’ve just started with a few sheep and it’s sort of taken a life of its own now, and it’s a huge event – it’s the second largest outdoor event of the City of London, other than the Lord Mayor’s Show,” he added.

The fundraiser also has stalls and is expected to raise tens of thousands of pounds for the Woolmen Charity, which supports the wool trade, and the Lord Mayor’s Appeal, which works to improve “London’s most pressing societal issues”.

Major floods and landslides in Nepal have killed at least148 people and injured more than 100 across the Himalayan nation, police have reported.

They say more than 50 people are still missing on Sunday after two days of intense rainfall, which has inundated the valley around the capital Kathmandu. About 3,600 people have been rescued.

Residents say they “jumped from one roof to another” to escape rising waters, which have flooded thousands of homes. Meanwhile, crews are still carrying out rescues on helicopters and inflatable rafts.

Despite rain being forecast to continue through to Tuesday, there are signs of some easing on Sunday.

Some residents were able to return to their mud-caked homes on Sunday, while others are still cut off with major roads between towns and villages still blocked.

But flash floods, along with landslides, have caused many deaths.

At least 35 bodies have been recovered from vehicles buried under landslide in Prithvi Highway, near Kathmandu, police officials say.

Most major motorways connecting Kathmandu with the rest of the country remain blocked in multiple places by landslides.

Five people, including a pregnant woman and a four-year-old girl, died when a house collapsed under a landslide in the city Bhaktapur, to the east of Kathmandu, state media reports.

Two bodies were removed from a bus buried by a landslide in Dhading, west of Kathmandu. Twelve people, including the driver, were said to be onboard.

Six football players were also killed by a landslide at a training centre operated by the All Nepal Football Association in Makwanpur, to the south-west of the capital.

Others have been swept up in the floodwaters. In one dramatic scene, four people were washed away by the Nakkhu River in the southern Kathmandu valley.

“For hours, they kept on pleading for help,” Jitendra Bhandari, an eyewitness, told the BBC. “We could do nothing.”

Hari Om Malla lost his truck after it was submerged by water in Kathmandu.

He told the BBC that water had “gushed” into the cabin as the rain intensified on Friday night.

“We jumped out, swam, and got away from it – but my purse, bag and mobile have been swept away by the river. I have nothing now. We stayed the whole night in the cold.”

Another person, Bishnu Maya Shretha, said the scale of flooding was more extreme this season.

“We had run away the last time, but nothing happened. But this time all the houses were flooded.

“As the water levels rose, we had to cut the roof and get out. We jumped from one roof to another and finally reached a concrete house.”

Government spokesman Prithvi Subba Gurung told the state-run Nepal Television Corporation the flooding had also broken waterpipes, and affected telephone and power lines.

According to state media, 10,000 police officers, as well as volunteers and members of the army, have been mobilised as part of search and rescue efforts.

The Nepalese government urged people to avoid unnecessary travel, and banned driving at night in the Kathmandu valley.

Air travel was also affected on Friday and Saturday, with many domestic flights delayed or cancelled.

Monsoon season brings floods and landslides every year in Nepal.

Scientists say, though, that rainfall events are becoming more intense due to climate change.

A warmer atmosphere can hold more moisture, while warmer ocean waters can energise storm systems, making them more erratic.

Austria’s far-right Freedom Party is heading for an unprecedented general election victory under leader Herbert Kickl, projections say.

The projections, based on initial results, give Kickl’s party 29.1% – almost three points ahead of the conservative People’s Party on 26.2%, but far short of a majority.

The Freedom Party (FPÖ) has been in coalition before, but the second-placed conservative People’s Party has refused to take part in a government led by him.

Kickl’s main rival, incumbent Chancellor Karl Nehammer of the People Party (ÖVP), has said it’s “impossible to form a government with someone who adores conspiracy theories”.

Some 6.3 million Austrians were eligible to vote in a race dominated by the twin issues of migration and asylum, as well as inflation and the war in Ukraine.

Freedom Party general secretary Michael Schnedlitz was delighted with the initial projections, declaring that “the men and women of Austria have made history today”. He refused to say what kind of coalition his party would try to build.

They are on course to secure about 57 seats in the 183-seat parliament, with the conservatives on 51 and the Social Democrats on 41.

Freedom Party leader Herbert Kickl has promised Austrians to build “Fortress Austria”, to restore their security, prosperity and peace.

He has also spoken of becoming (people’s chancellor) which for some Austrians carries echoes of the term used to describe Adolf Hitler in Nazi Germany.

Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan has told fans “it’s good to be back” after winning the best actor award at the International Indian Film Academy Awards.

Khan was referring to his return to movies in 2023 after a hiatus lasting four years.

“I think I have a little happiness from the audience this year because I worked (again) after a long time,” he declared to crowds at a star-studded show in Abu Dhabi.

Khan, a household name in India, is also one of the country’s most popular stars with millions of fans domestically and abroad.

He not only won the prize for his role in action thriller Jawan but also co-hosted the event in in the capital of the United Arab Emirates, a city with a big Indian population.

Fireworks greeted his arrival on stage, and the whole event was peppered with tributes to him.

“I love awards, I’m greedy about awards,” he announced. “I just want to tell you it’s good to be back.”

Khan’s return to the big screen was Bollywood’s biggest success story last year. He also starred in the spy film Pathaan.

The roles – in which he portrayed a rugged action hero – marked a departure for the 58-year-old, who, over three decades of his movie career, has been best known for playing the tender romantic hero.

His comeback on the big screen comes after a series of setbacks in his personal and professional life. They include the arrest of his son Aryan Khan on fake charges of drug possession – the charges were eventually dropped – and a number of films that didn’t do well.

But his break from the limelight is unlikely to have dented his popularity. Charming and funny, the actor is often described as Bollywood’s “most important cultural export”, with millions of fans who endearingly refer to him as King Khan or the King of Bollywood.

Other Bollywood megastars also attended the event on Saturday, including Rani Mukerji, Anil Kapoor and Bobby Deol.

Mukerji won the best actress award for the child-custody drama Mrs Chatterjee vs Norway while Vidhu Vinod Chopra won best director for 12th Fail.

Meanwhile, Sandeep Reddy Vanga’s Animal scooped up six awards including best picture, and best supporting actor for Anil Kapoor.

Bollywood, India’s dominant film business, produces hundreds of films every year and has a huge following among Indians globally.

But like others across the world, it has seen ups and downs since the coronavirus pandemic shuttered cinemas for months and led many to turn to streaming services. It is yet to return to its former glory.

This year has been particular difficult, thanks to a lacklustre pipeline of new releases.

In comparison, 2023 was a stellar year, helped in part by the return of “King Khan”.

It is the third time Abu Dhabi has hosted the event, which is running over three days this year.

Karan Johar co-hosted the ceremony alongside Khan. The renowned filmmaker also scooped up a special award marking his 25 years in cinema.

If you were in India and had 900,000 rupees ($10,800; £8,000), what would you buy? A car? A trip around the world? Diamond jewellery? Or a Coldplay concert ticket?

The British rock band is set to perform three shows of their Music of the Spheres world tour in Mumbai next year and the tickets are being sold for obscene amounts on reselling platforms, after being sold out in minutes on BookMyShow (BMS) – the concert’s official ticketing platform.

The tickets went on sale last Sunday and were priced from 2,500 rupees to 12,000 rupees. More than 10 million people competed to buy some 180,000 tickets.

Fans complained about hours-long digital queues and site crashes, but many also alleged that the sales were rigged as resellers had begun selling tickets for five times the price – touching even 900,000 rupees – before they were released on the official site.

Earlier this month, something similar happened with tickets for Oasis’ concert in the UK, where resellers charged more than £350 for tickets that cost £135. But even then, the inflated prices of Coldplay tickets stand out. To put this in perspective, Madonna charged £1,306.75 for VIP passes to her Celebration tour and the best tickets for Beyoncé’s Renaissance concerts sold for £2,400.

The events have sparked a conversation around ticket scalping in India, where people use bots or automation tools to bypass queues and purchase multiple tickets to sell on reselling platforms. Fans are questioning whether the official site had taken adequate steps to prevent this, or whether it chose to look the other way.

BMS has denied any association with resellers and urged fans to avoid tickets from “unauthorised sources” as they could be fake, but this hasn’t stopped people from viewing the site suspiciously.

Fans have complained about having a similar experience while buying tickets for Punjabi singer Diljit Dosanjh’s upcoming concerts. Tickets were released on Zomato Live, the concert promoter, earlier this month and after getting sold out, they began popping up on reselling platforms for several times the original price.

Ticket scalping is illegal in India, and experts say that while it’s possible that it’s happening anyway, it’s also likely that legitimate ticket-holders are selling theirs through resellers to make a profit due to the massive demand.

Graphic designer Dwayne Dias was among the few lucky ones who managed to buy tickets for the Coldplay concert from the official site. He bought four tickets for 6,450 rupees each.

Since then, he’s been approached by people who are willing to pay up to 60,000 rupees for a ticket. “If I wanted to, I could sell all the tickets and watch the concert in South Korea [Coldplay’s upcoming touring destination]. The amount will cover my travel expenses and I’ll be able to experience a new city,” he says.

While the inflated prices of Coldplay tickets are shocking, the huge demand for tickets to see popular international artists perform is not uncommon. In fact, the live music business in India has been growing in leaps and bounds over the past couple of years.

According to a report, music concerts generated about 8,000m rupees in revenue last year and by 2025, this figure is set to increase by 25%. Brian Tellis, a veteran in the music business and one of the founders of the Mahindra Blues music festival, says concerts have become a part of an individual’s – and the country’s – cultural currency.

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Chart-toppers like Ed Sheeran, Alan Walker and Dua Lipa have performed in India in the recent past, and the latter two are set to perform again this year. “Like for other industries, India is a booming market for the music business as well. There’s a huge demographic that’s young and has money to spend. Everyone wants a piece of the pie,” he says.

The soaring demand is evident in ticket prices and sales. Tellis says about a decade ago, 80% of production costs were footed by sponsors and 20% through ticket sales, but the numbers have reversed today.

“Attending a concert is a mix of bragging rights, being a conformist and being part of the scene,” he says. “There are true music lovers as well in the mix, but many attend because they get swept up by the hype surrounding a performance and they don’t want to feel left out.”

Days before and after Coldplay concert tickets went on sale, social media was full of captivating Instagram reels of the band performing hits like and in packed stadiums, with fans singing along and turning the venue into with their LED bracelets. Influencers waxed eloquent about their love for the band and there was no dearth of Coldplay memes.

Industry sources told the BBC that targeted marketing plays a key role in ticket sales – a task handled by the promoter’s website. The more demand is created, the more ticket prices can be raised. Organising concerts is tough, as they often incur losses, so when the opportunity arises, bankable performers are exploited for profits.

While some fans argue that the government should take steps to control ticket prices, Tellis doesn’t agree. “This [selling tickets] is entrepreneurship – it won’t be right for the government to get involved. Because if you want to control revenue, then you’ll have to also control costs,” he says.

Despite the upward trajectory of India’s live music business, experts say the country still has a long way to go before it can be on a par with the international music scene.

• Oasis hit out at Ticketmaster’s dynamic pricing after backlash

“We have very few concert venues and they are not up to international standards,” Tellis says. “That’s why artists perform fewer shows in India despite the massive demand.”

Dias and his friends recently travelled to Singapore to attend a Coldplay concert. He says the ticket-booking experience was smooth, the venue was top-class and the crowd was well-managed.

He’s not sure he’ll have the same experience at DY Patil stadium – the venue for the band’s concerts in India. “For one, it’s much smaller and crowds in India can be quite indisciplined,” he says. He’s also worried about how safe the venue will be and whether the crowd will be managed properly at entry and exit points.

But for now, he’s holding on to his tickets and is prepared to endure whatever lies ahead, just to get a chance to watch Chris Martin and company perform again.

Michael Fortin was at the heart of Hollywood’s golden age of streaming.

The actor and aerial cinematographer turned his hobby of flying drones into a profitable business in 2012 just as the streaming wars were taking off. For a decade, he was flying high above film sets, creating sleek aerial shots for movies and TV shows on Netflix, Amazon and Disney.

Now he’s on the verge of becoming homeless – again. He was evicted from the Huntington Beach home he shared with his wife and two young children and now is being booted from the Las Vegas apartment they moved to because they could no longer afford to live in Southern California.

“We were saving to buy a house, we had money, we had done things the right way,” he says. “Two years ago, I didn’t worry about going out to dinner with my wife and kids and spending 200 bucks.”

“Now I worry about going out and spending $5 on a value meal at McDonald’s.”

For over a decade, business was booming in Hollywood, with studios battling to catch up to new companies like Netflix and Hulu. But the good times ground to a halt in May 2023, when Hollywood’s writers went on strike.

The strikes lasted multiple months and marked the first time since the 1960s that both writers and actors joined forces – effectively shutting down Hollywood production. But rather than roaring back, in the one year since the strikes ended, production has fizzled.

Projects have been cancelled and production was cut across the city as jobs have dried up, with layoffs at many studios – most recently at Paramount. It had a second round of layoffs this week, as the storied movie company moves to cut 15% of its workforce ahead of a merger with the production company Skydance.

Unemployment in film and TV in the United States was at 12.5% in August, but many think those numbers are actually much higher, because many film workers either do not file for unemployment benefits because they’re not eligible or they’ve exhausted those benefits after months of not working.

As a whole, the number of US productions during the second quarter of 2024 was down about 40% compared to the same period in 2022. Globally, there was a 20% decline over that period, according to ProdPro, which tracks TV and film productions.

That means less new movies and binge-worthy shows for us.

But experts say the streaming boom wasn’t sustainable. And studios are trying to figure out how to be profitable in a new world when people don’t pay for cable TV funded by commercials.

“The air has come out of the content bubble,” says Matthew Belloni, the founder of Puck News, which covers the entertainment industry. “Crisis is a good word. I try not to be alarmist, but crisis is what people are feeling.”

Part of the boom was fuelled by Wall Street, where tech giants like Netflix saw record growth and studios, like Paramount, saw their share prices soar for adding their own streaming service offers.

“It caused an overheating of the content market. There were 600 scripted live action series airing just a few years ago and then the stock market stopped rewarding that,” Mr Belloni says. “Netflix crashed – all the other companies crashed. Netflix has since recovered – but the others are really struggling to get to profitability.”

And along with the streaming bubble bursting, some productions are also being lured away from California by attractive tax incentives in other states and countries. Los Angeles leaders are so concerned about the slowdown that Mayor Karen Bass created a task force last month to consider new incentives for film production in Hollywood.

“The entertainment industry is critical to the economic vitality of the Los Angeles region,” Bass said announcing the plan, explaining it is a “cornerstone” of the city’s economy and supplies hundreds of thousands of jobs.

Recent data shows the entertainment industry contributes over $115bn (£86bn) annually to the region’s economy, with an employment base of over 681,000 people, the mayor said.

The writers’ and actors’ strikes lasted for months and resulted in union contracts that offer more money and protections against artificial intelligence.

Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, the chief negotiator with the Screen Actors Guild union, told the BBC that some consolidation in Hollywood was inevitable. He says he is optimistic that production will be ramping up soon.

“What makes these companies special, what gives them their unique ability to create value is their relationship with creative talent,” he said while visiting a picket line outside a Disney office in September, where video game voice actors are currently on strike fighting for similar protections.

Hollywood “always thinks it’s in crisis,” he says. “It is a town that constantly faces technological innovation – all kinds of change – which is part of the magic. Part of keeping content fresh is everyone having the idea that things don’t always have to be the way they’ve been.”

Mr Fortin’s drone company was operating nearly every day before the strikes. Now he’s flown the drones just 22 days in the year since the strikes ended. And as an actor – he often plays tough guys – he has worked just 10 days. He used to work as a background actor to get by, but the pay barely covers the gas money to get to Los Angeles from Las Vegas.

“It was a great wave, and it crashed,” Mr Fortin said after a day flying his drones on the AppleTV+ show Platonic – his first gig with drones since April.

“Things are coming in little by little,” he says in his van before driving back to Las Vegas for a court hearing to fight his eviction order.

“Hollywood gave me everything,” he says. “But it feels like the industry has turned its back on lots of people, not just me.”

There is a young woman sheltering under a tree between two busy roads clutching a pile of documents to her chest.

These pieces of paper are more important to Bibi Nazdana than anything in the world: they are the divorce granted to her after a two-year court battle to free herself from life as a child bride.

They are the same papers a Taliban court has invalidated – a victim of the group’s hardline interpretation on Sharia (religious law) which has seen women effectively silenced in Afghanistan’s legal system.

Nazdana’s divorce is one of tens of thousands of court rulings revoked since the Taliban took control of the country three years ago this month.

It took just 10 days from them sweeping into the capital, Kabul, for the man she was promised to at seven to ask the courts to overturn the divorce ruling she had fought so hard for.

Hekmatullah had initially appeared to demand his wife when Nazdana was 15. It was eight years since her father had agreed to what is known as a ‘bad marriage’, which seeks to turn a family “enemy” into a “friend”.

She immediately approached the court – then operating under the US-backed Afghan government – for a separation, repeatedly telling them she could not marry the farmer, now in his 20s. It took two years, but finally a ruling was made in her favour: “The court congratulated me and said, ‘You are now separated and free to marry whomever you want.'”

But after Hekmatullah appealed the ruling in 2021, Nazdana was told she would not be allowed to plead her own case in person.

“At the court, the Taliban told me I shouldn’t return to court because it was against Sharia. They said my brother should represent me instead,” says Nazdana.

“They told us if we didn’t comply,” says Shams, Nazdana’s 28-year-old brother, “they would hand my sister over to him (Hekmatullah) by force.”

Her former husband, and now a newly signed up member of the Taliban, won the case. Shams’ attempts to explain to the court in their home province of Uruzgan that her life would be in danger fell on deaf ears.

The siblings decided they had been left with no choice but to flee.

When the Taliban returned to power three years ago, they promised to do away with the corruption of the past and deliver “justice” under Sharia, a version of Islamic law.

Since then, the Taliban say they have looked at some 355,000 cases.

Most were criminal cases – an estimated 40% are disputes over land and a further 30% are family issues including divorce, like Nazdana’s.

Nazdana’s divorce ruling was dug out after the BBC got exclusive access to the back offices of the Supreme Court in the capital, Kabul.

Abdulwahid Haqani – media officer for Afghanistan’s Supreme Court – confirms the ruling in favour of Hekmatullah, saying it was not valid because he “wasn’t present”.

“The previous corrupt administration’s decision to cancel Hekmatullah and Nazdana’s marriage was against the Sharia and rules of marriage,” he explains.

But the promises to reform the justice system have gone further than simply reopening settled cases.

The Taliban have also systematically removed all judges – both male and female – and replaced them with people who supported their hardline views.

Women were also declared unfit to participate in the judicial system.

“Women aren’t qualified or able to judge because in our Sharia principles the judiciary work requires people with high intelligence,” says Abdulrahim Rashid, director of foreign relations and communications at Taliban’s Supreme Court.

For the women who worked in the system, the loss is felt heavily – and not just for themselves.

Former Supreme Court judge Fawzia Amini – who fled the country after the Taliban returned – says there is little hope for women’s protections to improve under the law if there are no women in the courts.

“We played an important role,” she says. “For example, the Elimination of Violence against Women law in 2009 was one of our achievements. We also worked on the regulation of shelters for women, orphan guardianship and the anti-human trafficking law, to name a few.”

She also rubbishes the Taliban overturning previous rulings, like Nazdana’s.

“If a woman divorces her husband and the court documents are available as evidence then that’s final. Legal verdicts can’t change because a regime changes,” says Ms Amini.

“Our civil code is more than half a century old,” she adds. “It’s been practised since even before the Taliban were founded.

“All civil and penal codes, including those for divorce, have been adapted from the Quran.”

But the Taliban say Afghanistan’s former rulers simply weren’t Islamic enough.

Instead, they largely rely on Hanafi Fiqh (jurisprudence) religious law, which dates back to the 8th Century – albeit updated to “meet the current needs”, according to Abdulrahim Rashid.

“The former courts made decisions based on a penal and civil code. But now all decisions are based on Sharia [Islamic law],” he adds, proudly gesturing at the pile of cases they have already sorted through.

Ms Amini is less impressed by the plans for Afghanistan’s legal system going forward.

“I have a question for the Taliban. Did their parents marry based on these laws or based on the laws that their sons are going to write?” she asks.

Under the tree between two roads in an unnamed neighbouring country, none of this is any comfort to Nazdana.

Now just 20, she has been here for a year, clutching her divorce papers and hoping someone will help her.

“I have knocked on many doors asking for help, including the UN, but no-one has heard my voice,” she says.

“Where is the support? Don’t I deserve freedom as a woman?”

SpaceX has launched its mission to bring back two astronauts stranded on the International Space Station (ISS) since June.

The Dragon capsule, which has two empty seats for Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, lifted off from Cape Canaveral, Florida on Saturday.

The pair’s mission at the space station had only been expected to last about eight days but after a fault was found on the new Boeing Starliner it returned to Earth empty as a precaution.

Nasa astronaut Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Alexander Gorbunov are flying with fresh supplies for Butch and Suni and expect to bring them home in February.

The Dragon launch had been scheduled for Thursday but was delayed because of Hurricane Helene, which has left a trail of destruction through Florida, north through Georgia and into Tennessee and the Carolinas.

SpaceX, founded by billionaire Elon Musk, has been ferrying crews to and from the ISS every six months.

The Dragon is expected to dock with the ISS on Sunday at around 21:30 GMT.

Under a contract between Nasa and Roscosmos, the Russian federal space agency, three-seat Russian Soyuz spacecraft carry one Nasa astronaut on each flight to the ISS and a cosmonaut flies on each four-seat Dragon.

A lot of us have been there, locked in a metal cylinder flying at more than 500mph (804km/h), gritting our teeth about the armrest the person to the left is hogging.

Or the person next to the window who keeps getting up to go to the toilet, or the person in front who has suddenly put their seat back, squashing your knees.

With roughly half of the UK’s households flying once a year, how people behave on planes is an ongoing bugbear.

And this week a Hong Kong couple were banned by Cathay Pacific after tensions flared over a reclined seat.

So how can we avoid getting in our fellow travellers’ bad books?

Someone putting their seat back on a long-haul flight can be frustrating – but it seems to trigger Britons and Americans to different degrees.

A 2023 survey by Skyscanner into the issue indicated that 40% of people in the UK find it annoying, but a YouGov survey earlier this year suggested that only a quarter of Americans view it as unacceptable.

Whatever the percentage, reclining seats “really are a problem”, according to Charmaine Davies, a former flight attendant.

She says cabin crew sometimes have to step in to stop anger boiling over between passengers.

The basic problem is how airlines cram seats onto planes, with passengers having less space than they did in the past, according to Prof Jim Salzman of University of California, Los Angeles.

“[The airlines] are able to pass on the anger and frustration of cramped seating to passengers who blame each other for bad behaviour instead of the airlines who created the problem in the first place.”

William Hanson, an etiquette coach and author, says it’s a matter of choosing your time to recline your seat, which you shouldn’t do during a meal. Check whether the person behind is leaning on the table, or using a laptop – and recline slowly.

If in doubt just talk to your fellow passenger, he says. Don’t expect them to be a mind reader.

Another gripe linked to the amount of space people have on planes is double armrest hogging.

Mary, a flight attendant for a major US airline, says she is often given a middle seat between “two guys with both their arms on armrests” when she’s being transferred for work and doesn’t have a choice of seat.

Nearly a third of UK airline passengers found this annoying in 2023, the Skyscanner survey suggested.

Mary has had “a tussle with elbows”, she says, but has a strategy for reclaiming the space.

“I wait until they reach for a drink and take the armrest. One [guy] kept trying to push my arm, and I just had to give him a look: ‘We’re not doing that today.'”

To resolve any tension, Mr Hanson says people should get used to the idea of having “elbow rests” rather than armrests, and share them.

Many of us will be familiar with the dilemma of being in a window seat and needing to go to the toilet, but the person next to you has fallen asleep.

Do you nudge them to wake them up, or climb over them?

More than half of Americans responding to the YouGov survey said climbing over someone to go to the toilet was unacceptable.

Mr Hanson says he normally has an aisle seat, and before going to sleep he tells the passenger next to him it’s fine to wake him up or hop over if they need to.

If sat in the middle or window seat, you should just gently let the passenger in the aisle seat know you need to get past them – but be aware you might not speak the same language, he advises.

If a passenger has been drinking alcohol, it can make them need to go to the toilet more often too.

Zoe, a former flight attendant with Virgin Atlantic, was on a flight to Ibiza on a different carrier where many of the passengers had been drinking in the airport bar beforehand, she says.

As soon as the flight took off and the seatbelt light went off, “everybody stood up” and started queuing for the toilet. Some got “quite aggressive”, she says, leading to the cabin crew turning the seatbelt signs back on, forcing everybody to sit down.

Unfortunately, one passenger really couldn’t wait so had to “have a wee in a carrier bag”.

“He put some swimming shorts in there first to soak it up,” says Zoe.

About a third of Brits find people standing up as soon as the plane lands annoying, the Skyscanner survey indicated.

“Just stay in your seat,” says former flight attendant Ms Davies. “There’s no point jumping up because you’re not going anywhere.”

It normally takes the ground crew several minutes to either hook up the passenger boarding bridge or put boarding stairs in place.

Even after that, if you have checked baggage, you’re going to need to wait for it to get to the carousel, she says, “no matter how quickly you get off the plane”.

Mr Hanson says that in etiquette terms, there’s nothing wrong with wanting to get up to stretch your legs, and perhaps people just want to get off because they are unconsciously a bit scared of being on a plane.

But he adds that it is “faintly comical” when people all get up at once and then “stand there like a lemon”.

Other air passenger pet hates include people jumping queues, using phones or other devices without headphones, draping long hair over the backs of seats, and taking shoes or socks off on a plane.

If you become aware the flight attendants are using spray to “spritz” the aircraft near you, you may want to put some socks or deodorant on, Mary says, as cabin crew won’t say anything directly.

But with air travel continuing to grow, how can we get on with other passengers on planes?

The key is everyone being considerate, Mr Hanson says.

“If you don’t want to temper your behaviour to get along with other people then there’s something wrong with you, to be blunt.”

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 British woman who fled Lebanon after fighting between Israel and Hezbollah intensified has said she feels “terrible and guilty” for leaving.

“I’m still in denial,” Alla Ghalayini told the BBC. “I can’t sleep. I still hear the bombs in my head.”

The 28-year-old is nearly two months pregnant with her first child. She looked exhausted as she arrived at London’s Heathrow Airport aboard a Middle East Airlines flight with two large suitcases on Sunday morning.

She says she left her husband behind – along with the life she loved.

• What might Hezbollah, Israel and Iran do next?
• ‘It’s the worst moment the country has passed through’
• Israel-Lebanon live updates

There has been fighting between Israel and Hezbollah across the Lebanese border since the 7 October attack on Israel by Hamas. The Iran-backed militia, which is based in Lebanon, said it would continue until there was a ceasefire in Gaza.

In recent weeks, Israel has attacked areas it says are Hezbollah strongholds in different parts of Lebanon, including the capital, Beirut.

On Saturday, an Israeli strike in southern Beirut killed Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, with Israel saying 20 more of the group’s senior members were killed in the attack.

Ms Ghalayini moved to Beirut from north London when she married in August last year.

She said she had no idea when she would see her husband again, or if she will be able to return to Lebanon before her baby is born.

Ms Ghalayini said the only commercial airline she could find leaving Beirut was Middle East Airlines – and she was only able to get a seat because her husband is a pilot for the company.

“I feel terrible and guilty that I have been able to leave,” she said.

“I didn’t want to leave my husband. My heart is with him.”

She said Beirut Airport, where she departed from, was “chaotic” and “rammed with people”, adding that the plane did not have an empty seat.

“[The flight] was obviously emotional – everyone had a story.

“Everyone on the plane felt at ease as soon as the airplane left Lebanese airspace. That’s because areas very close by to the airport were being bombed.”

Ms Ghalayini said that, before she had left, the situation in the country felt “unbearable”.

“I was seeing buildings bombed, buildings falling, huge fires. It wouldn’t just be one bomb, it would be 20 explosions, one after the other,” she added.

“We were screaming. Hiding in the bathroom. I live on the 23rd floor, so I was seeing my city burn. You feel helpless.

“You smell flesh, see people still stuck under rubble.

“Being born and raised in London, I’ve never experienced anything like this.

“No one should have to go through what we’ve gone through.”

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

The Foreign Office told UK nationals in Lebanon to leave immediately on Saturday due to the escalating violence.

“We encourage you to book the next available flight, even if it is not a direct route,” it said in its official advice.

In a post on X, it said it was working “to increase capacity and secure seats for British nationals to leave”.

UK nationals in Lebanon have been told to register their presence to receive the latest information.

Iran’s supreme leader has said the death of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah “will not go unavenged”, a day after he was killed in an Israeli air strike in Lebanon.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei announced five days of mourning in Iran in response to what he called the “martyrdom of the great Nasrallah”, describing him as “a path and a school of thought” that would continue.

Iranian media reported that a Iranian Revolutionary Guards general was also killed in the Israeli strikes in Beirut on Friday.

Israel’s military said Nasrallah had “the blood of thousands… on his hands”, and that it targeted him while he was “commanding more imminent attacks”.

There are fears that the strike could plunge the wider region into war, after nearly a year of cross-border fighting between Israel and Hezbollah sparked by the 7 October attacks and war in the Gaza Strip.

Key to what happens next in the Middle East is what Ayatollah Khamenei decides.

So far, he and other senior Iranian figures have refrained from vowing to retaliate for the series of severe and humiliating blows that Israel has dealt Hezbollah in recent weeks, seemingly because Iran does not want a war with its arch-enemy.

Iran also has not carried out its threat to avenge the assassination of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran in July, which Iran and Hamas blamed on Israel.

Both Hezbollah and Hamas are designated as terrorist organisations by Israel, the US, UK and other countries.

Earlier on Saturday, Ayatollah Khamenei urged Muslims to stand by Hezbollah “with their resources and help” but did not promise to retaliate for the strike that killed Nasrallah.

“The fate of this region will be determined by the forces of resistance, with Hezbollah at the forefront,” he said.

Reuters news agency meanwhile cited two regional officials as saying that the supreme leader had been transferred to a secure location inside Iran with heightened security measures. They also said Iran was in constant contact with Hezbollah and other allies to determine their next steps, according to the report.

Friday’s Israeli strike levelled several buildings in Beirut’s southern suburb of Dahieh, underneath which the Israeli military said Hezbollah’s central headquarters was located.

Hezbollah confirmed Nasrallah’s death on Saturday. But it did not comment on the Israeli military’s claim that Ali Karaki, the head of the group’s Southern Front, and other commanders were killed alongside Nasrallah.

Gen Abbas Nilforoushan, deputy commander of operations for Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guard Corps (IRGC), was also “martyred” in Dahiyeh on Friday, according to the IRGC-linked Saberin News outlet.

It provided nor further details, although the moderate Didban news website said he was “assassinated along with” Nasrallah.

However, there has been no official confirmation from Iranian authorities.

Iran uses the IRGC to provide Hezbollah with most of its funding, training and weapons, which have allowed the Shia Islamist group to build a military wing stronger than the Lebanese army.

The US says the IRGC also oversees the co-ordination of Iran’s network of allied armed groups across the Middle East, which are all opposed to the US and Israel and sometimes refer to themselves as the “Axis of Resistance”. Besides Hezbollah, they include Hamas, the Houthis in Yemen and Shia militias in Iraq and Syria.

On Saturday, there were air raid sirens in the Israeli city of Tel Aviv after the Houthis launched a missile in support of Hezbollah. The Israeli military said the missile was intercepted.

The Islamic Resistance in Iraq, an umbrella group of Iraqi militias, also claimed new drone attacks on northern Israel and the occupied Golan Heights.

Sanam Vakil, director of the Middle East programme at the UK-based think tank Chatham House, said Iran’s reputation among its allies was “certainly damaged” and that it would be “looking for some way to turn the tables and save some face”.

“This could result in a co-ordinated axis response, including from Iraq and the Houthis, or another direct Iranian strike on Israel itself,” she said.

“By maintaining pressure or even escalating, Tehran is aware that this will invite further attacks, but it will choose to do so keep pressure on Israel.”

Lebanon is a country that knows war all too well. And it is not eager for more.

It still bears the scars of 15 years of civil war between 1975 and 1990, and of the last war between Hezbollah and Israel in 2006.

But for some, including Beirut’s Governor Marwan Abboud, Israel’s recent escalation already feels worse.

In the past 10 days, the country has endured mass casualties from exploding pagers and walkie-talkies, a wave of assassinations of Hezbollah military commanders, devastating air strikes – and the use of bunker-busting bombs in Beirut, which killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah on Friday.

“It’s the worst moment that the country passed through,” said Abboud, who has no connection with Hezbollah.

“I feel sad. I am shocked by the large number of civilian casualties. I am also shocked by the silence of the international community – as if what’s happening here does not mean anything.”

• US and allies call for 21-day ceasefire in Lebanon
• What might Hezbollah, Israel and Iran do next?
• Follow live: Nasrallah’s killing is ‘historic turning point’, Netanyahu says

We spoke at the edge of Beirut’s Martyrs Square, where many families slept in the open last night after fleeing Israel’s strikes in the southern suburb of Dahieh – Hezbollah’s heartland.

They remain in the square today – unsure where to turn for safety, like many in Lebanon.

Asked what he thought Israel’s plan was, the governor replied: “I don’t know but Israel wants to kill and to kill and to kill. May god protect this country.”

His parting words were bleak. “It’s the saddest day of my life,” he said, his voice heavy with emotion.

A few steps away we met an extended family, sitting on bare concrete, under the harsh morning sun.

Madina Mustafa Ali was rocking her seven-month-old baby Amir in her lap and reliving the trauma of Friday night.

“There was an explosion, and we got scared, especially for the children. So we ran away and came here. This is where we slept,” she said.

She told me the family will stay in the square for now because they have nowhere else to go.

Others are fleeing, some heading to the north of Lebanon. The south of the country is not an option – it’s being hit hard.

Driving through the city we saw families on the move, some crammed into cars with thin mattresses strapped to the roof, others piled onto motorbikes.

Here and there, we saw people on foot carrying a few belongings.

This is the new landscape of Beirut: boarded-up shops, fewer people, and more fear – especially since Nasrallah’s killing was confirmed.

Throughout the day, plumes of dark smoke billowed from Dahieh. The Hezbollah stronghold looked much weakened today – the two busiest streets were largely deserted, and many apartment blocks looked empty.

We spotted Hezbollah members, guarding an air strike location, one brandishing a Kalashnikov. That’s a sign of tension, or desperation – as normally the armed group doesn’t show its weapons on the streets.

Hezbollah was not watching our every move today – they were more focused perhaps on the threat from above.

We, too, were keeping an eye on the skies, where there were drones.

At the location of one Israeli strike, we saw smoke still rising from the ruins of what appeared to be a factory. We were told it made kitchen roll, and there was plenty of that shredded on the ground.

Lebanon has been rendered a war zone, but there are risks growing for the entire Middle East. And plenty of questions.

Will Hezbollah hit back hard at Israel? Can it?

Will its Iranian backers intervene? Until now they have been in no rush.

And will Tehran’s other regional proxies – in Iraq, Syria and Yemen – get more involved?

Three days of national mourning are due to begin in Lebanon on Monday. No-one can be sure what else is ahead.

“I’m supposed to be her protector but I’m also supposed to be his protector and when you’re caught in the middle, what do you do?”

For the dads of children with severe learning difficulties, life can often bring a lot of challenges.

BBC Spotlight has spoken to four dads of boys who all have a diagnosis of autism and a severe learning disability that can lead to upsetting and harmful behaviour to themselves and others.

They become bodyguards and protectors and in many cases face physical harm, and have called for more support and respite.

On Tuesday, a group of mums spoke out in a BBC Spotlight documentary about incredibly hard choices they have had to make when looking after sons with complex needs, often without any respite or support.

Séamus Flannigan is dad to 16-year-old Eoin.

“I could be out of the room and the next second I’m being called by my daughter or my wife because he’s kicked off again. You have to put yourself physically between him and them and get them out of the road,” Mr Flannigan said.

“You think okay, at least I’m able to deal with this and it’s not my wife and it’s not my daughter that are getting hurt. But then you realise that they can’t be on their own with him,” he said.

“ They can’t spend that quality time without someone being there as a bodyguard.”

One of the most touching scenes in the film is when the family are in a hydrotherapy pool with Eoin. The bond between father and son is clear.

“It’s so simple, just splashing about in the water, playing with the waves pushing against you, he just loves that and he loves you to be there with him.”

Those moments are what all four dads call the “small wins”.

Frank Tipping’s 11-year-old son Theo can have great difficulty controlling his emotions, but there is another side to him.

“He is a gorgeous child. He is affectionate, he is warm. You can see he wants to belong everywhere,” Mr Tipping said.

“You can see him struggling to figure things out, but it’s very difficult for him and it’s very difficult for us to understand what exactly it is that he needs.”

And it is those moments of struggle that can often escalate into distressed behaviour.

In the film, Mr Tipping often intervenes between Theo and his wife Julie, shielding her from the more harmful outcomes of Theo’s distress.

“Ultimately, you’re approaching a situation in which you could get hurt, you know, and that’s really hard to contemplate,” Mr Tipping said.

“He’s getting bigger and stronger and I’m not sure we’re ready for that.”

Mr Tipping admits he feels very guilty discussing Theo’s difficult episodes.

“It’s not Theo’s fault. Theo is a great kid, he’s a godsend, he’s a blessing,” he said.

“ But I feel every time we articulate the problem it feels like betraying him.”

John Bell’s 15-year-old son Rudy is strong and his outbursts have resulted in multiple injuries.

In the film Rudy bites and scratches his father’s hands during an outburst as Mr Bell is trying to de-escalate things.

“My hands are still black and blue and that was five or six weeks ago. And it’s hard because you don’t want him to hurt you or other people. Or himself. When Rudy gets you he gets you good, you can really feel it,” he said.

Mr Bell said he and his wife Carly felt taking part in the film was a last resort – they wanted to show the reality and how they are struggling.

“When people see this and professionals might see it, they might see what me and my family are going through,” he said.

“We’re physically drained, mentally drained. I’m still trying to hold down a job but I’ve had to drop it down to two days.”

Social services have assessed all four boys should be getting regular overnight respite. That is where the children would go to a health trust facility and the families would get a break.

There are no spaces currently available in the Belfast and South Eastern Trust.

Mr Bell said respite was invaluable.

“It made a hell of a difference to everybody in the family. I mean everybody. Because you were getting a bed for the night, you were getting a sleep for the night.”

Mr Bell has had medical issues this year including very high blood pressure: “It’s got to the stage where I’m running on empty.”

Danny Miller’s dad Steven has changed jobs to be able to spend more time at home.

“I used to be a mechanic and now I work for the Roads Service and lost almost half my wages,” Mr Miller said.

“That’s something I’ve had to do to support my family.”

His wife Claire suffers quite significant injuries on a regular basis.

“I’m watching him attacking her and there’s not really anything I can do,” he said.

“I’m supposed to be her protector but I’m also supposed to be his protector and you’re caught in the middle what do you do?

“A lot of the time we’re lying on the floor trying to protect him from banging his head on the floor.”

Mr Miller says he is devoted to his son and believes regular respite would help the whole family.

The South Eastern Health Trust who look after Danny and Rudy’s care said it would not comment on their cases.

It said it understood the pressure on families but it could not offer respite because beds were being used by children who need long-term placement.

It added that it hoped future funding would be made available.

The Belfast Health Trust who are responsible for Eoin and Theo’s care said it was very sorry that it was unable to offer overnight breaks, but that the Trust was exploring ways of reintroducing them.

Health Minister Mike Nesbitt said the current situation was unsustainable, adding that he was determined to see “urgent improvements”.

You can watch the film I Am Not Okay on BBC iPlayer.

The first Sikh woman police officer in Leicestershire has retired after 28 years in the force.

Manjit Atwal rose to the rank of chief superintendent and retired on Thursday as one of the highest-ranking Sikh female officers in the UK.

She said she had witnessed major changes since joining Leicestershire Police in 1996, including technology and inclusivity.

During her time in the police, Ms Atwal worked as a hostage negotiator for 12 years, and received the Queen’s Police Medal for Distinguished Service.

She said: “Over the last 28 years, there’s been so many changes. Whether you look at uniform, from a skirt to trousers, to more women in the job and also technology, and we’ve got a more diverse workforce.”

Ms Atwal said some of the biggest challenges she had faced in her career included “being a woman of colour and being a mother, because of the shift pattern that we worked at that time.

“What I was able to do, was work through those barriers and make those changes throughout my career.”

However, Ms Atwal said she believes workforce diversity remains a challenge.

“When I joined back in 1996, there weren’t many that looked like me,” she said.

“And there weren’t many women either. But now, we’ve got a lot more women in the job.

“For me, Leicester is so vibrant, multicultural, and we really need to look like our communities.”

She added that she one day hopes to see a chief constable from a minority community.

Ms Atwal also worked as part of Operation Soteria, a national programme to improve the policing response to rape and other sexual offences.

Chief Constable Rob Nixon said communities trusted Ms Atwal, which helped to build trust in the force.

He added: “Internally, I think her legacy is she has inspired staff and officers to join the force, stay with the force, and adopt a really high level of integrity and community focus.”

When asked what her plans were next, Ms Atwal said: “I’m going to take some time out, because as I’ve gone through my career, my children have grown up.

“I’ve now got grandchildren and I really want to have a bit of time out to have some time with my grandchildren, my family, but also reinvent myself as the new Manjit.”

Dame Maggie Smith was one of Britain’s best-loved and most celebrated actresses, with a career spanning eight decades.

Her first performances came on stage in the 1950s, and her last screen role was just a year ago, when she starred in The Miracle Club.

She was one of a select group of actors to win the treble of big US awards, with two Oscars, four Emmys and a Tony – as well as seven Baftas and an honorary Olivier Award in her home country.

Here are six of her best-known performances:

One of Dame Maggie’s most iconic early roles was as Desdemona in Shakespeare’s Othello.

Sir Laurence Olivier, who was playing the title role, offered her the part at the National Theatre in 1963.

The production, with the original cast, was made into a film two years later, and Smith nominated for an Academy Award for best supporting actress.

Reflecting on the role much later, Dame Maggie told the Guardian she did the role “with great discomfort and was terrified all the time”.

Shakespeare, she added, “is not my thing”.

The role that brought Dame Maggie international fame came in 1969 when she played the determinedly non-conformist teacher in the title role of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie.

The film was adapted from the 1961 novel by Muriel Spark, set in 1930s Edinburgh, and the character was based on the author’s inspirational teacher.

The part won Dame Maggie a best actress Oscar, and she later married co-star Robert Stephens.

Dame Maggie won critical acclaim for her role as Betsey Trotwood in a BBC adaptation of David Copperfield at the turn of the century.

The part also brought her Bafta and Emmy nominations.

She starred alongside a young Daniel Radcliffe, who she would later act with again in the Harry Potter films.

At the age of 67, a whole new generation was introduced to the acting marvels of Dame Maggie.

In 2001, she took on the role of Professor Minerva McGonagall in Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone.

Her formidable character was in all eight films and she was reportedly the only actor that author JK Rowling specifically asked for.

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

At the same time as appearing in Harry Potter, Dame Maggie also starred in another huge hit – Downton Abbey.

Between 2010 and 2015 she played Violet Crawley, Dowager Countess of Grantham, in ITV’s British period drama.

Her performance as the quick-witted matriarchal figure won her three Primetime Emmy awards, a Bafta, a Golden Globe and four Screen Actors Guild awards.

She reprised her role of Violet in the Downton Abbey films in 2019 and 2022.

In the final film, her character’s health deteriorates and she dies.

One of Dame Maggie’s most famous later roles was as a homeless woman in The Lady In The Van.

In the 2015 film, she starred as Miss Shepherd, who lived in a battered van in playwright Alan Bennett’s driveway for 15 years.

Her performance in the comedy-drama was described as “terrifically good” and “magnificent” by critics. She received a Golden Globe award and was nominated for a Bafta.

But it wasn’t the first time she had played Miss Shepherd.

Dame Maggie also starred as the lead character in 1999 when the play, based on Bennett’s memoir, opened in London’s West End.

Her performance earned her an Olivier Award nomination for best actress in 2000.

If you were in India and had 900,000 rupees ($10,800; £8,000), what would you buy? A car? A trip around the world? Diamond jewellery? Or a Coldplay concert ticket?

The British rock band is set to perform three shows of their Music of the Spheres world tour in Mumbai next year and the tickets are being sold for obscene amounts on reselling platforms, after being sold out in minutes on BookMyShow (BMS) – the concert’s official ticketing platform.

The tickets went on sale last Sunday and were priced from 2,500 rupees to 12,000 rupees. More than 10 million people competed to buy some 180,000 tickets.

Fans complained about hours-long digital queues and site crashes, but many also alleged that the sales were rigged as resellers had begun selling tickets for five times the price – touching even 900,000 rupees – before they were released on the official site.

Earlier this month, something similar happened with tickets for Oasis’ concert in the UK, where resellers charged more than £350 for tickets that cost £135. But even then, the inflated prices of Coldplay tickets stand out. To put this in perspective, Madonna charged £1,306.75 for VIP passes to her Celebration tour and the best tickets for Beyoncé’s Renaissance concerts sold for £2,400.

The events have sparked a conversation around ticket scalping in India, where people use bots or automation tools to bypass queues and purchase multiple tickets to sell on reselling platforms. Fans are questioning whether the official site had taken adequate steps to prevent this, or whether it chose to look the other way.

BMS has denied any association with resellers and urged fans to avoid tickets from “unauthorised sources” as they could be fake, but this hasn’t stopped people from viewing the site suspiciously.

Fans have complained about having a similar experience while buying tickets for Punjabi singer Diljit Dosanjh’s upcoming concerts. Tickets were released on Zomato Live, the concert promoter, earlier this month and after getting sold out, they began popping up on reselling platforms for several times the original price.

Ticket scalping is illegal in India, and experts say that while it’s possible that it’s happening anyway, it’s also likely that legitimate ticket-holders are selling theirs through resellers to make a profit due to the massive demand.

Graphic designer Dwayne Dias was among the few lucky ones who managed to buy tickets for the Coldplay concert from the official site. He bought four tickets for 6,450 rupees each.

Since then, he’s been approached by people who are willing to pay up to 60,000 rupees for a ticket. “If I wanted to, I could sell all the tickets and watch the concert in South Korea [Coldplay’s upcoming touring destination]. The amount will cover my travel expenses and I’ll be able to experience a new city,” he says.

While the inflated prices of Coldplay tickets are shocking, the huge demand for tickets to see popular international artists perform is not uncommon. In fact, the live music business in India has been growing in leaps and bounds over the past couple of years.

According to a report, music concerts generated about 8,000m rupees in revenue last year and by 2025, this figure is set to increase by 25%. Brian Tellis, a veteran in the music business and one of the founders of the Mahindra Blues music festival, says concerts have become a part of an individual’s – and the country’s – cultural currency.

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Chart-toppers like Ed Sheeran, Alan Walker and Dua Lipa have performed in India in the recent past, and the latter two are set to perform again this year. “Like for other industries, India is a booming market for the music business as well. There’s a huge demographic that’s young and has money to spend. Everyone wants a piece of the pie,” he says.

The soaring demand is evident in ticket prices and sales. Tellis says about a decade ago, 80% of production costs were footed by sponsors and 20% through ticket sales, but the numbers have reversed today.

“Attending a concert is a mix of bragging rights, being a conformist and being part of the scene,” he says. “There are true music lovers as well in the mix, but many attend because they get swept up by the hype surrounding a performance and they don’t want to feel left out.”

Days before and after Coldplay concert tickets went on sale, social media was full of captivating Instagram reels of the band performing hits like and in packed stadiums, with fans singing along and turning the venue into with their LED bracelets. Influencers waxed eloquent about their love for the band and there was no dearth of Coldplay memes.

Industry sources told the BBC that targeted marketing plays a key role in ticket sales – a task handled by the promoter’s website. The more demand is created, the more ticket prices can be raised. Organising concerts is tough, as they often incur losses, so when the opportunity arises, bankable performers are exploited for profits.

While some fans argue that the government should take steps to control ticket prices, Tellis doesn’t agree. “This [selling tickets] is entrepreneurship – it won’t be right for the government to get involved. Because if you want to control revenue, then you’ll have to also control costs,” he says.

Despite the upward trajectory of India’s live music business, experts say the country still has a long way to go before it can be on a par with the international music scene.

• Oasis hit out at Ticketmaster’s dynamic pricing after backlash

“We have very few concert venues and they are not up to international standards,” Tellis says. “That’s why artists perform fewer shows in India despite the massive demand.”

Dias and his friends recently travelled to Singapore to attend a Coldplay concert. He says the ticket-booking experience was smooth, the venue was top-class and the crowd was well-managed.

He’s not sure he’ll have the same experience at DY Patil stadium – the venue for the band’s concerts in India. “For one, it’s much smaller and crowds in India can be quite indisciplined,” he says. He’s also worried about how safe the venue will be and whether the crowd will be managed properly at entry and exit points.

But for now, he’s holding on to his tickets and is prepared to endure whatever lies ahead, just to get a chance to watch Chris Martin and company perform again.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Many economists question the effectiveness of Trump’s tariff plans and warn that they would ultimately be harmful to US consumers. 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.

It was January 1998 and Robert Bourgi was waiting to see the Gabonese president Omar Bongo, in an antechamber at his seaside palace in Libreville.

He was there to collect funds for the approaching French presidential election on behalf of the centre-right Gaullist candidate Jacques Chirac, who was mayor of Paris at the time.

Who should then be ushered into the same antechamber but Roland Dumas, former French foreign minister and right-hand man of ruling Socialist President François Mitterrand, Chirac’s arch-rival.

“Good day, Bourgi,” said Dumas. “I believe we are here for the same purpose.”

Claiming seniority, Dumas went into Bongo’s office first. Emerging a short time later, he said to Bourgi: “Don’t worry, there’s still a bit left!”

Recounted in Bourgi’s newly-published memoirs , the anecdote says everything about the money-grabbing and mutual dependence that for so long linked French and African politics.

For four decades Robert Bourgi was at the centre of it all.

Born in Senegal in 1945 to Lebanese Shiite parents, he rose to become a confidant of a generation of African leaders – from Omar Bongo in Gabon to Denis Sassou Nguesso of Congo-Brazzaville and Blaise Compaoré of Burkina Faso.

And in Paris, he inherited the mantle of the legendary Jacques Foccart – the Gaullist who oversaw the post-colonial system, with its arrangements of influence and protection, markets, materials, muscle… and money.

From the early years after World War Two – during which it had been a centre of activism in favour of France’s post-war leader Charles de Gaulle – Africa and its former French colonies had been a source of financing for all French political parties. By the 1980s, when Bourgi came onto the scene, it was routine.

Bourgi says that he himself never imported the bags of cash.

“The procedure was simple. When there was an election approaching, Chirac made it clear that I should deliver a message in various African capitals,” he said in an interview in Le Figaro newspaper this week.

“The [African] heads of state then sent an emissary to my office in Paris with a large sum. Several million in francs or dollars.”

In each of the 1995 and 2002 presidential elections – both won by Chirac – he says around $10m (£7.5m) was given by African leaders.

The 2002 race provided Bourgi with another colourful story, when a representative of Burkinabè leader Blaise Compaoré arrived in Paris with a large sum of money concealed in djembe drums.

According to Bourgi, he accompanied the envoy to the Elysée Palace, where they were greeted by Chirac. They opened the sealed drums using a pair of scissors, upon which a rain of banknotes fell out.

“Typical Blaise,” Bourgi quotes Chirac as saying. “He’s sent us small denominations.” The money was apparently all in fives and tens.

Handling the cash was not always easy. Remembering a big donation to Chirac from another African leader, Bourgi says: “The money arrived in Puma sports bags. I wanted to put the wads in paper so I went into my daughter’s room and took down one of her posters, and wrapped the money in that.”

The system was so widespread that it gave rise to a verb – from the Frenchmeaning a present.

When Bourgi’s allegations first surfaced in 2011 they were denied by officials in Burkina Faso and elsewhere, although a former presidential adviser in Ivory Coast conceded they were “historical practice”.

Chirac and his then chief of staff Dominique de Villepin also strenuously denied Bourgi’s claims.

A preliminary investigation was opened but later dropped without further action, because the payments were considered too long ago.

For African leaders at the time, says Bourgi, it was normal, and they did it among themselves. Giving large sums of money was a way of establishing trust and support.

But in a changing world it was unsustainable and Bourgi says he grew disillusioned. Nicolas Sarkozy came to power in 2007 vowing not to take a single franc from Africa, and Bourgi says he kept to his word.

Sarkozy has since been placed under investigation for allegedly taking campaign funds from Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi – which he denies. Bourgi, a Sarkozy loyalist, says he does not believe the charges.

The former lawyer, now aged 79, also reflects on his rather different role in another election – that of Emmanuel Macron in 2017. That was when Bourgi helped scupper the chances of the man who was for a time the runaway favourite, the conservative François Fillon.

Once close to Fillon, Bourgi had become estranged: he accused the former prime minister of being rude and stingy. So he released to a journalist the fact that he had made Fillon a gift of two very expensive suits.

Campaigning on a message of probity, Fillon never recovered. Later he was convicted of giving a fake parliamentary job to his British wife.

But Africa is Bourgi’s love.

He reflects that though the corruption at the heart of Françafrique was wrong, the system at the time brought stability, and a bond – often personal – between French and African leaders.

Today, that is gone.

France has a worsening image in its former colonies, and its influence is on the wane. Witness the recent retreat from its former army bases in Mali and Niger.

“I note with sadness the disintegration of French relations with the continent,” Bourgi says.

“But it is too easy to put all the blame on Françafrique… Africa has globalised. France has been unable to adapt to this new fact. And it keeps making the same mistake: arrogance.”

A nature reserve in the Philippines, which has been lauded by top climate activists and film stars, has come under a concerted disinformation attack on social media as it fights to continue its work, a BBC investigation has found.

A network of nearly 100 fake Facebook accounts and pages were found to be spreading misleading claims about the Masungi Georeserve and its keepers. Most were taken down after the BBC asked Meta, Facebook’s parent company, about these accounts.

Despite gaining international recognition for its reforestation efforts in the fight against climate change, the reserve is under pressure from illegal loggers, land grabbers, and quarrying companies.

A spokesperson for the reserve said it was being “ganged up on” by local politicians, businesses and some officials in government. The environment department, which has proposed ending a reforesting contract with the reserve, denied the claim.

It is not clear who controlled the network, but evidence seen by the BBC suggests that a public relations consultant who states on his social media profile that he has expertise in “reputation management” was linked to pages involved in the campaign.

Located east of Manila, the Masungi reserve is a popular eco-tourism destination, known for its lush rainforest and gravity-defying limestone formations. Supporters include climate activist Greta Thunberg and Hollywood superstar Leonardo DiCaprio.

The reserve has been trying to fend off illegal business activities for years, but this particular smear campaign is understood to have started in recent months.

“We’ve seen misleading information, trying to manufacture dissent against work that we do as environment defenders,” says Billie Dumaliang from the Masungi Georeserve Foundation.

These online attacks have appeared against a backdrop of physical violence against people involved in protecting the environment in the Philippines.

Two forest rangers who work for the Masungi Georeserve were shot and wounded in 2021. And campaigning group Global Witness says the Philippines ranks as the most dangerous place in Asia for environmental defenders, with 298 people killed since 2012.

”Online propaganda can be quite important in creating a fear factor for the people who work in Masungi,” says Regine Cabato, a Filipino journalist with experience covering disinformation.

By investigating this propaganda, BBC Verify identified a pattern of fake accounts and pages seemingly working together as part of the smear campaign.

Suspicious features included profile pictures showing K-pop stars, cats and models, rather than real people. Many of these accounts were created within hours of each other, and had very few friends.

But it was the content that they posted which made them stand out the most: in the last few months, they repeatedly posted content critical of the Masungi Georeserve Foundation.

“Suddenly the owners are making a lot of money,” posted one user, questioning the Masungi Georeserve’s entire operation.

“This protected area is owned by the people. Don’t be arrogant!” wrote another, along with an image telling the reserve to “stop masquerading as a protector of nature”.

“This is something we’ve seen play out during elections against certain political targets, and sometimes it’s something we’ve also seen deployed against private individuals,” says Ms Cabato.

“There is a lot of power and a lot of money that goes into turning the wheels of this machine.”

The campaign appears to have begun this year, around the time the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) proposed scrapping the 2017 contract that handed the Masungi Georeserve Foundation control over the vast majority of the land it holds – some 2,700 hectares – for reforestation purposes.

The move was criticised by a number of international celebrities, including Filipino actress and singer Nadine Lustre, Greta Thunberg and Leonardo DiCaprio – who, in an Instagram post, called on the Philippine president to “protect Masungi”.

When news outlets posted on Facebook about celebrity calls to “#SaveMasungi”, their posts drew the attention of the small army of fake accounts identified by the BBC.

Under those posts, they left comments defending the environment department’s proposal and attacking celebrities like DiCaprio over their intervention.

“Don’t be a loser Leonardo,” wrote one user.

“The DENR saw sketchy behaviour a long time ago,” posted another.

In addition, several of these accounts went on to share content from the DENR’s own social media accounts, or from pages supportive of the department’s work.

The DENR denies having any links to these accounts and pages.

But the department plays a dual role in the Philippines, which critics say is contradictory: it issues mining and quarrying permits, while also employing hundreds of forest rangers to protect the Sierra Madre, the country’s longest mountain range.

Podcast: An (online) storm in a Philippine rainforest

The BBC asked Meta about the accounts that seemed to be operating as an organised network, and the company confirmed that a cluster of accounts was engaging in inauthentic activity.

It took down most of the accounts and pages identified as part of the BBC investigation, saying they “engaged in deceptive, spammy activity, including amplifying content using fake accounts to make it appear more popular than it was”.

But it stopped short of linking this network to any third party.

“It seems like we’re being ganged up on by local politicians together with some people from the DENR, together with their cohorts in these destructive industries,” says Ms Dumaliang from the Masungi Geoserve Foundation.

The environment department denies this claim.

In a statement, the DENR told the BBC it had “no involvement in any social media campaign, activity, or other online tactics aimed at influencing public opinion in a negative manner”. It also described its communication efforts as transparent, accurate and fair.

While we do not know who ultimately controlled the network of accounts and pages, the BBC found evidence linking one individual to the campaign.

On social media, Ben Pablo described himself as a public relations consultant who specialised in “reputation management” and “social media marketing”.

But he placed ads on behalf of pages that were part of the campaign, according to Meta’s ad library, which lists all adverts placed on Facebook.

Mr Pablo did not respond to the BBC’s repeated requests for comment.

But since we first approached him, several of the pages that we believe he was linked to have been deleted, along with Mr Pablo’s own social media accounts.

In recent months, Mr Pablo has also bought Facebook adverts promoting Senator Imee Marcos, the sister of the current president, Ferdinand Marcos Jr.

Although there is no evidence linking her to this campaign, the BBC asked the senator’s team whether she had ever employed Mr Pablo, but did not get a response. Whether Mr Pablo was acting alone remains unclear.

But, despite the impact that online disinformation may have on the lives of those looking after Masungi, Billie Dumaliang seems undeterred.

“Every time we see the landscape, the sunset unobstructed, we are reminded of the reason why we’re doing this: it is to preserve this special place.”

Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan has told fans “it’s good to be back” after winning the best actor award at the International Indian Film Academy Awards.

Khan was referring to his return to movies in 2023 after a hiatus lasting four years.

“I think I have a little happiness from the audience this year because I worked (again) after a long time,” he declared to crowds at a star-studded show in Abu Dhabi.

Khan, a household name in India, is also one of the country’s most popular stars with millions of fans domestically and abroad.

He not only won the prize for his role in action thriller Jawan but also co-hosted the event in in the capital of the United Arab Emirates, a city with a big Indian population.

Fireworks greeted his arrival on stage, and the whole event was peppered with tributes to him.

“I love awards, I’m greedy about awards,” he announced. “I just want to tell you it’s good to be back.”

Khan’s return to the big screen was Bollywood’s biggest success story last year. He also starred in the spy film Pathaan.

The roles – in which he portrayed a rugged action hero – marked a departure for the 58-year-old, who, over three decades of his movie career, has been best known for playing the tender romantic hero.

His comeback on the big screen comes after a series of setbacks in his personal and professional life. They include the arrest of his son Aryan Khan on fake charges of drug possession – the charges were eventually dropped – and a number of films that didn’t do well.

But his break from the limelight is unlikely to have dented his popularity. Charming and funny, the actor is often described as Bollywood’s “most important cultural export”, with millions of fans who endearingly refer to him as King Khan or the King of Bollywood.

Other Bollywood megastars also attended the event on Saturday, including Rani Mukerji, Anil Kapoor and Bobby Deol.

Mukerji won the best actress award for the child-custody drama Mrs Chatterjee vs Norway while Vidhu Vinod Chopra won best director for 12th Fail.

Meanwhile, Sandeep Reddy Vanga’s Animal scooped up six awards including best picture, and best supporting actor for Anil Kapoor.

Bollywood, India’s dominant film business, produces hundreds of films every year and has a huge following among Indians globally.

But like others across the world, it has seen ups and downs since the coronavirus pandemic shuttered cinemas for months and led many to turn to streaming services. It is yet to return to its former glory.

This year has been particular difficult, thanks to a lacklustre pipeline of new releases.

In comparison, 2023 was a stellar year, helped in part by the return of “King Khan”.

It is the third time Abu Dhabi has hosted the event, which is running over three days this year.

Karan Johar co-hosted the ceremony alongside Khan. The renowned filmmaker also scooped up a special award marking his 25 years in cinema.

If Ruger has learnt one thing this year, it’s that taking a leap of faith pays off.

Parting ways with his old record label to form his own was an eye-opening experience for the 24-year-old Nigerian singer.

“I understand the business more now,” Ruger says, admitting “it’s more stressful” but that the newfound freedom has also granted him a deeper sense of control.

“I feel more enlightened and more at peace,” he tells me.

As we speak, the star is preparing for his first headline show in London.

I don’t detect any nerves, though.

He is bubbly, engaging and relaxed as he explains the role Britain’s capital city plays in shaping Afrobeats music on the global stage.

“If your song is big here, it is big around the world,” he says.

Not that he wants to do things the same old way.

Ruger’s sound sets him apart due to his distinctive use of Jamaican Patois and his refusal to repeat melodies, giving each song a fresh energy.

“That’s why you know a Ruger song when you hear a Ruger song,” he explains. “My delivery is different, my lyricism is different.”

In the current landscape of African music he has mastered the art of fusion.

Born and raised in Nigeria’s hectic metropolis Lagos, Ruger’s music pays homage to his African roots and global influences.

The Jamaican artists he grew up listening to – Chronixx, Kranium, Popcaan, Gyptian, and Buju Banton – were a key influence on his unique blend of dancehall and Afrobeats.

Asiwaju remains his most significant hit to date. The infectious song peaked at number two on the UK Afrobeats chart and boasts over 127 million streams on Spotify, along with 113 million YouTube views.

Ruger says the shift from recording “normal Afrobeats” was organic rather than strategic, and happened two years ago while working on his track Warning in the studio with Nigerian producer KukBeatz.

“I told him: ‘I think I’m going to stick with this sound. There is nobody actually killing this sound the way I just did it now. I think I want to make more songs like this. Using Patois and blending it with Afrobeats.'”

With 2.5 million Instagram followers, over four million monthly Spotify listeners, and multiple chart-topping hits under his belt, Ruger’s rise in the music industry since starting out just five years ago is undeniable.

Reflecting on his influence, Ruger says emerging artists are taking note of the unique energy he brings to the scene.

“I feel like everybody that is coming up, is also looking like the way I’m doing it and they’re learning from me,” he says.

“I’m creating another path… I am also doing my own thing.”

Known for his bright pink hair and pirate-esque eye patch, Ruger emphasises that individuality is crucial for success.

He urges new artists to identify something that is distinctive about their music and “hold on to it” if they want to elevate their brand.

Another lesson he has learnt is about conflict.

A highly-publicised online beef with fellow Nigerian singer BNXN (formerly Buju) kept both singers in the headlines in recent years.

The spat was fuelled by fans comparing the two artists and came to a head when the pair competed for a prize at the Headies, a Nigerian music award show, in 2022, which was ultimately won by BXBN.

But the former rivals eventually called a truce and collaborated on the joint album “RnB”, released earlier this year.

“We grow, you understand,” Ruger tells me. “We grow and we elevate together. That’s the most important thing.”

Looking back now, it seems clear to him that the pair were destined to make great music together, regardless of that early rivalry.

More collaborations are on Ruger’s mind now.

On his wishlist are global superstars Doja Cat, Future and – above all – Adele.

“Just her soft voice and mine doing something amazing. I trust it to be mad!”

So what does Ruger make of the trend of singers from outside the continent tapping into the “African sound”?

As the Afrobeats genre expands globally, even earning its own category at the Grammys and MTV VMAs, it’s the lack of substance behind certain songs that worries Ruger.

“Some people just get into the studio and just do some things, and because there’s money to push, they push it – and the world is forced to like it.

“That’s where I feel like the dilution comes from.”

Despite the pressures of an evolving industry, Ruger remains committed to staying true to his craft.

“Times change,” he says. “I feel like you can either change with the time or do whatever you like.”

For now, though, the boundary-breaking artist is focused on the present and giving the best to his fans.

“I feel blessed… This is my first headline show in London, it’s long overdue.”

• Why Ayra Starr was avoiding lifts before Glastonbury
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• Burna Boy is ‘a work in progress’, his mother says

In May a huge iceberg broke off from an Antarctic ice shelf, drifted, and came to a stop – right in front of “maybe the world’s unluckiest” penguins.

Like a door shutting, the iceberg’s huge walls sealed off the Halley Bay colony from the sea.

It seemed to spell the end for hundreds of newly-hatched fluffy chicks whose mothers, out hunting for food, may no longer have been able to reach them.

Then, a few weeks ago, the iceberg shifted and got on the move again.

Scientists have now discovered that the tenacious penguins found a way to beat the colossal iceberg – satellite pictures seen exclusively by BBC News this week show life in the colony.

But scientists endured a long, anxious wait until this point – and the chicks face another potentially deadly challenge in the coming months.

In August, when we asked the British Antarctic Survey if the emperor penguins had survived, they couldn’t tell us.

“We will not know until the sun comes up,” said scientist Peter Fretwell.

It was still Antarctic winter so satellites couldn’t penetrate the total darkness to take pictures of the birds.

This label of “maybe the world’s unluckiest penguins” comes from Peter, who has shared the penguins’ ups and downs for years.

These creatures teeter on the edge of life and death, and this was just the latest in a string of near-misses.

It was once a stable colony and with 14,000 – 25,000 breeding pairs annually, the second biggest in the world.

But in 2019, news came of a catastrophic breeding failure. Peter and his colleagues discovered that for three years the colony had failed to raise any chicks.

Baby penguins need to live on sea ice until they are strong enough to survive in open water. But climate change is warming the oceans and air, contributing to sea ice becoming more unstable and prone to sudden disintegration in storms.

With no sea ice, the chicks drowned.

A few hundred stragglers moved their home to the nearby MacDonald Ice rumples and kept the group going.

That is until A83 iceberg, which at 380 sq km (145 sq miles) is roughly the size of the Isle of Wight, calved off the Brunt Ice Shelf in May.

Peter feared a total wipe-out. It has happened to other penguin colonies – an iceberg blocked a group in the Ross Sea for several years, leading to no breeding success, he explains.

A few days ago, the sun rose again in Antarctica. The Sentinel-1 satellites that Peter uses orbited over Halley Bay, taking pictures of the ice sheet.

Peter opened the files. “I was dreading seeing that there wouldn’t be anything there at all,” he says. But, against the odds, he found what he hoped for – a brown smudge on the white ice sheet. The penguins are alive.

“It was a huge relief,” he says.

But how they survived remains a mystery. The iceberg could be around 15m (49ft) tall, meaning the penguins could not climb it.

“There’s an ice crack, so they might have been able to dive through it,” he says.

The iceberg probably extends more than 50m beneath the waves, but penguins can dive up to 500m, he explains.

“Even if there is just a small crack, they might have dived underneath it,” he says.

The team will now wait for higher-resolution pictures that show exactly how many penguins are there.

Scientists at the British research base at Halley will visit to verify the size and health of the colony.

But Antarctica remains a rapidly changing region affected by our warming planet, as well as natural phenomena that make life difficult there.

The MacDonald Ice rumples where the penguins now live is dynamic and unpredictable, and Antarctic seasonal sea ice levels are close to record lows.

As A83 moved, it changed the ice topography, meaning the penguins’ breeding site is now “more exposed”, Peter says.

Cracks have appeared in the ice and the edge with the sea is getting closer day-by-day.

If the ice breaks up under the chicks before they are able to swim, in around December, Peter warns they will perish.

“They’re such incredible animals. It’s a bit bleak. Like many animals in Antarctica, they live on the sea ice. But it is changing, and if your habitat changes then it’s never good,” he says.

Cairo Nakhate-Chirwa had a non-surgical Brazilian butt-lift (BBL) in June.

She’s happy with the results – but says that she now regrets it after finding out the procedure was unregulated and potentially risky.

This comes after arrests were made following the death of Alice Webb, who is thought to have undergone the procedure.

A non-surgical BBL most often involves filler being injected into the buttock to make it bigger, more rounded or lifted, and is not regulated in the UK.

Experts have called the lack of rules in the UK the “wild west” while NHS England has warned against the procedure entirely.

The Department of Health and Social Care says it is currently exploring regulatory options of the non-surgical cosmetics sector and says it will provide an update in due course.

Cairo used Instagram to find someone to give her a liquid BBL – another name for a non-surgical BBL – in late June.

She found one page that was advertising the procedure for £1,200.

Twenty-four hours later, she arrived at a London flat for her appointment.

She did not check whether the person performing the procedure was a qualified medical professional.

“When they’re advertising themselves, you just assume they are [qualified],” Cairo said.

But non-surgical cosmetic procedures are not regulated in the UK – this includes liquid BBLs.

The BBC contacted the person who performed Cairo’s BBL for comment, but they did not respond.

Cairo said the only drawback, aside from the “pain” of the procedure, was some leaking from the site of the injections two weeks later.

She said she looked into the risks for the first time after hearing about Alice Webb’s death – and that while her experience “wasn’t all negative”, she regretted it and wished she had done more research.

“I’m happy with how I look.

“It made sense, it was cheaper. But now I’m questioning.”

Non-surgical BBLs can be done using local anaesthetic and generally take place in a clinic room – rather than a sterile operating theatre.

There are even reports of procedures taking place in hotel rooms.

Recent research by organisation Save Face, suggests many people don’t know what is injected into their bodies.

The filler used could be hyaluronic acid & PLLA (Poly-L-lactic acid), for example.

NHS England strongly advises against having a non-surgical BBL “because it is unregulated”.

Surgical BBLs meanwhile often involve transferring fat from one part of the body into the buttock.

This most often happens under general anaesthetic in an operating theatre, and can involve extensive liposuction, with large volumes of fat being transferred.

In 2018, because of concerns around high death rates linked to surgical BBLs, the British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons asked for a four-year pause on its members carrying out the procedure.

In 2022 it published new guidelines, encouraging surgeons to use a different technique – called superficial gluteal lipofilling (SGL).

While it uses fat collected from the body, this is only injected below the skin whereas BBLs insert fat deep into the muscles.

It also recommends surgeons should only carry out SGLs while simultaneously using ultrasound scans so they can see where the cannulas are going.

This procedure carries its own risks.

Mr Marc Pacifico of the British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons said the lack of regulation meant the UK was “known as the wild west”.

In the UK, the filler injected during non-surgical procedures is not classed as a medicine, and so it does not need to be prescribed. Instead, it’s classed as a device.

“That’s one of the biggest loopholes we have in the country,” Mr Pacifico believes.

“And that’s why anyone and everyone could have access to get hold of them.”

This makes the UK “the most outlying country” in Europe, he said.

Dr Sophie Shotter, who runs her own private clinics and is a trustee of the British College of Aesthetic Medicine, said “a lot of people don’t have a clue” about the risks before signing up for a liquid BBL.

She says she does not offer non-surgical BBLs because of the potential risks – and although Cairo was OK, this isn’t the case for everyone.

A serious concern is that the injection can cause a blockage in a blood vessel that can in turn lead to a blood clot travelling to the lungs – what is known as a pulmonary embolism.

This can be lethal.

Infections, scarring, significant deformities and reactions to local anaesthetic, including toxicity, are also risks.

There is no data on the death rate of liquid BBLs, but the British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons said the procedure was associated with a higher complication rate than other non-surgical procedures.

Dr Shotter said regulatory action had been slow “because the people in power don’t take it seriously”.

“I think it’s because of a little bit of inherent misogyny,” she said, since the procedures are more popular with women.

She said she wanted to see regulation of who can administer fillers and where this is allowed to take place.

“It feels like it’s spiralling and spiralling.

“Alice’s case is absolutely tragic – but many of us feel like we’ve been expecting it for a while.”

NHS England advises against having a non-surgical BBL altogether.

“There is no guarantee that the right safety measures are being taken,” the NHS’s National Medical Director Prof Sir Stephen Powis said.

Referring to all cosmetic procedures, a Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson said: “The safety of patients is paramount, and we would urge anyone considering a cosmetic procedure to consider the possible health impacts and find a reputable, insured, and qualified practitioner.”

Cairo, who performs as rapper Lavida Loca, said she wanted a BBL because of pressure to look a certain way: “In the hip hop world… women are meant to be curvy.”

“I fell into the pressure. I tried to do it naturally and it wasn’t working, and I didn’t have enough fat on my body for a surgical BBL.”

According to Prof Elizabeth Daniels, director of the Centre for Appearance Research at the University of West England, people who have cosmetic procedures often feel dissatisfied with their body image.

But she stressed that relationships and societal factors, like laws and mental health resources, also come into play.

“It’s important not to pathologise people or make assumptions about their motivations and instead think about – this is a big social issue and how can we make the situation better?”

Nita Morton turned up at a Bridgerton-themed ball expecting glitz, glamour and fabulous food.

The event in Detroit, Michigan, on Sunday night invited fans to “step into the enchanting world of the Regency era” with “sophistication, grace, and historical charm”.

So far, so good – but what happened next could almost make a Netflix drama itself.

Guests say they found soggy noodles, chicken bones, melancholy decor, a single violin and a pole dancer.

“I was brought to tears,” 25-year-old Nita told the BBC. “It was the worst event I’ve been to. My high school parties were better.”

“Bridgerton food is turkey and ham and grand dessert tables with things like macaroons,” she told the BBC.

“But we got soggy noodles with tomato sauce and small chicken wings.”

The blunder has gone viral on social media, as attendees who paid nearly $200 (£150) for a ticket complained it was a “scam”.

Guests in fancy ballgowns say they were reduced to sitting on the floor due to a lack of chairs – and some left early for McDonald’s or Burger King when food ran out.

People have been quick to note the similarities with other viral flops, including the Fyre festival in the Bahamas and the Willy Wonka experience in Glasgow.

The ball – in no way associated with Netflix or production company Shondaland – was organised by Uncle & Me LLC. It did not respond to the BBC’s request for comment but told local media it was working to address concerns.

The BBC has spoken to some of those who attended to hear how high society turned to bitter disappointment.

The itinerary for the ball, seen by the BBC, included photo opportunities, dance lessons and a fashion show.

People who had purchased a more expensive ticket were also promised dinner and a violinist.

But alarm bells started ringing for guests when they arrived and found no-one at the door to greet them.

Kimberley Pineda, who posted a TikTok video about her experiences, told the BBC “anyone could’ve walked in” due to the lack of a check-in process.

She said guests were walking out as she arrived, with one warning her not to bother going in.

Once inside, she said she was faced with “cheap” decorations, and said the ballroom was completely sparse.

“There were just a few vendors, who I felt sorry for. They had been booked and had no idea either what was going on.

“Plates were being stacked on top of each other, glasses were being reused, whole plates of food were being left too, and someone told me the chicken wasn’t cooked properly and the beans smelled like fish.”

Like Kimberley, Andi Bell found the food and drink options woefully inadequate.

“Hors d’oeuvres were meant to be available to all guests. And the leftovers from the dinner were the promised hors d’oeuvres.”

Then came the entertainment – which for some proved to be the final straw.

“As the night wore on, we were presented with an exotic dancer with a pole, which very much appeared to be a stripper; a lack of dance lessons at the scheduled time despite most of us being in the ballroom waiting; and eventually club music was blasted from the stage,” Andi said.

“At that point, my sister and I left.”

Kimberley, meanwhile, said her “jaw dropped” when the pole dancer’s performance began.

“We were promised a Bridgerton-themed musical performance, but we were not expecting a pole dance,” she said.

Other entertainment included a Queen Charlotte act, one of the characters from the show.

But another guest, Amanda Sue Mathis, felt she was hardly regal – sitting in “a cheap costume” with a backdrop that looked like it was “purchased at a dollar store”, with a “fake stuffed dog” sitting on her lap.

The photographer, meanwhile, was only able to airdrop pictures, says Nita.

It meant people with Android phones resorted to taking pictures of his phone.

And while there was a violinist, she was having to perform across three floors, Nita said.

In a statement to WXYZ-TV, Uncle & Me LLC said: “We understand that not everyone had the experience they hoped for at our most recent event on Sunday night at The Harmonie Club, and for that, we sincerely apologise.

“Our intention was to provide a magical evening, but we recognise that organisational challenges affected the enjoyment of some guests.

“We take full responsibility and accountability for these shortcomings.”

The company said it was working to address all concerns raised by guests, adding: “We are reviewing resolution options, which will be communicated shortly.”

The company’s website does not appear to be working, while the event site – which was available until the middle of the week – now also appears to be down, adding to fans’ frustration.

Nita claims the statement was “gaslighting” attendees: “We’ve had no contact with the company for days.”

Andi claims communication from the organisers had been “non-existent”.

Kimberley says she feels “robbed” of her money and time, having spent $440 on her outfit alone.

And Amanda – a superfan who has watched Bridgerton six times from start to finish – described it as “a dream come true, until it wasn’t”.

Similar recent debacles might offer a clue as to how things will pan out.

After the spectacular failure of the Wonka experience earlier this year in Glasgow, where police were called as tempers flared at a near-empty warehouse, organisers said full refunds would be given to ticket holders.

Meanwhile, the Fyre festival promised a luxury two-week music event in the Bahamas – but fans arrived to find no musical acts, no planning and only disaster relief tents to sleep in.

Just months after being released from prison over the 2017 event, organiser Billy McFarland announced a reboot. Fyre II is due to take place in April 2025.

Should another Bridgerton-themed ball be arranged in the near future, fans in Detroit might be coining a phrase from Anthony Bridgerton himself: “You are the bane of my existence and the object of all my desires.”

A selection of striking news photographs taken around the world this week.

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.

Diego Garcia, a remote island in the Indian Ocean, is a paradise of lush vegetation and white-sand beaches, surrounded by crystal blue waters.

But this is no tourist destination. It is strictly out of bounds to most civilians – the site of a highly secretive UK-US military base shrouded for decades in rumour and mystery.

The island, which is administered from London, is at the centre of a long-running territorial dispute between the UK and Mauritius, and negotiations have ramped up in recent weeks.

The BBC gained unprecedented access to the island earlier this month.

___

“It’s the enemy,” a private security officer jokes as I return to my room one night on Diego Garcia, my name highlighted in yellow on a list he is holding.

For months, the BBC had fought for access to the island – the largest of the Chagos Archipelago.

We wanted to cover a historic court case being held over the treatment of Sri Lankan Tamils, the first people ever to file asylum claims on the island, who have been stranded there for three years. Complex legal battles have been waged over their fate and a judgement will soon determine if they have been unlawfully detained.

Up until this point, we could only cover the story remotely.

Diego Garcia, which is about 1,000 miles (1,600 km) from the nearest landmass, features on lists of the world’s most remote islands. There are no commercial flights and getting there by sea is no easier – permits for boats are only granted for the archipelago’s outer islands and to allow safe passage through the Indian Ocean.

To enter the island you need a permit, only granted to people with connections to the military facility or the British authority that runs the territory. Journalists have historically been barred.

UK government lawyers brought a legal challenge to try to block the BBC from attending the hearing, and even when permission was granted following a ruling by the territory’s Supreme Court, the US later objected, saying it would not provide food, transport or accommodation to all those attempting to reach the island for the case – including the judge and barristers.

Notes exchanged between the two governments this summer, seen by the BBC, suggested both were extremely concerned about admitting any media to Diego Garcia.

“As discussed previously, the United States agrees with the position of HMG [His Majesty’s Government] that it would be preferable for members of the press to observe the hearing virtually from London, to minimize risks to security of the Facility,” one note sent from the US government to British officials said.

When permission was finally granted for me to spend five days on the island, it came with stringent restrictions. These did not just cover the court reporting. They also extended to my movements on the island and even a ban on reporting what the actual restrictions were.

Requests for minor changes to the permit were denied by British and US officials.

Personnel from the security company G4S were flown to the territory to guard the BBC and lawyers who had flown out for the hearing.

But despite the constraints, I was still able to observe illuminating details, all of which helped to paint a picture of one of the most restricted locations in the world.

Approaching by plane, coconut trees and thick foliage are visible across the 44 sq km footprint-shaped atoll, the greenery punctuated by white military structures.

Diego Garcia is one of about 60 islands that make up the Chagos Archipelago or British Indian Ocean Territory (Biot) – the last colony established by the UK by separating it from Mauritius in 1965. It is located about halfway between East Africa and Indonesia.

Pulling on to the runway alongside grey military aircraft, a sign on a hangar greets you: “Diego Garcia. Footprint of Freedom,” above images of the US and British flags.

This is the first of many references to freedom on the island’s signage, a nod to the UK-US military base that has been there since the early 1970s.

Agreements signed in 1966 leased the island to the US for 50 years initially, with a possible extension for a further 20 years. The arrangement was rolled over and is set to expire in 2036.

As I make my way through airport security and beyond, US and UK influences jostle for predominance.

In the terminal, there is a door decorated with a union jack print and walls hung with photos of significant British figures, including Winston Churchill.

On the island itself, I spot British police cars and a nightclub called the Brit Club with a bulldog logo. We pass roads named Britannia Way and Churchill Road.

But cars drive on the right, as they do in the US. We are driven around in a bright yellow bus reminiscent of an American school bus.

The US dollar is the accepted currency and the electricity sockets are American. The food offered to us for the five days includes “tater tots” – a popular American fried-potato side dish – and American biscuits, similar to British scones.

While the territory is administered from London, most personnel and resources there are under the control of the US.

In the BBC’s bid to access the island, UK officials referred questions up to US staff. When the US blocked the court hearing from taking place on Diego Garcia this summer, a senior official at the Ministry of Defence said the UK “did not have the ability to grant access”.

“The US security assessment is classified… [they] have demonstrated that they have strict controls in place,” he wrote in an email to a Foreign Office colleague.

Biot’s acting commissioner has said it is not possible for him to “compel the US authorities” to grant access to any part of the military facility constructed by the US under the terms of the UK-US agreement, despite it being a British territory.

In recent years, the territory has been costing the UK tens of millions of pounds, with the bulk of this categorised under “migrant costs”. Communications obtained by the BBC between foreign office officials in July regarding the Sri Lankan Tamils warn that “the costs are increasing and the latest forecast is that these will be £50 million per annum”.

The atmosphere on the island feels relaxed. Troops and contractors ride past me on bikes, and I see people playing tennis and windsurfing in the late afternoon sun.

A cinema advertises screenings of Alien and Borderlands, and there is even a bowling alley and a museum with a gift shop attached, though I was not allowed inside.

We pass a fast-food spot called Jake’s Place, and a scenic patch of land next to the sea with a sign that reads: “Ye olde swimming hole and picnic area.” Diego Garcia-branded T-shirts and mugs are on sale on the island.

But there are also constant reminders of the sensitive base that is here. Military drills can be heard early in the morning, and near our accommodation block is a fenced-off building identified as an armoury.

All the time, US and British military officials keep a close eye on the court’s movements.

The island has startling natural beauty, from lush vegetation to pristine white beaches, and is also home to the world’s biggest terrestrial arthropod – the coconut crab. Military personnel warn of the dangers of sharks in the surrounding waters.

Biot’s website boasts that it has the “greatest marine biodiversity in the UK and its Overseas Territories, as well as some of the cleanest seas and healthiest reef systems in the world”.

But there are also clues pointing to its brutal past.

When the UK took control of the Chagos Islands – Diego Garcia is the southernmost – from former British colony Mauritius, it sought to rapidly evict its population of more than 1,000 people to make way for the military base.

Enslaved people were brought to the Chagos Islands from Madagascar and Mozambique to work on coconut plantations under French and British rule. In the following centuries, they developed their own language, music and culture.

I get to see a former plantation on the east of the island, where buildings stand in disrepair. The grand plantation manager’s house has a sign outside reading: “Danger unsafe structure. Do not enter. By order: Brit rep [representative].” A large crab crawls up the door of an abandoned guest house.

At a church on the plantation site, a sign, in French, beneath the crucifix reads: “Let us pray for our Chagossian brothers and sisters.”

Wild donkeys still roam in the area. David Vine, author of Island of Shame: The Secret History of the US Military Base on Diego Garcia, describes them as a “ghostly remnant of the society that had been there for almost 200 years”.

A Foreign Office memo in 1966 stated that the object of its plan “was to get some rocks which will remain ours; there will be no indigenous population except seagulls”.

A British diplomat responded that the islands were home only to “some few Tarzans or Man Fridays whose origins are obscure and are hopefully being wished on to Mauritius”.

Another government document stated that the islands were chosen “not only for their strategic location but also because they had, for all practical purposes, no permanent population”.

“The Americans in particular attached great importance to this freedom of manoeuvre, divorced from the normal considerations applying to a populated dependent territory,” it said.

Mr Vine says the plans came at a time when the “decolonisation movement was unfolding and accelerating” and the US was concerned about losing access to military bases around the world.

Diego Garcia was one of many islands that were considered, he says, but it became the “prime candidate” because of its relatively small population and strategic location in the middle of the Indian Ocean.

For the UK, he says, it was a chance to maintain close military ties with the US, even with only a “token British presence” there – but there was also financial motivation, he adds.

The US agreed to a $14m discount on the UK’s purchase of its Polaris nuclear missiles as part of the secret deal over the islands.

In 1967, the eviction of all residents from the Chagos islands began. Dogs, including pets, were rounded up and killed. Chagossians have described being herded onto cargo ships and taken to Mauritius or the Seychelles.

The UK granted citizenship to some Chagossians in 2002, and many of them came to live in the UK.

In testimony given to the International Court of Justice years later, Chagossian Liseby Elysé said people on the archipelago had lived a “happy life” that “did not lack anything” before the expulsions.

“One day the administrator told us that we had to leave our island, leave our houses and go away. All persons were unhappy. But we had no choice. They did not give us any reason,” she said. “Nobody would like to be uprooted from the island where he was born, to be uprooted like animals.”

Chagossians have fought for years to return to the land.

Mauritius, which won independence from the UK in 1968, maintains that the islands are its own and the United Nations’ highest court has ruled, in an advisory opinion, that the UK’s administration of the territory is “unlawful” and must end.

It said the Chagos Islands should be handed over to Mauritius in order to complete the UK’s “decolonisation”.

Clive Baldwin, senior legal adviser at Human Rights Watch, says the “forced displacement of the Chagossians by the UK and US, their persecution on the grounds of race, and the ongoing prevention of their return to their homeland amount to crimes against humanity”.

“These are the most serious crimes a state can be responsible for. It is an ongoing, colonial crime as long as they prevent the Chagossians from returning home.”

The UK government has previously stated that it has “no doubt” as to its claim over the islands, which had been “under continuous British sovereignty since 1814”.

However, in 2022, it agreed to open negotiations with Mauritius over the future of the territory, with then-Foreign Secretary James Cleverly saying he wanted to “resolve all outstanding issues”.

Earlier this month, the government announced that former Prime Minister Tony Blair’s chief of staff, Jonathan Powell, who played a central role in negotiating the Good Friday agreement in Northern Ireland, had been appointed to negotiate with Mauritius over the islands.

In a statement, new Foreign Secretary David Lammy – who has criticised previous governments for having for years “ignored the opinions” of various UN bodies over the islands – said the UK was endeavouring to “reach a settlement that protects UK interests and those of our partners”, as he stressed the need to protect the “long-term, secure and effective operation of the joint UK/US military base”.

Matthew Savill, military sciences director at leading UK defence think tank Rusi, says Diego Garcia is an “enormously important” base, “because of its position in the Indian Ocean and the facilities it has: port, storage and airfield”.

The nearest UK facility is some 3,400km (2,100 miles) away, and for the US, nearly 4,800km (3,000 miles), he explains, with the island also an important location for “space tracking and observation capabilities”.

Tankers operating from Diego Garcia refuelled US B-2 bombers that had flown from the US to carry out the first airstrikes on Afghanistan after the 9/11 attacks. And, during the subsequent “war on terror”, aircraft were also sent directly from the island itself to Afghanistan and Iraq.

The base is also one of an “extremely limited number of places worldwide available to reload submarines” with weapons like Tomahawk missiles, says Mr Savill, and the US has positioned a large amount of equipment and stores there for contingencies.

Walter Ladwig III, a senior lecturer in international relations at King’s College London, agrees the base fulfils “a lot of important roles” – but that “there is this level of secrecy that seems to go beyond what we see at other places”.

“There has been this hyper-focus on controlling access and on limiting access, which… seems to go beyond what, given what we publicly know about the assets, capabilities and units are based there.”

During my time on the island, I am required to wear a red visitor pass and am closely monitored at all times. My accommodation is guarded 24-hours-a-day and the men outside make a note of when I leave and return – always under escort.

In the mid-1980s, British journalist Simon Winchester pretended his boat had run into trouble next to the island. He remained in the bay for about two days, and managed to briefly step on shore before being escorted away and told: “Go away and don’t come back.”

He tells me he remembers British authorities there being “incredibly hostile” and the island as “extraordinarily beautiful”. More than two decades later, a Time magazine journalist spent 90 minutes or so on the island when the US presidential plane stopped there to refuel.

Rumours have long swirled about the uses of Diego Garcia, including that it has been used as a CIA black-site – a facility used to house and interrogate terror suspects.

The UK government confirmed in 2008 that rendition flights carrying terror suspects had landed on the island in 2002, following years of assurances that they had not.

“The detainees did not leave the plane, and the US Government has assured us that no US detainees have ever been held on Diego Garcia. US investigations show no record of any other rendition through Diego Garcia or any other Overseas Territory or through the UK itself since then,” then-Foreign Secretary David Miliband told parliament at the time.

On the same day, former CIA director Michael Hayden said that information previously “supplied in good faith” to the UK about rendition flights – stating that they had never landed there – had “turned out to be wrong”.

“Neither of those individuals was ever part of [the] CIA’s high-value terrorist interrogation programme. One was ultimately transferred to Guantanamo, and the other was returned to his home country. These were rendition operations, nothing more,” he said, while denying reports that the CIA had a holding facility on Diego Garcia.

Years later, Lawrence Wilkerson, chief of staff to the former US Secretary of State Colin Powell, told Vice News that intelligence sources had told him that Diego Garcia had been used as a site “where people were temporarily housed and interrogated from time to time.”

I was not allowed near any of Diego Garcia’s sensitive military areas.

After leaving my island accommodation for the last time I received an email, thanking me for my recent stay and asking for feedback. “We want every guest to experience nothing less than a welcoming and comfortable experience,” it read.

Before flying out, my passport was stamped with the territory’s coat of arms. Its motto reads: “In tutela nostra Limuria”, meaning “Limuria is in our charge” – a reference to a mythical lost continent in the Indian Ocean.

A continent that doesn’t exist seems like a fitting symbol for an island whose legal status is in doubt and that few, since the Chagossians were expelled, have been allowed to see.

Austria’s far-right Freedom Party is heading for an unprecedented general election victory under leader Herbert Kickl, projections say.

The projections, based on initial results, give Kickl’s party 29.1% – almost three points ahead of the conservative People’s Party on 26.2%, but far short of a majority.

The Freedom Party (FPÖ) has been in coalition before, but the second-placed conservative People’s Party has refused to take part in a government led by him.

Kickl’s main rival, incumbent Chancellor Karl Nehammer of the People Party (ÖVP), has said it’s “impossible to form a government with someone who adores conspiracy theories”.

Some 6.3 million Austrians were eligible to vote in a race dominated by the twin issues of migration and asylum, as well as inflation and the war in Ukraine.

Freedom Party general secretary Michael Schnedlitz was delighted with the initial projections, declaring that “the men and women of Austria have made history today”. He refused to say what kind of coalition his party would try to build.

They are on course to secure about 57 seats in the 183-seat parliament, with the conservatives on 51 and the Social Democrats on 41.

Freedom Party leader Herbert Kickl has promised Austrians to build “Fortress Austria”, to restore their security, prosperity and peace.

He has also spoken of becoming (people’s chancellor) which for some Austrians carries echoes of the term used to describe Adolf Hitler in Nazi Germany.

Israel’s assassination of Hassan Nasrallah, the long–standing leader of Hezbollah, is a major escalation in its war with the Lebanese militant group.

It has, potentially, brought the region one step closer to a much wider and even more damaging conflict, one that pulls in both Iran and the US.

So where is it likely to go from here?

That largely depends on three basic questions.

Hezbollah is reeling from blow after blow.

Its command structure has been decapitated, with more than a dozen top commanders assassinated. Its communications have been sabotaged with the shocking detonations of its pagers and walkie-talkies, and many of its weapons have been destroyed in air strikes.

The US-based Middle East security analyst Mohammed Al-Basha says: “The loss of Hassan Nasrallah will have significant implications, potentially destabilising the group and altering its political and military strategies in the short term.”

But any expectation that this vehemently anti-Israel organisation is going to suddenly give up and seek peace on Israel’s terms is likely to be misplaced.

• LIVE: Latest Israel-Lebanon updates as Israeli strikes continue

Hezbollah has already vowed to continue the fight. It still has thousands of fighters, many of them recent veterans of combat in Syria, and they are demanding revenge.

It still has a substantial arsenal of missiles, many of them long-range, precision-guided weapons which can reach Tel Aviv and other cities. There will be pressure within its ranks to use those soon, before they too get destroyed.

But if they do, in a mass attack that overwhelms Israel’s air defences and kills civilians, then Israel’s response is likely to be devastating, wreaking havoc on Lebanon’s infrastructure, or even extending to Iran.

This assassination is as much of a blow to Iran as it is to Hezbollah. It’s already announced five days of mourning.

It’s also taken emergency precautions, hiding away its leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamanei, in case he too gets assassinated.

Iran has yet to retaliate for the humiliating assassination in July of the Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh in a Tehran guesthouse. What has happened now will be causing hardliners in the regime to contemplate some kind of response.

Iran has a whole galaxy of allied heavily-armed militias around the Middle East, the so-called “Axis of Resistance“.

As well as Hezbollah, it has the Houthis in Yemen, and numerous groups in Syria and Iraq. Iran could well ask these groups to step up their attacks on both Israel and US bases in the region.

But whatever response Iran chooses, it will likely calibrate it to be just short of triggering a war that it cannot hope to win.

If anyone was in any doubt before this assassination, they won’t be now.

Israel clearly has no intention of pausing its military campaign for the 21-day ceasefire proposed by 12 nations, including its closest ally, the United States.

Its military reckon they have Hezbollah on the back foot now, so it will want to press on with its offensive until the threat of those missiles is removed.

Short of a capitulation by Hezbollah – which is unlikely – it is hard to see how Israel can achieve its war aim of removing the threat of Hezbollah attacks without sending in troops on the ground.

The Israel Defense Forces have released footage of its infantry training close to the border for this very purpose.

But Hezbollah has also spent the last 18 years, since the end of the last war, training to fight the next one. In his final public speech before his death, Nasrallah told his followers that an Israeli incursion into south Lebanon would be, in his words, “a historic opportunity”.

For the IDF, going into Lebanon would be relatively easy. But getting out could – like Gaza – take months.

Major floods and landslides in Nepal have killed at least148 people and injured more than 100 across the Himalayan nation, police have reported.

They say more than 50 people are still missing on Sunday after two days of intense rainfall, which has inundated the valley around the capital Kathmandu. About 3,600 people have been rescued.

Residents say they “jumped from one roof to another” to escape rising waters, which have flooded thousands of homes. Meanwhile, crews are still carrying out rescues on helicopters and inflatable rafts.

Despite rain being forecast to continue through to Tuesday, there are signs of some easing on Sunday.

Some residents were able to return to their mud-caked homes on Sunday, while others are still cut off with major roads between towns and villages still blocked.

But flash floods, along with landslides, have caused many deaths.

At least 35 bodies have been recovered from vehicles buried under landslide in Prithvi Highway, near Kathmandu, police officials say.

Most major motorways connecting Kathmandu with the rest of the country remain blocked in multiple places by landslides.

Five people, including a pregnant woman and a four-year-old girl, died when a house collapsed under a landslide in the city Bhaktapur, to the east of Kathmandu, state media reports.

Two bodies were removed from a bus buried by a landslide in Dhading, west of Kathmandu. Twelve people, including the driver, were said to be onboard.

Six football players were also killed by a landslide at a training centre operated by the All Nepal Football Association in Makwanpur, to the south-west of the capital.

Others have been swept up in the floodwaters. In one dramatic scene, four people were washed away by the Nakkhu River in the southern Kathmandu valley.

“For hours, they kept on pleading for help,” Jitendra Bhandari, an eyewitness, told the BBC. “We could do nothing.”

Hari Om Malla lost his truck after it was submerged by water in Kathmandu.

He told the BBC that water had “gushed” into the cabin as the rain intensified on Friday night.

“We jumped out, swam, and got away from it – but my purse, bag and mobile have been swept away by the river. I have nothing now. We stayed the whole night in the cold.”

Another person, Bishnu Maya Shretha, said the scale of flooding was more extreme this season.

“We had run away the last time, but nothing happened. But this time all the houses were flooded.

“As the water levels rose, we had to cut the roof and get out. We jumped from one roof to another and finally reached a concrete house.”

Government spokesman Prithvi Subba Gurung told the state-run Nepal Television Corporation the flooding had also broken waterpipes, and affected telephone and power lines.

According to state media, 10,000 police officers, as well as volunteers and members of the army, have been mobilised as part of search and rescue efforts.

The Nepalese government urged people to avoid unnecessary travel, and banned driving at night in the Kathmandu valley.

Air travel was also affected on Friday and Saturday, with many domestic flights delayed or cancelled.

Monsoon season brings floods and landslides every year in Nepal.

Scientists say, though, that rainfall events are becoming more intense due to climate change.

A warmer atmosphere can hold more moisture, while warmer ocean waters can energise storm systems, making them more erratic.

Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan has told fans “it’s good to be back” after winning the best actor award at the International Indian Film Academy Awards.

Khan was referring to his return to movies in 2023 after a hiatus lasting four years.

“I think I have a little happiness from the audience this year because I worked (again) after a long time,” he declared to crowds at a star-studded show in Abu Dhabi.

Khan, a household name in India, is also one of the country’s most popular stars with millions of fans domestically and abroad.

He not only won the prize for his role in action thriller Jawan but also co-hosted the event in in the capital of the United Arab Emirates, a city with a big Indian population.

Fireworks greeted his arrival on stage, and the whole event was peppered with tributes to him.

“I love awards, I’m greedy about awards,” he announced. “I just want to tell you it’s good to be back.”

Khan’s return to the big screen was Bollywood’s biggest success story last year. He also starred in the spy film Pathaan.

The roles – in which he portrayed a rugged action hero – marked a departure for the 58-year-old, who, over three decades of his movie career, has been best known for playing the tender romantic hero.

His comeback on the big screen comes after a series of setbacks in his personal and professional life. They include the arrest of his son Aryan Khan on fake charges of drug possession – the charges were eventually dropped – and a number of films that didn’t do well.

But his break from the limelight is unlikely to have dented his popularity. Charming and funny, the actor is often described as Bollywood’s “most important cultural export”, with millions of fans who endearingly refer to him as King Khan or the King of Bollywood.

Other Bollywood megastars also attended the event on Saturday, including Rani Mukerji, Anil Kapoor and Bobby Deol.

Mukerji won the best actress award for the child-custody drama Mrs Chatterjee vs Norway while Vidhu Vinod Chopra won best director for 12th Fail.

Meanwhile, Sandeep Reddy Vanga’s Animal scooped up six awards including best picture, and best supporting actor for Anil Kapoor.

Bollywood, India’s dominant film business, produces hundreds of films every year and has a huge following among Indians globally.

But like others across the world, it has seen ups and downs since the coronavirus pandemic shuttered cinemas for months and led many to turn to streaming services. It is yet to return to its former glory.

This year has been particular difficult, thanks to a lacklustre pipeline of new releases.

In comparison, 2023 was a stellar year, helped in part by the return of “King Khan”.

It is the third time Abu Dhabi has hosted the event, which is running over three days this year.

Karan Johar co-hosted the ceremony alongside Khan. The renowned filmmaker also scooped up a special award marking his 25 years in cinema.

Michael Fortin was at the heart of Hollywood’s golden age of streaming.

The actor and aerial cinematographer turned his hobby of flying drones into a profitable business in 2012 just as the streaming wars were taking off. For a decade, he was flying high above film sets, creating sleek aerial shots for movies and TV shows on Netflix, Amazon and Disney.

Now he’s on the verge of becoming homeless – again. He was evicted from the Huntington Beach home he shared with his wife and two young children and now is being booted from the Las Vegas apartment they moved to because they could no longer afford to live in Southern California.

“We were saving to buy a house, we had money, we had done things the right way,” he says. “Two years ago, I didn’t worry about going out to dinner with my wife and kids and spending 200 bucks.”

“Now I worry about going out and spending $5 on a value meal at McDonald’s.”

For over a decade, business was booming in Hollywood, with studios battling to catch up to new companies like Netflix and Hulu. But the good times ground to a halt in May 2023, when Hollywood’s writers went on strike.

The strikes lasted multiple months and marked the first time since the 1960s that both writers and actors joined forces – effectively shutting down Hollywood production. But rather than roaring back, in the one year since the strikes ended, production has fizzled.

Projects have been cancelled and production was cut across the city as jobs have dried up, with layoffs at many studios – most recently at Paramount. It had a second round of layoffs this week, as the storied movie company moves to cut 15% of its workforce ahead of a merger with the production company Skydance.

Unemployment in film and TV in the United States was at 12.5% in August, but many think those numbers are actually much higher, because many film workers either do not file for unemployment benefits because they’re not eligible or they’ve exhausted those benefits after months of not working.

As a whole, the number of US productions during the second quarter of 2024 was down about 40% compared to the same period in 2022. Globally, there was a 20% decline over that period, according to ProdPro, which tracks TV and film productions.

That means less new movies and binge-worthy shows for us.

But experts say the streaming boom wasn’t sustainable. And studios are trying to figure out how to be profitable in a new world when people don’t pay for cable TV funded by commercials.

“The air has come out of the content bubble,” says Matthew Belloni, the founder of Puck News, which covers the entertainment industry. “Crisis is a good word. I try not to be alarmist, but crisis is what people are feeling.”

Part of the boom was fuelled by Wall Street, where tech giants like Netflix saw record growth and studios, like Paramount, saw their share prices soar for adding their own streaming service offers.

“It caused an overheating of the content market. There were 600 scripted live action series airing just a few years ago and then the stock market stopped rewarding that,” Mr Belloni says. “Netflix crashed – all the other companies crashed. Netflix has since recovered – but the others are really struggling to get to profitability.”

And along with the streaming bubble bursting, some productions are also being lured away from California by attractive tax incentives in other states and countries. Los Angeles leaders are so concerned about the slowdown that Mayor Karen Bass created a task force last month to consider new incentives for film production in Hollywood.

“The entertainment industry is critical to the economic vitality of the Los Angeles region,” Bass said announcing the plan, explaining it is a “cornerstone” of the city’s economy and supplies hundreds of thousands of jobs.

Recent data shows the entertainment industry contributes over $115bn (£86bn) annually to the region’s economy, with an employment base of over 681,000 people, the mayor said.

The writers’ and actors’ strikes lasted for months and resulted in union contracts that offer more money and protections against artificial intelligence.

Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, the chief negotiator with the Screen Actors Guild union, told the BBC that some consolidation in Hollywood was inevitable. He says he is optimistic that production will be ramping up soon.

“What makes these companies special, what gives them their unique ability to create value is their relationship with creative talent,” he said while visiting a picket line outside a Disney office in September, where video game voice actors are currently on strike fighting for similar protections.

Hollywood “always thinks it’s in crisis,” he says. “It is a town that constantly faces technological innovation – all kinds of change – which is part of the magic. Part of keeping content fresh is everyone having the idea that things don’t always have to be the way they’ve been.”

Mr Fortin’s drone company was operating nearly every day before the strikes. Now he’s flown the drones just 22 days in the year since the strikes ended. And as an actor – he often plays tough guys – he has worked just 10 days. He used to work as a background actor to get by, but the pay barely covers the gas money to get to Los Angeles from Las Vegas.

“It was a great wave, and it crashed,” Mr Fortin said after a day flying his drones on the AppleTV+ show Platonic – his first gig with drones since April.

“Things are coming in little by little,” he says in his van before driving back to Las Vegas for a court hearing to fight his eviction order.

“Hollywood gave me everything,” he says. “But it feels like the industry has turned its back on lots of people, not just me.”

A lot of us have been there, locked in a metal cylinder flying at more than 500mph (804km/h), gritting our teeth about the armrest the person to the left is hogging.

Or the person next to the window who keeps getting up to go to the toilet, or the person in front who has suddenly put their seat back, squashing your knees.

With roughly half of the UK’s households flying once a year, how people behave on planes is an ongoing bugbear.

And this week a Hong Kong couple were banned by Cathay Pacific after tensions flared over a reclined seat.

So how can we avoid getting in our fellow travellers’ bad books?

Someone putting their seat back on a long-haul flight can be frustrating – but it seems to trigger Britons and Americans to different degrees.

A 2023 survey by Skyscanner into the issue indicated that 40% of people in the UK find it annoying, but a YouGov survey earlier this year suggested that only a quarter of Americans view it as unacceptable.

Whatever the percentage, reclining seats “really are a problem”, according to Charmaine Davies, a former flight attendant.

She says cabin crew sometimes have to step in to stop anger boiling over between passengers.

The basic problem is how airlines cram seats onto planes, with passengers having less space than they did in the past, according to Prof Jim Salzman of University of California, Los Angeles.

“[The airlines] are able to pass on the anger and frustration of cramped seating to passengers who blame each other for bad behaviour instead of the airlines who created the problem in the first place.”

William Hanson, an etiquette coach and author, says it’s a matter of choosing your time to recline your seat, which you shouldn’t do during a meal. Check whether the person behind is leaning on the table, or using a laptop – and recline slowly.

If in doubt just talk to your fellow passenger, he says. Don’t expect them to be a mind reader.

Another gripe linked to the amount of space people have on planes is double armrest hogging.

Mary, a flight attendant for a major US airline, says she is often given a middle seat between “two guys with both their arms on armrests” when she’s being transferred for work and doesn’t have a choice of seat.

Nearly a third of UK airline passengers found this annoying in 2023, the Skyscanner survey suggested.

Mary has had “a tussle with elbows”, she says, but has a strategy for reclaiming the space.

“I wait until they reach for a drink and take the armrest. One [guy] kept trying to push my arm, and I just had to give him a look: ‘We’re not doing that today.'”

To resolve any tension, Mr Hanson says people should get used to the idea of having “elbow rests” rather than armrests, and share them.

Many of us will be familiar with the dilemma of being in a window seat and needing to go to the toilet, but the person next to you has fallen asleep.

Do you nudge them to wake them up, or climb over them?

More than half of Americans responding to the YouGov survey said climbing over someone to go to the toilet was unacceptable.

Mr Hanson says he normally has an aisle seat, and before going to sleep he tells the passenger next to him it’s fine to wake him up or hop over if they need to.

If sat in the middle or window seat, you should just gently let the passenger in the aisle seat know you need to get past them – but be aware you might not speak the same language, he advises.

If a passenger has been drinking alcohol, it can make them need to go to the toilet more often too.

Zoe, a former flight attendant with Virgin Atlantic, was on a flight to Ibiza on a different carrier where many of the passengers had been drinking in the airport bar beforehand, she says.

As soon as the flight took off and the seatbelt light went off, “everybody stood up” and started queuing for the toilet. Some got “quite aggressive”, she says, leading to the cabin crew turning the seatbelt signs back on, forcing everybody to sit down.

Unfortunately, one passenger really couldn’t wait so had to “have a wee in a carrier bag”.

“He put some swimming shorts in there first to soak it up,” says Zoe.

About a third of Brits find people standing up as soon as the plane lands annoying, the Skyscanner survey indicated.

“Just stay in your seat,” says former flight attendant Ms Davies. “There’s no point jumping up because you’re not going anywhere.”

It normally takes the ground crew several minutes to either hook up the passenger boarding bridge or put boarding stairs in place.

Even after that, if you have checked baggage, you’re going to need to wait for it to get to the carousel, she says, “no matter how quickly you get off the plane”.

Mr Hanson says that in etiquette terms, there’s nothing wrong with wanting to get up to stretch your legs, and perhaps people just want to get off because they are unconsciously a bit scared of being on a plane.

But he adds that it is “faintly comical” when people all get up at once and then “stand there like a lemon”.

Other air passenger pet hates include people jumping queues, using phones or other devices without headphones, draping long hair over the backs of seats, and taking shoes or socks off on a plane.

If you become aware the flight attendants are using spray to “spritz” the aircraft near you, you may want to put some socks or deodorant on, Mary says, as cabin crew won’t say anything directly.

But with air travel continuing to grow, how can we get on with other passengers on planes?

The key is everyone being considerate, Mr Hanson says.

“If you don’t want to temper your behaviour to get along with other people then there’s something wrong with you, to be blunt.”

If you were in India and had 900,000 rupees ($10,800; £8,000), what would you buy? A car? A trip around the world? Diamond jewellery? Or a Coldplay concert ticket?

The British rock band is set to perform three shows of their Music of the Spheres world tour in Mumbai next year and the tickets are being sold for obscene amounts on reselling platforms, after being sold out in minutes on BookMyShow (BMS) – the concert’s official ticketing platform.

The tickets went on sale last Sunday and were priced from 2,500 rupees to 12,000 rupees. More than 10 million people competed to buy some 180,000 tickets.

Fans complained about hours-long digital queues and site crashes, but many also alleged that the sales were rigged as resellers had begun selling tickets for five times the price – touching even 900,000 rupees – before they were released on the official site.

Earlier this month, something similar happened with tickets for Oasis’ concert in the UK, where resellers charged more than £350 for tickets that cost £135. But even then, the inflated prices of Coldplay tickets stand out. To put this in perspective, Madonna charged £1,306.75 for VIP passes to her Celebration tour and the best tickets for Beyoncé’s Renaissance concerts sold for £2,400.

The events have sparked a conversation around ticket scalping in India, where people use bots or automation tools to bypass queues and purchase multiple tickets to sell on reselling platforms. Fans are questioning whether the official site had taken adequate steps to prevent this, or whether it chose to look the other way.

BMS has denied any association with resellers and urged fans to avoid tickets from “unauthorised sources” as they could be fake, but this hasn’t stopped people from viewing the site suspiciously.

Fans have complained about having a similar experience while buying tickets for Punjabi singer Diljit Dosanjh’s upcoming concerts. Tickets were released on Zomato Live, the concert promoter, earlier this month and after getting sold out, they began popping up on reselling platforms for several times the original price.

Ticket scalping is illegal in India, and experts say that while it’s possible that it’s happening anyway, it’s also likely that legitimate ticket-holders are selling theirs through resellers to make a profit due to the massive demand.

Graphic designer Dwayne Dias was among the few lucky ones who managed to buy tickets for the Coldplay concert from the official site. He bought four tickets for 6,450 rupees each.

Since then, he’s been approached by people who are willing to pay up to 60,000 rupees for a ticket. “If I wanted to, I could sell all the tickets and watch the concert in South Korea [Coldplay’s upcoming touring destination]. The amount will cover my travel expenses and I’ll be able to experience a new city,” he says.

While the inflated prices of Coldplay tickets are shocking, the huge demand for tickets to see popular international artists perform is not uncommon. In fact, the live music business in India has been growing in leaps and bounds over the past couple of years.

According to a report, music concerts generated about 8,000m rupees in revenue last year and by 2025, this figure is set to increase by 25%. Brian Tellis, a veteran in the music business and one of the founders of the Mahindra Blues music festival, says concerts have become a part of an individual’s – and the country’s – cultural currency.

• ⁠Oasis ticket row: How Ticketmaster’s owner has grip on UK live music scene
• Why do concert tickets now cost as much as a games console?

Chart-toppers like Ed Sheeran, Alan Walker and Dua Lipa have performed in India in the recent past, and the latter two are set to perform again this year. “Like for other industries, India is a booming market for the music business as well. There’s a huge demographic that’s young and has money to spend. Everyone wants a piece of the pie,” he says.

The soaring demand is evident in ticket prices and sales. Tellis says about a decade ago, 80% of production costs were footed by sponsors and 20% through ticket sales, but the numbers have reversed today.

“Attending a concert is a mix of bragging rights, being a conformist and being part of the scene,” he says. “There are true music lovers as well in the mix, but many attend because they get swept up by the hype surrounding a performance and they don’t want to feel left out.”

Days before and after Coldplay concert tickets went on sale, social media was full of captivating Instagram reels of the band performing hits like and in packed stadiums, with fans singing along and turning the venue into with their LED bracelets. Influencers waxed eloquent about their love for the band and there was no dearth of Coldplay memes.

Industry sources told the BBC that targeted marketing plays a key role in ticket sales – a task handled by the promoter’s website. The more demand is created, the more ticket prices can be raised. Organising concerts is tough, as they often incur losses, so when the opportunity arises, bankable performers are exploited for profits.

While some fans argue that the government should take steps to control ticket prices, Tellis doesn’t agree. “This [selling tickets] is entrepreneurship – it won’t be right for the government to get involved. Because if you want to control revenue, then you’ll have to also control costs,” he says.

Despite the upward trajectory of India’s live music business, experts say the country still has a long way to go before it can be on a par with the international music scene.

• Oasis hit out at Ticketmaster’s dynamic pricing after backlash

“We have very few concert venues and they are not up to international standards,” Tellis says. “That’s why artists perform fewer shows in India despite the massive demand.”

Dias and his friends recently travelled to Singapore to attend a Coldplay concert. He says the ticket-booking experience was smooth, the venue was top-class and the crowd was well-managed.

He’s not sure he’ll have the same experience at DY Patil stadium – the venue for the band’s concerts in India. “For one, it’s much smaller and crowds in India can be quite indisciplined,” he says. He’s also worried about how safe the venue will be and whether the crowd will be managed properly at entry and exit points.

But for now, he’s holding on to his tickets and is prepared to endure whatever lies ahead, just to get a chance to watch Chris Martin and company perform again.

There is a young woman sheltering under a tree between two busy roads clutching a pile of documents to her chest.

These pieces of paper are more important to Bibi Nazdana than anything in the world: they are the divorce granted to her after a two-year court battle to free herself from life as a child bride.

They are the same papers a Taliban court has invalidated – a victim of the group’s hardline interpretation on Sharia (religious law) which has seen women effectively silenced in Afghanistan’s legal system.

Nazdana’s divorce is one of tens of thousands of court rulings revoked since the Taliban took control of the country three years ago this month.

It took just 10 days from them sweeping into the capital, Kabul, for the man she was promised to at seven to ask the courts to overturn the divorce ruling she had fought so hard for.

Hekmatullah had initially appeared to demand his wife when Nazdana was 15. It was eight years since her father had agreed to what is known as a ‘bad marriage’, which seeks to turn a family “enemy” into a “friend”.

She immediately approached the court – then operating under the US-backed Afghan government – for a separation, repeatedly telling them she could not marry the farmer, now in his 20s. It took two years, but finally a ruling was made in her favour: “The court congratulated me and said, ‘You are now separated and free to marry whomever you want.'”

But after Hekmatullah appealed the ruling in 2021, Nazdana was told she would not be allowed to plead her own case in person.

“At the court, the Taliban told me I shouldn’t return to court because it was against Sharia. They said my brother should represent me instead,” says Nazdana.

“They told us if we didn’t comply,” says Shams, Nazdana’s 28-year-old brother, “they would hand my sister over to him (Hekmatullah) by force.”

Her former husband, and now a newly signed up member of the Taliban, won the case. Shams’ attempts to explain to the court in their home province of Uruzgan that her life would be in danger fell on deaf ears.

The siblings decided they had been left with no choice but to flee.

When the Taliban returned to power three years ago, they promised to do away with the corruption of the past and deliver “justice” under Sharia, a version of Islamic law.

Since then, the Taliban say they have looked at some 355,000 cases.

Most were criminal cases – an estimated 40% are disputes over land and a further 30% are family issues including divorce, like Nazdana’s.

Nazdana’s divorce ruling was dug out after the BBC got exclusive access to the back offices of the Supreme Court in the capital, Kabul.

Abdulwahid Haqani – media officer for Afghanistan’s Supreme Court – confirms the ruling in favour of Hekmatullah, saying it was not valid because he “wasn’t present”.

“The previous corrupt administration’s decision to cancel Hekmatullah and Nazdana’s marriage was against the Sharia and rules of marriage,” he explains.

But the promises to reform the justice system have gone further than simply reopening settled cases.

The Taliban have also systematically removed all judges – both male and female – and replaced them with people who supported their hardline views.

Women were also declared unfit to participate in the judicial system.

“Women aren’t qualified or able to judge because in our Sharia principles the judiciary work requires people with high intelligence,” says Abdulrahim Rashid, director of foreign relations and communications at Taliban’s Supreme Court.

For the women who worked in the system, the loss is felt heavily – and not just for themselves.

Former Supreme Court judge Fawzia Amini – who fled the country after the Taliban returned – says there is little hope for women’s protections to improve under the law if there are no women in the courts.

“We played an important role,” she says. “For example, the Elimination of Violence against Women law in 2009 was one of our achievements. We also worked on the regulation of shelters for women, orphan guardianship and the anti-human trafficking law, to name a few.”

She also rubbishes the Taliban overturning previous rulings, like Nazdana’s.

“If a woman divorces her husband and the court documents are available as evidence then that’s final. Legal verdicts can’t change because a regime changes,” says Ms Amini.

“Our civil code is more than half a century old,” she adds. “It’s been practised since even before the Taliban were founded.

“All civil and penal codes, including those for divorce, have been adapted from the Quran.”

But the Taliban say Afghanistan’s former rulers simply weren’t Islamic enough.

Instead, they largely rely on Hanafi Fiqh (jurisprudence) religious law, which dates back to the 8th Century – albeit updated to “meet the current needs”, according to Abdulrahim Rashid.

“The former courts made decisions based on a penal and civil code. But now all decisions are based on Sharia [Islamic law],” he adds, proudly gesturing at the pile of cases they have already sorted through.

Ms Amini is less impressed by the plans for Afghanistan’s legal system going forward.

“I have a question for the Taliban. Did their parents marry based on these laws or based on the laws that their sons are going to write?” she asks.

Under the tree between two roads in an unnamed neighbouring country, none of this is any comfort to Nazdana.

Now just 20, she has been here for a year, clutching her divorce papers and hoping someone will help her.

“I have knocked on many doors asking for help, including the UN, but no-one has heard my voice,” she says.

“Where is the support? Don’t I deserve freedom as a woman?”

In this closely fought US election, vice-presidential candidates JD Vance and Tim Walz were picked to sway Midwestern and rural voters who might be hesitating over Donald Trump or Kamala Harris. In Nebraska, owing to an electoral quirk, such voters could prove pivotal.

As an expert breeder, Wade Bennett can tell you the precise parentage of every one of the 140 head of Charolais cattle he keeps on a small holding on the edge of Nebraska’s rolling Sandhills.

Despite being a staunch Republican, he’s less certain, however, of the pedigree of the man once again vying for his vote.

Donald Trump, he says, would probably be “kicked out” of his voting shortlist if there were other conservative options available.

One of the least-populated states, Nebraska is, like much of rural America, not only deeply Republican but deeply Christian, too. And some here, like Wade, are uncomfortable with what they see as Donald Trump’s personal, moral failings.

But with Kamala Harris and a smattering of small-party candidates the only other options this November, Wade is putting his scruples to one side.

“Even as a Christian,” he tells me. “It is what it is.”

He’s focusing not on Trump’s character, but on his policies – and he likes the promises he hears to crack down on illegal immigration, cut the cost of living and put more tariffs on trade.

Even his slight hesitation, however, is enough to give Democrats hope.

The rightward drift of the American countryside over the past 25 years has been remarkable.

In 2000, Republicans had a six-point advantage over Democrats among registered rural voters, according to the Pew Research Center.

But by 2024, they had established a mammoth 25-point lead.

Even though only a fifth of Americans live outside the big towns and cities, the strength of their shift towards Donald Trump was key to his victory against Hillary Clinton in 2016.

But for Democrats, the rural vote is still worth fighting for, particularly where even small gains in already tight states just might make the difference.

So it’s no coincidence that both Kamala Harris and Donald Trump now have running mates whose white rural roots are being used to make the argument for who is best placed to speak on behalf of this country’s great Midwest.

Vice-presidential candidates don’t usually have much impact on how people vote, but when Tim Walz and JD Vance meet in a primetime televised debate on Tuesday night, they will be hoping their different backstories and visions resonate with voters still unsure about Harris, a California Democrat, and Trump, a New York real estate developer.

Walz, the current governor of Minnesota, was born in small-town Nebraska, and has made much of his background “working cattle, building fence”.

His time as a schoolteacher and football coach before politics, and his subsequent record in Minnesota, providing tax credits to families and free school meals, are precisely the kinds of things the Democrats hope will resonate with struggling rural voters.

Ohio Senator Vance, on the other hand, is a man who’s also made much of his rural roots, but with a far less optimistic framing.

Vance rose to national prominence with his best-selling book, Hillbilly Elegy, the story of his family’s origins in eastern Kentucky, their struggle with poverty, his mother’s fight with addiction and the joblessness and blight of Middletown, Ohio, where he grew up.

Where Tim Walz has emphasised individual freedom and what binds Americans, Vance has focused on a “ruling class” that he says has failed working families in small communities all over the country.

In writings and in interviews, he has stressed the need for individual responsibility, rather than welfare – although he does not support cutting programmes like Social Security. And he echoes Trump’s vision of protecting American jobs and workers with tariffs and border walls.

I meet 42-year-old Shana Callahan casting for catfish under a setting sun in the Two Rivers Recreation Area, just outside the city of Omaha. The cost of living, once again, is never far from mind.

“Everything costs more, everything sucks,” she says.

“I drive an F-150 and when Trump was in office, I was paying about 55 bucks for a tank of gas. Right now, it’s anywhere between 85 to 109, and, you know, the cost of groceries and everything has just gone through the roof.”

There were structural reasons for the depressed oil market during some of Trump’s presidential term, not least the Covid crisis, and prices had begun to climb steeply before he left office. Some economists also say President Joe Biden’s 2021 stimulus spending contributed to broader inflation.

But economics is a feeling in US elections, not a graph on a page, and Shana has made up her mind.

There’s nothing, she tells me, that would convince her to vote for Kamala Harris, especially not Tim Walz’s local backstory and his claims to represent people like her.

“For one thing, the man’s a goofball,” she says. “I can’t respect him. He comes out on the freaking stage like, ‘Oh, go, coach’.”

The story of JD Vance being raised by a grandmother because of the opioid crisis – which she knows from the film version of his book – resonates deeply, however.

“The beginning of the movie is like, you know, family is always going to back you up. I mean, that’s kind of the way it is out here.”

“I’m only 42 and I’ve had like, three friends die of fentanyl.”

Shana lives in the one small part of this vast, rural state that may find itself with an outsized impact on November’s election result.

Under the US system, each state is allocated a specific number of votes in what’s known as the electoral college. Presidential candidates need to reach 270 votes to win the White House.

Unlike most of the rest of America, where all the electoral college votes in each state go to the winner of the popular vote, Nebraska does things differently.

Three of its five votes are decided by whoever wins three individual districts.

Nebraska is a reliably Republican state but its second district – worth one vote – went to Trump in 2016, to Biden in 2020, and this time round there’s a scenario in which whoever wins it could win the whole election.

If Harris wins the Rust Belt swing states of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin and Trump takes the Sun Belt states of Georgia, North Carolina, Arizona and Nevada then the second district would provide the single tie-breaking vote.

District two is a microcosm of America, with the heavily Democrat-leaning city of Omaha balanced by the Republican-leaning outskirts and the countryside beyond.

In their backyard in the centre of Omaha, Jason Brown and Ruth Huebner-Brown are spraying giant blue dots on plain white lawn signs.

“We’re like a little swing state within a state,” Jason tells me. “It could absolutely, I guess you would say, be a history-changing moment. This could really be the ultimate one vote that matters.”

In an effort to keep the “blue dot” blue, the Harris-Walz campaign has been massively outspending Trump-Vance here, pouring millions into TV advertising.

Ruth tells me she believes it’s having an effect on the doorsteps.

“When they talk about Walz he’s very relatable. He’s, you know, one of us. And, you know, they just trust him.”

“And I think a lot of people are very tired of the divisiveness and the bitterness and he’s, he’s anything but that.”

There’s plenty of divisiveness in Nebraska.

Even here, deep in the American countryside, you can hear the unsubstantiated assertions that large numbers of immigrants are unlawfully claiming Social Security or engaging in ballot fraud.

One Republican voter admits his belief in such claims is based not on fact, but on what he’s heard, with echoes of JD Vance’s similar justification for his promotion, without evidence, of the allegation that Haitian migrants are eating pets in Ohio.

A soybean farmer tells me that Kamala Harris is a “DEI hire”; another says it is white people who are being discriminated against in today’s America.

Yet, on the Democratic side, there are signs of groupthink too – the bafflement over the choices of their opponents and a readiness to see all Republican voters as motivated by the narrow politics of prejudice.

But there’s something else unique about Nebraska’s electoral system. Its state legislature is nonpartisan, meaning it does not recognise the party affiliations of its elected members nor organise them around formal party voting blocs.

In the city of Hastings, Michelle Smith is out canvassing for a seat in that local legislature.

She’s a Democrat fighting for votes in a very red district, but, she says, the system encourages compromise.

“My own father is one of those people who’s going to vote for Donald Trump, and I understand it,” she tells me.

“I’m a business owner. I paid less taxes when Donald Trump was president. Our prices were lower at the grocery store.”

How does she campaign?

“I bring it down to the local issues. I’m not a national candidate. I’m a local candidate, and I’m running to make things better here in Nebraska.”

For now, Nebraska is very much in the national spotlight.

There’s been a last-minute attempt by the Republican Party not to leave anything to chance, with several lawmakers pushing for a move to make the state a winner-takes-all system.

Barring the completely unexpected, that would mean all the state’s electoral college votes go to Donald Trump.

It foundered, though, on the opposition of a few local Republican senators, who refused to bow to the pressure this close to an election, placing what they saw as the interests of the state – given the rare bit of political leverage the system provides – over that of national partisan politics.

Even Lindsey Graham, the powerful Republican senator, flew in to meet with the holdouts, but to no avail.

“It was interesting,” he’s reported to have said back in Washington. “They have a different system. Everybody’s like a mini-governor.”

Whether or not Nebraska plays an outsized role in November’s deeply divided contest, it may offer something of an alternative to it.

• SIMPLE GUIDE: Everything you need to know about the vote
• EXPLAINER: Seven swing states that could decide election
• FACT CHECK: What latest FBI data shows about violent crime
• POLICIES: What Harris or Trump would do in power
• POLLS: Who is winning the race for the White House?

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.